But there was no Mr Cox now. Tessa hadn’t liked to ask where he was; she didn’t like it when people asked about Daddy.
There were a lot of photographs in Mrs Cox’s sitting-room, all of children. Many were babies in prams funny-looking prams, very big and deep and with large hoods. Mrs Cox could be seen in some of the photographs, always dressed in a hat rather like the one she wore now, and a long plain coat.
‘Are they all your children, Mrs Cox?’ Tessa had asked her once, and Mrs Cox had said yes. She certainly had a very big family, Tessa thought.
On days when Tessa came home from school through the recreation ground, Mrs Cox was sometimes there, on a seat near the swings, or strolling back from the path by the river which flowed past beyond the railings. They would walk together then, which Tessa found trying because she liked to run part of the way as she always wanted to get back to Mummy quickly. Once, though, it had been lucky, for there had been a big dog which had come bounding towards her, only wanting to play, Tessa was sure, but it was just like a wolf and she had been frightened. Mrs Cox had driven it off with her umbrella, and when its owner came up had scolded him for letting the dog run wild. The man had got cross and said some rude things to Mrs Cox, but he’d put the dog on a lead and taken it away.
There were so many hazards, coming back from school on her own. She mustn’t speak to strangers, especially men in cars who would offer her sweets. Men in cars sometimes stole children away and were cruel to them, Mummy had said. There was the traffic, which came along so fast just when you thought the road was clear. There were big boys on bikes, who swooped past you and sometimes specially went through puddles to splash you, or rode right at you, only turning away at the very last minute. There was the dragon that lived behind the holly bush on the corner of Oak Way, and if you didn’t hurry past his fiery breath would devour you.
It was such a relief to survive all these perils and reach home safely, where nothing could hurt you. And Mummy must surely soon be better: all those pills would do some good in the end.
Tessa hadn’t noticed the white Cortina that followed her slowly home.
4
Daphne Parker was home by five o’clock that evening. She had spent a busy and rewarding day at the hospital, where the boy with the calliper was getting stronger daily, and old Mrs Burt, who had had a stroke, was talking intelligibly and would soon be able to leave; she could no longer live on her own and her son had adapted, under Daphne’s guidance, a room in his house for his mother.
She thought about these agreeable events as she chopped vegetables to add to the curry sauce in which she intended to immerse the remains of the half shoulder of lamb she and Alan had had for lunch the day before. She heard his key in the door just as she had subconsciously started to listen for it. He came into the kitchen, kissed her on the cheek and then filled the kettle and switched it on. This was unusual and she looked at him in surprise.
‘I thought a cup of tea would be nice,’ Alan explained. In fact he was missing the extra large mugful his secretary, Stephanie, had always brought him in the afternoon at the office, and sucking sweets had increased the thirst that was habit.
He did look tired, Daphne thought.
‘Why not a sherry?’ she suggested.
‘No thanks, dear. Tea will be just the thing,’ Alan said. ‘How was your day?’
While the kettle boiled she told him, in detail, and he expressed pleasure in hearing about Mrs Burt’s progress with the walking frame.
‘And you?’ Daphne asked, in her turn.
She thought that one of the nicest things about marriage was talking over the separate day at the end of it; it kept you in touch with each other. When Pauline was young and she had been tied, Alan had never been too preoccupied about business or too weary to listen to what Daphne planned to do about Pauline’s music lessons (allow her to give them up) or her wish for a new tennis racket. Daphne’s aims for their only child had always seemed reasonable enough to Alan, and he’d left decisions to her. Life had flowed harmoniously on through the years with only minor disagreements about what colour to paint the bathroom and where to go for the annual holiday.
Alan had made the tea.
‘Will you have a cup?’ he asked her.
‘No thanks.’ Daphne shook her head. Tea was an integral part of her hospital day. ‘Everything all right at the office?’ she said, to prompt him.
What if he told her the truth? Described his day in Berbridge with the hours at the library? Even mentioned the small girl too young to walk home from school alone, whom he’d followed? Told her about the film he’d watched part of – he’d missed the beginning – in the end not the Western but a sensitive effort in French, with subtitles, about adolescents in the Ardennes? It hadn’t been the sex tangle he’d expected from the posters outside the cinema but a poignant tale of misunderstanding amid beautiful scenery. What if he said, ‘I’m out of a job and on the dole, and if I don’t find something before my redundancy pay is spent, we’ll have to sell up and change our whole way of life’?
‘Oh, much as usual,’ he said, pouring his tea. It came to him now that he could invent small items of news that would be safe to offer Daphne, for she would have no means of checking them. ‘Stephanie’s thinking of leaving,’ he added. In a sense it was true: Stephanie, his secretary for the past three years, was now working for the managing director.
‘Oh Alan! That’s bad! Why?’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘Or is she pregnant at last?’
‘No,’ Alan said. He had followed Stephanie’s periodic moods and had shared her hopes and disappointments through most of their time together. ‘I think she feels a change of scene might help,’ he said.
‘It’s probably Vincent,’ Daphne pronounced. ‘He’s rather difficult, isn’t he? Do talk her out of it.’ She knew that Alan thought highly of Stephanie, despite her somewhat mercurial temperament.
