by Marie Joseph
‘Mr Pilgrim winked at me last night. Honest to God, he did.’ Over by the sink, she stared up through the basement window with as rapt an expression as if she was drinking in the beauty of a sunset. ‘He’s got lovely eyes. Dark brown and sad. Like Herbert Marshall’s.’ She turned round, clasping her apron up into a point in both hands. ‘I saw Herbert Marshall at the second house pictures on Saturday night. In ‘I Was a Spy’, with Madeleine Carroll and Conrad Veidt.’ All the passionate yearnings of Maureen’s young dreams were in her voice. ‘It was such a beautiful film, honest to God it was. It was about this Belgian nurse who, because she couldn’t turn her back on the sick and suffering, felt she had to serve in a German hospital. Caring for Germans.’ She opened her eyes wide to emphasize the point. ‘But she’s a spy, and when they trap her . . . well, Herbert Marshall. . . .’
‘Don’t like ’im.’ Mrs Cook jerked her head with its slipping bun towards the stairs. ‘Smarms ‘is hair back, an’ smarmy hair means smarmy everything else, an’ if you don’t get up them stairs quick an’ do what I pay you good money to do, there’ll be no pictures for you this next Saturday, gel!’
Maureen took the stairs two at a time. She thought Mrs Cook could be right about Herbert Marshall’s hair. Honest to God she hadn’t thought about it like that before, but slicked back hair wasn’t romantic. Not at all . . . Clark Gable was a real he-man, but even he had a little lock of black hair fallin’ down over his forehead. An’ Leslie Howard . . . but then his hair was fair an’ it was the dark ones she liked best. Like Mr Pilgrim. . . .
Maureen started to trundle the carpet-sweeper over the threadbare carpet. He was a good looker all right with his jet-black hair tumbling over his forehead. Pity he hadn’t more of a posh accent. He might’ve got taken on as a film star himself. He’d go well with Janet Gaynor, with her being so small and him not being all that big. The carpet-sweeper’s brushes were caught in the frayed edge of the carpet. Bending down, Maureen struggled to release them. She was quite unaware of what she was doing. Her mind and her spirit had soared away from the drab monotony of her daily existence. She was there on the silver screen, luscious lips parted in ecstasy, as Mr Pilgrim, transformed into the Red Shadow, swept her up into his arms and carried her across the sand dunes into his tent, his black hair falling in neglected abandon over his tanned forehead.
‘There’s something rather attractive about a man who has a tan in winter. Sets him out from the herd.’
Yvonne held on to Harry’s hand for longer than was necessary as she let him into her flat in the afternoon of the next day.
He had come in answer to her letter, arriving far too early and having to pass the time mingling with late-night shoppers in the crowded street. Standing in the doorway of a big store, he watched them pushing and jostling, carrying overtired toddlers and loaded down with parcels, women anxiously clutching lists, men over by the perfume counter having the stuff sprayed on their wrists by the counter assistants.
Harry shook his head from side to side. They just didn’t grow girls like that back where he came from. Not girls with so much stuff on their faces it must have taken them an hour to put it on. Why, if a girl made up like that walked down the village street, people would think she was a prostitute! All that crayon drawing round the eyes, and rouge and lipstick. Not to mention the dyed hair. Harry moved closer to a counter to get a better view. As the girl leaned forward he could see the roots of her white-gold hair, as dark as the soot on a chimney-back.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ She was smiling at him, holding out a tiny scent bottle with a silver-meshed rubber bulb fastened to it. Before Harry could stop her, she had picked up his hand and squirted the stuff all over it. He recoiled as if he’d been stung by a bumble-bee, and wiped his hand down his trouser leg.
‘How about buying a bottle for your wife? It’s only ten and sixpence, sir.’
He gawped at her as if she’d suddenly come out with a mouthful of swear words. ‘Ten shillings and sixpence? For that? For that little drop in that little bottle?’
Shaking his head as he walked away, he thought about women back home who had to feed entire families on that much. Women down the market of a Wednesday or a Saturday, opening worn purses and weighing up in their minds whether they could run to a pound of oranges for the children, or a half pound of tomatoes to sprinkle with sugar for a Sunday teatime treat. He felt he’d been made a fool of, and thrust the scented hand deep into his pocket.
