That settled it, of course. As soon as he thought he’d have to coax her, it was a firm decision. She started work on the following morning and it worked out exactly as she hoped it would. Better in fact.
Because it wasn’t at all boring. There were people in and out of the place all the time, toiling up the three flights of stairs that led to Braham’s Export Agency Ltd on the top floor of the shabby building in Great Portland Street, and they were interesting people. Some looked shady and highly unreliable, but others seemed as prosperous as Alfred himself. Once even Sidney Stanley, the famous Sidney Stanley who had so ruffled the Whitehall dovecotes when the Government’s Lynskey Tribunal had looked into, amongst other things, his business dealings, came puffing into her small outer office, where she sat being secretary and receptionist and general queen of the realm of Braham’s Export. He was carrying a large basket of fruit and was wrapped in a heavy black overcoat with a Persian lamb collar, and under his heavy black homburg hat his face was red and gleaming.
‘Alfred around?’ he asked jovially. ‘Got a little something for him –’
‘He’s gone round to the BBC, Mr Stanley,’ she said demurely. ‘A friend of his there needed some information about some new records from America –’
Her father had told her to say that to all comers. He was in fact having a haircut but part of one of his present schemes included importing several thousand new record players from America. Someone there had invented a new kind of record that played much longer than the ordinary three-minute ones, and was planning to bring them over to London.
‘No use, though,’ Alfred had said, talking to the man who came to make him the offer, while Maddie, ostensibly bringing the petty cash book up to date, listened avidly. ‘Unless we got the new sort of machines you need to play ‘em. You get me those and I’ll get your records on the wireless, okay? I got pals round there in Langham Place, I have, I’ll get them talking about your bloody records. Just get me the gramophones.’
So Alfred was busily working up the demand for his gramophones, as he insisted on calling them, which should be arriving in the next month or so depending on freight space and the right import licences and Maddie, knowing of Sidney Stanley’s supposed expertise in the area of import licences, smiled sweetly at the big man and said again, ‘The BBC. No idea how long he’ll be, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah,’ Stanley said fatly. ‘Glad to hear it. It’s just where he ought to be, the way things are shaping up. Very nice too. Now, dear, I’ll leave this for him. Just a couple of pieces of fruit, you know, a couple of pieces. Oh, and just give him this, will you? Very confidential –’ And he went away down the stairs, pretending to run lissomely, which was a lot easier than climbing up them had been, his heels rattling importantly on the shiny lino that covered the treads.
Before he had reached the bottom and slammed the glass front door behind him she had examined the fruit basket – which was surprisingly well filled and even contained a pineapple, a rare object even though it was now five years since the war had ended – and opened the envelope which was carefully marked in large letters ‘Private and Confidental. For Alfred Braham Esq. only‘. All she had to do was throw away the envelope and her father wouldn’t know she hadn’t been meant to see its contents.
But when she read it she decided he wouldn’t see it anyway, and carefully salvaged the envelope from the wastepaper bin. This was too useful to be left to her father, or worse still to Ambrose, who was getting a little sharper these days about work since his father had started to become a little less generous with cash. This was something for her Jay.
He rose to it just as she’d hoped he would, because for the first time in all their dealings he was able to feel that he knew more than she did. Because the envelope contained an export licence for fifty thousand bottles of best Scotch whisky, currently in a warehouse at Tilbury.
All he had to do, she told him, was to go armed with this document to supervise the loading of the whisky on to a cargo carrier due to leave London for Boulogne from whence it would be trans-shipped to a liner with some available cargo space on its way to Boston. And because Jay knew the way the Boston docks worked, and the necessary fiddles needed to get the stuff ashore, the whole thing would be very easy indeed.
‘And,’ Maddie said, ‘worth a good deal of money.’
