‘Of course she’s not.’ Harold Forbes stood up from his deckchair and began patrolling the length of the drainpipe wall. ‘Lying at the bottom of that canal, that woman. As sure as eggs is eggs.’
Mrs Dakin looked over at me and Tilly.
We had anticipated this and were feigning sleep.
‘So why haven’t they dredged it, Harold?’ Sheila Dakin took off her sunglasses and squinted over at him. ‘I thought they would have sent the divers down there by now.’
‘It’s all about this.’ Mr Forbes made money signs with his hands. ‘They don’t want to spend the cash.’
‘He’s right, you know,’ said May Roper. ‘Everything’s run on money these days.’
Mrs Roper and Mr Forbes nodded approval at each other.
‘I promise you she’s down there, though.’ Mr Forbes stopped patrolling. He rocked on his heels with his hands behind his back, staring at Jesus. ‘Bottom of that canal. As dead as a dodo.’
‘She’s not dead.’
We all turned.
It was John Creasy. He stood at the edge of the pavement. I could see his shirt drifting from his trousers, and his eyes heavy and unsure.
‘John!’ Mr Forbes clapped his hands together and did a little bounce with his knees. ‘We were wondering when you’d turn up. Come and sit down. Come and meet Christ.’
Mr Forbes ushered him past the drainpipe and into a deckchair.
‘She’s not dead.’ John Creasy stared at Jesus as he walked past. ‘She really isn’t.’
Mr Forbes said, No, no, of course, and Sit yourself down, John, and Have a glass of Dorothy’s lemonade.
Mr Creasy had the glass put into his hands. ‘She really isn’t dead, Harold,’ he said.
Mr Forbes crouched next to the deckchair. ‘I think we have to be like good sailors, John. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It’s the shoes, you see. There’s no denying the shoes.’
‘The shoes don’t matter.’ Mr Creasy still held on to the lemonade. ‘They really don’t.’
Harold Forbes looked over at Mrs Dakin, and I saw him raise his eyebrows for support.
‘They wouldn’t be next to the canal, though, would they, John,’ she said, ‘if Margaret was all right?’
‘I’ve told you.’ Mr Creasy put the glass down with such force, lemonade slipped over the edges and spilled on to the grass. ‘The shoes don’t mean anything.’
Mrs Dakin frowned at him. ‘How can you be so sure, John?’ she said.
He folded his arms and looked up at her. ‘Because I put them there.’
*
‘What the hell do you mean, you put them there?’ Harold Forbes stood up and dusted chippings from his hands.
‘She forgot them, you see.’ Mr Creasy leaned forward in the deckchair and hugged at his chest. ‘She left without taking any shoes.’
He began to rock, very slowly.
‘Oh, God.’ Sheila Dakin sat back and pinched the top of her nose.
I looked round at everyone. They all watched with open mouths, and May Roper had a Quality Street paused exactly halfway between the tin and her face.
‘I still don’t understand,’ said Mr Forbes. ‘Why, for heaven’s sake, would you leave a pair of shoes by the side of a canal?’
‘Margaret was always walking along the towpath. She used to sit and have her lunch down there, and I left them next to the little seat so she’d find them. You can’t manage all this time without a pair of shoes.’
‘Like the gloves by the door, and the umbrella at the bottom of the stairs,’ said Mrs Dakin, who was still pinching at her nose.
‘Yes!’ Mr Creasy smiled. ‘You understand, don’t you?’
‘Bloody hell, John.’ Mrs Dakin covered her face with her hands. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say anything?’
‘I didn’t think anyone would bother. I didn’t realize the cobbler’s ticket was still stuck to the bottom of them.’
‘Jesus Christ, John,’ said Mr Forbes.
Mrs Forbes glanced at the drainpipe.
‘So she’ll be back, you see,’ said Mr Creasy. ‘And she’ll be back very soon, because it’s our wedding anniversary.’
Everyone stared in silence. I thought I could hear someone swallowing. Mrs Morton had woken up and was looking very confused.
