Maddie

by Claire Rayner

  ‘I suppose – but he’s said nothing to me.’

  ‘He won’t. No need. He’s just let the police know at New York – then it will be up to them. Oh, Miss Braham, I am so –’

  She ignored that. ‘When does the next liner make the crossing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The next ship over.’ She slapped the sheets of paper in her lap. ‘He says he’s coming after me – when can he do that?’

  ‘I’ll check for you –’ He picked up a sheaf of papers from the tangle on his desk and began to leaf through them. ‘Liverpool, Montreal – Liverpool, Quebec – Liverpool, Australia, oh, here we are. There’s a sailing on the 15th from Liverpool – the Parthia. If he takes a Cunarder of course – he might manage to get on a foreign ship – French perhaps –’

  ‘If it’s the Parthia – when would he get to New York?’

  ‘Ah, the 23rd –’

  ‘If it isn’t, if it’s a French ship, can he get there before we do?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head forcefully. ‘It’s all planned very carefully so there’s no tangle at the docks. Of course he could go to Montreal or Quebec and take a train down to New York – there are all sorts of possibilities.’

  ‘Oh, hell – what do I have to do? I have to stop him – I can’t let him come over and make everything go wrong. The police at New York – I can find a way round them. But not him – he’ll know it’s me whatever I try to do. What can I do?’

  He stared at her and then shook his head. ‘I don’t know. If there’s anything I can to do help – send cables or anything – I’ll do it gladly. I can find a way to cover up – I’ll do anything for you, Miss Braham, I never saw a girl like you ever –’ And he leaned forwards clumsily and seemed about to seize her, but adroitly she shifted slightly so that all he could do was grab at her hands.

  ‘You’re terribly sweet, Mr Foss, really you are, but I just don’t see –’ And then she stopped and still holding both his hands firmly stared deep into his eyes as she thought, faster than she ever had. He, convinced that because she was gazing at him so intently she was thinking of him too, held on tightly and sweated happily.

  ‘You’ll send cables?’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, you can send cables for me. Oh, hell, I’m not sure how to – have you some paper I can work it out on?’

  At once he was all efficiency and provided her with pencils and cable forms and a desk to sit at and then busied himself at his console as sounds and lights became too clamorous to be ignored. And she sat and chewed the pencil and sorted out her memories and then, as succinctly as she could, wrote her cable.

  It was long and it was detailed and half an hour later, when Allan Foss had caught up with his routine work and had time to turn back to her, she was ready for him.

  ‘Can you send this?’ she asked and pushed the form into his hands, and then watched his bent head as he read it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at length, a little unwillingly. ‘I can send it. Are you sure – I mean, it seems –’

  ‘What does it seem?’

  ‘A bit – I mean, this is to go right to the top people. Are you going to – are you telling them – he is your father, after all, isn’t he?’

  She had to make up her mind swiftly, and she did, and pushing to the back of her mind any bad feelings she might have about what she was saying, sat down in the chair beside him again and leaning forwards to take both his hands in hers, began to talk, to tell him all about it.

  All about the dreadful life she had led with this awful man. Yes, he was her father, but so cruel, so uncaring – and his eyes softened and gleamed with sympathy as she painted her picture in more and more vivid and true-blue colours. The way he had kept her locked up, deprived of all that made life worth living while he got richer and richer. The way she had to countenance his wicked ways and his black-marketeering – and here she dropped her gaze in shame and then bravely looked up at him again, wide-eyed and limpid. The bad, dreadfully bad, way she had felt about it all. She had fled, she told Foss, now hanging on every word she uttered, his mouth lax with the sheer excitement of it all, simply in order not to have to see his inevitable downfall. It wasn’t for her own good, but for his; her poor misguided father. She had known the police were on his track because of his dealings, and would come to her for evidence and she had not wanted to give it – oh, she had so much not wanted to give it for she still loved him, wicked as he was. But if he was chasing her, he would beat her if he caught her and – and now she shuddered and faltered to a silence and he squeezed her hands in desperate damp sympathy and leaned perilously close.