‘How much?’ Jay sounded guarded then. ‘Is it worth the effort? I mean, to spend the whole of two days at Tilbury when I’m supposed to be at the Great Portland Street office – how will your Pa react when he finds out I’m not there? I could go sick, I suppose, but you know how he is. Not above sending someone round to my flat to make sure I’m there –’
‘He won’t,’ she said confidently. ‘I’ll see to that. It’s what I’m best at, seeing Daddy does what I want him to. And more importantly doesn’t do what I don’t want him to. Leave that to me. The thing is, it should get you at least five thousand. And if you can’t make a bit more on the side with the warehousemen and a few bottles not making it to the hold on account of they’re supposed to be broken, you’re not the chap I thought you were. And I know you are.’
He stared at her and shook his head. ‘Jesus, Maddie, you really are – listen, this is your Pa you’re screwing! How can you do it?’
‘I told you. I want you.’ She laughed then softly and lifted her head and whispered into his ear, ‘It’s you I want to be screwing.’ And he pulled away from her, seeming shocked.
‘Where did you learn language like that?’
She laughed again. ‘With a brother and a father like mine? Don’t be daft! I’ve got ears. And anyway, I’m not screwing Daddy.’
‘What happens when he finds out you’ve taken this licence out of his mail? Stanley’ll be expecting to be paid for it. Won’t he? He doesn’t go sniffing round these government offices just for the fun of hobnobbing with civil servants, does he? From all I’ve heard of him he’s a right twister –’
‘You’re being so silly, Jay! I shall go and see him and tell him I made a mistake and accidentally tore up his letter or burnt it or something. I’ll show him the envelope and say how I now realise I was supposed to give it direct to Daddy but I opened it by mistake and didn’t think it was important because I’m so stupid. Oh, you can work it out! I’ll be all pathetic and helpless and he’ll feel sorry for me and he’ll get me a copy of it. It has to be on file somewhere, doesn’t it? And then when I get it we give it to Daddy and he pays Stanley as arranged and by the time he gets the business in hand the ship’s gone and he finds the deal’s been struck with someone else. It’s always happening – I’ve heard it often enough in the weeks since I’ve been here. People make three set-ups of deals to sell something they’ve got and it goes to whoever comes up first with the best money. These days it’s the way it is everywhere. Daddy’ll just curse it and get on to the next deal. He’s going to make a fortune out of these gramophones, you know. I wouldn’t let you in on that because it’s much too big and Daddy’s watching every step. But he’s been in booze for so long it practically runs itself and he’s used to there being mistakes and things going wrong. Especially when it’s supposed to be Ambrose who’s dealing with it.’
‘Then it’s your brother you don’t mind screwing.’ He was watching her with fascination for her face was alight with the excitement of it all and her hands were flickering busily as she pushed home the points she was making with those elegant gestures of hers. ‘Doesn’t that worry you?’
She made a face. ‘Ambrose? Listen, Jay, I gave up worrying about him a long time ago. He’s so stupid. He could have half this business all to himself by now if he wanted. Daddy wanted him to have it, being the son and everything. But he’s hopeless, absolutely hopeless. Daddy says Mummy could keep him in order, but since she died he says he’s been impossible. So he has, too. Makes my life a misery sometimes, the way he – well, anyway, I don’t give a damn about him. If he can’t look out for himself then I don’t see why I should. I’m looking after number on
e. Daddy does. Ambrose does. So I shall too. Or rather one and two. Me and you. You especially. I do love you, Jay –’ And she leaned across the table of the small cocktail bar where they were sharing a drink and set her hand in his.
He didn’t move it away, but turned his palm upwards so that her fingers slid into his grasp.
‘I’m beginning to realise how much,’ he said. ‘To put this sort of money my way – and you think we can get away with it –’
‘I’m damned sure we can,’ she said at once and then leaned closer still. ‘Tomorrow’s time enough for business, Jay, my darling. Tomorrow. Tonight Daddy’s out at Wembley till midnight. There’s a boxing match. Come and have some supper. Stay late with me? Please?’
