Only half an hour to go before the princess arrived at the Abbey, and they had all given up on Ruby. ‘Where is that girl?’ Mrs Penny muttered, moving to the stove now so that she could clatter her kettle and her pans. She’d been asking the same thing over and over for years and never got a satisfactory answer. Neither she nor Barbara (nor even Tony) expected an answer now.
Barbara gave one anyway. It was what she did. ‘Perhaps she’s gone to get the milk?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Mrs Penny flicked her apron at the hotplate. ‘The milk van was hours ago.’
‘Maybe she’s gone to watch the parade with a friend.’ Tony was sitting by the stove, chair tipped back on its hind legs. He sucked on the stem of his pipe with his thick, wet lips, then tipped his head back too and dribbled rum down his wide-open throat. Tony had started early that morning, knowing nobody would dare to complain this day of all days.
Mrs Penny humphed and flicked her towel at the wide target of Tony’s belly until he closed his mouth again. Rule number 57 – no fraternizing (particularly with the opposite sex). But Mrs Penny suspected, just like everyone else in the house, that Ruby had broken that rule many times before.
Barbara tweaked the cutlery lying before her on the table in its neat formations. Then she went to the pantry to hang up her apron, her forehead a little clammy, her hands a little damp, heart going all pitter-patter where it was squeezed too tight by the bodice of her dress. Just once, she thought, just once it would have been nice for the two of them to have done something together. A procession of eight thousand. Three million spectators. Six and a half yards of train. Everybody else had managed the logistics. A space in front of a television set. A new outfit. A party out on the street. Everyone except Ruby, who always had preferred to keep herself to herself.
Ruby’s bedroom had been empty when Barbara had gone in, of course, blue faded cover pushed back, eiderdown rumpled, a few discarded hairpins scattered on the floor. Nothing left behind but a shape pressed into the mattress and a lucky coronation penny hidden beneath a chair. Not even a note. Barbara had realized then that she should be used to it by now. Ruby never had been reliable. Here one moment, vanished the next. The only predictable thing about her was that she was unpredictable in every possible way.
Swathed in her sensible apron, Barbara had sat instead on the edge of Ruby’s deserted bed and stared at the wall, from where a panoply of people stared back. Women with red spotted kerchiefs and sharp hips drinking cola out of bottles. Men in sunglasses trailing half-smoked cigarettes. A thousand glossy magazine pages (or thereabouts), ripped from their seams, all from the US of A. Land of the Free. Provider of the Brave. A place where all sorts of promises were made and kept.
That small hole inside Barbara which would never be filled had opened up all of a sudden then, as empty as the spaces in Mrs Penny’s apostle spoon set. Barbara preferred pictures of the royal family, of horses and kitchen gadgets that could be purchased in the smart shops of the West End. The twins always had been two sides of the same coin. Ne’er the twain shall meet.
She’d wondered, just for a minute, if America was where Ruby had gone to now. Only the week before her sister had declared her intention of travelling there, as though if she wished such a thing it could only come true.
‘But how will you afford it?’ Barbara was nothing if not practical. Every penny counted out and every penny counted back in.
Ruby lifted a tiny mascara brush laden with black to her eyelashes. ‘I’m saving up,’ she said.
‘Saving up with what?’ Ruby had never had any sort of job as far as Barbara could see.
‘None of your business.’
Barbara had been sitting on the floor fiddling with her sister’s lucky coronation penny. ‘She’s not there, Ruby,’ she said, spinning the coin to a blur on the floorboards. Heads to America. Tails to stay at home.
‘How do you know?’ Ruby blinked twice in rapid succession, tiny black filaments falling to rest on her powdered cheeks.
‘Because . . .’ Barbara felt a familiar heat then, running all through her. ‘Clementine’s dead. Just like Mother.’
Ruby pouted at herself in the mirror. ‘No, she’s not.’
Barbara watched the coin falter – ‘Yes, she is, Ruby. Mrs Penny said so,’ – then fall. Tails, just like always.