‘When is your anniversary, John?’ said Mrs Roper. Her voice sounded very small.
‘The twenty-first.’ John Creasy smiled. ‘And Margaret wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
Mrs Dakin dug around in her handbag and handed him a two-pence piece.
‘What’s that for?’ he said.
She held her head in her hands and sighed. ‘To ring the bloody police.’
*
They dropped Mr Creasy off in a panda car two hours later. Mr Forbes said he was lucky not to be charged with wasting police time. I didn’t realize you could be arrested for wasting someone’s time, but Mrs Morton said it only applied to policemen, which was probably just as well.
Everyone still sat with Jesus, and we watched as Mr Creasy trailed up his garden path and through the front door of number eight.
Tilly pulled at my sleeve. ‘Does that mean Mrs Creasy is still alive?’ she whispered.
‘I think so,’ I said.
We looked around at all the faces.
‘Then why does everyone look so worried?’
Number Four, The Avenue
2 August 1976
‘I suppose you’re glad, are you?’
I could just about see my mother through the banisters. She was standing in the kitchen with her hands fixed to her hips.
My father sat at the table. He looked crumpled, as though someone had let all the air out of him. ‘What do you mean, glad? Glad about what?’ he said.
‘That she’s alive.’
‘Well, of course I’m glad that she’s alive. What kind of a question is that?’
‘Glad about your fancy woman,’ said my mother. Her voice was at least an octave higher than usual.
‘For God’s sake, Sylvia. How many times? She’s not my fancy woman.’
My mother picked up a mug, just so she could put it back down again. ‘I saw your face,’ she said, ‘when John Creasy said he’d put those bloody shoes there himself. You looked relieved, Derek. Relieved.’
For once, I was glad that Tilly wasn’t with me, that it was just me and Remington on the stairs. Remington didn’t like my parents’ arguments any more than I did. He would curl his tail around my toes and look up at me with confused, Labrador eyes.
‘Don’t tell me you weren’t relieved, because I could see it in your face,’ my mother was saying.
‘Well, of course I was. Wouldn’t any decent person feel relieved to hear one of their neighbours isn’t lying at the bottom of a canal?’
‘Especially if you were the last one to see them alive.’
I heard a small cough. ‘Well, there is that.’
‘So you admit it, then? You admit she was at the office with you, when you should have been at a Round Table in the British Legion?’
My father was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, the words sounded tired and beaten. ‘Yes, Sylvia. I admit it.’
‘Finally,’ my mother said. Her hands left her hips and sailed into the air. She sounded like someone who had won a competition that she had never really wanted to enter in the first place.
‘It’s not what you think,’ my father said.
‘Oh no, Derek, it never is, is it?’ My mother started marching around the kitchen, but she came into view from time to time, and her hands were still swimming through the air. ‘It never is what people think.’
‘I mean it, Sylvia. It really isn’t.’
My father reached out for my mother’s arm as she passed, and she allowed herself to be stopped. ‘Please sit down. If I’m going to tell you this, I need you to sit down.’
My mother sat down.
‘She was helping me,’ he said. ‘Margaret Creasy was doing me a favour.’
<
br /> ‘Helping you? What on earth was she helping you with?’
My father sat back. I could hear the chair scrape against the lino and his hands rest on the table.
‘She used to do a bit of accounting before she married John,’ he said.
My father paused, but my mother stayed silent.
‘She was helping me with the books, Sylvia. She was helping me sort out the finances.’
‘Sort what out with the finances? I don’t understand.’
I heard my father take a breath. ‘We’re broke, Sylvia. We’re in a mess. I’m struggling to pay the wages, let alone keep up with the rent on the office.’
He took another breath. ‘We’re going under,’ he said.
No one spoke for a very long time. I must have made a noise, because I felt Remington beat his tail against my feet.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ My mother’s voice disappeared into almost nothing.
‘I was trying to protect you. I have only ever tried to protect you and Grace.’
I thought I heard my father sob, but my father never cried at anything, so I must have misheard.