‘I’ve got work to do tomorrow,’ he said and smiled lazily at her, his face curving gloriously, Maddie thought, in the limited light of the bar. ‘What good will I be to anyone if I spend a night of mad passion with you, hmm?’
‘Do you want to spend some mad passion with me?’
‘Any man would.’ He grinned even more widely.
‘I’m not interested in any man. Only in you. Go on, answer me – do you?’
‘Of course I do – no, hang on there, for Christ’s sake. I don’t do things like that to innocent young girls, you know. Especially if they love me.’
‘I’m not so bloody innocent,’ she flared at him, trying to look sexually experienced but not quite sure how to. ‘And it’s not whether I love you that should matter. It should be don’t you love me?’
‘I’m beginning to think a hell of a lot of you, Maddie,’ he said and suddenly he wasn’t bantering any more. He took hold of both her hands now and leaned over towards her so that their faces were almost touching. ‘More than just wanting to crawl into the sack with you. That’d be easy and fun and then what? No, I want more for us. A real partnership, hmm? Real togetherness – I’ll take you out for supper tonight and tomorrow I’ll work and get on to this deal. Let’s see how this one works out and then after that – who knows? But until we know we’re on the right road together, my dear impetuous Maddie, I’m going to take care of you. And that means no mad passionate love. Yet.’
And he leaned just that little bit further forwards and kissed her and her bones melted completely.
9
February 1987
A bitter February sort of day, heavy with the kind of chill that creeps into bones and makes them feel fragile, and she had to choose today to decide to walk; bloody Maddie, Annie thought sourly and tucked her chin down into her scarf. And then lifted her shoulders because the movement had exposed the back of her neck and that was cruelly cold. Having her hair cut in that mad fashion had really been just that: mad.
She thought about it as she walked slowly along beside the shuffling figure that was Maddie. She was wrapped in several layers of cardigans and sweaters and an overcoat and on her feet she was wearing an elderly pair of Annie’s own Wellington boots, the only things that could be found that would fit the splayed old feet. It had been so long since Maddie had walked anywhere except between her bed and her chair and the bathroom that her feet had softened, losing their muscle tone. Now they flapped in the old boots and she put them down to the ground gingerly at each step, as though they hurt.
Well, she’ll just have to put up with that, Annie thought. If she’d have agreed to come out to walk with me when I first suggested it, when the weather was in that mild phase, she’d have found it easier. To wait till now, when snow glowered over the sky like a pall and the ground was rock hard with frost, was asking for painful walking. And she was suffering it, and it served her right, Annie told herself and went back to thinking about her visit to the hairdresser and was angry once more.
Why had she done it? What had possessed her? It had been like being possessed, come to think of it. She had woken that morning feeling quite extraordinary, as though there was helium in her bones so that she floated above ground instead of plodding along as heavily as Maddie was now doing, in the way she had seemed to have done for months, even years. That morning there had seemed to be sun in the sky and softness in the air of the sort that spoke of April, even though it had been just an ordinary gloomy sort of January Saturday, and she had gone to the High Street to do her usual bits and pieces of shopping, leaving Maddie to spend the morning alone for once. And had succumbed to the most ridiculous behaviour ever.
She had been walking past the hairdresser’s shop on the corner where the buses turned, a shop she had seen before and despised for its absurd over-fanciful frontage covered as it was in shimmering silvery scales that glittered as the wind moved over it, and great steamed-up glass windows and silly name: ‘Heading for Heaven’. Someone had pushed the door open just as she had passed it and come out bringing with her a great wash of luscious smells and warmth and light.
It had been amazing the effect the smell had had on her; it was a concoction of flowers and herbs and heat and ammonia and bleach and coffee and sweating female bodies and it had engulfed her and made those helium-filled bones feel even lighter; and before she knew what she was doing she had walked into the shop and was asking for an immediate appointment.
