A Lesser Evil

by Lesley Pearse

  The sky had been like lead all day, with a cold wind, and Dan had a constant picture in his mind of Fifi lying in a cold, dark place, terrified out of her wits. He had always thought he could cope with just about any situation life threw at him. But this waiting around, unable to do anything constructive to find his wife, was too much to bear.

  They found a spare table and Harry ordered the drinks from a waiter. ‘I’ll just check if there are any messages,’ he said as the waiter went off. ‘And I’ll quickly phone home too.’

  Dan observed how Clara’s eyes followed her husband as he walked back across the bar to the foyer and the phones. She had held up well, but every time Harry went out of the room her eyes became full of panic as if she were afraid he would vanish too.

  Dan knew now that he had been very wrong in thinking the Browns’ marriage was more or less an arranged one, without real love. They had revealed their feelings for each other many times this weekend. Love was there, as sturdy as a rock, he’d noticed it in the way they fumbled for each other’s hands when one of them became upset or frightened, the looks they exchanged, the little caresses. He felt somewhat ashamed that he’d once thought Clara’s problems with Fifi were caused by jealousy.

  He had also observed many similarities in their characters. Clara thought she knew best about everything, just as Fifi did. Clara was equally nosy, and she could act like a spoiled child too. She couldn’t communicate with others as well as her daughter, and she was more dogmatic, but Dan felt that was largely because of her upbringing and the more sheltered life she’d led.

  Yet he had also found much to admire in his mother-in-law. He liked her poise and her directness. Nor was she such a terrible snob as Fifi claimed. She reacted to bad manners with horror, but her attitude was the same whatever social group the ill-mannered person came from. She turned up her nose at people eating in the street, she thought the journalist asking her age was rude. Yet she treated people with lowly jobs, like the chambermaid in the hotel, waiters or taxi drivers with appreciation. In the Rifleman she had been charming. Even when Stan told her he was a dustman she didn’t bat an eyelid and later remarked what a gentleman he was.

  Clara had of course banked on her daughter marrying a professional man, and why shouldn’t she? Her husband was one. But Dan realized now that it was Fifi who had created the frightening image of him in Clara’s mind by being so secretive. If she’d only taken him home immediately, Dan felt Clara might still have been stiff and stand-offish at first, but her innate good manners would have demanded that she look for his good points.

  He knew this because he could see it happening now. When the three of them went back to Dale Street early on Saturday evening, he had made tea and sandwiches for them, and he saw her watching in surprise when he laid the table. She clearly expected him to put the sandwiches and tea on the floor and tell them to ‘dig in’. He might have done that once, but Fifi had trained him well.

  Later Clara admired several things he’d made. ‘You’ve made these with a lot of love, Dan. And a great deal of skill,’ she said approvingly. ‘Harry is hopeless with his hands.’

  It wasn’t an apology for judging him so hastily at their first meeting, but then he neither wanted nor expected one. It just pleased him that at last she was finding things in him to like.

  The waiter brought their drinks, and when Dan got some money out of his pocket Clara waved it away. ‘I’ll put it on our bill,’ she said.

  They sipped their drinks in silence. Clara was looking at a group of American tourists at the next table. They had very loud voices and even louder clothes.

  ‘London used to be full of very elegantly dressed people,’ she said quietly. ‘Even during the war everyone made an effort. But I haven’t seen one smartly dressed person this weekend.’

  ‘I have,’ Dan said. ‘There’s you.’ He meant it, she looked so neat and feminine in a navy blue costume with a white frilly blouse beneath it. He’d felt proud to introduce her in the pub as his mother-in-law.

  She gave a weary little smile. ‘I feel a wreck,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you don’t look like one,’ he said. ‘Just very tired.’

  She looked at him long and hard, and Dan braced himself for a sharp retort.

  ‘I misjudged you, Dan,’ she said softly and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  He was so taken aback that he was tongue-tied, but as tears trickled down her cheeks he involuntarily moved forward in his seat, picked up a paper napkin and gently wiped her tears away as if she were Fifi.

