Through the years Daphne kept busy, involved with village activities in Lower Holtbury and with rearing Pauline. She played tennis all the year round when the weather allowed, and badminton in the winter. Later, as Pauline grew older, she took up golf, and it was golf that led her to bridge, for often, after a morning round, the ladies would settle down to a rubber or two in the comfortable clubhouse. For Daphne, Cherry Cottage was the base from which she set forth to engage in real life in the world outside; for Alan, it was a refuge where he could potter in peace in the garden, or in his study, where he kept his record player and most of his books.
One night Alan had tried, in bed, to get Daphne to listen to him. Normally he slept well, but lately he had lain awake, worrying about his coming redundancy, while Daphne breathed evenly beside him.
He had waited, pretending to read, while Daphne bathed and creamed her face, and when she got into bed he took off his glasses, closed his book and turned to her. Daphne slid her arms round him at once, misinterpreting. She had the same healthy, uncomplicated attitude to sex as she had to most aspects of life, and though a little surprised, for it was Wednesday and latterly they had tended to reserve such moments mainly for weekends, she was really rather pleased. It made her feel quite young again, and giggly.
Alan did not destroy her mood. Why distress her? The news would keep, and things could be a great deal worse than in fact they were, for the mortgage was paid off, Pauline was settled, and his compensation, after so long with Biggs and Cooper, would be substantial. All he had to do now was to leave Cherry Cottage at his usual time every day and return as before. She would suspect nothing, and there was small risk of her finding out what had happened by accident. She never telephoned him at the office. They had no rule about it; simply, the need had not arisen since Pauline’s appendicitis when she was twelve. He had sometimes called Daphne, in the early years, but now only did so if he was unexpectedly delayed at the office, and that was rare. None of her golfing friends or hospital colleagues had any connection with Biggs and Cooper; no one from the works lived in the Holtbury area; and he and Daphne did not meet anyone from the firm socially. Their friends, he reflected, were really Daphne’s friends, not his; anyone who came to dinner or drinks was either from the village or a golfing contact of Daphne’s. He’d never really noticed that before. Well, it was lucky things had worked out like that, he decided now. He should be safe from discovery until he had found another job and could tell her both bits of news together.
At one o’clock in the library on that first Monday, Alan put his papers away in his briefcase. He’d have a sandwich in a pub somewhere, but how should he spend the afternoon? There was plenty to do at home – sweeping up storm damage in the garden and having a bonfire, for instance, since the weather was good – but he couldn’t do these things without some sort of explanation to Daphne.
He collected the car and drove to the Rising Sun on the edge of the town, where he had a snack lunch which cost him much more than his subsidised meals in the works canteen. Then he bought stamps for his letters and mailed them. There would be younger applicants for all these positions and most would be equipped with business diplomas, if not degrees. Alan sighed. He’d spent all that time in the surveyor’s office without achieving any qualification, though he knew a lot about housing, drainage and planning, which had been useful when they had an extension built on to Cherry Cottage.
It was just after two o’clock. Alan went along to the town museum, which he hadn’t visited since he took Pauline years ago, and stayed there nearly an hour, but how could he occupy the rest of the afternoon?
He could go to the cinema.
What a pity the old Plaza no longer existed, he thought, settling into the Cortina and reaching under the dash for the Murray Mints he kept there for long journeys or frustrations in traffic jams. He was not far from its site, and the new shopping centre near the primary school. He’d go along there and buy some more Murray Mints and the local paper to see what was on at the cinema. He had a whole week to fill in, so he might as well study the available diversions. The week might extend to several: even to months.
As he passed the school once more, the children had just come out, some on foot, in groups, or walking off with their mothers. Others, fetched by car, were driven away. The lollipop lady, her job almost done, had moved to the kerb with her banner.
Alan saw the small girl quite alone. She was some fifty yards beyond the school, standing on the corner looking along the road. While he watched, she moved suddenly, seeming to square her small shoulders, and began to walk on, purposefully. She was very small. Blonde hair in two bunches stuck out below her red woollen cap. She wore white socks, above which her knees were bare.