‘What am I going to do, Sylve? I’m a businessman. I’m successful. People can’t find out the truth.’
‘We’ll get through it, Derek. We’ve always got through things.’
‘But it’s the shame,’ said my father, ‘I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the shame of people finding out I’m something that I’m not.’
I felt Remington push his head into my lap. He wanted me to keep stroking his ears, even though I didn’t realize I was doing it.
‘It’s all right, Remington, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s going to change. Everything is going to be exactly the same as it’s always been.’
Dogs were like that sometimes. They needed reassurance.
Number Three, Rowan Tree Croft
3 August 1976
‘But why isn’t she coming?’
Mrs Morton was closing the back door.
The perfume Tilly’s mother wore still hung in the air. It smelled like wet soil.
‘Her mother thinks it best if she has a rest today. She’s looking a bit peaky.’
‘Peaky?’
‘Tilly’s a delicate child, Grace. You know that.’
I thought about the way Tilly opened marmalade jars when I couldn’t manage it, and how she carried my mother’s shopping bags in when my mother ran out of hands.
‘She’s not that delicate,’ I said.
Mrs Morton frowned and wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘It was good of her mother to let us know,’ she said. ‘She looked very worried.’
Tilly’s mother always looked very worried. I had learned not to take any notice, because she carried worrying around with her at all times, like a spare cardigan.
‘Tilly’s mother always looks worried,’ I said. ‘She’s very good at it.’
Mrs Morton sat across from me at the kitchen table. ‘That’s how it is when you care about someone.’ She smoothed down the plastic tablecloth. ‘You worry.’
I made a wrinkle in the tablecloth with my elbow. ‘Like I worried about Remington when he was poorly last summer?’
‘I suppose so. Although I’m not sure how appropriate it is to equate Tilly to a yellow Labrador.’
‘Oh don’t worry, it’s more than appropriate,’ I said.
I watched Mrs Morton’s eyes. They looked very busy.
‘She will be all right, though, won’t she?’
‘Of course.’
‘She’s always all right, isn’t she?’
‘She is.’
Sometimes, with grown-ups, the gap between your question and their answer is too big, and it always seems like the best place to put all your worrying into.
*
I was disappointed, because I wanted to talk to Tilly about the conversation I had accidentally overheard the night before. Mrs Morton said I could talk to her about anything, but Mrs Morton’s life was quiet and carpeted, and her clocks always told the right time. I didn’t think she would know very much about being poor. Tilly, on the other hand, used to live in a hotel where everyone had to share a bathroom, and all the ornaments were glued to the windowsills, so she might have had a better idea.
Mrs Morton and I decided to have a game of Monopoly instead.
Tilly was always the boot and I was always the racing car, so Mrs Morton decided she would have to be the top hat.
I threw the dice and moved along the squares.
‘Don’t we have to throw a six to start?’ said Mrs Morton.
‘Only Tilly bothers with that nonsense,’ I said, and landed on Whitechapel.
‘Are you going to buy it?’ she said.
I looked at the board. Tilly always bought Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road. She said she felt sorry for them, because they were brown and uninteresting, and the people who lived on them probably didn’t have very much money.
‘Do you think the people who live on the Old Kent Road are happy?’ I said.
‘I expect so.’ Mrs Morton stopped shuffling the Community Chest and frowned. ‘Or, at least, as happy as everyone else is.’
I looked across the board. ‘As happy as the people who live on Mayfair or Park Lane?’
‘Of course.’
‘Or Pall Mall?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Do you think lots of people on the Old Kent Road get divorced?’
Mrs Morton put down the cards. ‘Grace, what is this conversation about?’
‘I’m just taking an interest in things,’ I said. ‘Well, do you?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. No more people than anywhere else.’
‘Even though they’re poor?’
Mrs Morton was in the middle of buying King’s Cross Station, and it took her a minute to reply. ‘I think only having a little money puts people under stress, but it doesn’t stop them loving each other,’ she said.
‘Or caring about each other? Or worrying about each other?’
She smiled.