  ‘The past doesn’t matter,’ he replied, but Clara’s eyes were so like Fifi’s that it brought a lump to his throat.

  ‘We’ll have no future either if we don’t get her back unharmed,’ she said, catching hold of his hand with urgency. ‘Tell me honestly, Dan, do you think she’s already dead?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m sure I’d know if she was, and besides, if they’d killed her, the police would’ve found her body by now.’

  Clara’s face relaxed for a minute, then tightened up again.

  ‘Whatever could have gone on in that house?’ she asked. ‘It had to be something much more than just the one little girl being killed by her father.’

  Dan nodded. ‘I can’t work out what though,’ he said. ‘Fifi was always saying that she found it puzzling that anyone would want to play cards with Alfie. I didn’t really see what she meant. But now I wish I’d taken more notice of what she was saying, you know, talked to her about her feelings, then maybe she wouldn’t have found it necessary to go down to that depot.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot more to reproach myself with than that,’ Clara said sadly. ‘I should have been kinder when she lost the baby. I didn’t meant to be nasty, but we had that long train journey, and she wasn’t the least pleased to see me. I wish I could learn to curb my sharp tongue.’

  ‘Fifi forgot about all that once you came to visit her. And whatever you’d said or done, it couldn’t have prevented this,’ he said to soothe her. ‘If anyone’s to blame it’s me. I should have been more understanding after she found Angela, but I got irritated when she seemed so obsessed by it. All I could think about was working more so I could get enough money together so we could move away. If I’d just been there listening, maybe she wouldn’t have resorted to snooping.’

  ‘I doubt it, Dan,’ Clara said. ‘She always was a law unto herself. I never found a way to curb that curiosity of hers. I can remember dozens of times when she was still a child when I had to go searching for her. She’d slip out the gate when I wasn’t looking and go exploring. Sometimes I’d find her in someone’s garden, and she’d have gone right into their house if the door had been left open. She just didn’t seem to have any normal sense of caution.’

  Harry interrupted them by coming back and slumping down into his chair. ‘No news,’ he said sadly. ‘Patty said that lots of the people she’d contacted to see if Fifi had been in touch with them had rung back to ask if there’s any news. She said everyone was being very kind.’

  Clara told Harry what she and Dan had been talking about.

  ‘I want you both to stop blaming yourselves,’ Harry said when she’d finished. He looked sternly at both his wife and Dan. ‘We all know Fifi likes drama, and when there isn’t one, she creates one. It’s no good you thinking you shouldn’t have taken her to London, Dan, you had to go, that was where the work was and a wife’s place is at her husband’s side. I’m just sorry that we didn’t welcome you into our family. We were foolish and short-sighted. In the last two days we’ve seen for ourselves why Fifi loves you.’

  Such a frank admission, and the affectionate and paternal way it was made, was too much for Dan after such a harrowing day and Clara’s apology too, and all at once he was crying. He tried to stop himself but he couldn’t, and he covered his face with his hands, appalled that he was showing himself up in public.

  Clara got up and enveloped him in her arms. ‘You poor boy,
’ she whispered as she rocked him against her chest. ‘Stay here in the hotel with us tonight, we’ll look after you.’

  Her words were a comfort, for Dan couldn’t remember anyone ever offering to look after him, not even when he was a child.

  In that moment he saw the truth about Clara. She had a hard shell, that much was certain, she liked her own way, and she was stubborn. But the hard shell was there to protect the softness inside her, and she was just like any other good mother, prepared to fight to keep her children from anything that she perceived as harm. And that had once included him.

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate it,’ he whispered, pulling himself together. ‘I’ll be fine, just a temporary blip. But I’ll go on home now. I feel closer to Fifi with all her things around me.’

  They came out to the hotel foyer with him, and Clara hugged him and kissed his cheek. ‘Try and get a good night’s sleep,’ she said tenderly. ‘You never know, the police might have some good news by the morning.’