Alan passed her slowly. She seemed very young to be on her way home alone.
He drove on, turned the corner into the street with the shops, and parked outside the supermarket. At the newsagent’s, he bought a packet of Murray Mints and the Berbridge Bulletin. Then he sat in the car reading the cinema announcements. There was only the Odeon now, with its three screens, and the titles of their offerings held no obvious allure, but one sounded as if it might be a Western; he could pass an hour or so watching shoot-outs and galloping horses, Alan decided, folding up the paper.
As he reached for the ignition key, he glanced casually ahead at the shoppers on the pavement and caught sight of the small girl he had noticed earlier. She was walking along, head held high, towards his parking spot. Just before reaching him she turned into a baker’s shop. Alan waited, curious. In a few minutes the child emerged, now carrying a paper bag. She came to the kerb edge and looked carefully in each direction. Then she stepped into the road between Alan’s car and the one ahead, and peered each way once more. She had a thin, pale, anxious face. Her hair, beneath the red cap, was like flax.
Where was the child’s mother, wondered Alan angrily, and why was there no pedestrian crossing to serve these shops? He glanced in his side mirror. The road seemed clear. The child took a step forward, hesitating, then retreated again between the two cars, her head poking forward. Alan saw it was safe for her to cross and nodded encouragingly, but she was oblivious, intent on the road.
His hand was on the door handle, about to get out and help her, when she seized her courage and ran across, dropping to a sedate walk again on the far pavement. Alan saw her continue down the road for perhaps seventy yards to the next intersection; here she turned right, marching onwards, satchel bobbing on her back, paper bag under one arm and white socks twinkling above little brown ankle boots.
He started the car and moved slowly out of his parking spot when the traffic allowed. Taking the centre of the road, he indicated his intention to turn and went down the road into which the child had disappeared; Oak Way, it said on the corner. He came up to her quite soon; she was too small to have got very far.
3
Tessa Waring walked quickly along Oak Way. The worst part of her journey back from school was over now, and she quite liked doing this last stretch alone. The bad bit was at the beginning, not knowing if Mummy would be standing near the tree on the corner; she always waited there, when she did come, staying close to the wall until Tessa had run up to her and was holding her hand, and even then she would walk along almost touching the hedge or fence or wall that they were passing. She hated crossing roads and going into shops and all sorts of things that happened every day, going pale and shaky, and frightening Tessa by looking so strange.
Several other small children were never met at school because their mothers had jobs which didn’t finish till later. Some went off together, but there was no other child among them who lived in Oak Way. Usually, Tessa walked back through the recreation ground; then she did not need to cross any busy roads; but sometimes there was shopping she had to do if Mummy wasn’t there to meet her. Today she’d had to buy a loaf. It was still warm inside its bag under her arm. The bakery had smelled lovely, and the lady behind the counter had been the nice one with the
round glasses and smiley eyes, not the one with the fierce black eyebrows and stiff hair that Tessa was sure was a wig.
Mummy had a wig. It was soft and curling, and could be brushed into various styles. Mummy never wore it now but Tessa used it for dressing up, when she was being a princess or a space siren. Mummy’s own hair was very straight, like Tessa’s, though much darker. She said it had been just as pale as Tessa’s when she was a little girl.
Each afternoon, Tessa would come out of school with a funny, excited feeling inside, looking for Mummy. Then, when she wasn’t there, a sort of collapse would happen and the bright feeling would be replaced by an ache, which Tessa would try to ignore as she walked home, pretending that she’d known all along Mummy wouldn’t have come and wasn’t really disappointed, but sometimes there would be a tear or two to blink back. This would be specially the case if Tessa was in a hurry to tell Mummy something extra good – that she’d got a gold star, for instance – or indeed if things had gone wrong, like a problem with numbers or a bad tumble in the playground. Mostly, school was nice; Mrs Dawson, the teacher, though quite old, was a laughy sort of person and you knew what to expect of the day. Tessa didn’t like surprises much; they weren’t always nice.