‘You shouldn’t believe everything Mrs Penny says,’ Ruby had replied, licking her lips to a shine. And that had been the end of that.
‘Barbara! Barbara! Hurry up. It’s about to start.’
From deep in the pantry, next to enough supplies for an army should an army be required, Barbara rubbed at her eyes now with the edge of her apron as she heard Mrs Penny calling to summon the troops. Then she took the apron off and smoothed down the pleats on her new dress. The sandwiches were sandwiched. The buns were baked. Everything was ready. What more could she ask?
‘Tony! Tony! It’s about to begin.’
As Mrs Penny called again, Barbara took Ruby’s lucky coronation penny from the pocket of her apron and tucked it into the pocket of her dress instead. Leave no trace. Wasn’t that the Walker family motto?
Now, without Ruby, it would be the three of them once again, gathered around the television set for this momentous occasion. Mrs Penny with her rules.
‘No feet on the chairs, Barbara, I’ve told you!’
Fat Tony sucking on his rum.
‘Anyone fancy another?’
And Barbara, of course, the last of the Walkers. Nothing left behind but her. Always second best. Sitting quietly in the corner considering the whereabouts of two lost sisters and a twelfth apostle spoon.
Far away in another part of London, in a small, square room, in a small, narrow bed, Ruby listened to the beginnings of Psalm 122 as it filtered through the wall.
I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go into the house of the Lord.
Our feet shall stand within thy gates . . .
For there are set thrones . . .
Children’s voices soared up into the arches of the Abbey and Ruby soared with them, reciting the names as she went. Lady Moyra. Lady Anne. Lady Jane. All the new queen’s attendants. Lady Rosemary. Lady Mary. Lady Jane again. Attend on me.
Mrs Withers had already attended on Ruby. No fuss. No mess. Just warm water and soap and a red rubber tube, amongst other things. A sip of cheap, fiery liquid to help it all go down. Now all Ruby had to do was wait, while next door a princess became a queen.
Through the wall Ruby could hear Mrs Withers shifting about, trying to get the best picture on her little grey television screen. Lying in her iron-framed bed, she stared up at where damp spread across the ceiling. The bed was just like the one she and Barbara used to share before Tony agreed that she could have Clementine’s instead. In a room scented with lipstick and oranges, a thousand cigarette ends floating in the gutter outside the window like a shoal of tiny fish. Here, though, there was even plastic sheeting laid out beneath the linen, just like there had been when she and Barbara shared. Ruby shifted now and felt its crinkle. A real home from home.
Tudor Rose.
Scots Thistle.
Welsh Leek.
Ruby counted the embroidered motifs for the new queen’s gown as earlier Mrs Withers had counted the cash. Fat fingers, just like Tony’s, each one licked with a flick of her tongue. Ruby had stood, sweaty and damp in her best jumper, waiting for Mrs Withers to tell her she was not too late. Finally the older woman had folded the notes in half and said, ‘All there, dear, as we agreed.’
Mrs Withers was a large woman with a two-string pearl necklace clasped tight around her throat. She wore her hair in rollers and had a floral housecoat wrapped over her best dress in preparation for the ceremony to come. She had placed Ruby’s cash in a wooden box, locking it with a miniature key that appeared by magic from her clothes and disappeared the same way. ‘A very important day for all concerned,’ she said, holding out a slip of paper to Ruby. A receipt for cash, paid in a
dvance. Everything prepared.
Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted Queen.
God save the Queen . . .
God Save the Queen . . .
God Save the Queen . . .
God Save the Queen.
Through the wall, now, Ruby listened as Mrs Withers saved the queen along with all the rest, two fingers of whisky to burn the back of her throat. Ruby shivered, skin pale as a creature dredged up from the deep. She would have loved a whisky right now. She was clad in nothing but a gown too, a petticoat turned grey with too much washing, cold trickles of sweat running between her thighs. Her clothes were behind an old folding screen in the corner of the room, just like the bedspread draped across the corner of the parlour at 14 Elm Row. A family business Ruby understood from both sides now.
Jewellery and cloak.
White linen gown.
Perfumed oil.