They discussed the possible stresses in the home life of Stephanie and her husband Vincent until their meal was ready, and afterwards Daphne went off to play badminton.
Alan went into his study and put on his new recording of Trovatore. While he listened to it, he did some sketches, in pencil, of the small girl he had seen that day. He drew well. He could have lessons now, he thought idly, lightly shading the hollows behind her thin little knees in a sketch of her walking away from the viewer. There would be plenty of time for study.
A week passed, and Alan was settling to his new routine.
Every morning he went to Berbridge Central Library to search through the newspaper advertisements and write applications for possible jobs. Then, on his way to post them, he called at the employment agency. In that first week, he made one personal approach to a firm on their books. He saw the personnel manager who said he would be considered for the vacant post, but they were in fact, looking for someone considerably younger.
At lunchtime he went to various pubs or snack bars for a sandwich, and in the afternoon he returned to the library where he settled down comfortably to read. He should, he supposed, follow some purposeful course of instruction, but he was rather enjoying dipping about in books that caught his fancy. He had read Sir Arthur Grimble’s A Pattern of Islands which he came on by chance, and had now embarked on a life of Verdi, which he replaced each day on the shelf.
At Biggs and Cooper’s works he had had his own reserved parking slot in the yard, which of course was free. Now, using the municipal multi-storey car park every day, he was spending a large sum daily just on leaving the car. He was using more petrol, too, than before. His daily budget, with no salary coming in, had gone up, and this couldn’t continue.
On the second Monday morning, he drove straight through Berbridge as he had done the week before. So consistent was his timing that again he met the blue Fiesta waiting at the side road near the traffic lights, and again he waved it on.
This time, Alan did not follow the Fiesta as far as the school. He turned into Oak Way, along which he had followed the small girl t
he previous week, where there was plenty of space to park without charge by the kerb. Then he walked back to the main road and caught a bus in to the town centre.
On Tuesday morning he saw the small girl again. This time, he left the car in Shippham Avenue, a cul-de-sac that led off Oak Way and ended in the entrance to the recreation ground.
As he parked in the short road, Alan saw the little girl running along ahead of him, and he glanced at his watch. She was going to be late for school, he thought, though she wasn’t taking the route past the shops, as before.
Vague fears that she might cross the road recklessly in her haste came into his mind. Children moved so quickly and were so easily distracted. He got out of the car, locked it, and followed her into the recreation ground. She was still running.
In procession they crossed the short, damp turf, past the swings and the see-saw, and through the gate at the end where the child slowed down. Alan, his long strides closing the gap between them, saw the pale stem of her neck above the coat collar, the two bunches of ash-blonde hair emerging beneath her woolly cap. He noticed again the shadowed hollows behind her bare knees above the white socks. She hurried on.
Beyond the recreation ground, Alan saw the school, with no further road to cross. The lollipop lady had gone, and there were no other children in sight as the little girl reached the school entrance and ran in. Were you punished for being late at that age, he wondered? Perhaps she bore some letter of explanation.
He pondered about the child during the day. Modern children were extremely self-reliant, he knew, and were taught by their enlightened parents how to cross the road almost as soon as they could walk. Yet there had been a desperate urgency about the little girl this morning. Wondering about her and her possible problems took his mind off his own.
That afternoon he walked back from the town centre in time to station himself, on foot, outside the school but at a little distance, before the children came out. He watched for the little girl.
He saw the blue Fiesta. The young woman driver got out and walked up to the gates to collect five children. They hung round her, two with mops of dark curls like her own, the others fairer.
The little blonde girl was one of the last children to come through the school gates. Alan saw her look across towards the corner opposite where he was standing. Then, as before, she seemed to square her shoulders before going over the road herself, under the benediction of the lollipop lady’s banner.
She set off resolutely, bound for the shops again, Alan guessed as he slowly followed. Her thin little white-socked legs twinkled ahead. This time, she went into the supermarket, picking up a wire basket at the doorway and walking a short way into the shop to where there was a small space by the biscuits. Here she set her basket down on the ground, then pulled her satchel round to the front of; her body, unbuckled it, and hunted inside. She took out a piece of paper and consulted it. Alan could see her mouthing the words; she was barely old enough to read.
She put her shopping list, for so it must be, away, picked up the wire basket and headed towards the freezer area. Alan had picked up a basket too. He put a packet of cheese crackers in it; he ought to buy snacks for his lunch instead of spending money in pubs. He moved towards the small girl.
She was standing on her toes, stretching, trying to reach something deep inside the freezer cabinet.
‘Can I help you?’ Alan smiled down at her. Her hand, in its red glove, was hovering above the fish fingers. He picked up a packet and gave it to her. ‘Is this what you want?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said gravely, putting it in her basket with a packet of peas which she had been able to reach herself. She did not look at him, but moved on round the shop to take a tin of rice pudding from another shelf, and a pot of cherry jam. She collected the items with slow deliberation, reading the labels with concentration.