Five minutes later he was inside Yvonne’s flat, seeing her smile at him with that trick she had of holding her head on one side, looking at him from beneath those incredibly long eyelashes.
‘Nay. I’m more weather-beaten than tanned,’ he told her seriously. ‘When I die they’ll be able to make a handbag out of the skin on my face.’ He withdrew his hand from hers. ‘And don’t go getting the wrong idea about the way I smell, either. A young woman on the make-up counter in the store round the corner has just squirted me with the stuff.’
She was wearing something loose and floating in a delicate shade of blue. Harry couldn’t make up his mind whether it was a dress or some sort of flimsy dressing-gown. Outside in the street the people were muffled up in scarves and top coats, but here in the flat the atmosphere was as warm as a hot-house, though the white marbled fireplace was filled not with leaping coals but a massive display of bronze and gold mop-head chrysanthemums.
‘You said you had some news for me?’ He sat down where she told him to, on a wide chesterfield covered in cream material, the cushions bound in the same soft brown as the deep-pile carpet. ‘My landlady had obviously opened your letter, so she’ll be wondering what it is as well.’
Her dark uptilted eyes held the same affectionate amusement he remembered from their last meeting. He’d never considered himself to be much of a caution before, but Roger Craven’s sister obviously found him as good as a music-hall turn. Harry felt his spirits rise. He couldn’t get enough of watching her laugh. It made him feel ten feet tall. If she’d wanted him to, he would have stood on his head on the white fluffy rug at his feet and wiggled his toes.
‘A drink, Harry?’ She was holding up a jug so that the light from a standard lamp caught the crystal and set it winking. ‘It’s much too early of course, but we have a toast to drink.’
She came towards him with two glasses, handing one over, then sitting down beside him. The neck of whatever it was she was wearing was cut so low he could see the sweet hollow between her high, small breasts. He looked away, his face burning.
‘Now I want you to listen, Harry. But first drink up and tell me if you like it.’
Leaning forward, she touched his glass with her own. Copying her, Harry drank deeply from the glass. ‘Put some lead in me pencil, that will.’
Horrified at what he’d just said, Harry clapped a hand over his mouth. That was the sort of remark guaranteed to make Polly laugh. Man to wife sort of banter. And yet here he was behaving as naturally with this beautiful, sloe-eyed young woman as if he’d known her for a lifetime, gone to the same schools, and knowing nothing but the ease of money and the privileges that stemmed from a similar environment. It was because, he realized again, she had no silly snobbishness about her. She was like her brother had been. Totally at ease. With both the high and the low, as his mother used to say.
‘Our Harry can mix with anybody. Both the high and the low. Comes of his Romany ancestry. There’s never been a prouder man on this earth than a real true Romany.’
Yvonne was over by the drinks table again. ‘In that case,’ she was saying, ‘you must have another one, Harry.’ She wasn’t offended, or shocked, and the knowledge that she found him witty stimulated him once more, till he felt equal to anything.
This time he sipped the drink slowly, savouring the smooth feel of it on his tongue and the pleasant burning sensation as it slid down his throat. ‘Gin based?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Guaranteed to strip the bark off a tree, Harry.’
She took a cigarette from a silver box on the low
table beside them, and at once he picked up the lighter standing next to it and flicked the flame into action.
‘The good news,’ she said, blowing out a stream of smoke, then remembering to waft it away from his face. ‘I told you my parents had taken to you last Sunday. My father especially. You were with him a long time walking round the gardens and shut away in the greenhouses. Did it never occur to you to wonder why he was asking you so many questions?’
The drink was doing its work. ‘He just needed putting right on one or two things. It’s one thing being a keen gardener; it’s another thing knowing the job inside out.’
‘As you do, Harry?’
