‘There’s not a word about death in this,’ Miss Purchase said. ‘It simply says he vanished.’
‘I know, dear. Mrs Ferndale says he’s in Germany. He married her when he shouldn’t, you realize? The real wife’s a dressmaker down Folkestone way. Elderly by now.’
‘None of this in the very least concerns us at the Sundown. I must ask you to leave here, Miss Smith.’
Doris shook her head, making a fresh attempt to light the cigarette that hung from the centre of her mouth. But her matches would still not ignite.
‘That last night he was saying goodbye. He was making his confessions to Joy and myself. He was on about Constance Kent, if ever you heard of her –’
‘Will you kindly stop talking like that?’, Miss Purchase almost shouted. ‘And will you kindly stop striking those matches? You smell of drink. You cannot see the Tytes and that is that.’
Doris leaned against the hallstand, wondering just for an instant where she was and then remembering. She had cried when she’d found herself in the traffic controller’s office in Oxford Circus, with the West Indians staring down at her. She had cried again in the upstairs bar of the Spread Eagle while the fan was going round, and again in the flat, when she told Joy. ‘You take it easy now,’ the West Indians had urged, but Joy hadn’t been able to say anything because she’d been crying herself. Poor Joy hadn’t had her spectacles on and the chapped skin of her face had reddened a bit more. ‘He’ll never come back,’ she’d kept repeating between her bouts of tears. It was all very well the Ferndale woman insisting he was in Germany. Better to believe the worst because at least the worst wouldn’t let you down. She made that point to the woman with the spectacles on a chain and then she added:
‘What I’m saying is if that young actress is to blame there’s maybe a few other people as well, his mum and dad for a start. There was a hell in that house, Mrs Purchase, and all I need is a brief word with your old people to straighten things out.’
‘Well, you’re not going to have it. You have no right to come barging in here with your wild talk and your drink. You will kindly leave, madam.’
‘I have come here to see the Tytes. Are you the matron in charge?’
‘Of course I’m the matron in charge. And I can only repeat that you cannot see the Tytes.’
‘Tytes?’ said a voice, and an old woman in grey paused before mounting the stairs. ‘Henry’s in the W.C.’
‘Go away immediately,’ Miss Purchase said fiercely to Doris. ‘You are not to address Mrs Tyte.’
‘Good evening, Mrs Tyte,’ Doris said. ‘I came to see you, dear.’ ‘George!’ shouted Miss Purchase up the staircase. ‘Cyril!’
‘How d’you do, Mrs Tyte?’ Doris said, proffering her bony hand again.
‘I’m all right. Well as can be expected. We had that rhubarb again, and Henry can’t come out of the W.C. That’s the only thing.’
‘George!’ shouted Miss Purchase more agitatedly. ‘To the hall, please.’
‘I’ve come with my condolences,’ Doris said in a solemn voice. ‘I’m sorry Frankie’s dead, Mrs Tyte.’
‘Frankie?’
‘I’m sorry your son took his life.’
‘Please go at once,’ shouted Miss Purchase, making as much noise as she could. She bustled about, opening the hall door and standing to one side of it.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ said Mrs Tyte.
‘I’m only saying I’m sorry your son’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ shouted Miss Purchase. ‘There’s a crisis in the hall.’
Other old men and women had gathered. They stood in ones and twos, staring at Doris.
‘She’s telling you your son’s dead,’ one of them said to Mrs Tyte.
‘Dead?’said Mrs Tyte again.
‘I’m the mother of your grandchild, dear. Joy she’s called.’
The man like a ball hurriedly descended the stairs, with a bigger man in a similar white jacket. They seized Doris and proceeded to eject her.
‘Whatever’s happening?’ an old man asked, and an old woman sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and began to cry. Mrs Tyte was staring vacantly.
‘You have a grandchild, dear,’ the woman who had spoken to Mrs Tyte before said. ‘This lady’s given birth to a grandchild.’