Alan, with two packets of Murray Mints alongside the cheese crackers in his own basket, went to a different till at the check-out. He saw the assistant who was dealing with the small girl smile at her, and help her pack her purchases into a plastic carrier which the child had pulled from her satchel. The little girl looked quite animated as they exchanged some remarks. Then solemnity returned as she left the shop and crossed the wide pavement to wait at the kerb before crossing the road.
Alan stood beside her, planning to write to the Berbridge Bulletin about the need for a pedestrian crossing here. He looked to right and left, as the child did, and crossed beside her. Her bundle of shopping, in relation to her own size, was large and heavy. She had no doubt been told not to talk to strangers, and would not take it well if he offered to carry it home for her. He walked behind her, however, all the way to number 51 Oak Way, and saw her go safely inside.
After that he looked for her every morning, parking his car in such a way that if he was sitting in it, he would see her approaching the recreation ground. In the afternoons, if she went shopping, he waited outside the row of shops until she emerged with whatever she had to buy that day, not speaking to her, merely making sure that she crossed safely over the road and reached home without mishap. Some afternoons, if it was fine, he walked through the recreation ground and along the towpath beside the river. He would stroll past cabin cruisers moored at the bank, their canopies tightly fastened now against the winter. He still missed his afternoon cup of tea and would sometimes call at a cafe for one before going back to where he had parked.
He would return to the car before it grew dark, and sit there reading or listening to the radio, occasionally running the engine to let the heater come into action when he felt cold. He did not go to the cinema again.
On Wednesday of the second week, the handle of the little girl’s carrier bag broke as she crossed the main road, and three oranges rolled away from her. Other packages – biscuits and a bag of flour – fell too.
Alan was beside her in an instant.
‘Run across—quick—it’s all right, I’ll pick it all up,’ he said. ‘Quick, now—go along, before a car comes.’
But tears were near. She looked at Alan with brimming, glistening eyes, and did not move.
Alan took her hand.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, holding onto her while a car went past swerving slightly to avoid an orange, the driver hooting in annoyance and frowning at Alan for, as he supposed, causing the confusion. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated, and led her over the road to the further pavement. ‘You wait there. Give me your bag and I’ll rescue your shopping.’
He took the carrier from her, waited for a space in the oncoming traffic, and returned to the road where he retrieved the packages. Luckily there was only a small tear in the bag of flour and it had escaped being crushed by a passing car. A woman had picked up one of the errant oranges and she gave Alan a curious inspection as she dropped it into the bag he extended towards her.
‘She lives just down Oak Way,’ Alan told the woman. ‘I’ll see her home.’
The woman nodded. She had noticed the child alone before but the man seemed to know her, and in his tweed overcoat, with his greying hair neatly brushed, he looked utterly respectable.
The little girl was waiting anxiously on the far pavement, a few tears rolling down her face. Alan gave her a clean handkerchief.
‘Here – blow your nose,’ he said. ‘It’s all right now. I’ll carry your bundle home for you.’
Obediently, she blew and wiped, and when she had returned his handkerchief, he rummaged in his pocket for a Murray Mint which, after a moment’s hesitation, she accepted. She knew this kind man. She’d seen him outside school when she was looking for Mummy, and in a white car near the rec. He’d helped her once, too, when she couldn’t reach something in the supermarket. So he wasn’t really a stranger.
Sucking her Murray Mint, Tessa Waring walked along beside Alan and told him her name and that she was nearly seven years old.
They parted at the gates of 51 Oak Way, where Alan handed back her bundle, and she carried it safely inside.
Their friendship began that day.
5
These winter mornings Mrs Cox rose late, her one concession to her age.
She always woke early: habit died hard. First there had been those decades with the babies; then the other years she tried not to remember, years filled with the clanging of doors, the harsh sounds of footsteps on stone, and the smells: so many long years spent like that.
She had not always lived alone in the basement flat at 51 Oak Way. When she arrived, Mavis had been there, waiting for her, the new life already begun. But Mavis, although eight years younger, had died, leaving Mrs Cox all she possessed – some money, and the flat’s furniture. Mrs Cox was just able to manage the rent on her own. For a while when she came out of prison she had done a cleaning job several days a week, but when Mavis was ill she gave that up. Now she went baby-sitting for several families living nearby, and had her regular clientele. Occasionally, if the parents planned to be very late home, she slept overnight, and it was quite like old times to stand, in dressing gown and slippers, in the small bedroom looking down at the cot with its rosy occupant dead to the world before retiring to the comfortable guest room bed herself.
Dead to the world: best not to think of that.
Waking early in her dim-lit room, Mrs Cox would get up, go to the kitchen to switch on the kettle, and visit the bathroom. Then she would put her teeth in and return to bed with a cup of tea. She would drowse for a while, remembering some of the children – Jack, in his sailor suit, perhaps, or Philip who had gone into the Foreign Office and as far as she knew was still there. She would think about Denis, who was killed in the war, and Paul, who’d become a parson.
Sometimes, she thought about Grace. Often, she slept again.
Later, she’d put on the radio and listen to the news. It always seemed gloomy, yet look what time-saving gadgets there were these days: drudgery was a thing of the past; and though people spoke of poverty, there was little to be seen in Berbridge. Young folk didn’t know when they were well off.
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