But at 5 a.m., uncomfortable and cold, the stupidity of it all sank in. Sleeping in a dungeon on a mattress of paper with sweat gathering in her armpits and ice round her feet, Rose thought, So this is what I have become. A vagrant, a dosser, moving my shell each day with no good reason, always looking for a new corner because some little old man is chasing me. Down in the basement in the bleakest reaches of the night, Rose could not begin to congratulate herself for what she had done with her life to date, nor perceive even one of her extraordinary achievements. She was literate, presentable, employable; she was a mass of scars but she was not a cripple, and all she could see of herself was a snivelling thing, hiding in a cellar like a rat, the way she had hidden out with men. In the last analysis it was the terrible vision of what Michael would think if he saw her thus which drove her to groan. She thought of Helen waiting all week for her to talk without prompting. She thought of Dad in court and cringed.
She could sense the wind outside, smell the rain. From the well between the railings and the wall there came the steady sound of dripping water from the distant eaves above. The boiler burst into a new phase of life, then reduced its volume to a sinister muttering. Rose felt dirty. At six, she ascended the back stairs, feeling her way, dying for daylight, found the washroom on her floor where all the clerks ran to hide. Ever fastidious, she stripped, lingered over her ablutions with the powerful office soap and the harsh paper towelling. Upstairs, the silence was astounding apart from the minute sounds of her own effort, until she heard footsteps. Footsteps and a cough, which made her suppress her own. A pair of feet, walking along the corridor outside, unhurried but purposeful, receding shoes with steel caps sounding on the worn bits of carpet. Rose put her damp hand on the door of the washroom, opened it a crack, just in time to see a slim figure disappearing through a set of old swing-doors at the end. The doors were heavy: he was forced to pause long enough for her to recognise the set of his shoulders and the colour of his hair. Mr Dinsdale Cotton, carrying a couple of files, a sight which sent her mind snapping into sharp connections. Rose knew in that moment the identity of the office thief. She was unable to move, looking out into the empty space with the door still juddering at the end, paralysed with anger. Of course Rose knew about someone purloining the files, fouling the system, getting cases deliberately lost, she was equally well aware that the inefficiency of her own team had been casually blamed, none of them told anything, all under suspicion, herself in particular. She did not need Helen West to hint by way of warning: she wasn’t a fool; she had tried to tell Redwood about it long before, but had been told to make an appointment and she wasn’t going to do that, let them rot if they wouldn’t listen. So what had she done? Told Dinsdale, once, weeks before. She trusted Dinsdale, presumed he would act, tell his buddy Helen all about it at least, but even when she knew he had done no such thing, she had still trusted him.
What time was it? Half-past six, still the middle of the night and she had grit under her eyeballs. Rose carefully made up her face in the mirror, to offset the effect of her crumpled clothes. It wouldn’t be the first time she turned up to work looking like this. She shivered as she thought of nights in the section house, surprised herself by thinking, You’ve come a long way, Rose, in a short time; don’t go back, will you? Thinking of favours, she also reckoned she owed Helen West one: she’d better blow the gaff on her bloody boyfriend before anything went further between them. It was strange how one problem displaced another; in Rose’s life that had been the history of her sanity.
Outside the loo, she coughed loudly to warn anyone else of her presence. She also whistled. The cough was still painfully real while the whistle was tuneless with nervous artificiality.
Even with this complication, it was still safer in here. Her gran had always wanted her to work in a place like this.
Three hours until Helen came in? Rose had the feeling that once she started to talk, she might not be able to stop.
It was a rain-soaked, blustery, purple-sky kind of day where the sun would never rise and the winter was interminable. The same kind of savage day in which Helen had encountered Mr Logo on the rooftop. She remembered him as she woke on Friday, for no reason except for the rain slapping against the window and her own, foul temper. No phone call from Bailey. All right, she’d unplugged the answerphone, but it was still his fault. She guessed by now he wasn’t returning today, wondered if he ever would, didn’t much mind; she wanted time to slouch, think and be a slut. Far fewer of us, Helen thought, swinging herself out of bed with the usual violence, need a constant man than any of them ever imagine. Three days a month would do nicely.
It was only when she crashed into the bathroom wall while reaching for a toothbrush that she realised that the symptoms of this depressive malaise were not merely mental. Her tonsils rose to close her throat like a portcullis; toothpaste tasted fiery; she felt as if her neck had been held to a flame and yet her face was unnaturally pale with deep red rings under the eyes. Rose’s cough had been passed like a gift. Put make-up over that lot and she’d look like a corpse dolled up for a funeral. Take the day off again? Who cares? Who’ll miss you? Point taken, they won’t even notice, apart from Dinsdale, lovely dangerous man with the silly name. That fixed it. She wasn’t going anywhere: she could make up the work before Monday. Helen sat instead in her basement living room with the dirty winter windows sluiced by the snarling rain, watching other workday feet go briskly by while she considered all her duties and personal obligations, finding them too numerous to contemplate without screaming. By reflex action, she phoned Rose on the number she’d noted down from the phone inside the girl’s house (like the sneak she really was), simply to ask Rose to present her excuses at work (like the lazy coward she also really was). Only to find a girl who said hallo, nicely, but Rose hadn’t been home last night and wasn’t there now, and Helen found herself saying, ‘Fine, it doesn’t matter,’ while feeling that little jolt of alarm which was akin to electric shock, then sitting back in the chair, to watch more feet.
