‘I’ve cut it already.’
‘But we need it for breakfast.’ Barbara looked around for somewhere to put the stockings, but everywhere was covered, so she folded them into her lap.
‘No, Barbara.’ Ruby pointed with her wooden spoon at the pot of soup, a mass of soggy bread covering the surface. ‘It floats on top. Like this.’
Two and a half months, and they ran out of money for the gas, those little hissing jets faltering and falling low one night before disappearing with a pop. Barbara tried to light them again, over and over, the matches burning down to black each time. ‘Christ!’ She knelt back to survey the charred little corpses scattered on the hearth, her forehead hot and cold at the same time. ‘We’ll have to borrow a shilling for the meter.’
‘I already owe them,’ said Ruby, lounging like a seal on the crumpled eiderdown. She was wearing nothing but a pair of pants and a vest.
Dark shadows cut into Barbara’s cheeks. ‘Owe them what?’
‘Shillings,’ said Ruby. ‘For the meter. Lots and lots.’ She ran her hands over the bulge of her stomach where it protruded from the vest. ‘You’ve no idea how cold it gets here sometimes, even when it’s sunny outside.’
After that it was coffee. Then toothpaste. Then soap. Then the electricity meter, the dial spinning down, neither of them with a penny to slide into the slot.
‘I had a penny once,’ said Ruby, sitting at the small table rubbing at her swollen feet. ‘But it disappeared.’
Barbara shaved the thinnest slice she could from their last piece of tongue and kept silent.
Then there was the rent. ‘It’s double now.’ The landlady stood in the hall when Barbara came home one evening after a long day of taking down someone else’s notes. The landlady’s arms were folded, blouse buttoned all the way to the dip at the bottom of her throat. A wave of cheap brandy washed out of her as she spoke.
‘What do you mean?’ Barbara said, lifting a gloved hand to cover her nose.
‘There’s two of you, isn’t there. Soon be three.’ The landlady tapped her fingers three times on her forearm as though to emphasize the point. ‘Maybe even more.’ And she looked Barbara up and down then as though she knew something Barbara did not.
‘But it’s still one room.’
‘Can’t have room shares if there’s only one bed.’
Barbara lifted her handbag and flipped open the gilt clip. ‘I’m not sure I have the extra right now. Can you wait until the end of the month?’
The landlady unfolded her arms and placed them on her hips instead. ‘Is she married?’
‘What do you mean?’ Barbara looked up from her purse.
‘Rent or no rent, you can’t stay if she’s not married. It’s not that kind of house.’
‘But you just said . . .’
‘Well, I’ve changed my mind.’
The two women stared at each other for a moment. ‘But where shall we go then?’ Barbara said.
‘That’s your business. I’ll give you a week.’ The landlady leaned forward then and gripped Barbara on the arm as though she was doing her a favour. ‘By the way, you do know she steals things?’
‘What?’
‘Just ask the other girls.’
Upstairs, Ruby was standing before the mirror applying lipstick from a brand-new tube. ‘What does she mean, Ruby?’ Barbara demanded. She hadn’t even taken off her gloves.
‘I have no idea.’ Ruby pouted at herself. ‘She’s just an old witch.’
‘But we need money,’ Barbara insisted. ‘What about the baby’s father? Can’t you try him?’
‘No.’ Ruby gave up colouring her lips and took out a pencil instead to draw lines around her eyes.
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’
And Barbara knew there was no reply to that. Besides, the baby’s father could have been anyone, as far as Barbara was concerned.
‘Anyway . . .’ Ruby smudged the pencil line with the tip of her index finger. ‘Isn’t there someone else we could ask?’
‘Like who?’
‘Your Mr Nye, for example.’ Ruby waved the pencil in the air in a nonchalant gesture as though it was nothing to her that in only seven days they would be left out on the street.
Barbara looked away. ‘He’s not my Mr Nye,’ she said. If there was one thing she was not prepared to share with Ruby, Nye Junior was it.
Ruby turned back to the mirror. ‘But you’d like it if he was.’
