That girl on the first floor, the mother of Tessa, now: what a spineless creature she was, to be sure, Mrs Cox thought. She didn’t deserve to have such a nice, neat little girl, the feckless way she cared for her. Imagine letting a child her age walk to and from school alone, for instance; goodness knows what could happen to her. Tessa was well-behaved and polite; she played contentedly on her own by the hour, Mrs Cox knew, for she often saw her at her imaginary games in the garden. The mother was hysterical, though; Mrs Cox had come upon her one day cowering in the road, standing pressed against the fence some distance from number 51 and looking as pale as a ghost. She’d said she felt ill, and begged Mrs. Cox to take her home, which Mrs Cox did.
She’d gone up with Mrs Waring into the first floor flat and lit the gas for her, and made her a cup of tea, sniffing with disapproval at what seemed to her to be simply feebleness.
‘I’m sorry – I don’t know why this happens – it’s just since my husband—’ Mrs Waring’s voice, which to Mrs Cox’s ears was a self-pitying whine, had trailed off.
‘Left you, has he?’ Mrs Cox had said, putting sugar in the mug – she could find no cups and saucers – and stirring vigorously.
‘Well, it was—’ Louise had begun, but Mrs Cox had cut in.
‘You must think of the child, my dear. Take a grip on yourself. Plenty of women bring up children alone, and nowadays no one need starve.’
It might have been Louise’s own mother speaking.
‘I know. I’m lucky,’ Louise had said. Mrs Cox had got it all wrong but she felt too weak to explain that Roddy was dead. ‘It’s just that I get these funny swimmy turns,’ she said.
‘And I expect you’ve been to the doctor and he’s given you pills,’ said Mrs Cox.
‘That’s right. He said it would pass, in time,’ said Louise. ‘Shock, he said it was.’
‘You must pull yourself together,’ Mrs Cox repeated. ‘Think of the child,’ and when she saw that some colour had returned to Louise’s face, she left her. It was no good being soft with someone like that: it would just encourage her in her self-pitying ways.
Lately, she’d seen Tessa talking to a man – a big fellow, well dressed, and middle-aged, with greying hair. Was it the father, visiting? Mrs Cox did not know, but she meant to find out.
It was another thing to think about, lying in bed on these dark winter mornings with the electric blanket which Mavis had given her turned on, and her cup of tea at hand.
She never looked at the newspaper cuttings then. Those were for the night hours, rare now, when the dreams came and she couldn’t sleep, haunted by images of little Grace.
She’d been blonde, too: just like a little angel; and she’d had a mummy who didn’t deserve such a jewel.
Sometimes, by mistake, Mrs Cox would call Tessa by her name. ‘Grace,’ she’d say, and Tessa would stare. But Tessa was older than Grace had been when it happened.
She asked Tessa about the grey-haired man, intercepting her one afternoon in the recreation ground on the way home from school.
‘Is he your daddy?’ she asked, and the child had looked puzzled.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He isn’t at all like Daddy,’ and then she had added, ‘Daddy’s in heaven with Jesus and Grandpa.’
So that’s what her mother had told her! How wicked!
Tessa had run past Mrs Cox, waving, after this exchange, and the old woman now saw a male figure coming to meet her: the very man they’d just been discussing. They met and caught hands and with Tessa swinging on his arm, went on ahead of Mrs Cox, who stumped over the grass, muttering. Fresh growth was beginning to show; birds were twittering in the bushes, and soon the razzmatazz of spring would be here, a time Mrs Cox did not enjoy. She walked on at a steady pace, sturdy and upright, wearing thick wool stockings and zipped boots rather like Tessa’s. On her head was her grey felt hat, skewered into place with a large pin thrust into the straight grey hair.
Mrs Cox turned into Oak Way. Just wait till she told Mrs Waring about the man Tessa kept meeting; she’d have something to make her tremble then, for certain. Mrs Cox looked forward to being the bearer of worrying tidings and she was thwarted indeed when she saw the man turn into the entrance of 51 with Tessa. By the time Mrs Cox came round the side of the house to her stairs, the two had vanished.