Her cat came in from the great outdoors via the flap, wet and disgusted, sniffed at her feet in pure cupboard love and disdained to come closer. All right then, one phone call like a prisoner in custody allowed to say where he is, and then she would wait since she was in no position to do anything but fall over. Story of her life. Nobody loved her and she deserved nothing better.
‘Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house, and her hands were upon the door of the threshold.
‘And when he came into his house, he took a knife and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.’
Logo was well acquainted with those biblical passages which smelt of blood, while he chose to ignore all those which favoured forgiveness over hideous retribution. His present serenity owed much to his loving contemplation of blood as well as to the lethargy of his limbs following all the dreadful exertions of the last thirty hours. Lifting heavy weights, lugging, lying, spying, mourning at a graveside, and suddenly some kind of end was in sight, only he was not sure what the end was. The reverie was broken by someone knocking at the door. He stood behind it and shouted, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Mr Logo?’ Assuming it was, the voice went on, young, brisk and efficient. ‘Dr Smith, Mr Logo. Only your neighbour, Margaret Mellors, had an appointment to see me yesterday evening. I sent her a letter about the date for her hip operation, only she didn’t turn up. She gave you as her next of kin; you wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?’
‘I am not my neighbour’s keeper,’ yelled Logo.
‘I didn’t expect you were. But do you know where she is? I don’t want her to miss this chance—’
‘Margaret who?’
The voice went away. He was suddenly afraid. People would come looking for Margaret, of course they would, a popular woman with friends, which in the case of someone over seventy, meant a vis
itor a day. He’d left the kitchen tidy, locked the door, thrown away the key. No, no, he would say, he hadn’t seen her for a day or two, and it wouldn’t be the shadow of a lie. And where did you see her last? Knitting, sir, only knitting. Oh yes, he could imagine the question and it made him put his fist to his face and giggle out loud.
Today he’d make amends to the old dear, put flowers on her grave if he could find something suitable left on another and no-one was watching. Something to do on the way to work; he supposed he had better turn out, knowing as he did how far to push the line of absenteeism and today was a day for scoring points, what with the weather like this and everyone else playing truant. Then he’d rest, maybe take a long walk later … Logo rumbled the old trolley through the nine-o’clock streets, glaring straight ahead, his substitute for singing, frightening people another way. A man needed a tribe. To be disenfranchised by blood or sin was a terrible fate. Eenie had done that to him. She had made him the man who always walked alone, with others making their signs against the devil in a dozen different languages as they passed him. She had consigned him to hell. He paused by the graveyard gate. There was a man by the distant grave with a little girl, a smart-looking man with a suit, holding a bright show of daffodils in the one hand and the child’s gloved paw in another. Then the man stooped and put his arm round the child’s waist, intimately. See? Logo crooned to himself. Look at her flirting. Look at him! We all do it.
Daffodils, Rose thought, just daffodils. They were suddenly in tight-budded profusion on barrows near the office, bursting from buckets by the Underground, lining the street. They had all laughed today, must be the promise of spring, Rose their cheerleader, cracking jokes, mimicking the bosses, flying round, sharp and brittle as a thorn, hooting and yelling, hoovering work like a machine, flirting on the phone and making eyes at men. Everyone loved it. Rose on insolent form made the day go quicker, and as she led the gang out for sandwiches, the daffodils stood to attention along with the man on the stall, mesmerised by four noisy girls. Rose stopped and stared back.
‘What you looking at?’ she demanded.
‘You, darling,’ he answered.
‘Cost you a free bunch of them.’
He gave them a flower apiece. Rose pretended to eat it. ‘Lovely,’ she said. They all snorted.
Anyone would think I was normal, she thought. Thinking, If I went round to Aunty West’s flat with a bunch of daffs, would she let me in? Why’s the silly cow off sick, when I need her? Promise me she won’t mind. Can I please, please trust her? I’m not going back and I’ve got to tell her about that little fucker anyway. The bank machine ate her cashcard, a punishment for overspending. She winked at the girls and cashed a cheque at the counter without anyone being shot or yelling stop thief, and they huddled out like conspirators. In the middle of the afternoon, because of something else decided in the nether regions of the night, about how she couldn’t face his parents, not as she was, she phoned Michael. Her heart thumped like a bass drum when she heard his voice, but she’d already made it into a public joke, about parents and everything, what a bore it would be, so she was brisk, said she couldn’t do Saturday, she had to work. The lie was apparent; he was hurt and offended, but she was on a course of action she couldn’t change, not even to avoid the corners. She threw a file across the room, let the papers spill out like confetti, teased her hair into spikes, chewed her pigtail, shouted some more. Put more files in the goods lift beyond the door, pressed the red button and shouted down, ‘Egg and chips twice, please!’ Dreading the ending of the working day, wanting it too, and it was still raining.