A canopy of silk.
Mrs Withers had hidden Ruby beneath a canopy while it was done too – silk for a queen, an old sheet for her. The queen had been anointed with a special potion. But Mrs Withers had anointed Ruby with a basin of grey water and a cold, rubber tube. She’d kept her eyes closed throughout.
She lay now, reciting: orb, sceptre, rod of mercy, royal ring. She would have liked to have a ring of her own to wear. But all she had was a little silver teaspoon hidden in the bottom of her basket and a Brazil nut tight in her hand.
Thou shalt do no murder.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Ruby knew the Ten Commandments off by heart. She was only seventeen years old and she had already broken them all.
A few hours later and Ruby woke to find Mrs Withers sitting beside the bed, money laid out on the table beside them. Big banknotes, painfully acquired. ‘So, my dear, have you thought about what I said earlier?’ Mrs Withers pressed a surprisingly delicate finger down onto the stack of paper notes, pinning them to the surface beneath. ‘We can call it your first month’s wages, board and lodging thrown in.’
Ruby stared at Mrs Withers’ finger with its small polished nail. It had never occurred to her when she arrived that morning that the ending of one life might lead to the beginning of a new one too.
‘No need to even go home, if you don’t want to.’ Mrs Withers was holding something else now. A small glass with a slick of golden liquid swilling in the base. ‘Just start next week when you are well enough.’
Ruby blinked and stared at the grey pearls embedded in the fat of Mrs Withers’ neck. Inside her belly an ache was beginning to spread, down through her pelvis, up into the cavity of her chest, unfurling into all her vital organs – liver, kidneys, heart. She tried to pull herself higher in the bed, hair in dark streaks stuck to her neck.
‘But I haven’t brought anything with me.’
Seeing Barbara all of a sudden, back in another tall house on the other side of town. Washing up in the scullery, perhaps. Dragging chairs in from the street.
‘There, there dear, not to worry.’ Mrs Withers put a hand towards Ruby as though to help her. Or perhaps to hold her down. ‘We can start everything anew.’
A gold coach.
Eight horses.
A thousand acorns sent out into the world to grow into enormous trees.
Ruby subsided into her damp pillow. She knew it wasn’t normal. But then again, none of this was normal. One day amongst millions that would never be the same again. Not for the new queen. Not for Barbara. Not for Ruby either. She struggled to lift herself up once more, felt the glass pressed cold against her lip. A hand on the back of her neck where once there had been the touch of a silver blade. Then a piece of dirty paper pressed into her palm. A receipt for cash in lieu of services rendered, no harm done.
Nine forty p.m., and inside Clementine’s old room, sheet neatly folded, blue cover pulled tight, Barbara sat on the edge of the bed turning and turning a penny in her hand. Britannia on one side. The king who should have never been a king on the reverse. All dead now, of course, just like most of the people Barbara had ever known.
She tried to imagine what the new queen was doing, hair unpinned perhaps, just like Barbara’s, feet resting on a padded velvet footstool while she ate a slice of her very own cake. Barbara turned the penny in her hand once again. Heads to America. Tails to somewhere else. All her life Barbara had been unlucky. Perhaps things would change now.
Nine forty-two p.m., and in the damp London evening fireworks flew from the Embankment. A thousand children clambered onto buses, laughing and chattering from all the excitement. And Mrs Withers opened the back door of a tall, narrow house in the east of the city and made her way outside.
Nine forty-five p.m., and Barbara spun a coin on the floor as the new queen flicked a switch. Fountains ran like liquid silver. A girl with startling eyes shivered in a bed with a narrow iron frame. And one small foetus (lumpy and unformed) was flushed away into the city’s sewers.
London was rising. Washing itself clean.
2011
The very next morning, up early with the rise, and Margaret Penny returned to the territory of the dead. Not Flat Two, 47 Nilstrum Street this time, but the row of small, decrepit shops nearby. One baker, one grocer, one candlestick maker (or something of that sort). Research, that was what Margaret called it. Or one more chance to get under Mrs Walker’s skin.