Alan had only just met Louise. The previous afternoon she had been waiting on the corner by the school when the children came out, and he had witnessed her meeting with Tessa. The little girl had halted for an instant when she saw her mother, and her delight was evident when she cast herself forward and flung her arms round the young woman who bent stiffly to greet her.
They set off together, hand in hand, the child on the outside of the pavement, the mother keeping close to the fences and walls as they passed. Tessa skipped along, chattering, a very different little girl from the quiet, intent small person he had watched on other afternoons.
He followed them, because his car was parked in Shippham Avenue, and although it was still too early to go home, he must eventually return to it although there was no need, now, to supervise Tessa’s journey home.
At the shops, the pair paused outside the supermarket. They conferred briefly, and then entered together. Alan stood on the pavement, tempted to go into The Pancake for a cup of tea. Whilst he tried to make up his mind, the mother came suddenly out of the shop, moved away from its doors, and leaned against the nearby wall, taking gulps of air. Her face was ashen.
Alan went to her at once.
‘Here—hold on to me,’ he said. He thought she was going to faint. ‘Lean forward – put your head down. I won’t let you fall.’
He grasped her firmly, and Louise did as he said, bending down, clinging to his arm.
In a minute or two she felt better and straightened up. Sweat beaded her face.
‘Thank you – I’ll be all right now,’ she said, clearly far from all right in fact.
‘Take it gently,’ Alan instructed. ‘Breathe deeply.’
‘It’s stupid – I felt dizzy,’ the girl said. ‘I get like this sometimes.’
Perhaps she was pregnant, Alan thought. That might explain why she could not escort her daughter to and from school.
‘You’ll be all right in a minute,’ he said.
A little colour had returned to her face. Suddenly aware of the way she was clutching his sleeve, she released him, but Alan still held her arm.
‘What about Tessa?’ he asked. ‘Is she doing your shopping?’
Louise still felt too fragile to take in the fact that this helpful stranger knew her daughter’s name.
‘Yes. She’ll manage,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait here till she comes out. Please don’t bother about me.’
‘My car’s not far away. I’ll fetch it and drive you both home,’ Alan said.
‘Oh no, really—’ the girl protested.
‘We’ll just wait for Tessa,’ said Alan. ‘Don’t try to talk. Just keep breathing deeply.’
A few passers-by glanced at them curiously, but whatever was wrong seemed to be under control. Soon Tessa came out of the supermarket, with a laden carrier which Alan at once took from her.
‘Tessa, you wait here with your mother. She seems all right now but I’m going to get the car and drive you home,’ he said.
Tessa had been worrying all the way round the shop, wondering how she was going to get both her mother and the shopping back to the flat.
‘Oh, yes please,’ she gasped with relief.
‘You know that man,’ Louise said, when Alan had gone. She was feeling much better now though her knees were still weak. She had felt so pleased at getting all the way to the school, earlier; on the way she had felt one of her attacks coming on, but by then was nearer to the school than home, so she had continued on her way when, after standing still for some minutes, the attack had begun to recede.
‘Yes. I told you, Mummy. He’s the kind man who picked up the shopping when the bag broke the other day,’ Tessa said.
‘Oh,’ said Louise. ‘I remember.’
Alan soon returned with the car, and bundled them both into it. He felt under the dash for the bag of Murray Mints and handed it to Louise.
‘Have one, both of you,’ he said. Sugar for shock, he thought, and took one himself before putting the bag back.
When they reached 51 Oak Way, he noticed that the mother almost fled up the path, leaving him and Tessa to follow with the shopping. They caught up with her at the top of the iron staircase, where she was fumbling in her bag for the key, trembling again.
Once inside the small hallway, she turned to take the shopping from Alan.
‘Thank you—’ she began, but Alan stepped over the threshold.
‘I’ll just take this in for you,’ he said. ‘And you need a cup of tea. Tessa will show me where everything is.’
