The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

by Andrew Nicoll

  “You know my brother?”

  “I was sure I was right! I knew it. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Charles Walker, of Detroit, Michigan.”

  Miss Ann Myfanwy slipped off her glove – naturally she was never without gloves – and offered her hand. “How do you do, Mr Walker?”

  He took hold of her fingers gently and said: “How do you do,” with a not unpleasant American twang.

  “But how do you come to recognise me?” she said.

  “Why, Miss Jones, your brother keeps your picture in a silver frame on the piano in his home – the one with . . .” He let his hand tumble down in an uncertain, cascading motion from his face to his chest.

  “Oh the picture with the fur stole! That silly thing.”

  “I don’t think it’s silly at all. I think it rather beautiful. I know Arthur is very fond of it and you may judge how closely I have made a study of it, Miss Jones, if I am able to recognise you by sight and ‘in the flesh’ as it were, weeks later and thousands of miles away. But, if I might say something . . .” He waited.

  “Please, yes, go on.”

  “That portrait does not do you justice, Miss Jones.”

  She noticed he was still holding her hand and, a little reluctantly, she took it back.

  “You know Arthur?”

  “Why, of course, Miss Jones. We run across each other frequently. In fact, I saw him only a few weeks ago, just before I left the States.”

  “Are you in the advertising business too?”

  “No.” He gave a kind of throaty chuckle and she noticed, for the first time, he had three gold teeth at the front of his mouth. “No, I’m a horse trader. I couldn’t do Arthur’s job, stuck behind a desk in the city all day. I need to be out in the open air in all weathers, with my horses and . . .”

  She was staring at him.

  “Oh. You noticed my teeth.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “I understand. It’s peculiar, I know. The glue in the seat of my pants failed me one fine day, Miss Jones, and I came out of the saddle and broke my fall with my face.”

  “Oh, you poor man. Poor, poor man.” She put a hand on his arm.

  “It’s nothing to grieve over, Miss Jones. I came away with no real hurt and an extra-shiny smile, that’s all. You’ve got to expect something like that when you’re in my line, working with horses every day . . .” Horses. Horses every day. The thought of horses beguiled her. “. . . although I like to pretend it has something to do with my lack of success with the fair sex.”

  “Oh, come now, Mr Walker. I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, believe it or not, Miss Jones, it’s true.”

  “You’re not married?”

  “No. I regret to say I’m not.”

  He wasn’t married.

  “It would mean a great deal to me to have someone to care for, Miss Jones, and it would mean a great deal to have someone who could care for me. I regard the married state as one of the most noble institutions of mankind and, speaking as a religious man . . .” Oh, a religious man. He was religious and he traded in horses and he was unmarried. “. . . one of Heaven’s most gentle blessings and an intimation of the bliss to come. But perhaps it is not meant for all of us.” He gave another of his little chuckles. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s very likely I could find a little lady who would put up with my feeling for horses, Miss Jones. No, I don’t think that’s likely at all.”

  “Mr Walker, you’d be astonished. I for one have a perfect passion for horses.”

  “No! You do? Well, don’t that beat all?”

  “Arthur must have told you . . .”

  “Yes, of course. You know, come to think of it, he did!”

  “. . . about my dear old chum Boxer.”

  “Boxer, yes of course. How could I have forgotten?”

  “Well, as you know, we had to say ‘farewell’, we two, Boxer and I.”

  “Yes, of course, after, after . . . You need say no more, Miss Jones.”

  “I can see you are too delicate to mention Father’s business disappointment, Mr Walker, but I’m sure Arthur has spared you nothing of his opinions on the matter.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that.”

  “You are being very kind, but we both know that Arthur took it hard. I am only a woman. I was protected from the worst of it, but poor Arthur had to fly the nest and make his way in the world.”

  “Miss Jones, I know very well that you suffered too.” And then he said just one word, softly and sadly. “Boxer.”