Once, there had been a different school, a much smaller one, and other children she’d always known because they lived near each other and had all been to playgroup together first. Mummy had been different then, always able to take her to school and meet her; and there’d been Daddy, too. They’d lived in a house with a garden that belonged just to them, and she’d had a swing of her own. Now they lived in a flat that was part of a very old house, and they shared the garden with other people.
Mummy had explained that Daddy had gone away, and Granny Waring, who’d come to stay, had said he was living in heaven with Grandpa and Jesus, but it was all rather puzzling to Tessa. Vivid in her memory was that last morning: the angry voices and banging door, then Daddy driving away in his car. He’d forgotten to kiss her goodbye, which he always did even when he was cross with Mummy. For ages she’d expected him to come back just to do that, if not to stay, but they’d moved and now, if he came, he wouldn’t know where they were. But people didn’t come back from heaven, ever. She knew that.
At first, when they moved, Mummy had a job. She’d said that jobs fitting in with school hours would be easier to find in Berbridge when she explained about selling the house, but Tessa knew there wasn’t much money now. Daddy had taken that, and the car, too, when he went to heaven.
It had been nice to begin with; she and Mummy had painted the flat and made it comfy. Tessa liked the big garden, which had lots of bushes and trees and easily became an enchanted forest. There was a plot where Mr Henshaw from the ground floor flat grew vegetables; he sometimes gave them things from it – cauliflowers and cabbages, peas and beans, when there were plenty. She and Mummy had the first floor flat, which was reached by their very own separate staircase, an iron one outside the building. Mrs Cox, in the basement, had her own private stairs too. Mummy took temporary jobs because then she could be with Tessa all the holidays. They’d visited Grandmother – that was Mummy’s mother – in Cornwall, and had gone fishing in a boat several times; Tessa had liked that.
It was soon after they came back that things started to go wrong and Mummy kept feeling ill. One morning on the way to school she’d gone all white and peculiar-looking, and had clung to the fence of the house they were passing, swaying about so that Tessa had been afraid she would fall down. She’d put her arms round her, to hold her up. Mummy had stood up properly then and told Tessa to go on to school by herself; she’d go home, she said, and lie down, and would soon be all right. All day, Tessa had worried, but Mummy had been outside as usual that afternoon.
After that, though, things had got worse and Mummy had often felt strange. She’d got an attack of the gremlins, she’d say, with a funny sort of laugh that didn’t sound as if it was a joke at all. She didn’t go out to work now but did typing at home, and she hardly left the flat unless Tessa was with her.
This afternoon, carefully carrying her loaf, Tessa turned in at the gate of 51 Oak Way. She walked along the moss-covered path that led round the side of the tall old house to what had once been the tradesmen’s entrance. Here, stairs led down to Mrs Cox’s basement flat, where the door opened straight into her dark living-room with its long barred windows. Past this gloomy area, Tessa walked on to the curly iron stairs leading up to the first floor flat. At the top she set her parcel down, took off one red woollen glove, and fished inside her clothes. Round her neck, under her clothes, the doorkey hung on a tape.
She drew it out and unlocked the door, then tucked the key back against her vest before picking up her parcel and going inside. Everything that Tessa undertook was done with care, for so much depended upon her.
She closed the door and called out, in her high, clear voice, ‘Mummy?’
‘Here, darling.’
Louise Waring hurried to greet her daughter. She was small and thin, with large blue eyes, shadows under them, and a pale face. She hugged Tessa, taking the parcel containing the loaf, and began helping her off with her coat. It had been a bad day today, and she had been sitting in her chair huddled by the gas fire, trembling, her gaze on the clock, waiting for Tessa’s return; then, when the child did arrive, she was unable to move to the door. She’d tried, earlier, to go to meet her, as she tried every day, but had got no further than the laurel bush by the side of the house before one of the shaking attacks, which made her heart pound and her head spin and which she called ‘the gremlins’, began, and she had to return to the sanctuary of the flat.