Mr Nye Senior had been eating dinner with his wife and son when Ruby arrived barely three months before. She’d watched them through a crack in the door, all three frozen in place with their cutlery suspended somewhere between plate and mouth, as the housekeeper announced her arrival. It was Nye Senior who’d put down his knife and fork first. ‘A client,’ he said, pushing back his chair and exiting into the hall where Ruby was waiting with her basket on her hip. She had come straight to Nye Senior after the artist had shown her the door.
In the elegant vestibule they regarded each other – the older man with a scar on his back, the younger woman with two beating hearts inside. Then Mr Nye Senior gave a sort of semi-bow and held out his arm. ‘Miss Ruby Penny,’ he said. ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’
The study was like the man. Meticulous, but with a certain flair. Books with gold spines. A rug woven with damask. A desk with a deep walnut sheen. Mr Nye Senior took the chair behind the desk as though it were a matter of course.
‘How long?’ Nye Senior was a lawyer. He liked to get to the point.
‘Too long.’
Mr Nye picked up a silver letter opener from his desk and ran one finger along the engraved blade. ‘There are things which can be done.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘It’s too late.’
‘Surely Mrs Withers . . .’
But Ruby just shrugged her shoulders. She could still feel that cold rubber tube inside her. This time she would keep what she could.
Mr Nye Senior bent his head in acknowledgement that his usual way of doing things would not be accepted here. ‘Then I’m not sure what you think I can do, my dear.’ He lifted his hands and held them out as though to indicate the uselessness of a room full of books.
Ruby put a hand upon her hip. ‘I need somewhere to stay.’
‘Well, you cannot stay here.’ Mr Nye Senior inclined his head towards the dining room from which he had just come. ‘Family is family, after all.’
‘I don’t have anyone else to ask.’
‘Have you tried our mutual friend?’ An artist with paint embedded in his toes.
Ruby looked away, colour rising up her neck. ‘He’s not inclined.’
‘Well, my dear.’ Mr Nye Senior stared at Ruby’s stomach. ‘Then I can’t say I’m inclined either.’
‘But you have more money.’
Mr Nye Senior smiled and pushed a hand through a curl of vibrant hair that had fallen over his forehead. ‘I think you’ll find I’ve been more than generous in that regard.’
Ruby looked away, thinking of a necklace and two earrings to match stitched into the hem of an emerald gown. ‘How about your son?’ she said. ‘Perhaps he might help.’
For a moment Mr Nye Senior’s eyes blinked at her just like those of the stoat on his office mantelpiece. ‘My son? What’s he got to do with it?’ Ruby stared back, hand running across her stomach where it protruded from her coat. Nye Senior coloured then, a deep stain right at the centre of each cheek. When he spoke again his voice was ice. ‘Perhaps you should try your mother – Mrs Penny, isn’t it? I’m sure she could help.’
Ruby flushed herself, a raw kind of red. ‘Mrs Penny isn’t my mother.’
‘Or your sister then.’ Mr Nye moved out from behind his desk. ‘She, in particular, might be interested to hear what you have to say.’ He spread out an arm to show Ruby the door. ‘After all, that’s what family is for, isn’t it? Times like these.’
Two and three-quarter months together, and Ruby and Barbara walked back towards 14 Elm Row. Undemolis
hed. Undivided. Three storeys and a semi-basement stretching up to a gable window in the roof. It wouldn’t be for good, Barbara was certain about that, just for whatever they could get. She went straight to the front door to ring the bell. Ruby went for the back.
Through the kitchen window, Ruby watched Mrs Penny beating pastry as though it might be the last thing she ever did in life. Tony was still sitting by the stove poking away at the insides of his latest pipe. But he looked old now, grizzled, his face a thick map of veins. In the crook of his elbow a toddler was balanced, small frilled skirt riding up around her waist. Inside Ruby’s swollen belly she suddenly felt her own creature pressing down.
‘Ruby!’ Barbara’s face appeared from the narrow passageway at the side of the house. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just looking.’ Ruby didn’t even bother to lower her voice.
‘Well, stop looking,’ Barbara hissed. ‘And come back round the front.’
The front door was opened by a young woman with a short skirt and a baby on her arm too. She glanced down at Ruby’s bulging stomach. ‘Come to join the throng?’
‘Not likely,’ said Ruby, pushing past and heading towards the stairs.
