by Paul Finch
“Do you have any grandchildren, Mrs Dawkins?” someone asked.
“No, I haven’t been blessed that way. But I have a son.”
“Did he never have a family of his own, then?”
“No, but he might do. Nice girl, he’s going out with. Very pretty, blonde. Works for Age Watch as a home-help.”
After they’d cleared up and said the rosary together, the ladies went their separate ways. Elsie took a bus back into Camden, and visited the bank, just in time to draw some money out before it closed. After that, she went straight to the Stables Market, now on tenterhooks in case the stall she was looking for wasn’t there anymore.
“Afternoon missus,” the Asian stallholder said. He was well wrapped, wearing a donkey jacket, gloves and a woolly hat. His breath puffed in thick clouds. “You window shopping again, or can I actually do you for something?”
“You said fifty pounds, yes?”
He looked at her askance. “You serious?”
She dug into her purse and took out a bundle of notes. “Fifty pounds … and that thing is exactly what you say it is?”
“I’ve no proof. I mean, you’ll have to take my word for it.”
She offered him the money.
“It might be worth a bit more, now I think about it.”
Elsie flashed him a startled look.
“Don’t worry, only pulling your leg. Want me to put it in a bag for you?”
It was dark when Elsie returned home. She lived at the end of what at first glance was a typical North London terrace, quite close to a Victorian railway arch. But hers was the only complete house. The rest of the row of narrow, brownstone buildings had been subdivided into upstairs and downstairs flats, several of which were to-let, which meant they were drab, dingy affairs, the tiny strips of garden at their fronts filled with litter and refuse. Elsie, who had been able to buy her property thanks to the compensation she’d received when her husband, Ted, was killed in an accident working on a building site, kept her own front garden spick and span, as she did the interior of her home. Though, as Age Watch had noted, it wasn’t possible for her to do it all by herself these days, and even Age Watch’s generous assistance didn’t extend to the allotment on the other side of the road. There were ten of these in total, and in many ways they were the reverse of the buildings facing them. Where the Dawkins house was the only smart one in the row, the Dawkins allotment was the only unkempt one; it was deeply overgrown and covered with dead leaves, its shed dilapidated. All the others were tidy and fenced off from each other; at this time of year, many had been newly planted with flowers or vegetables.
Elsie gave her own oblong patch of scrubby vegetation a frustrated glance before going indoors. Several times now, a West Indian gent from the next street had enquired about taking if off her hands, but she’d always said ‘no’. She never used it, but was determined to keep it in memory of Tommy. Indoors, she drew the curtains and switched the gas fire on. She didn’t immediately remove her coat or mittens; the living room usually took ten minutes to warm up. As she waited, the phone rang.
“Hello?” she said.
“Mrs Dawkins? It’s Mrs O’Leary.”
“Mrs who?”
“Mrs O’Leary. You remember me? I’m housekeeper at St Luke’s presbytery.”
Elsie did remember her. A short, stumpy Irishwoman. Red-haired and rather bossy, if memory served.
“Hello, Mrs O’Leary.”
“Listen, I’ve got some good news for you.”
The voice sounded so excited that for a brief time its strong Dublin accent was difficult to comprehend.
“Could you say that again, Mrs O’Leary?”
“It’s really good news. You know Father Ryerson’s recently taken over as parish priest here?”
“I’ve heard that, yes.”
“Well he’s a lovely young man. You must meet him.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Listen, I’ve mentioned to him … well, you know.” Mrs O’Leary’s voice tailed off and she seemed uncertain how to continue. “You know … about, well, about Tommy’s anniversary coming up in two weeks.”
“Yes,” Elsie said, her voice clipped.
“It was very difficult before, of course.”
“You mean when Father Frobisher was in charge?”
“Father Frobisher was quite an old priest, Mrs Dawkins, and very set in his ways. As you know, he wasn’t keen to include Tommy’s name in the prayers for the dead.”
“He never mentioned him once.”
“I know.”
“Every fourth week in November, Tommy’s anniversary comes around, Mrs O’Leary and he never mentioned him once.” Usually, Elsie would struggle to contain her tears at the mere mention of this matter. Not so now. Her delivery was straight and firm. “Every year I requested it. I begged and pleaded with him, and he just shook his head.”
“That’s what I’m ringing to tell you about,” Mrs O’Leary said. “Father Ryerson’s not like that. I’ve explained everything, and he said he’ll be delighted to include Tommy’s name in the memorial prayers at Mass in two weeks’ time. He said he’ll even give him a special mention while it’s the fortieth anniversary.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Elsie replied.
“I’m sorry?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t want it now.”
“Mrs Dawkins, please …”
“It doesn’t matter, Mrs O’Leary.” Elsie hung up. She turned and looked across the room at the bulky brown paper package sitting on the sideboard. “We don’t need your prayers anymore.”
*
It was Friday morning when Shirley next visited.
She arrived pushing her bicycle, and was surprised to see Elsie outside, wearing an old-fashioned, flower-patterned pinafore and brushing leaves from the pavement in front of her house.
“Mrs Dawkins, that’s what I come for.”