  “Yes. Poor, dear Boxer.” She looked down at the pavement and noticed the first splash of a raindrop. “The weather is taking a turn for the worse, Mr Walker.”

  “Indeed, Miss Jones. Indeed, it is. I wonder. I hardly dare to ask, but would you do me the great honour of joining me at the Royal Ferry Hotel? I believe it is a respectable establishment and suitable for ladies. I would be delighted if we might continue our conversation over a cup of tea.”

  “Mr Walker, I should be delighted too.” So he offered her his arm and she took it and they walked off together.

  20

  IT SEEMED THAT time simply flew by while they were together in the parlour of the Royal Ferry Hotel. It was the very finest hotel in New Brighton, right at the pier head, so it was almost the first thing anyone saw as they left the boat from Liverpool, but the parlour was burdened with a rather untrustworthy fireplace, which gave occasional coughs of smoke and not a great deal of heat. Still, it had a certain charm.

  They chatted happily, and when the waiter came Mr Walker ordered tea for two with cakes and scones: “Let’s have a treat while we enjoy our chat,” he said. But no sooner had the waiter left with their order than he leaned across the table and interrupted Miss Ann Myfanwy in the middle of a story about a hat she had seen and said: “I’m sorry, could you excuse me for just one moment?” and hurried out.

  He returned again a moment later and everything was as happy as before and he had her laughing behind her hand when he told her about the dreadful stormy crossing “over the pond”, but when the waiter returned there was only one sandwich, one cake, one scone. She noticed, but she did not remark.

  “Won’t you, please, have a sandwich? That ham looks delicious.” He handed her a tiny plate. “Please, do.”

  She was unsure, but when he insisted she slid half a sandwich, a little thing the size of a calling card, onto her plate.

  “No, no, please. You must take all of it. I invited you for a proper tea, but I find I’m not in the slightest hungry. I had an enormous breakfast – as is my habit when I’m working with the horses – but I haven’t done half the work I’m used to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure. Please. Milk?”

  She nodded and he poured tea for them both and he seemed so happy and easy that she forgot all about the business with the sandwich. “Tell me more about your horses,” she said.

  “Well, I run a small ranch a day or so outside Detroit. My grandfather set the place up getting on for eighty years ago . . .”

  “Did he have to battle the redskins over it?” she said.

  “I’m sure he had some stories to tell. Things were pretty wild in those days, you bet!”

  She liked that. “You bet!” It was all so young and daring and so American.

  “But I reckon some of Granpaw’s stories got bigger with the telling.”

  He told her about the time of the big drought when the bullfrogs latched on to the old milch cow and sucked and sucked and when Granpaw came out in the morning they were bigger than the cow.

  “He had a lot of stories like that. Like the time it froze so hard he couldn’t hear the cattle until the thaw came and all their moos unfroze.”

  She laughed over that one too. “Do you still run cattle?”

  “No, my dad thought it was an awful lot of work for not much wages, so he decided to go into horses instead. People are always going to need horses, that
’s what my old dad said, and he was right.”

  “Then you’re not a believer in the motor car, Mr Walker?”

  “It’s a flash in the pan. It’s a confidence trick perpetrated on the public – the wealthy public with more money than sense. A fool and his money are soon parted, that’s what they say, and if you’re looking for a fool parted from his money, you will find him behind the wheel of an automobile!”

  “Why, Mr Walker, you are very fervent!”

  “Then I beg your pardon, but this is a matter I feel strongly about. I believe in honest dealing and I call it a downright swindle to sell a man a noisy, stinky automobile that can rattle along at upwards of twenty miles an hour when there is no road that can take him at more than five miles an hour! And I will go further, Nancy – no man alive could ever make friends with an automobile or feel for that mountain of nuts and bolts as you felt for your dear Boxer!”

  She was impressed. He was hot-blooded. He was passionate. He believed in honest dealing. He understood what it was to love, truly love a horse, he was of a religious turn of mind, he was unmarried – and he had called her Nancy.