‘So sorry,’ said Barbara as she stepped inside too. She was still wearing her gloves.
The hall had been repainted, brown to the level of the dado rail, dirty cream above. The floorboards were covered with a long roll of red lino, easy to scrub. At the bottom of the stairs, stacks of folded cotton nappies were waiting for someone to carry them up. From the floors above came the distant sound of young women talking, the occasional slamming of doors. Water ran constantly through the pipes, accompanied by the plaintive wails of a hundred babies (or thereabouts). The latest Penny Family Business. Fallen women still; just those who kept their babies this time, at least for a short while.
Downstairs, Barbara sat in the kitchen drinking tea poured from Dorothea’s pot. Tony sat opposite, one eye leering in a continuous kind of wink. At the table Mrs Penny still kneaded her pastry with a vigour that belied her age. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What did you expect?’
It wasn’t a question and Barbara knew not to bother with a reply. How was it, she thought (not for the first time) that Mrs Penny had it all, while she and Ruby had nothing but themselves?
‘Wilful, that’s the word. Nothing but trouble.’ Mrs Penny began to gather up her pastry scraps. ‘I warned you once before. Runs in the family.’
On the other side of the stove Tony poured himself a shaky tumbler of rum. Barbara pressed her arm towards her stomach to quell a sudden twist in her gut. She would have liked a taste of rum herself right now. Ever since she’d stepped back into this house, her insides had begun to cramp.
‘I suppose you’ve got no money.’ Mrs Penny squashed her pastry into a grey lump with the heel of her hand.
‘Who told you that?’
‘One has one’s sources.’ Above Mrs Penny a neon strip light crackled and sparked. ‘You could come back here, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I can always do with another pair of hands. Though I don’t imagine madam would agree.’
Barbara held an arm up against her forehead for a moment, cold sweat suddenly gathered along the line of her hair. ‘No, I suppose not.’
Mrs Penny wiped her hands on a tea cloth and came to stand in front of Barbara. ‘You know she’ll take what she can get and leave you with nothing.’
‘She won’t.’ Barbara dropped her arm and held tight to her teacup instead, trying to still the tremor in her hand.
‘She’s done it before. Went to work for Mrs Withers, didn’t she? Never gave you a second thought.’
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Wasn’t that what Mrs Penny had said?
‘But she’s my sister.’ Barbara’s cup chattered in its saucer despite her grip.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Mrs Penny looked down at Barbara, shaking her head as though she’d seen how it would work out years ago and had just been proved right. ‘Neither of your sisters has turned out very reliable. Where are they when you need them the most?’ Mrs Penny bent suddenly and removed the rattling teacup from Barbara, putting it down on the table with a clatter of her own. ‘I tried my best,’ she said. ‘With you, in particular. But all that time together and you never learned a thing.’
Barbara stared up at the only mother she had ever known, alert now for something she must have missed. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said, face creased with confusion and the cramping of her gut.
Mrs Penny stood before Barbara, two flour-dipped hands on her hips. ‘Can’t you see what’s right in front of you?’ She shook her head again. ‘Your sister, of course. Not satisfied with the father, had to have the son too.’
Outside, Ruby was waiting for Barbara on the corner where once Clementine had stood, leaning against the wall in a nonchalant manner. Barbara came walking towards her, hurried and shaky, handbag gripped before her like a shield. Ruby, big now but still with a certain grace, levered herself off the wall. At her feet was an old suitcase, insides stuffed full.
‘Where have you been?’ Ruby started to complain as soon as Barbara got near. ‘I’ve been waiting for ages.’ She gestured to the suitcase. ‘It’s too heavy for me to carry on my own.’
Barbara stood directly in front of her sister, her face grey, like the remains of Mrs Penny’s pastry. ‘What did Mrs Penny mean?’ she said. ‘Not satisfied with the father, had to have the son too?’
Ruby flinched and turned her startling eyes away from her twin. ‘We should go now, Barbara, before she tries to stop us.’
‘Is she talking about Mr Nye? My Mr Nye?’
‘I have no idea.’ Ruby fell back against the wall where once Clementine had fallen back too.
‘What did she mean, Ruby?’ Barbara didn’t raise her voice often, but this time all the young women watching from the gable windows could hear.