Doris tried to strike at the two men with her handbag, which was still attached to her shoulder by its strap. ‘I’m sorry your son’s committed suicide,’ she shouted. ‘But no one does it without a reason, Mrs Tyte.’
‘Suicide?’ an old man without any shoes said.
‘The Tytes’ son committed suicide,’ someone else said.
‘You made a hell for him,’ Doris shouted. ‘Your knitting-needles going in Rowena Avenue. You have that on your conscience, dear.’
The two men deposited her on the crazy paving in front of the house.
‘If you return you’ll instantly be arrested,’ Miss Purchase snapped. ‘You’ve upset that woman beyond measure.’
‘Dead?’ repeated Mrs Tyte in the hall.
‘She’s given birth to a grandchild,’ said the woman who had said this already, raising her voice considerably because it seemed to her that Mrs Tyte had turned deaf. ‘Joy,’ she shouted. ‘She’s called Joy, dear.’
Doris rang the bell but no one answered it, and eventually she went away, the cigarette she’d tried to light still hanging from the centre of her mouth. In her struggle with the male nurses it had become crushed and more than usually bent.
‘Vodka, dear,’ she said in the Blue Feathers, which wasn’t far away. ‘And a spurt of soda, dear.’
It hadn’t happened as she’d planned. She’d thought she’d sit quietly with the old couple and tell them about Joy, offering consolation and asking a few questions. She hadn’t wanted to accuse them, even though she knew they were among the people who were to blame. It was extraordinary that she’d been seized by the arms and warned she’d be arrested if she returned.
In the public house she dropped into conversation with a man who seemed agreeable to buying her further glasses of vodka. She told him about her visit to the home, how the black-haired man had reminded her of a ball, and about the spectacles on a chain that the matron had been wearing. The man’s bloodshot eyes were genial and kind, reminding her of her father’s.
‘I loved Frankie,’ she said. ‘And then he went with a girl. The next thing it’s on the paper he’s dead.’ She talked about all of it, repeating herself because sometimes it was necessary to make the same point again. She worked in a shoe department, she said, in Oxford Street.
‘Time to cork it up, madam,’ a man who was not the bloodshot man said. He was leaning over her where she sat, smiling a little, his face and his smile moving glassily around, reflected in mirrors all over the place. She’d never seen so many mirrors.
‘Frankie was battered,’ she said. ‘Like a kid would be.’
‘Poor Frankie,’ the man said. ‘Come along now, please.’
‘I’d like another drink. Just a glassful for the road.’
The man was wearing an apron with words on it, but the words whirled about like words in a kaleidoscope and she was reminded of that last night, when there’d been words going round in the sitting-room. ‘Impossible, madam,’ the man said. ‘Time to cork it up, I’m afraid.’
He helped her to her feet, handling her more gently than the men in the institution had. He told her he had a taxi for her and then he led her out into the air. The engine of the car was running, one of its doors was open. A voice asked her where she lived and as best she could she gave the address in Fulham. She felt groggy in the legs, and the mirrors were going round again. ‘Four quid’ll cover it,’ a voice said and her handbag was taken from her shoulder. She thought they were maybe looking for matches on account of their own matches being damp, but instead there was this reference to money. ‘O.K.,’ a voice said, and then the strap of her bag was replaced on her shoulder and a voice said so
mething else.
She woke up in the darkness, lying on her bed with her clothes on, with the latchkey still in her hand. Almost immediately more bits of what Frankie had said that last night returned to her through a muzziness, as if his voice were actually in the room, as if he particularly wanted her to hear. Again he referred to Constance Kent. Again he spoke of Rowena Avenue and the dressmaker’s house, and the wispy grey moustache of the debt-collector. Tit for tat,’ he said.
11
Doris in Julia’s
It was on a Thursday evening that Doris made her way to the Sundown Home. On the following Saturday morning, accompanied reluctantly by Joy, she set out on another journey.
‘We took that train,’ she said on the telephone. ‘We’re here, dear. At Cheltenham station.’