Elsie acknowledged this with a slight smile, which was considerably more of a smile than she usually gave. Shirley was even more surprised.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“I like things to be just so.”
“Of course. But – well, that’s my job now. Come inside and I’ll make us a cup of tea, before I get cracking.”
Elsie nodded, but seemed distracted. She glanced past Shirley across the road. Shirley looked round and, at first saw only a large ginger tom-cat sitting on the opposite pavement, grooming itself. Then she realised that, directly behind the cat, the old wooden gate that had hung lopsided in its frame for as long as she could remember had been fixed, and that, beyond that, the Dawkins allotment looked completely different. The straggling weeds and thorns were gone. Briefly, Shirley wondered if they’d withered in the late-autumn chill. But no, they’d been cleared, exposing the narrow cement path up the middle and, to either side of it, black earth beds, which appeared to have been rolled flat. The shed was still an eyesore, but its broken door had also been repaired and a shiny new padlock was visible.
“You haven’t done all that, yourself, have you?” Shirley said admonishingly.
“Of course not. How could I?”
“You’ve sold it?”
“Someone helped me.”
“Well they’ve done an excellent job. Now, shall we go and have that cuppa?”
“You go ahead, dear.” Elsie nodded across the road. “I’m just keeping an eye on his lordship.”
“You mean the cat?”
“Cats can make nasty messes.”
“If you say so.” Shirley fastened her bike’s security chain to the front fence, and bustled indoors.
She went first into the living room, where she took off her Afghan and draped it over the arm of the sofa. As she did, she heard a shout outside. She glanced through the window and saw Elsie halfway across the road, brush in hand. The cat, which had just intruded onto the allotment, turned to face her, its back arched. Elsie continued to advance, giving another screech of anger; the cat ro
cketed away, vaulting the fence and vanishing from sight.
Shirley smiled to herself. Then the phone rang. She picked it up, only pausing briefly when she thought she heard a slight creak from somewhere overhead.
“Hello?” a male voice said.
“Hello,” she replied.
“Oh – that isn’t Mrs Dawkins?”
“No, Shirley Stockton. I’m her home-help.”
“Ah yes, we’ve met, haven’t we?” The voice was deep and resonant. It sounded well educated. “James Ryerson here, the new parish priest at St Luke’s.”
“Oh hello, Father Ryerson.”
“Do you mind me asking, Shirley, is everything okay there?”
“Well, yes.” Shirley glanced again through the window and saw that Elsie was on the allotment, where – with more energy than she’d shown for some time – she was sweeping up any imagined ‘mess’ that the cat might have left behind it. “Better than okay, if you want the truth.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand …”
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing. How can I help you?”
“Well, it’s an oddity really.”
The priest explained about his former parishioner’s sudden turnaround with regard to the special prayers he’d been planning to say at Mass for the repose of her son’s soul.
“That’s curious,” Shirley said, “because this is something that’s upset Mrs Dawkins for a long time.”
“Yes, that’s what I was led to understand. It was rather remiss of Father Frobisher, if you want my opinion. But everyone has their own view of what constitutes morality these days. Now that I’m here, I was hoping to make it up to her.”
“I’d have thought she’d snatch your hand off.”
“It’s her choice, of course, but I’m confused, having heard how many times she’s petitioned for this in the past. Is she – well, is she quite herself?”
Shirley hesitated before replying. If Father Ryerson meant was the old dear going dotty, it was difficult to say. In the four years Shirley had known her, Elsie had always been a strange, lonely individual, who was more than capable of withdrawing into long, morose silences. But she elected not to mention this. She didn’t really know this Father Ryerson after all.
“I was hoping to have met Mrs Dawkins by now, but she hasn’t been attending Mass,” he said.
“Oh, she has. But she’s been going down to St Mark’s in Kentish Town.”
“I see. Well … her reluctance to come back to St Luke’s is understandable. Hopefully she’ll return to us at some point. The main thing is that she’s okay?”
“As far as I’m aware, she’s fine,” Shirley said. “If anything, she’s more robust today than I’ve seen her in quite a while.”
“That’s good. Perhaps you could tell her I’ve called. If she changes her mind, she only has to let me know.”
Shirley hung up, more than a little puzzled. She knew that Elsie had an obsession about her son. The early death of his father had meant that she’d had to raise the child all on her own – very difficult in those long-ago days – and a strong bond had formed between them.
Out of professional necessity, Shirley had already researched the events surrounding Tommy Dawkins’s execution. He’d been found guilty of murdering a girl called Mary Stillwell, who’d lived next door. Apparently he’d also mutilated her, quite horribly. No-one had really understood why he’d done it. Had there been something going on between them? Had Mary Stillwell resisted a sexual advance maybe? No answers were ever provided. But this had happened in 1965, and the twenty-year-old was subsequently tried, and, as he’d already confessed, was convicted and sentenced to death; a sentence carried out swiftly – only a few days before the passing of the Murder Act, which effectively abolished capital punishment in Great Britain.
He’d been one of the very last men to hang. Whether this in itself was a sore point with Elsie, Shirley didn’t know. But it couldn’t have helped.