  She swayed gently away from him and went on earnestly, ‘Do you see, Allan? What else can I do? I must yield to the law of the land – if he had left me alone then I could have saved my father even at the cost of my own conscience, but as it is – what else can I do? Will you send the cable?’

  He nodded convulsively and then picked up the cable form again and turned back to his console and she sat and watched as he tapped away the long message she had prepared for the CID at Scotland Yard investigating rationing and controls abuses and frauds, the accounts of all the deals she had passed on to Jay, in every possible detail they could need, but telling them that the person they had to investigate if they were to get at the facts of the case was her brother Ambrose and giving the Regent’s Park flat address.

  As she watched his fingers flashing over the keys she bit her lip; when he’d finished would he see the huge holes in her hastily constructed tale? Would he start to doubt her, see what a liar she had been, tell the captain, get her locked up? And the thought of such an action on his part frightened her so much that tears began to well up in her eyes and she had to sniff to stop her nose running.

  At which point he had finished the sending and turned to see her sitting there so woebegone and with tears streaking her cheeks, that with a little cry he lunged and seized her, hell bent on providing comfort for her, as well as some agreeable contact for himself. And she sobbed even more loudly and did the only thing she could do which was to bury her face in his shirt and keep her head well down so that the kiss which was clearly bursting to emerge from him could not be planted on her.

  And in fact it was comforting to be able to cry like this, for all the time she had told the tale about her father she had seen his head with its crinkled half-grey hair bent over a typewriter, his cigar jutting out from his face, his corrugated forehead even more deeply lined than usual as he struggled to cope with the letters she should be doing for him, and guilt had washed over her like a flood.

  And that was not all; she had found herself remembering Ambrose too. Not Ambrose as he now was, pompous and boring and unpleasant whenever he spoke to her, but as he had been when they had been children, when he had missed his mother so much and clung so warmly to her. That he had grown up to be so hateful didn’t alter the fact that he had been the brother she had loved once and now she sobbed deeply and let her tears splash Allan Foss’s shirt to good effect as she pushed as far away as she could her grief for the little boy she had loved once. He was dead now, and his place had been taken by a far from nice person who had done all sorts of horrid things to her and to her father, so why feel so guilty because she needed to be unkind to him? It wasn’t, she told herself passionately as Allan Foss patted her back with an infuriating tattoo meant to comfort but having far from that effect, that she was doing it out of spite. It was only because she had to. To be stopped now, when she and Jay were at last on their way to being the married couple they were destined to be, would be impossible. It was necessary, indeed vital, that she do what she had done. It was not her fault. It had been forced on her, that was the thing, and she mustn’t feel so bad about it –

  Slowly, with a few hiccups, her tears stopped and carefully she lifted her head from Foss’s shirt and stepped back at the same moment so that there was no risk of being too close and therefore kissable, and smiled at him tremulously.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskil
y. ‘I – I lost control. Do forgive me.’

  He shook his head earnestly as delicately she stepped even further away from him and began to mop her damp face with her handkerchief.

  ‘Oh, Miss Braham, don’t apologise, please. I want to help you, any way I can. I’m truly so sad for you. It’s a dreadful situation to be in – to be forced into such an action – I think you’re so brave.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured softly and managed a watery little smile. ‘You’re being so kind. Oh, dear –’ And she put her hand to her forehead as she saw his round eyes brighten hopefully. ‘I’ve got such a headache now. I feel quite wrung out –’

  He was all concern. ‘Of course you do! I can well – look, I’ll see if I can get my oppo to come and take over for a while – I can always take his night watch. He hates that – well, we all do – and then I can take you to your cabin and look after you and –’

  ‘No, really, no,’ she said, not hastily enough to offend him, but with determination. ‘You’ve already done too much – and there are so many other people who share my cabin, you see, that –’

  ‘I could take you to mine.’ He now looked almost as determined as she felt and she managed a wan little smile and shook her head, clearly regretful.

