I am curious how long this rain will last and what will happen if the air-raid shelter floods. I have a terrible image, all of a sudden, of three bloated corpses full of wriggling maggots floating about inside the flooded shelter. I dismiss it. I cannot think of such things any more. Maggots. And eye sockets. And rats nesting in chest cavities. I must put them all behind me.
“Would you…” I go to say.
“Have you…” she says at the same moment.
We both laugh together, happily, and I gesture for her to go first.
“Do you have some water, tap water, for us, for Lily?”
I suddenly realise that, among all the goodies on display, I have not put out anything to drink. Not even glasses. Silly me!
“Yes, yes, of course,” I say, feeling myself redden. I get up to go to the kitchen as Josie leans towards Lily and says something. I don’t catch what it is but assume it must be something like “Cheer up” or “Sit up straight” or words to that effect. Naughty little girl.
I return with a jug of tap water and three glasses and put these on the table. I then go back into the kitchen as I remember I have two half-full cartons of juice inside the fridge door, one apple, one orange, which they might like.
“What’s the matter?” I ask as I go back in and see Josie picking at the rim of the glass while the child sits back in her chair, kicking her legs to and fro against the table leg.
Josie looks up, a little surprised. I came back in quicker than expected. She mumbles something about thinking there was a hair-line crack in the glass. I take it from her and hold it to the light. The glass is a little smudged and dusty as it has been at the back of the cupboard for a while and I forgot to give them all a wipe over in my haste.
“Here,” I say, pushing my glass towards her and hoping it is cleaner, “have mine.”
She takes it and, without looking, pours herself and then Lily some water.
“Come on,” I add. “Eat up, lots to choose from!”
I observe Josie as she carefully takes a piece of brown toast and runs the edge of her knife along the top of the margarine in its tub. She looks at but does not take any honey or lemon curd. She then bites carefully into the toast.
Adrian used to make a gagging noise if he saw a smidgen of butter or a crumb of toast – “stuff” as he called it – in any of the jars. “It makes me think of bogeys,” he once said when he was younger.
But Josie did not open either of the jars to look inside so I think she simply does not like them.
I make a mental note to get some marmalade or maybe some Marmite when I go to the shops. Anything for ‘our Josie’ as I have taken to thinking of her.
She is a precise eater, and rather nice to watch. I notice she is wearing the same clothes as yesterday and wonder whether this might become an issue soon. The girl too is wearing the same clothes and hers look crumpled and creased as if she has slept in them. I don’t think Josie slept in her clothes. She would have taken them off. Slept in her underwear or possibly even naked. I do not want to think about that. Not now, anyway. Not yet. Maybe later when I am on my own.
I reach for the radio, which I have on the side of the table, and turn on Radio 4, just in time to hear the eight o’clock pips.
Adrian and I had hardly any conversation about the news. He just listened to my comments with little more than a nod or a grunt. I might as well have been talking to a brick wall.
I think Josie and I, once we get to know each other better, will talk freely and openly about all sorts of matters. Politics, the economy and so on, enjoying our time together at the start to the day. I will enjoy teaching her the ways of the world. She will be an apt pupil.
I go to say something, to comment, to ask what she wants to do today, when the little girl, whose legs have been swinging back and forth, kicks me. It seems to me that she did it deliberately. For attention. To get between Josie and me.
I look at her sternly but do not say anything.
“Lily,” says Josie in a slightly raised voice.
And to me, “She doesn’t usually have a proper breakfast like this.”
I smile, not sure what to say.
Josie goes on, “She usually has Coco Pops watching cartoons on the telly.”
I nod, “Well, I can get some of those from the shops later this morning. I think the Co-op has them. She can do that tomorrow. Watch television.” (I’m not sure I agree with this, but still. We’ll see.)
The girl seems to perk up a little at my words and, with some gentle cajoling from Josie, she eats one piece of brown toast followed, slowly and almost reluctantly, by another.
“She likes Nutella,” says Josie, as if that explains the child’s reluctance to eat. I must have looked uncertain as she adds, “It’s a chocolate spread.” I go to say, “For breakfast?” but manage to stop myself and smile instead.
For a few minutes, we are all quiet, each of us drinking and eating happily enough. I note they eat only the toast, the brown toast, as I eat the white, and Josie politely declines another round.
I eat a yoghurt and then a bowl of cornflakes, crunching my way through the silence as quietly and as slowly as I can. They sit waiting for me to finish. I feel a little awkward.
I notice the little girl glaring theatrically at Josie whenever she thinks I am not looking. I ignore it, as does Josie.
Today’s weather report is on the radio and I lean forward to listen, to see how long it will rain for and whether it has broken for good the endless, day-after-day, week-after-week, heat. It will give us something to talk about, to chew over, to debate. To enjoy each other’s thoughts.
As I do, the girl makes a noise, halfway between a gurgling and blowing a raspberry, so that I cannot hear properly. On purpose, for sure.
I go to turn up the sound and then, astonishingly, the little girl sits up and reaches, almost sprawls, across the table, knocking over the box of cornflakes.