Strangely, though the bereaved woman had proclaimed her son’s innocence at the time, and had tried to claim that his penalty was an injustice, she’d afterwards come to accept it with surprising speed and dignity. There’d been no histrionics in the following months, no letters to the newspapers or the Home Secretary. When, over the next few years, the policeman who’d arrested Tommy – Shirley thought he was called Mackeson – had occasionally come to visit Elsie, she’d maintained a cold but proud silence. Of course, Elsie was part of that steely World War II generation, who kept their grief and rage buried deep inside, only allowing it to surface now and then – like when her local church, previously a source of strength during her difficult years as a young widow, had refused even to acknowledge that there might be hope for her son in the afterlife.
“Everything all right, dear?”
Shirley glanced up. Elsie was in the doorway. She looked flushed in the cheek.
“You’re not overdoing it, are you?” Shirley asked. “You know what the doctor said about your blood pressure.”
“Doctors know nothing. Now, shall I make us that cup of tea, or will you?”
Before Shirley could answer, her charge had hobbled off to the kitchen to do it herself. It was perplexing. This was not the Elsie Dawkins of two or three days ago.
*
“The really odd thing,” Shirley said, “was that I went back that evening, and there was someone there.”
Des Martindale, her supervisor, sat back behind his desk. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
“Well, when I left … everything seemed okay on the surface. But it didn’t feel right. Later on I went back. I mean, I didn’t visit officially. I was tempted to, but she’s a sharp old girl, she’d have known something was up. So I went round the back.”
Shirley explained how she’d wheeled her bicycle along the alley behind the row of houses, until she came to Elsie’s rear gate, which, because it had warped over the years, no longer closed properly. She was able to slip through this, creep up the yard to the kitchen window and peek through it. She said how startled she’d been to see a man seated at the kitchen table. She’d only seen him from behind, barely managing to make out his left shoulder and the back of his head, but he’d been youngish looking with short, dark hair. Elsie, meanwhile, had been stirring something on the stove.
“And this is a problem?” Des asked. He was a middle-aged chap, with a salt and pepper beard and moustache. “Surely it’s a good sign that she’s got a guest?”
Shirley wasn’t convinced. She re-envisioned the back of that young man’s head. Something about it had bothered her – something she couldn’t put her finger on.
“In the last four years,” Shirley said, “I’ve never known Mrs Dawkins have a single visitor. She’s no living relatives that I know of. She hasn’t even got any friends, apart from whoever it is she meets at this Mothers’ Association. And that’s another problem. She hasn’t been a mother for forty years. What’s all that about?”
“Old ladies join mothers’ associations. I don’t suppose it’s incumbent on them to actually have children.”
“But who’s this guy?”
“Maybe he’s the bloke who did the allotment for her?”
“And she was cooking tea for him?”
“Why not? She probably can’t afford to pay him wages.”
“I think he was in the house earlier.”
Des’s smile faltered. “Explain.”
“When I got that phone call from the priest, I thought I heard a noise upstairs. A creak. Like a footstep.”
“Like a footstep?”
“Well it could have been.”
“It could also have been an old house creaking.”
“Come on Des, work with me!”
“You said like a footstep.”
“Just for the sake of argument say it was a footstep. What was he doing up there? Was he keeping out of my way, maybe?”
“More likely he was having a bath after doing a hard day’s graft on the allotment.”
Des shook his head. “Even if he had, we’re being very presumptuous assuming there’s something wrong with it. You think she’s got no living relatives, but you don’t know. It’s probably some long-lost nephew who’s come to stay.”
Shirley considered. When you looked at it that way, it didn’t seem so odd. “But if that’s the case, why didn’t she tell me about it?”
“Does she tell you other things about her private life?”
“Not really.”
“There you go.”
“I just had a feeling, Des.” Logical as his arguments were, he wasn’t putting her at ease. “There was something about it I didn’t like.”
“When are you next due to see her?”
“I’m not scheduled until Monday, but I was thinking of popping in tomorrow morning.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Just a friendly visit, checking she’s got everything she needs. I’ve done it before, I’m not breaking any rules.”
“Up to you, Shirl. Just don’t do anything that’ll compromise your position, or make Age Watch look intrusive.”
*
Shirley was only supposed to use her key to enter Elsie’s house in the event of emergencies, but such was the relationship they’d developed over the years that she tended to come in and out as she pleased, and the old lady never objected. However, on this particular Saturday morning Shirley was less sure.
What she was actually doing on this occasion was snooping, and her conscience was nagging her for it. In addition, she’d become wary because of Elsie’s curious behaviour. The eagerness and energy with which the old girl had been going about her chores had set alarm bells ringing. Of course, personality changes didn’t always have to be for the worse. But they rarely signified that all was well.
Shirley wheeled her bike along the street with some trepidation. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, and this also made her feel guilty. Camden was starting to buzz – traffic sounds could be heard, a train trundled over the viaduct – yet it was still early to call on someone at the weekend, and she’d chosen it for specifically that reason. She didn’t like to admit it, but she wanted to catch Elsie unawares; if there was something untoward going on, she wanted to walk in on it without the perpetrators having an opportunity to conceal their actions.