When she arrived, icy slurry still ran thick in the gutters, the tenement walls were still black. But this time the sky was as pale as a bird’s egg, all washed clean by a fresh fall of snow in the night.
It had been her mother who pointed it out. Not the names on the scraps of paper gathered from Mrs Walker’s skirting board –
Moyra,
Jane,
Rose,
And Mary,
– but the shopping list on the reverse.
Margaret had been studying the scraps when Barbara shuffled into the kitchen the night before. ‘Where are these from?’ Barbara had said, gesturing towards them. Rum slopped dangerously from the edge of her glass.
‘It’s nothing. Just work.’ Margaret went to sweep the pieces of paper away. She didn’t want her mother contaminating the only evidence she’d managed to acquire so far.
‘But what’s written on them?’ Barbara picked up one of the scraps before Margaret could stop her.
‘Names, I think,’ said Margaret, brushing the rest of her treasure out from beneath her mother’s grasp. ‘Moyra, Jane, Rose and Mary.’ She was still trying to work out which came first.
Barbara seemed startled for a moment, turning the scrap of paper in her hand over and back again as though she might somehow be able to break a hidden code. Then she held the scrap out towards Margaret. ‘Are you sure?’ she said, frowning. ‘This says something different.’
Together they peered down at yet another shaky message from the dead. There was no doubting that Barbara was right. Margaret had missed it. Too concerned with solving a more elevated type of mystery to concentrate on the prosaic. Peas. That was what was written. It was easy to piece together the rest after that.
Eggs £1.
Paris Bun.
Tetley Tea Blue Bag 80.
Gold Blend.
It was a shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less. The last meal of the deceased. Margaret wondered then if she should have asked Dr Atkinson about stomach contents, while Barbara sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and lifted her rum glass to her mouth with both hands as though taking communion at the church. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Allah. Thank you, God.
Back in the land of the deceased, and Margaret began with the grocer. Who Dares Wins and all that. In Costcutter the two men behind the counter turned their eyes up to the ceiling when Margaret approached with a packet of chocolate fingers.
The older one said, ‘We’ve told it to the police already.’
‘Told what?’
‘About the thieving.’
‘The thieving?’
�
��They’ll not have given you the report then,’ the younger one said.
What was it with this town, Margaret thought, that everyone believed she already knew something when she hadn’t even worked out yet what to ask.
‘Used to come in all wrapped up in that coat of hers,’ the elder of the two said. ‘Just a tin of peas at the counter. Butter wouldn’t melt. You know the type.’
Margaret thought of her mother. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Took us a while to realize it was her. Old ladies, not your prime candidate.’
‘What did she steal?’ Somehow it didn’t surprise Margaret to discover that her client was a thief.
‘Cigarettes. Super Size.’
Margaret looked at the cigarette rack positioned well behind the till.
The younger man cut in, to explain. ‘Only came when there was one of us on,’ he said. ‘Then she’d ask for something off the top shelf. Couldn’t refuse. Just an old lady.’ Perhaps it was he who had been on duty when Mrs Walker pulled her scam.
Margaret looked around at the shelves stacked high with breakfast cereal and washing powder, rolls of toilet paper and gallons of bleach. Mrs Walker might have been old, but she seemed to know all the tricks in the book.
‘We never worked it out until we caught her with the oranges.’
‘The oranges?’
‘Aye. Lovely sweet ones displayed out front. Clementines, six for a pound. Bargain. She bought the peas like usual then left. Five minutes later we realized two punnets had vanished.’
‘How did you know it was her?’
‘We followed the peel.’
‘The peel?’
‘Aye.’ And the older man laughed now. ‘She’d left a trail. All along the gutter. Couldn’t wait. Tucking into one of our oranges right there in the street.’
Beneath her red, stolen coat, heat prickled across Margaret’s skin as she remembered a box room black as midnight, misshapen orange held to her lips. ‘Did you report it?’ she asked.
‘No.’ The man gave a shrug. ‘Just took them off her. Left her a couple though. It was Christmas, after all.’
The Other Mrs Walker Page 11