As her hand touches the radio, to turn the sound down or change the station, I’m not sure which, I grab it and hold it firmly. Both to stop her and, yes, to punish her. She falls silent in surprise that someone might actually prevent her from doing what she wants whenever she wants to do it.
It is all I can do not to squeeze her hand so tightly that she squeals – a well-deserved punishment for her bad behaviour.
But I let her hand go and she pulls back, knocking the jug of milk over her top. She sits there in sullen silence. I smile at Josie as if to say, there, no harm done.
The moment passes as Josie gets to her feet, picking up the glass and the box of cornflakes, and heads for the kitchen to find something to mop up the spilt milk. Reams of kitchen roll, no doubt.
As she leaves the room, I tut quietly and slowly, two or three times, to express my disapproval. The girl looks at me. She pulls a sort of smarmy, mock-sorry face. She does not mean it.
I look at her, staring her down.
And I think at this moment that, actually, I really don’t like her much at all and wish she wasn’t here, spoiling everything for Josie and me.
SATURDAY 29 JULY 9.23AM
I have been lying here on my bed, thinking about things, since breakfast. I am waiting for the rain to stop so that I can, assuming there is no sign of this Leon anywhere, go to the shops to get my daily milk and bread and other groceries. It is my habit. My routine. I enjoy it. The simplicity of my life.
I listen to the rain on the roof and at my window.
And think about things. Her. Him. Adrian.
And other things before that. Many years ago. The babies, mostly.
Josie, after breakfast, took herself and the child off to Adrian’s room and then the bathroom. The door shut. Bath running. Taps turned on. I slowed as I walked by, on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, and could hear them talking quietly. Their words obscured by the sound of running water. Josie telling the child to behave better? I could only hope. I think I could possibly live with a well-behaved child.
I stopped
and listened again on the way back. All I could hear was splashing water. The two of them in the bath together. I could imagine that very easily. But do not want to. Not yet. Not until we are closer. Friends. Perhaps more. Time will tell.
Truth be told, I never really wanted children. The babies. Nor Adrian.
When there is a child, the mother puts them first, before anyone else. Every time. Nothing else matters.
The husband, the father, is there to do little more than provide. Money. Food. His wants and needs, his feelings, his heart and soul, do not matter. He becomes nothing.
I hear the bathroom door being opened and the soft footsteps of Josie and the child walking back to Adrian’s room. I imagine Josie wrapped in the bath towel, her hair wet and tied back, her skin still glistening with specks of water. The hand towel wrapped around the child’s waist.
I must tell Josie that there are other towels in the airing cupboard. I should also, some time soon, buy some more. I cannot remember when new ones were last purchased. The ones I have are scratchy and threadbare in places. Our Josie deserves better!
I think, aimlessly, about what Josie and the child will do. What they will wear.
If they will simply put back on the clothes they have been wearing.
Or whether Josie will come, wrapped in the towel, asking me to go to her house to fetch some clothes.
The rain seems to be starting to ease, ever so slightly. I think that it will soon clear and a soft hazy sun will appear and the air will feel fresh and clean after the long stifling heat we have endured. It will be as if the rain has washed away the heatwave and all that came with it and the summer can begin again, warm and gentle this time. As it should be.
I sit up. Josie is tapping gently at my door. “Come in,” I call out.
She stands there, in one of Adrian’s old T-shirts, black with a skull logo on it. She is wearing it as a dress, her legs long and bare, and I wonder if she is wearing underwear or not. I feel myself moving and flush with embarrassment. She does not seem to notice as she starts talking conversationally.
“I’m wearing this, this morning, if that’s okay, and Lily’s in her underwear… in the bedroom… as I’ve just rinsed her things through and hung them up. The milk would start to smell if it gets hot again later… I seem to have been wearing the same things for ages… I just fancy a change.” She looks at me and smiles, as if waiting for my approval to wear Adrian’s clothes.
“Hang them over the radiator in the bathroom,” I reply. “I’ll get up in a minute or two and turn the heating on and the radiators in the other rooms off so we don’t get too hot… what will you do for clothes?”
She looks so beautiful that I catch my breath as I finish my question. Her hair pulled back from her almond-shaped face. She is sleek and willowy, all legs and arms and dainty, bare feet. I can almost smell her freshness and want to reach out to touch her, pull her into me, hold her tight. I’d never let her go.
She shrugs as if it is of no importance and replies, “We’ll be okay for today. Lily’s clothes will dry quite quickly as they’re only thin and she can put those back on for today. Adey’s got a pile of T-shirts I can wear and I can rinse out my things to dry overnight… maybe in a day or two, one evening, you could drive me back home to get some more?”
“Did you want to go back home to stay?” I find myself holding my breath as I wait for her answer. Fact is, at this moment, I don’t want her to go.
She pulls a face. “I think… at the moment, with Leon as he is… out there somewhere waiting… I won’t be safe. When Adey is back… I think we’d be looking to get our own place somewhere… and… I could work and maybe Lily could go to a nursery… but not round here. Leon won’t stop if he thinks I’m with another man. I don’t know. I… we feel safe here… if we could stay until Adey gets back?”
I nod and smile. “You call him Adey.”
“Yes,” she laughs. “And he calls me Pops.”