  Miss Ann Myfanwy regarded him over the rim of her teacup for a moment, watching him push fingers through his thick, dark hair in an agitated fashion.

  “Cake?” he barked.

  “You called me Nancy.”

  His hand flew to his mouth. “Why, Miss Jones, a thousand pardons. Please accept my apologies. Here I am, an absolute stranger to you, I intrude myself upon your acquaintance and now I force you into a familiarity I have no right to demand. Please, forgive me, Miss Jones. It’s only that all I’ve ever known of you is that dear photograph on Arthur’s piano and it has always been to me simply ‘Nancy’. I offer you my most sincere and humble apologies, Miss Jones.”

  She laughed out loud at him then and said: “I do not object in the slightest, Mr Walker. Cake?”

  After that, of course they were – “Call me Charlie, won’t you?” – the very best of friends and she forced him to share the one, solitary cake and she cut the scone in half and spread a tiny knob of butter very thinly across both sides and doled out the damson jam as if they had been sharing rations under siege.

  He left his place on the other side of the table and he went to sit beside her and they watched the rain drumming up the pier to fling itself against the windows.

  “Call me Nancy again.”

  “Nancy.” He brushed his fingers over hers. “Nancy.”

  And then she called him “Boxer”.

  She said. “Why did you make the waiter bring cakes for one?”

  “I told you. I’m not hungry.”

  “Is that all? Really?”

  “Really, that’s all.”

  He told her about his life raising horses and how he had brought the best of them all the way across the Atlantic, sleeping alongside them in the hold of the ship so they might have at least a familiar voice to listen to in the dark, and how he had crossed all the way to Ostend to sell them and how, in a few days, just a few days, he would join his ship at Liverpool and sail back to America.

  “This time I plan on making use of my cabin. It’s going to be a good deal more comfortable but a whole lot lonelier.”

  “Where are you staying?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’ve rented two rooms from a fine old lady, Mrs Graham, along in Riversdale Road. No. 10. You will always reach me there.”

  The waiter came in to tend to the fire, and when he was finished he made a point of noisily clearing away their tea things.

  “The rain has stopped,” Walker said. “I suppose we should go.”

  “Yes . . . Boxer.”

  “Unless you want a fresh pot of tea.”

  “No . . . Boxer.”

  “Nancy!”

  “Yes . . . Boxer.”

  “Why do you call me by that silly name?”

  “It’s not a silly name. And you remind me of him. Your mane is not so long and it is rather more silver, but otherwise there is quite a resemblance.”

  “Did he have a mouthful of gold teeth too?”

  “Don’t be silly . . . Boxer.”

  By the time they had their coats on and he had paid and left a few pennies in the saucer for the waiter, by the time they were back out on the street, his new name seemed perfectly familiar and commonplace.

  They walked slowly together down to the pier head and then back along the shore to the promenade where they had first seen one another, talking, talking, talking all the way mostly about how lonely they each were and how disappointed they had been but mostly about how lonely they were and how happy they had been for these few hours, all the way back up the hill to the gates of the old magazine.

  “Father will be home from the business soon,” she said. “I must go in and see to his dinner.”

  “Of course. Of course. I understand. Of course. Nancy, do I dare to hope that we might meet again tomorrow?”

  “I should like nothing better. I long for it. When? When shall we meet?”

  “As soon as we can. Let’s meet as soon as we can. When can you be free?”

  “I can be here at nine o’clock.”

  “And we can have the whole day together. The whole day.” He folded his huge hands around her tiny hands and kissed her fingers. “Oh, Nancy. My Nancy. Until tomorrow.”

  “Until tomorrow, my dear, sweet Boxer.”

  He stood at the corner of the lane and watched until she went through the gate of No. 102 Magazine Lane. She turned, waved to him and opened the door. His arm was still raised in farewell when she went inside.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said.