‘Do you worry about me?’ I said.
‘All the time.’ She put down the dice and looked right into my eyes. ‘Every day since you were a little baby.’
The Drainpipe
6 August 1976
My parents sat together, next to Jesus. From time to time, my mother squeezed my father’s hand, and gave him the same smile she gave to me when I was on my way to the dentist’s. My father just stared at his shoes. Mr Forbes sat on his deckchair with his arms folded, and, in the corner, Clive fed his dog left-over pork scratchings and wiped his fingers on his trousers.
The playing cards sat quietly on the fold-out table, except for the King of Hearts, which turned in Eric Lamb’s hand as he lost himself in thinking. May Roper was rubbing her feet and waiting for Brian to fetch her ointment, and the only sound I could hear, as I lay on the grass, was Mrs Morton’s knitting needles tutting against each other in disapproval.
Tilly smoothed out her dress.
‘Are you feeling less peaky?’ I said.
‘Much less, thank you. I think my mum worries about me.’
‘Worrying is a good thing,’ I said. ‘Worrying means someone cares about you.’
‘Then I think my mum must care very much.’
I watched my parents. My mother was still holding my father’s hand, but I couldn’t tell if he was holding hers back.
‘Do you think the newspapers might come today?’ said Tilly.
I looked around at everyone’s faces. ‘I don’t think they’re going to get much of an interview if they do.’
‘I hope they turn up,’ said Tilly. ‘It would be a shame not to have a photograph of Jesus.’
Mrs Forbes looked up from her deckchair. ‘We could take one ourselves – if we had a camera.’ She looked at Mr Forbes and then she looked at Clive. ‘Couldn’t we, Eric?’ she said.
Eric Lamb looked at all of them, and brushed dried mud from his wellingtons.
‘Why i
s everyone so quiet?’ Tilly did a bit more smoothing. ‘And where’s Mrs Dakin?’
‘She nipped home for something,’ I said, ‘again.’
We were all drifting in a wide ocean of silence, when Mrs Forbes stood up out of nowhere and clapped. The King of Hearts fell to the grass and May Roper looked up from her rubbing.
‘I know what everybody needs,’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘We all need a little pick-me-up. I’m going to fetch a board game and some custard creams.
Everyone’s gaze returned to the ground.
I pointed to the drainpipe. ‘Look at Jesus,’ I said to Tilly, ‘even He seems even more unhappy than he did before.’
‘Perhaps it’s the heat,’ said Tilly.
July had been hot, but August seemed even more brutal. The heat poured itself over the country, swallowing rivers and streams, emptying reservoirs and burning through forests. ‘People are dying,’ my mother said, as we watched the news. ‘Human beings aren’t made to tolerate this kind of heat. It’s not normal, Derek.’ As though my father could somehow control it. I had stared at the coat on the back of my bedroom door that morning, and couldn’t imagine ever wearing it again.
A few minutes later, Mrs Forbes returned with three packets of biscuits and a box of Scrabble. Whilst she was gone, Mrs Roper had somehow slid unnoticed into Mrs Forbes’ deckchair, and was sitting next to Jesus with a box of Cadbury’s Roses on her knee and her eyes shut.
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Forbes.
It was a very small Oh, but I had learned from my mother that words didn’t necessarily have to be big to make a good impression on people.
‘I thought it was time for a little change around,’ said Mrs Roper.
‘I see.’ Mrs Forbes put down the biscuits and the game of Scrabble. She stood over the deckchair and the shadow she cast covered the whole of Mrs Roper and most of my father’s left leg.
There was a silence, and we all stared into it and waited.
‘You’re obviously not aware’, said Mrs Forbes, ‘that I’m the one who sits in the deckchair next to Jesus.’
Mrs Roper didn’t open her eyes. ‘That’s not a rule I’ve agreed to,’ she said.
Mrs Forbes forced a small cough. ‘I am the most logical choice. Not only am I in charge of the altar flowers, I also polish the brass every other Thursday. I’m the closest to God out of all of us.’
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Page 25