“Pops?” I ask.
“After Popeye, the cartoon character.” She flexes her muscles. “I used to do weights… and kick-boxing.”
I smile at her. “You are safe here. No one knows where you are. You could vanish in a puff of smoke as if you’d never been here. No one will find you. It would be as if you never existed.”
She smiles at me, reassured, and then adds, “Do you think Adey will ring tonight? From his mum’s?”
“Would he know your mobile number off by heart?”
She shakes her head, “No, I changed it not so long ago because Leon got hold of it… but Adey would have it on his mobile phone.”
“His mum said he’d lost it, when she called… but he might call… in a night or two maybe… it all sounds rather traumatic up there right now… what with the old fellow dying.”
She looks disappointed, so I continue talking, “Give him time, I’m sure he’ll be back soon. A week or two, no more. And then you can pick up where you left off. You can stay here until then… for as long as you like really, you’re no trouble.”
She thinks for a bit and then smiles at me at last, looking a little happier, and adds, “Lily likes you.”
“And I like her,” I respond. (I don’t, but what else can I say?)
“She can be mischievous at times. It’s always just been her and me on our own… since I broke up with Leon… she runs rings round me sometimes. She can be wilful. I think she needs a father figure… and some friends to play with.”
I nod, not sure what to say to that. What she needs, the madam, is a bloody good wallop and an evening shut in her room with the lights off and nothing to eat. That would teach her to behave, but I don’t think this is something I should say to Josie. Instead, I nod and smile as if in agreement.
“Anyway, I’ll let you get on,” she says, turning to go back to Adrian’s room. “You’re going to the shops when it stops raining?”
I nod.
“If you get something nice, I could make us a lunch… it will give me something to do… I could be your housekeeper for you while we’re here.” She laughs and then goes on, looking around the room, “Just do some cooking and tidying around? A bit of cleaning. I’d not want paying… just to earn our keep.”
I nod again in agreement and get up off my bed to follow her out of the bedroom. Josie turns into Adrian’s room and I see the child lying on the floor scribbling inside a book. One of Adrian’s. I also see some red and yellow scribbles on one of the walls. This angers me. The child is little more than a savage.
I am about to suggest to Josie that the child sits and watches the television in the living room for a while. Where she can do no harm or damage. It might also give Josie and me the time to talk, to chat and to get to know each other better.
As I start my words, I look out of the window. From where I am standing, I can see out into the road. It seems to have stopped raining, although I hardly notice that.
His car, over the way, has gone. Vanished. Disappeared. I don’t know when.
I feel an unexpected surge of relief and can barely contain my joy.
The police have moved on with their enquiries and I am free. At last.
SATURDAY 29 JULY 9.57AM
It is raining slightly and I am sitting quietly in my bedroom again waiting for it to stop. Josie’s words – “tidying around, a bit of cleaning” – are on my mind. I look at my room thinking how she must see it; the ancient flock wallpaper, the single beds with flowery duvets, the walnut-coloured wardrobe ‘too good to throw away’ when mother died, the ill-matching chest of drawers and bedside cabinets from when pine was fashionable and the peach-coloured carpet, which, I suspect, never really was.
It is old and faded as is everything in the bungalow. It all looks shabby and soiled, although I clean round regularly enough.
I feel ashamed and think it is time I bought a bucket and a sponge and a scraper and some paints, to freshen up the walls and the door frames and skirting boards. Give them a good going-over.
Josie will think bet
ter of me and will want to stay here, I think, if I can make the place look nicer. It will be something of a new start for us all.
She is a sweet-natured girl, is Josie. There is a lightness about her, a jolliness, that I find so appealing, and her looks are very attractive to me. She is beautiful, inside and out. I want to be with her as much as I can, but the child is always there, in the way, being a wretched nuisance. I had sat in the living room with them for a while after breakfast, watching inane cartoons, but with increasing irritation and then anger.
It’s Josie I feel sorry for. She deserves better.
The child never sits still. She fidgets. She twitches. She sings and then stops. She leans on Josie. She sits up. She pinches Josie’s arm for attention. She gets up. Does a little dance around the room. Changes television channels. Sits down. Gets up again. Moves an ornament. Plays with it. Puts it back in the wrong place. Always something or other. On and on.
It is all I can do not to reach out and slap her.
So I am back here in my room and I can still hear the endless cacophony of the child. So loud. So random. So intrusive. I am distracted. I cannot think. I cannot relax. I have always been aware of noise, from the road, the railway, the neighbours, but this endless, jarring bedlam – stop… start… long silence… start again… stop… a sudden noise – drives me to the brink. It is all I can do stop myself screaming out loud.
It is easy to stop a child’s noise, you know.
You pinch their nose and hold their mouth shut.
That’s all you have to do. That, and wait a while.
It sounds to me as though the child is now marching up and down. I hear her footsteps on the creaking floorboards. Then there is silence. The TV channel is changed again as the child searches for new and different cartoons to watch. I hear snatches of TV programmes before she settles on one. The sound gets turned up. Then down again, so low that I can barely now hear it. I count the seconds of peace and quiet. I do not think it will get above ten.
Mr Todd's Reckoning Page 19