‘As I do.’ He put the glass down on the low table, frowning at it as if surprised to see it was half empty. He held out his hands, palms upwards. ‘See these hands?’ He touched his forehead. ‘See this brain-box? Well, what I’ve got up here in me noddle is an untutored intelligence. That means that what I know hasn’t come from studying textbooks and taking exams.’ He grinned. ‘Oh, I’ve read books on the subject. Dozens of ’em. But growing things is instinctive, lass. It’s in the blood, like being able to write books or paint pictures is just something a person is born with or he isn’t. An’ I was born knowing how to garden. How to take a barren piece of land and make things grow on it.’
Suddenly he lifted the glass and drained it. ‘An’ they took that away from me! My mother-in-law wanted me to take on a job in a factory, if I was lucky enough to be offered one, but I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. That’s why I came down here, and here’s where I’m going to stop till I get what I want!’
Leaning forward, so that the soft blue stuff of the robe she was wearing fell away again, Yvonne got up and went to refill his glass. Her eyes were very kind, black almost, in the softly shaded room.
‘You’re very sweet, Harry. I can see why Roger liked you so much.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘He had the same proud dedication as you once.’ Her voice was as warm as an embrace. ‘And because you were his friend, and because he had you at the end, my parents feel they owe you a debt of gratitude. They want to pay you back, Harry.’
‘I don’t want no paying! Being with your brother at the end was all pain and sorrow, but it was life. He gave me far more than I gave him. He never lost his dignity, you know. Right to the end, when he was down as low as he could go, he was still a gentleman.’ Harry nodded. ‘In both senses of the word. A gentleman, and a gentle man.’
‘Harry, listen.’
Stubbing out her cigarette, Yvonne looked deep into his eyes. They were very close together on the wide cushioned sofa, and he could see the faint down on her cheeks by her small ears, exactly like the bloom on a sun-kissed peach.
He started to tell her this, but she laid a hand gently over his mouth. ‘Listen, Harry. Will you listen to me, for Christ’s sake!’
The blasphemy didn’t shock him. Nothing she said or did in that moment could have shocked him. He smiled and felt his smile wobble at the edges.
‘My father has a friend living a mile away. Lord Carson. The furniture people. You know?’ Yvonne shook her head. ‘Well, of course you don’t know. How could you? But Jimmy Carson lives in a house set in acres and acres of ground. Part of it is landscaped, part of it kitchen garden, as well as miles of parkland, and all of it is neglected. The house itself is beautiful. Georgian red brick. I want you to see it, Harry. So take that silly grin off your face, close your eyes and bloody listen! There’s a marble fountain in the middle of the lawn, and a row of monkey puzzle trees over to the far side. The Carsons had six daughters, all married now, but when they were little Roger and I used to go over and play with them, running wild in the gardens. They adored Roger. He was such a funny little tadpole of a boy when he was small.’
She gave Harry’s arm a shake. ‘You haven’t gone to sleep? Right. Here comes the best part. The Carsons have a gardener, an old, old man, as ancient as Noah. He lived with his wife in a cottage on the edge of the estate, and last year she died. Since then the old man has deteriorated to the extent where he can no longer even trundle a barrow. Jimmy Carson couldn’t turn the old chap out, he’s not that sort, but recently they have persuaded him to go – at their expense – into a home. A good private home, Harry, where he can sit out the rest of his life in the sun, talking to his buddies. He was in the Boer War and his only son was killed on the Somme. He’s like you’ll be some day, when you’re old and grey. You’ll like him, Harry.’
‘I’ll like him?’
Opening his eyes, Harry looked at her for a long moment, doubtful, the dawning of something he daren’t believe clouding his dark eyes. ‘Am I going to meet him, then?’
‘I hope so.’ Her voice was very low and husky. ‘You’re to go and see them, Harry. Soon. Tomorrow. My father has convinced Lord Carson that you’re the man he needs to pull that garden into shape. Hard work, Harry. Bloody hard work, and most of it on your own, because the house eats up most of the money. But there’s the cottage for you and your family. All mod. cons with a bathroom upstairs. The old man never wanted the bathroom, but it’s there. Waiting, Harry. All you have to do is go and see them, and if you talk to them like you talk to me, then the job’s yours.’