‘Oh but—’ Louise began.
‘I could do with a cup myself,’ Alan said, with a smile.
Louise owed him that. She gave in and discovered that it was nice, when you felt ill, to be taken charge of and told what to do. She went into the sitting-room and lit the gas fire, then sat down to wait while sounds of conversation came from the kitchen.
Alan and Tessa soon returned with a tray of tea, and a plate of biscuits which Tessa had arranged in an artistic design.
‘My name’s Alan Parker,’ he told Louise, pouring out the tea. ‘I’ve been made redundant and I’m looking for a new job, so I come to Berbridge every day to see agencies and look at the advertisements in the library. I park near here, and either take the bus or walk into the centre. I’ve noticed Tessa once or twice, and was luckily there when her shopping bag broke last week.’
As he explained, Alan felt a great sensation of relief. Apart from the clerks at the agency and the Social Security officials, this was the first person to whom he had revealed his circumstances.
‘Oh,’ said Louise. ‘I’m sorry. About your job, I mean.’
‘Yes, well, it was a shock, after so long,’ Alan said. ‘I’d been with the same firm almost all my working life, you see.’
‘You’ll soon find something else, won’t you?’
‘I hope so, but I’m a bit old, it seems, for the job market,’ said Alan.
‘Are you?’
Her genuine surprise was balm to Alan’s hurt pride.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All my experience counts for nothing.’
Louise asked what he had done, and he told her briefly, then poured her more tea. She looked much better now and was regarding him with some interest, colour in her cheeks.
‘What about you?’ he said at last. ‘Have you seen the doctor about these turns?’
Louise nodded.
‘He’s given me some pills. He says they’ll pass,’ she said. She glanced at Tessa, who was sitting on a small stool with a glass of milk beside her, eating a large sandwich constructed by Alan with raspberry jam imprisoned between two slices of the crusty loaf she had bought the day before. ‘Would you like to watch Jackanory, Tessa?’ she asked, and Tessa nodded and hopped down, crossing the room to switch on the small black-and-white television set in the corner. She moved her stool over to sit in front of it.
Alan had already glanced curiously round. He saw knitting, a sewing machine on a table, a typewriter and a neat pile of typed pages.
‘Are you on your own – you and Tessa?’ he asked now, certain that they were, although there was no good reason why any husband should leave signs of his presence in a sitting-room. A stranger entering the sitting-room at Cherry Cottage would have no direct evidence that a man used it, he thought; all his personal things were in his study. But there was no study here; he’d seen the extent of the flat while preparing the tea – the kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom, besides this room where they sat now.
‘My husband was killed in a car crash last year,’ Louise said flatly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. How dreadful,’ said Alan. Somehow he’d expected to hear she was divorced; so many people were these days. Well, that explained things. She hadn’t got over it yet.
‘Roddy left a lot of debts,’ Louise said, and in her turn she felt the relief of telling a stranger her troubles. ‘He’d set up a mail-order business,’ she went on. ‘But he didn’t pay his suppliers for the stock he advertised, and after a bit they wouldn’t let him have any more, so he couldn’t deliver, and then there were all the customers who’d sent orders and money and got no goods. He kept changing his business address, too, so that no one caught up with him. I only discovered all this afterwards. The house and everything had to be sold, to pay the creditors.’ She picked at a worn place on the sofa where she was sitting. ‘You never think these things will happen to you,’ she said. ‘There was nothing left – no insurance. He’d let the payments lapse. By the time it was all settled there was just a tiny bit over which we’ve got for a rainy day. We bought our furniture in junk shops.’
‘What about your family?’ Alan asked. ‘Your parents?’
There was a silence. At last Louise said, ‘My mother and I don’t get on very well. She’s a very successful woman. She runs a hotel in Cornwall with a partner, another woman.
‘And your father?’
Again Louise paused before she replied. When she did speak, the words burst from her.
‘I thought he was dead,’ she said. ‘When I asked, long ago, that was what my mother told me. But then I found out that he isn’t – well, he may be by now, but he didn’t die when I was a child. He left my mother – ran off with someone who worked in the same place.’