Ruby turned her gaze back to her sister’s pig-like face. ‘Don’t shout, Barbara, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘Just tell me the truth, Ruby, for once in your life, or I’ll have to take Mrs Penny’s word for it.’
Ruby laughed then. A horrible, abandoned sound. ‘You’d believe Mrs Penny over me. The woman who stole everything we ever had. I told you, but you never listened. She’s a thief, nothing but a parasite. Why shouldn’t I take what I want, when she took everything from me?’
A terrible, heavy, coldness spread through Barbara then. Pennies from Tony’s pockets. Mrs Penny’s powder puff. Soap with a patterned wrapper. Or perfume with a glass stopper for a lid. Mrs Penny had been right. There was nothing Ruby wouldn’t take if she wanted it for herself. A silver apostle spoon because Barbara took one first. A dead sister’s bedroom because Ruby always had loved Clementine the most. And now, just because she could, a tall man in a narrow seaside bunk. Someone who dreamed of oranges while Barbara dreamed of something else.
A father reading by a fireside.
A mother sewing buttons on a coat.
A baby smiling as it turned in its crib.
Barbara clutched her side all of a sudden as a hot pain stabbed right in the centre of her gut. Not cramps this time, but everything that had always been in front of her, but which she had never allowed herself to see.
‘It’s not Mrs Penny who’s the thief, Ruby,’ she said then. ‘It’s you.’
Night drew in like a cloak as Barbara ran through the streets of London, nothing but a handbag held tight in her arms. Down main roads, down side roads, down cul de sacs and back. On, on, towards the familiar stink of the river and of tidal London mud.
She ran until she could run no more, straight to where the water flowed far below her, thick and glinting in the dark. Then she stood swaying on the edge, cold seeping up through the soles of her shoes, imagining her body falling, falling, disappearing just as Clementine’s had disappeared. Nothing left behind but Ruby to do as she liked.
Blood rushed through Barbara’s arteries and into her brain, sounding like a great
ocean inside the middle of her head. What was it Mrs Penny had told her once? It runs in the family. Fat Barbara. Pig Barbara. Always second best. And she needed it then, just for a moment. Salvation. Or something like it. The pull of the water dragging her under, running through her hair like a cold-fingered nurse, racing to fill up her ears and her mouth. For all Barbara had ever wanted was Ruby. While all Ruby had ever wanted was whatever she could have for herself.
Then she stepped away. Bent double. Vomited. Hot bile spattering to the concrete pavement, onto the hem of her second-best coat.
Three hours later, darkness wrapping around everything it touched, Barbara limped back to the bedsit to find all the windows ablaze. She fumbled in her handbag to get at her key, only to discover that the door was already open, a small whirlwind waiting for her in the hall.
‘I told you,’ the landlady was shrieking. ‘I said. No girls like that in my house.’ The little woman clenched her fingers tight around the top of Barbara’s arm.
‘What?’ said Barbara. ‘Let go.’
‘I told you.’ The woman jerked Barbara towards her, spit freckling Barbara’s cheek. ‘I said. I won’t have it.’
‘Leave me alone,’ Barbara cried. She twisted her arm away and stumbled for the stairs, tripping as she made her way up.
On the top step another girl stood waiting, nightgown falling to her knees. ‘We called an ambulance,’ she said as Barbara blundered past. ‘There was an awful lot of blood.’
At the door to her room, Barbara stared across at the alcove where a stain, bright as a pillar box, had soaked through from the eiderdown to the mattress. On the floor a chair had been knocked over, a bloody handprint on its seat. On the table Mrs Penny’s suitcase lay open, all its contents spread about. A jewellery box lined with nappy velveteen. A fox fur eaten away by mange. A china cherub, chipped and dirty, its rosy mouth rubbed pale. There was a bottle of Mrs Penny’s Innoxa. A photograph of two children sleeping behind cracked glass. And next to that, two spoons, once silver, now tarnished, two tiny apostles attached to their ends.
Barbara stared at the spoons, the bowl of one nesting inside the other, as thick clots of blood began to seep from between her own legs now. One last chance, gone forever. Then she raised her hands, still wearing her gloves, and swept everything to the floor.
The Other Mrs Walker Page 22