  ‘That sounds bliss – but I can’t. I asked my friend to come with me on this journey, you see. He’s – er –’ Again she began to improvise. ‘He’s my best friend’s fiancé, you see, and he agreed to help me – and if I vanish he’ll get worried. And he’s madly protective, you know. He promised my friend Barbara to take care of me and he’s very thorough – if he can’t find me where he expects me to be, why, he’ll go mad. We don’t want him raising a fuss, do we?’

  ‘No,’ he said, though without great conviction, but then he brightened, clearly happy to hear of Jay’s status as another girl’s property. ‘I hope to see you some time later in the voyage, then?’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ she said and now smiled sweetly. ‘Oh, of course – I’m so grateful to you, and you’re really so awfully sweet. And –’ she went on hastily as he stepped closer once more ‘– and of course there may be other cables you’ll want to tell me about, mayn’t there?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Of course, there may well be. I’ll make sure I come and tell you the moment I get any news –’ She began to make her way to the door, one hand still held limply to her forehead. ‘We get the main newspaper stories, you know – we need to be informed even though we’re at sea. I’ll let you know anything I hear that could be important to you –’

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured and then, as if on an impulse, leaned forwards and kissed his cheek. It was safe to do so now, for the door was open and she was almost out of it, and then she pulled it closed behind her, leaving him standing in the middle of his cabin, looking ineffably pleased with himself.

  It wasn’t till she reached her own cabin on the lowest deck and could creep into her bunk to lie down that she really let herself think properly. She had been faced with a crisis and she had dealt with it. Surely, with that information about Ambrose, the police would be after him immediately? And surely her father would have to stay in England to look after him? Whatever she was up to, his son at risk of prison sentences must surely take precedence. Yes, she had made sure he wouldn’t come after her, at least not till she was a safely married woman. So why should she feel so dreadful about it all? Why was it she was crying again, not prettily this time for a besotted man’s benefit, but in great ugly tearing sobs, for her own need? Why?

  14

  May 1987

  ‘You should have come. The soup was really vintage stuff. So was I. At my peak as a host. You should have been with us.’

  ‘I told you I had that rotten cold. Why didn’t you believe me? I didn’t say I would come – not for a moment, and –’

  ‘I know you didn’t. I didn’t expect you. I just wanted you to know what you missed. You look very nice today. Not so boiled. It could be that sweater. The colour suits you.’

  ‘Too bright,’ she said dismissively, and tried to look annoyed. He really was getting ridiculous lately, with all his chatter, but at the same time she had to admit it was agreeable to be told she looked well. And the sweater had been a gamble. She’d found it when she unpacked the last of the tea chests yesterday and decided to wear it, marvelling that she’d ever bought so vivid a thing, bright scarlet as it was, because it would look good with her grey trousers and jacket, and because it would be less trouble than washing one of the others in time for the morning. Or so she had told herself, though she had a suspicion that she was actually finding herself interested in how she looked again. It felt all wrong somehow to waste time and effort on such matters, but there it was; she was much more aware lately of her clothes and the state of her hair than she had been used to be. It was irritating and yet perhaps, a little pleasant –

  ‘How has she been while I was away? I should have come back sooner, I suppose, but I thought –’

  ‘Not at all. You needed to get your cold quite well. And it clearly is. It’d be a poor state of affairs if you couldn’t be away for a few days from us without the place falling to pieces.’

  ‘It’s not the place I’m concerned with,’ she said drily. ‘Just Maddie. Has she been eating, do you know?’

  ‘We’ll have to find out. I haven’t heard she wasn’t, and Sister B being what she is she’d have been nagging me stupid if there’d been any cause for concern. I dare say she’ll be there now, waiting to pounce.’