‘How did you discover that?’ Alan asked.
‘We went to stay with my mother and Ruth – that’s her partner – in October,’ Louise said. ‘Ruth told me while we were there.’
They’d been in the bar one evening. Ruth had poured Louise a large gin and tonic and told her to relax.
‘You’re having a holiday,’ she had said. ‘Relax and enjoy yourself. Put the past behind you, Louise. You made a mistake with Roddy,’ she’d continued. ‘He was a selfish, insensitive man. You weren’t happy with him, I know, but you would do it. You wouldn’t listen to your mother, who happened to be right over that, though I don’t think she always is, by any means. You need someone, Louise. I hope you’ll marry again, one day.’
Louise had replied that she would be much too scared to risk a second attempt.
‘That was always your trouble,’ Ruth had said. ‘You were always too timid.’
‘But why am I like that?’ Louise had demanded. ‘You can’t say that mother protected me too much – that’s supposed to make you timid, isn’t it? She doesn’t know what it means to protect someone.’
‘Your mother’s not easy to understand,’ Ruth admitted. ‘But she isn’t as tough as she seems. She runs away from unpleasantness—won’t face it. Even with the business, I cope with the difficult interviews. Her personal life’s always been a total disaster.’
Louise had stared.
‘But her marriage—my father—she was shattered when he died,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t she?’
Ruth had hesitated, then plunged.
‘She was shattered all right,’ she said. ‘But your father didn’t die, Louise. He left her. He’s probably still alive.’
The news had astounded Louise.
‘I don’t know where he is,’ she told Alan now. ‘It seems Ruth only discovered he wasn’t dead when the new divorce laws came in and my mother had a letter from some lawyer. She’d always refused to divorce him.’
Louise, trying to absorb what Ruth had told her, had thought this petty, but Ruth had pointed out that there were practical considerations, such as her pension, to be borne in mind.
‘Did you talk to your mother about it?’ Alan asked.
‘Yes.’ Louise had gone to the private flat, where her mother and Ruth had their rooms, after dinner that evening. Her mother always went up there when her work in the kitchen was done, while Ruth looked after the bar. The sitting-room was in
semi-darkness and her mother was watching a snooker match on television. She had looked up and frowned when she saw Louise. She never looks pleased to see me, Louise had thought; I’m a big disappointment to her. ‘I asked her where he lives,’ she told Alan. ‘She wouldn’t tell me. She said I must put him out of my mind.’
Freda Hampton had been very angry.
‘Ruth had no right to tell you,’ she’d said. ‘It’s none of her business.’ She’d gone on to tell Louise that she must rely only on herself, and then she would never be let down. ‘Now, if that’s all, I want to watch this programme,’ her mother had said, turning back to the television.
Louise had wanted to know much more. She had wanted to ask what her father was like and if she resembled him. But she could ask no more of the stern woman sitting in the beige-upholstered chair.
‘I started to get these funny turns after that,’ Louise said to Alan. ‘When we came home. My gremlins, I call them.’
‘So you found out nothing more?’ Alan asked.
‘I did – a bit,’ said Louise. She got up and went to the sideboard where, from a drawer, she took a large envelope and opened it. Inside, there was a faded photograph which she handed to Alan. It showed a wedding group, with the smiling bride in a light-coloured suit and a pillbox hat, holding a bouquet of roses. She clung to the arm of a man in air force uniform, two narrow stripes on his sleeve.
‘I don’t remember him at all,’ Louise said.
‘But you use airforce slang,’ Alan said gently. ‘That word, gremlin, is an airforce term.’
‘Is it? I didn’t know.’
‘Where did you find the photograph?’ Alan asked. ‘Did your mother relent and give it to you?’
Louise shook her head.
‘I stole it,’ she said, and now, sitting here with this sympathetic stranger, she could laugh at what she had done. Alan thought how pretty she was when she smiled. She couldn’t be much older than Pauline.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
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