In the hall of Swan House Julia began to protest, to say she’d asked specifically that that shouldn’t happen, but she changed her mind before she’d made her meaning clear. They could have whatever conversation was necessary at the station, she said.
‘No hurry, Julia. Joy’s having a nibble in the buffet.’
‘I’ll be about half an hour.’
But Mrs Anstey, on her way downstairs, suggested that whoever had arrived should be brought to the house in the normal way. She herself was going to do a little weeding and would not appear till lunchtime. She could keep out of the way entirely if that was preferred. Francis naturally had had friends.
‘It’s a woman who had his child.’
‘She won’t worry me, my dear, if that’s what you’re thinking about.’
Julia stood still, her hand on the telephone, watching her mother’s slow descent of the stairs. When Mrs Anstey reached the bottom step she took a grey cardigan from the newel post. Julia said:
‘I thought I had finished with it all.’
Mrs Anstey nodded. With the cardigan over her shoulders, she passed through the hall and the drawing-room and out into the garden, to the lily-of-the-valley bed. The spaniel trotted at her heels.
An hour later Mrs Anstey peered through shrubs to catch a glimpse of the visitors. Restraining the spaniel, whose intention it was to rush across the garden and jump up on them, she couldn’t tell much from what she saw. The woman was attired in a maroon-coloured raincoat; the child, in a yellow and green school uniform, appeared to have glasses. They disappeared quickly into the house, and Mrs Anstey released her hold on the dog and continued to pull out dandelions and clover. She herself would have sent them packing over the telephone.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Julia offered in the drawing-room.
‘What about Joy? There’s orange juice. Or Ribena.’
‘Tizer?’ Joy suggested hopefully.
‘Dear, they wouldn’t have Tizer, place like this. Run along to the toilet, dear. If you’re thirsty there’ll be water in the tap.’ Doris laughed, looking round the drawing-room.
‘Excuse me,’ Julia said. She took Joy to the hall and directed her to the lavatory. She showed her where the kitchen was and said there was a carton of orange juice in the door of the fridge. ‘There’s no one in the house,’ she said. ‘You can wander about as much as you like.’ She said it because she imagined that the conversation in the drawing-room should be private.
‘What would you like to drink yourself?’ she offered Doris, who said she honestly could do with a vodka. Her face was even whiter and gaunter than it had seemed in the railway buffet. Her thin, loose body looked as though it could easily collapse, folding her into a heap on the carpet.
‘Would gin do instead? I’m afraid we haven’t any vodka.’
‘Oh anything, anything. I’m not much of a drinker.’
She had been drinking in the station bar when Julia had arrived. She’d suggested that Julia should join her, and Julia had declined. The child had been eating crisps at a table.
‘What would you like in this? Vermouth? Tonic?’
‘Oh, anything, dear.’
Julia added Cinzano to the gin. She’d said they must stay to lunch, an invitation that had been accepted. The child looked hungry, her fair hair lifeless and neglected.
‘Cheers, Julia.’
‘Yes, cheers.’ She did her best to smile. She dropped a slice of lemon into a glass of tonic water, hoping it would be taken for gin and tonic.
‘I haven’t been sleeping, Julia. I haven’t had a night’s rest since I read it on the paper weeks ago.’ She paused in order to lift her glass to her lips. ‘We met on a bus, you know, 1966. I was down in the dumps on account my dad had just married again. Poor Frankie warmed me up.’
Julia nodded.
‘It’s Joy the problem is now, as I was trying to explain to Frankie before he went. She’s got his eyes, in point of fact.’
Julia looked into the clear tonic water in her glass, and heard a match being struck as Doris relit a cigarette which had gone out.
‘Frankie and I weren’t intimate, Julia, not for a long while. The flat wasn’t big enough, what with Joy growing up and watching television late, and then the partition wall –’
‘Let’s not go into all that.’
‘Sorry, dear.’ She paused, sucking in smoke. ‘He brought me into the Spread Eagle, Woodstock Street. D’you know the Spread Eagle, Julia?’
‘No, I don’t think I do.’