  21

  THE RAIN WAS unceasing all through the night. Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones lay in her narrow bed in the tower of No. 102 Magazine Lane, listening as it hammered on the windows. Far away, downstairs, she heard the clock strike one. She watched the tiny pile of coals in her grate cool to a single stuttering flame and go out. The room was suddenly darker. The wind howled in the chimney. She heard it screaming among the trees across the street and imagined them reeling and bounding and dancing out there in the night. Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones was afraid that he might not return, that the weather would keep him away. How could it be, how could it be that now, after all these years of waiting and watching when, at last, the knight had arrived on his horse to save her, the weather might part them? Her pillow was a lump of rock. She beat it with her fists. The bedclothes tangled round her frozen feet. As the clock struck two, she rose and remade the bed, stopping to look out her streaming window. If the storm kept up, the ferry might be cancelled and Father would not be able to go into the business. He would expect her to spend the day with him. He would expect her to entertain him. He would expect her to smile at snatches of articles he read from the paper – little snippets he thought suitable for ladies. She would have no excuse for going out. Hope sank in her chest and the familiar sense of disappointment returned. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t,” and lay down again.

  She did not hear the clock strike three, but at seven o’clock she was awakened by a violent and repeated flushing of the water closet and the sound of Father running his bath. When it was her turn, she found a scattering of whisker shavings in a tidemark round the sink and a dribble of tooth powder where he had spat it out. He always did that. She always meant to talk to him about it, just to mention how, little by little it was driving her mad, just to ask if he might not simply wash round the sink, only for a moment, after he had used it, just to tell him how damned annoying it was. But she never did. It was so important to remember that Father had his share of disappointments too and she had no wish to add to them by appearing bitter or complaining or ungrateful.

  “I expect the ferry has been cancelled for the sake of this storm,” he said at breakfast.

  “Yes, Father, I suppose it has.” The threat of the day ahead loomed over her.

  “So, I shall have to hurry up. If I leave promptly I can catch th
e train from New Brighton station, but I don’t suppose I shall be the only one thinking that this morning. There’s bound to be a crush and the train takes that bit longer, and if I want to be at my desk for the start of business, I’d best get a shift on. You know what they say about the rubber trade, m’dear.”

  “Yes, Father, we always bounce back.”

  “We always bounce back, and don’t you forget it, Nancy my girl. I should have had that carved over the gates of Bodyngharad as a family motto – and I might yet. We always bounce back, that’s what I say!” He stopped by her chair and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t you touch those dishes, m’dear. Leave them for Tetty when she comes in. She might as well work for her pay. What will you do today?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I had planned to go up to the library and change my book, but the weather is so awful, I just don’t know.”

  “You’ll find something,” he said and he left her. Then there was the sound of him struggling with his coat and hat, a brief call of “I’ll try to be back at the usual time,” a blast of damp air as the door opened and the noise of it banging shut behind him.

  Miss Ann Myfanwy looked up at the wall. It was barely eight o’clock. There was still an hour – at least an hour – before Boxer was due at the old magazine gates. Was that a long time, too long a time or not long enough? There was time to dress, time to undress and get dressed again. The dress she wore yesterday, when they met? A different hat? This hat? That hat? She longed to see him, she feared to disappoint him, but why would it matter? How could it matter after a scant day of acquaintance on a day of rain when she would be covered, top to toe, in that dreadful raincoat?

  She changed her hat for the third time and glared at herself in the mirror. “He liked me well enough this way, yesterday,” she said. “Maybe he will like me well enough again today.” She hurried down the stairs to the front door, but the clock said it was not yet half past eight. She could not go out and stand in the rain for half an hour in the hope that he might come. She could not. She would not. It was beneath her dignity. So she cleared away the greasy breakfast dishes and took her coat off and rolled her sleeves up and washed them all, plates and pans and cutlery, in the kitchen sink – despite what Father had told her. Miss Ann Myfanwy was careful to wash the soda off her hands and she hoped they would not go rough and red and she wondered if Mrs Corn Merchant Pryce ever had to wash her own breakfast things a single day of her life.