It would be better tomorrow. She told herself that every day, and one day it had to be true. Now, with Tessa there, she was able to smile.
‘Let’s have dripping toast for tea, shall we?’ she said.
She wanted to tell Tessa how she tried to set out every day to meet her and not let the child think her neglectful or uncaring, but it was impossible to explain something she did not understand herself.
‘It’s shock,’ the doctor had said, prescribing tranquillisers. ‘Very natural, under the circumstances. It will wear off, given time.’
But it was taking so long.
Louise felt so dull and stupid these days. Sometimes she feared she was losing her mind, and if that were to happen what would become of Tessa? She must pull herself together. Other women showed much more courage than she was doing, and in far worse circumstances, too. No wonder, before they moved, her few friends had faded away. She’d always been nervous and shy and she’d had such a shock when she found out how much money Roddy owed that she’d wanted to hide away from people they knew. She’d had to sell the house to pay Roddy’s creditors and a new start seemed the best way to forget.
‘Tell me what happened at school,’ she said to Tessa. ‘Did you have singing?’
Gradually, in the warmth of the small kitchen, with the light on and the blinds drawn, the tension left both of them. Tessa was an ordinary little girl again in a protected atmosphere, chattering away, showing her mother her drawing and writing. Louise, enclosed too, was no longer alone and knew that she need make no further effort until the next day when again she would try to take Tessa to school. She listened, looked and admired. After tea they played Snap, and then, curled up on the sofa together, read a further instalment of The Borrowers.
Louise, full of pills, slept heavily that night, with her bedroom door ajar so that if Tessa called out she would wake, and a low bulb burning on the landing.
Down below, in the basement flat, Mrs Cox slept, too. She seldom dreamed of the past now, but a blue light always burned in her bedroom throughout the night, just in case.
The houses in Oak Way had been built during the expansion of Berbridge between the wars. Some were arranged in semi-detached pairs; others, like number 51, were large and detached, and several of these had been converted into flats.
Louise knew none of the other tenants well.
They all, except Mrs Cox in the basement, went out to work each weekday. There were two girls with office jobs in the two flatlets, really bed-sitters, on the top floor. The young couple on the ground floor, the Henshaws, had the biggest part of the house. Terence, at weekends and on summer evenings, was often to be seen working in the garden, and he and his wife seemed friendly; they had asked Louise down for a drink once or twice but she had always refused; she would not leave Tessa alone.
Mrs Cox was short and sturdy. Out of doors, she always wore a severe felt hat over her cropped grey hair. Sometimes she strolled in the garden, though she never sat out in the sun as the other tenants did. Last year, when a poisoned finger prevented Terence Henshaw from clipping the boundary hedge, she did it for him, even burning the clippings afterwards. Though a pensioner, she was fit and active. Tessa, playing at being a princess in a forest or an explorer in the jungle, would pretend, if they met, that Mrs Cox was a witch. Mrs Cox always drew attention to an untied shoelace or a descending sock, which was irritating, but sometimes she invited Tessa into her flat and there would be a glass of milk and a round small cake full of sultanas for her, or a banana, which Mrs Cox would cut into very thin slices and expect her to eat with a spoon, which seemed a bit complicated.
Mrs Cox’s sitting-room was quite big, but it was gloomy because the barred windows looked into the well and let in very little light, though you could see the legs of anyone passing on the path outside. Mrs Cox was fussy, and would spread a little cloth on the table before you had your milk and cake. There were white cloths on the backs of the chairs, too. There were only two armchairs; a tall one and a much rounder one which Tessa preferred. Tessa had told Mummy about the white cloths on their backs and she said they were called antimacassars and had been necessary long ago when men put oil on their hair to smarm it down and the oil rubbed off on the chairs.
Devil's Work Page 2