She had been given it by a receptionist who looked at her with bored disdain and then, before she could change her mind, had wrapped her in a frilled pink plastic cape and taken her and plopped her down in front of a mirror where an even more disdainful young man waited to look after her.
From then on it had been impossible to change her mind even if she had wanted to, which in fact she didn’t, at first. The disdainful young man talked at her about the lack of condition her hair showed, and its split ends, its dryness and general dinginess and then washed it in several highly scented unguents, covered it in coloured foam, cut it with much determined waving about of scissors and finally attacked it ferociously with hair dryer and brush and comb. And she had sat throughout in a sort of trance, watching herself being transformed, and not until he had finished and she had handed over what seemed to her an inordinately large sum of money – for it had been so long since she had been to a hairdresser that she could not remember how much it ought to cost – and walked out of the shop had she really registered what she had done.
She had gone back to the flat at once, not bothering with the shopping at all and had stared at herself in the mirror, aghast and then secretly pleased and then suddenly angry, for she hardly recognised herself. The mass of ill-pinned dark hair in a bun to which she was so accustomed had been replaced by a jagged-edge cap that shone redly in some lights – the effect of the coloured foam? she rather suspected it – and which made her face look thinner and lighter. Younger too, and she hated that and yearned to have her heavy bun back.
But that, of course, was a stupid way to think so she had tried to forget what she had done, refusing to look in a mirror even when she combed her hair, just running the teeth through the tangles and leaving it to find its own level, and pretending it just didn’t matter. And it didn’t, except when it was cold and she forgot her neck no longer had the heavy bun of hair that had once protected it from the chill and she felt the exposed skin shudder in the wind. Like this morning.
She looked at Maddie again. She was now walking a little more steadily, both hands still thrust into the pockets of her top coat – for she had flatly refused to budge if anyone touched her or tried to support her – and with her head up. The ward sister had set a large knitted woollen cap on her head which she had tolerated and now she glowered out from beneath its edge, set low on her forehead, at the monotone world of the wintry afternoon with her dark eyes fixed ahead and her face as expressionless as ever. And suddenly Annie laughed.
‘Maddie, you’ve no idea how bloody ridiculous you look! That stupid hat makes you look like an upended radish and that awful coat – if you’re going to come out and about with me, you’re going to have to look better than that. I’ll get you some new clothes. What do you say to that? Hmm?’
Maddie plodded on, but it seemed to Ann
ie she was listening with more care than usual. It was impossible ever to know whether she was listening, because although Maddie now talked, often for hours on end, she did not converse in any way. It was not a matter of Annie asking questions or making comments and getting logical answers. It was far more that the two women embarked on a series of parallel monologues, although Annie did listen to Maddie. But Maddie seemed not to listen to Annie.
Or did she? Looking at her now Annie thought – is she listening? – and she said a little more loudly, ‘I’ll get you some clothes, Maddie. And I’ll take you to the hairdresser. Come to my hairdresser. A very determined young man, knows exactly how someone should look. See what he did to me –’ and she moved sharply to come and stand in front of Maddie, so that she had to stop walking and look at her.
‘See what he did to me?’ Annie pulled off her own cap, a rough Jules et Jim one that she had bought when she had been a schoolgirl and had never got round to throwing away. She could feel her hair blowing in the wind, stirring over her forehead, and again she shivered as the cold stroked the back of her denuded neck. ‘Do you like it?’
Maddie focused her eyes on her and then let them slide into their usual glaze and Annie made an irritated noise between her teeth and crammed her cap back on her head. ‘Well, all right, you don’t like it. Neither do I, much. But it’s done. And I dare say if I took a bit of trouble over it I’d get used to it.’
She was arguing with herself now as they started to walk again, side by side. ‘I dare say it was more that I’m not used to it than anything else. And why shouldn’t I try to make myself look nicer? Mmm? I may be gone thirty and useless but dammit, it’s my head and my hair and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t make an effort, is there?’
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