  Harry embraced Dan too. ‘We’ll come over in the morning and go down to the police station together,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like me to go down to your work with you later on? You really must talk to your boss; you don’t want to lose your job on top of everything else.’

  Dan nodded. He hadn’t contacted his firm since Thursday, and he knew he must, even though his job seemed unimportant right now. ‘That would be good,’ he said, and tried to smile. ‘Sleep well and don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Poor lamb,’ Clara said thoughtfully as they watched Dan walk down the street to the tube station. ‘I can see now why Fifi fell for him; he isn’t the cocky, on-the-make thug I took him for at all.’

  Harry put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her back into the hotel. ‘I’m proud to have him as a son-in-law,’ he said gruffly. ‘He’s made of the right stuff.’

  As Dan was walking to the tube station, his cheeks still damp with tears. Fifi was sitting up rigid with shock at what Yvette had just said to her.

  It was too dark to see her face; she was just a darker shape in front of her, with only the white of her teeth and the collar of her white blouse showing up faintly.

  ‘You can’t have killed Angela,’ Fifi gasped. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I did,’ Yvette insisted.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It was how you say? The lesser evil?’

  ‘I don’t understand. I don’t believe you either; you couldn’t kill anyone, certainly not a child,’ Fifi said indignantly. ‘And what do you mean by “a lesser evil”?’

  A deep sigh came from the Frenchwoman, as if she were gathering her thoughts. ‘Sometimes you ’ave to choose between two bad things. Like when you ’ave to choose to treat a very sick animal and maybe make it suffer more, or ’ave it put to sleep. Mama had to choose between sending me away or keeping me with her and maybe we both go to a camp. At theese times we try to choose the lesser of ze two evils.’

  Fifi had a mental flashback to Angela lying naked on the bed with blood on her splayed thighs. She also had the image of Yvette being raped in the brothel in Paris.

  ‘So you thought Angela would be used like you?’

  She felt a slight movement as if Yvette was nodding her head. ‘Right, well explain what happened that morning, from the beginning.’

  ‘Eet started the night before,’ Yvette said hesitantly. ‘I hear ze men arrive. It is hot, ze windows open. I hear everything like I am in ze room.’

  ‘Let’s lie down,’ Fifi said gently. ‘It’s too cold to sit here like this.’

  She lay down and Yvette crawled towards her, then pulled the blanket over them both. Fifi waited patiently, afraid to rush Yvette because her breathing was laboured; whether this was because of the enormity of what she’d just confessed, or a symptom of her weakened condition, Fifi didn’t know. She thought she ought to be frightened, yet strangely she wasn’t.

  ‘Do you remember how hot it was that night?’ Yvette asked.

  ‘Mmm,’ Fifi replied.

  ‘On hot nights when they had those parties I hate it because the men often use the garden like a pissoir. The smell it comes in my bedroom and kitchen. I was thinking theese when I hear them drinking and laughing, Molly is cackling like a madwoman.’

  It was Molly’s cackling that Yvette always found hardest to bear when they had these parties. The men’s laughter was no different to the sounds from any crowded bar, but Molly’s was shrill and maniacal.

  At first the noise came from all the rooms on the ground floor, music from the front room, guffaws of laughter, shouted greetings from one man to another, clinking glasses and bottles from out in the kitchen, and now and then the children’s voices mingling with the adults.

  Earlier in the day, Yvette had overheard Alan and Mary talking excitedly about the trip to Southend the following day and around ten she heard Molly order them to bed with a few choice swear words and the warning they wouldn’t be going if they came downstairs again tonight. She thought Dora and Mike went to bed too, as she didn’t hear their voices again.

  At about ten-thirty the entire party moved into the back room, which was next to her bedroom, and apart from the odd man going out into the garden to urinate, the noise lessened as they settled down for a game of cards. Yvette didn’t mind the sound of cards slapping on the table, the odd creak of chairs, sighs and frequent expletives, at least that signalled this wasn’t going to be one of those nights when more terrible things went on.