‘’Course he was married to this dressmaker even then. Dead unhappy he was.’ Her voice had begun to falter. She sought about among her clothes and eventually produced a tissue with which she blew her nose. She said:
‘I loved him all these years. I really loved him. No more than a boy he was.’
Julia listened to the sound of the woman’s nose being blown, and her sniffing. She didn’t look at her but at the scarlet roses she’d picked and arranged in the two vases on the mantelpiece. All she wished for was that the woman should quickly come to the point and not ever bother her again.
‘D’you mind if I top myself up?’ As she spoke, Doris was half way across the room, intent on the table of bottles in the bow of the window.
‘Yes, do please help yourself.’
‘I thought at first you might be to blame yourself, dear.’
Julia shook her head. From the mantelpiece came the quiet tick of the ormolu clock beneath the portrait of her father. The room smelt of the roses.
Doris lit another cigarette. ‘Could I ask you a question, Julia? Did you have sex with Frankie?’
‘No.’
‘I thought that. When I heard your tone of voice I said to myself they won’t have had sex.’
Julia nodded, not knowing what else to do. She caught a reflection of her face in the glass of a picture and saw that her features were pale above the red and black of the dress she was wearing, the freckles on her forehead standing out a bit.
‘Was he going to live with you here, Julia?’
‘I don’t believe he ever intended to.’
‘Did Frankie love you, dear?’
‘No. Not ever.’
‘Was it money, like with the dressmaker?’
‘More or less. On our honeymoon I gave him my jewellery.’
‘He ended up telling me fibs, you know. He ended up a weirdo, but it wasn’t his fault. Battered he called it, like something that happens to a kid.’
‘Yes, I know he called it that.’
‘I get on Joy’s nerves, you know. I have an evening drink in and my tongue runs off with me. The next thing is she’s looking daggers, her poor old face sliding all over the place. But I’d do it again, dear. I’d have Frankie’s child a million times over.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s not a virgin, Julia, twelve years of age. She’s had this elephant stuff, she can’t read or write, you know.’ As she spoke, Doris slowly shook her head. Joy needed a father, she said. She sighed and blew her nose again. ‘I blame that lodger,’ she said. ‘I blame the old parents. I blame that Susie Music. She’s no taller than a baby, that Susie Music, two big eyes staring out of her hair at you. A scrubber’s what the
girls on the floor would call her.’
Julia watched while her visitor helped herself to another drink and relit her cigarette, dropping the match on the floor. She might have asked her to stop walking about the room, to sit down and listen for a change. She might have said that Francis Tyte had blamed other people when he should have blamed himself, that the blaming should not be continued. This woman who was the mother of his child, who had still not removed her mackintosh or the handbag slung over her shoulder, seemed unaware of the cruelty that distorted the man she spoke of, even though she had suffered from it. But Julia didn’t say anything because she didn’t think it would be listened to. Through the French windows she saw the child in the garden, standing beside her mother, who was still weeding the lily-of-the-valley bed.
‘I took the. trip to see his mum and dad Thursday night. God almighty, it’s a place that is! These two pooftas in the hall, turn your stomach to look at them. I’ll tell you one thing, I didn’t get on with that matron one little bit.’
‘What did you say to the Tytes?’
‘I didn’t want to accuse the poor old things, I just wanted a natter. Only the matron woman turned nasty, Julia. No better than a torture chamber these elderly places, you read it on the papers. Stench of cabbage nearly knocked me out.’
Again Julia did not say anything, guessing at what had happened, not wanting to think about it.
‘Another fib that was,’ Doris said. ‘How he had an Uncle Manchester there, dying of his water-works.’
‘Manchester?’
‘I don’t know why he made him up, dear. Old folks’ home out Hampton way, he said.’
There was a silence, during which it seemed to Julia that the invention of this man belonged in the same grey limbo as the process of going through a marriage ceremony. There were the same elaborations of pretending, with truth and lies insidiously mixed and an outcome full of other people’s pain. Again Julia didn’t want to think about it.
Other People's Worlds Page 17