  He had appeared beside her in the car park this morning with such promptness that she had wondered briefly if he had been waiting to see her arrive and had deliberately joined her, but then pushed the thought aside. There was no reason why he should, after all; there could be no great pleasure to be had in walking with her from the admin, building car park to the West Pavilion even on a morning as blowy, albeit shiny, as this blustery Monday.

  ‘Have you missed her?’ he asked then as their footsteps crunched along the gravel, making a satisfactory sort of noise that she rather enjoyed and she looked up at him, startled for a moment, because she had been concentrating on the way the wind felt against her skin as well as the sounds and smells of the morning.

  ‘Missed Maddie? Why should I? I only come here to help with her – she’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But you’ve spent a lot of time with her these past few months. By now you either hate her or –’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or feel rather fond of her.’

  ‘She’s a job you asked me to do. That’s all,’ she said, and then shook her head irritably. ‘Were you trying to make me fond of her? As though she were a puppy or a kitten, ideal for bringing bad-tempered women out of themselves?’

  He grinned. ‘I may have had something of the sort in mind once. I really can’t remember. It’s so long ago now. Anyway, I know better than to try to make you do anything you don’t choose to do. You’ve taught me well, Annie! I’m not doing anything sinister in asking you how you feel about her. Just wondering. I’m fond of her myself, you see. I get a feeling of – oh, I don’t know – strength, I think, from her. It takes immense strength to shut yourself up in silence for thirty-five years. Misguided but tremendous. It takes even more to start to come out of it. It may well be that underneath it all she’s a ghastly woman – the sort I’d never want to invite to supper. But I suspect not, because I like her. And I was wondering if you did.’

  October 1950

  The next problem was getting off the ship. The last full day at sea, she decided, would have to be the one devoted to carrying out her plans, and she sat over dinner on the night before, silent as Jay joked and guffawed with his other neighbour and trying not to notice the way Allan Foss was staring at her from his table across the aisle and three down the line. She’d used him enough, she decided. Dodging his ardour this past couple of days had been far from easy; add any more favours to his load and he’d be demanding repayment lo
udly. At least there had been no more alarming cables from her father to the ship. There had been a couple from the captain to New York arranging for immigration officials and police to meet her and he had told her of those faithfully. She knew they would be there at Pier Ninety-Two, unobtrusive but watching for her. A description of her (rather a flattering one, she had been glad to read) had been sent, and now as the ship steamed stolidly on its way over the last few hundred sea miles, she had to think.

  Jay leaned across and tapped her arm. ‘Hey, dreamer! I said, do you want some more wine?’

  ‘Mm? No – no thanks. I think – I’d like to go up on deck, Jay. I want to talk to you.’

  He grinned lasciviously. ‘So soon? Let me digest my dinner, for Christ’s sake – boy, but you are one eager little lady –’

  ‘No, not that. I mean – yes, any time we can. But I really have to speak to you.’ She was keeping her voice low, very aware of the rest of the people at their table, even though most of them were too busy eating to pay any attention. ‘I’ve got – there are problems.’

  He looked suddenly blank and bent his head closer to her. ‘Listen, you’re not knocked up, are you? You can’t be yet –’

  She blinked. ‘Knocked up?’

  ‘Shh, keep your voice down. You know what I mean. I knew this’d be a problem – oh, Christ, didn’t I warn you? But you said there were ways of taking care –’

  ‘Hussh,’ she said and got to her feet. ‘Please excuse us,’ she smiled at the rest of the table and swept away, pulling Jay behind her, desperate to get up on deck where they could talk in private, though not so desperate that she did not remember to take the way out of the saloon that led them well away from Allan Foss’s table.

  Outside it was dark and blowing hard and they huddled in the lee of a boat and she pulled her stole around her and stood as close to him as she could, not just for protection from the wind, but so that they would not be heard by late walkers.