  Yvette couldn’t hear Molly’s voice any longer either, but this wasn’t in any way unusual – she could have been drunk in the front room or up in her bedroom with one of the men – but her absence suggested that cards was the only thing on the menu tonight.

  She carried on with her sewing by the window in the front room, the curtains closed. She was tired but she knew it was futile to go to bed as the party would go on till the early hours of the morning and then it often became raucous once everyone was drunk and had lost interest in the cards.

  Raised voices alerted her later that something unusual was happening. Fights were common enough, bottles or glasses would be hurled, furniture turned over, and while she hated the noise and the menace of violence, at least she always knew it meant the party was drawing to a close. But this was something different; the men were drumming on the table, there was excitement in their raised voices.

  Yvette wasn’t in the habit of going to investigate anything going on next door. Over the years she’d learned the hard way what might happen. She’d had a full beer can thrown at her, been sprayed with urine, and just being spotted standing at her kitchen sink could result in screamed accusations that she was spying on them.

  But her curiosity got the better of her, and she stole quietly out into the garden, keeping her head well below the fence that separated the houses. When she reached the bottom of the garden and the cover of the tree that overhung the back wall, she stood up on an old crate to see into number 11.

  Her view of the Muckles’ back room was uninterrupted, and as the lights in there were bright she could see everyone clearly, except for two of the men nearest the window who had their backs to it. There were six men in all, including Alfie, and the table was strewn with glasses, bottles, overloaded ashtrays and cards, with a heap of money in the centre.

  Molly was standing, or rather posing seductively, by the door through to the hall, wearing a flimsy red negligee, with just underwear and stockings underneath, and she was holding Angela by the hand.

  One swift glance at the men’s leering faces, Molly’s coquettish expression and Angela’s look of complete bewilderment was enough for Yvette to know exactly what Molly was offering.

  Her body or that of the child’s, in exchange for the money on the table.

  Had she not experienced the self-same thing herself as a child, she might very well have imagined Angela’s presence was an accident, that she’d come down for a drink at an inopportune moment. But there was no mistakin
g the slathering hunger in the men’s faces, and nothing else would create such a highly charged atmosphere, certainly not just Molly’s body which could probably be bought for a bottle of drink.

  ‘There’s over two hundred quid in the pot,’ one of the men yelled out. ‘She ain’t worth that much.’

  Yvette began to tremble. She clasped her hands together and offered up a silent prayer that the men would denounce a mother who could sell her child, and leave hurriedly.

  ‘Ones this young don’t come cheap,’ Molly said, then bending over she caught the hem of the child’s nightdress and with a flourish whipped it off over Angela’s head, leaving her stark naked.

  ‘No, Mum!’ Angela cried out, trying to cover herself with her thin arms.

  Only a completely perverted beast could possibly have viewed the skinny little girl with her dirty face and unbrushed hair as an object of desire. Her ribs stood out like a relief map, her arms were like sticks of macaroni. But this was obviously what the men were feeling, for there was a buzz of appreciation. Overcome by a wave of both terror and nausea, Yvette got down from the crate and hurried indoors.

  ‘I was sick again and again,’ she whispered to Fifi. ‘I ’ad feelings Alfie did theese to Mary, and I’m sure he also do it to his older girls when they lived there too. But Angela ees so leetle. She ’ave no breasts, no ’ips, just a small child. I should ’ave gone to the police right then, but I was too frightened and sick.’

  Fifi felt sick herself. If she’d had any food inside her she was sure she’d have brought it up. She had formed the opinion that Alfie Muckle was allowing men to use his children, but thinking of something hideous like that in your own head could never be as horrifying as discovering those nightmare images were real.

  ‘Do you know which man got her?’ she asked.

  ‘Oui,’ Yvette whispered. She was trembling by Fifi’s side. ‘I did not see him but I ’eard his voice and I know it was ze big older man, who come so often. I know ’is name is Jack Trueman, because Molly she boast so often about this rich man who is her friend.’