He continued to stare at her for an endless moment. There was no sudden whoop of joy, no shout of triumph. Instead his eyes filled with tears, and in them she saw reflected all the anguish of the last months, the disappointments, the insults, the fearing that hope was gone. In his dark eyes was the picture of the man he was, the man who could grow seeds from lumps of granite, a man who had only asked to work at the job he had been born to do.
‘It’s true, Harry.’ She kissed him gently. ‘Miracles don’t happen, but this one has. And now you must love me. Because I need you. You must come with me now, and you must hold me close. Because I’m scared, Harry. I go away soon and I’m scared, and you were Roger’s friend, so that makes it all right.’
When he stood up his head swam, but he allowed her to take him by the hand. The bedroom was all white and pink, and the sheets smelled of roses. Harry’s clothes seemed to fall away from him, and she knew no shyness as she stood before him, small and perfectly formed, the light from a street lamp outside in the street silvering her skin.
As they lay close together in the wide bed, he felt the joy of what she had just told him sing through his veins. The feel of her smooth skin was almost more than he could bear. But it was she who guided him into their loving, until with a sigh he forgot everything as their bodies merged and became one.
‘Be happy, Harry,’ she whispered, as they lay spent of passion at long last. ‘You’re a lovely, lovely man, and the nicest thing about you – one of the nicest things about you – is that you don’t know it.’ Raising herself on an elbow, she stared down into his troubled face. ‘There. You’re regretting it already, aren’t you, darling?’
‘I am not!’
She smiled into his troubled eyes. ‘I know you, Harry Pilgrim.’ Her voice was teasing. ‘You haven’t exactly been in the habit of doing this in the late afternoon, have you? Not with someone you hardly know.’
‘I feel I’ve known you for ever and a day,’ he whispered, but she saw the shadow on his face.
‘Nothing is spoilt, Harry. Nothing. I’m not a marriage breaker, for all my faults, and God knows there are plenty.’ She sighed. ‘This is our secret, yours and mine. I needed to be loved, and I think I’m right in saying that you needed me just as much.’
She slid out of bed, not bothering to take the sheet with her, picking up the blue silk robe and trailing it behind her. ‘I’m going to take a bath. Want to join me?’
‘Later,’ he said, and she turned and saw the colour flood his face.
When she’d left the white and pink room he lay still. As he closed his eyes, he had a sudden fleeting vision of Polly, toiling up the hill in her red coat, loaded with shopping, a scarf covering the glory of her yellow-gold hair.
Polly found the letter she had written to Harry de
ep in the pocket of her scarlet coat, creased and forgotten, where it had lain for two days.
‘Would you like me to take it down to the post office, Mam?’ Gatty spoke quickly, as she saw the look of desolation on her mother’s face. ‘I can easily go down to the village and back now the worst of the snow has melted. They’ve had the snow ploughs out, and dad might just get it before Christmas. They always tell you to post early to make people write their cards in time.’
‘It’s too late.’
Polly was downstairs for the first time in three days. The only other times she had taken to her bed had been when her children were born, and even then she’d rebelled against the two weeks’ lying-in time thought necessary after childbirth.
The chill she’d caught after her struggle through the snowdrifts, culminating in the discovery of the horrors down at Bella’s cottage, had left her weak and lethargic. It had faded the fresh colour in her cheeks and dulled the bright blue of her eyes.
‘All right, then, take it if you want to,’ she said. ‘It’ll do you good to get out for a while.’ Polly looked at her daughter, her chin quivering. ‘Thank you, love, for looking after me. If the buses are running, go into town if you like. Go to the shop and see Winnie. She must be worried sick about you. Go and see your grandma and tell her I’m expecting her on Sunday. With Martin.’
‘Sunday’s Christmas Eve, Mammy.’
Gatty used the childish name without thinking. It had seemed to her, as her mother lay feverish in her bed, staring endlessly at the ceiling, that the events of the past few days had turned her mind. Refusing to eat, only drinking when Gatty held the cup to her lips, Polly had looked at her through pain-dazed eyes, shivering one minute and throwing the blankets off the next. Once or twice, during the night, she had cried out in terror, and Gatty had crept into bed beside her, holding her mother’s burning body in her arms, their roles reversed, as she took on herself the position of protector.
‘Is there any money?’ she asked now.