Enough stolen from the bank for the taxi fare and three bunches of daffs. Dark at five forty-five when she rang the bell to Helen’s flat, and when there was no immediate reply and she was shivering on the doorstep, the old terror struck again. Until Helen appeared, looking like an alien without her make-up, letting her in, coughing like a car with a flat battery, but welcoming, oh yes. No fuss. Put your coat on the radiator and shove that cat off the chair, let’s have a drink, excuse the way I look, all in one sentence. After that it was all right. It really was all right. More than all right, after all this time, to dump some of the shit on another pair of shoulders. She never could have done it if Helen hadn’t told her about biting that bloke.
There was an interruption around seven when Bailey phoned. They’d covered quite a lot of ground by then, one bottle empty, a bit dry for Rose’s taste, but not bad, and then it was Helen’s turn to play the fool. Making faces at Rose while holding the phone. No, he wouldn’t be coming home this weekend. As if I didn’t know, Helen whispered with her hand over the mouthpiece. Neither mentioned the other’s neglect. Bailey was always tense on the phone, sounding like someone in a call box with a queue outside.
‘Other fish to fry?’ Helen was asking lightly, while Rose took lessons. Truth to tell, Helen was feeling a whole lot better since Rose had arrived, deeply troubled but a damn sight more useful and therefore better. At least she and Rose coughed in unison.
‘No,’ he said, equally lightly. ‘Work. They work us like slaves.’
‘Can I ask you something?’ He half hoped it would be something personal, but it wasn’t.
‘If a chap has paid someone to get his drink-driving charge dropped, by say stealing the papers or bribing the copper, what do you reckon it would be worth?’
He thought for all of a second. ‘Oh, two, three thousand, if his car was vital. It would depend on the alcohol reading, who he was and how greedy the person was he was paying. Helen, are you all right? Why are you asking?’
‘Oh, a little academic problem.’ More faces at Rose.
‘Helen, if you go around asking questions, you get what I get, black eyes. What are you up to?’
‘Nothing. See you when I do. Have fun.’ The alarm in his voice was revenge enough.
Bailey remained as he was, furious. He was angry for her being nice about his absence when he wanted her to shout, I still need you, come home. For leaving him free when he needed chains. For not screaming at him, as if last weekend’s sweetness and closeness had counted for nothing. He needed to be told, for God’s sake, he needed that all the time. She acted as if reassurance was her sole prerogative. Ah well. Then he phoned Grace.
It was the room which soothed Rose as much as Helen’s languorous stillness when she was listening, but then it hadn’t been dramatic reactions she had wanted. A room with warm red walls lined with pictures, all differently framed, and books standing crooked, nothing new, no furniture without wear and tear, the gleam of mahogany, a worn carpet but densely coloured and comfortable, an ash-littered grate below guttering flames, litter and learning, something to look at all the time when you didn’t want to meet eyes. What was it Helen was saying? Rose felt her lids twitching, watching the fire after talking for two hours.
‘People care for you, you know,’ Helen said, bowling coke at the grate and making a mess. ‘An awful lot more than you think, so phone the flatmates, will you, stop them getting alarmed.’
‘OK.’ Rose was enough at home to take orders.
‘And it goes without saying you can stay here as long as you like, you’d be doing me a great favour,’ Helen added in a cunning throwaway line. ‘Only there’s nothing to eat until I go out to the corner shop. There’s never anything to eat here. It’s you ribbing me about carting home all those potatoes. I’ve never been the same since.’
‘I’ll go,’ Rose struggling to find energy, thinking of the dark.
‘No you won’t. I’ve got a cough, but it isn’t terminal. Open this bottle will you, we don’t have to get up in the morning. Back in a minute.’
She wanted time to digest some of Rose’s revelations. She had taken them calmly. Rose didn’t want outrage; she wanted belief. Abuse, betrayal, the deep, murky waters of systematic cruelty, all described, but no names, no pack drill, simply facts, no weeping please, no cries of horror. Rose needed empathy, she needed love, therapy, she couldn’t do it all on her own,
no-one could. She wanted to be normal, so Helen acted normally, a lawyer listening with quiet credulity. Out in the street she wanted to scream with pity and rage.
The wind had lessened, so the trees now swayed elegantly rather than furiously, whispering not hissing without their leaves. It was a street of handsome houses where people walked day and night, confidently, and despite her history here, Helen had forged a sense of safe belonging. She wondered as she walked down her own road to her own parade of shops, what it was like for Rose to live without that blanket. Everyone needs a tribe.
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