Exchange

by Paul Magrs

  The next day he came home from school to find Winnie on her knees in the black smudgy mud of the back garden. She was picking through the nasty debris of the fire. She looked up at him, almost shame faced. ‘I’m checking to see if I can rescue anything,’ she said. ‘Look.’ She pointed to a heap of charred remnants.

  ‘Leave them,’ he said. ‘We can always buy more…’

  ‘Buy more!’ she cried out, struggling to her feet. ‘Buy more, indeed! Now, there’s the voice of spoiled youth. We used to have to make do and mend. We had to look after things. We couldn’t just go out and… buy more!’ She picked up the four or five cindery artefacts she had salvaged and realised they were beyond rescue. She sighed and threw them back onto the ashes.

  ‘I think they’ve driven each other round the bend,’ Simon told Kelly on the phone that night. ‘All that resentment and claustrophobia. They’ve both gone crackers.’

  ‘It sounds awful,’ Kelly said. She was concerned, but refused to feel guilty about events at the bungalow. She didn’t think Grandad Ray had done what he’d done because they had stolen his mags. ‘That old devil is a powder keg,’ she said. ‘Moods up and down like that. He’s bound to do daft things. It’s just lucky that no one was hurt.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Simon. He was in the phone box in the town centre, amazed that it had been fixed. His mobile had run out of credit and he couldn’t have spoken so freely on the phone at home. It was dark now and he was only meant to be out buying milk at the grocery’. He was tapping his twenty pence pieces together when he realised that the kids who hung around the phone box at night were returning to their habitual post. He could see them crossing over from their favoured off-licence — Booze ‘N’ Cigs ‘N’ Papers — bringing their cheap fags and cider with them. The oldest boy was in a T-shirt that showed off his muscles.

  ‘Damn,’ Simon said softly.

  ‘I’m going to tell Terrance what’s going on,’ Kelly was saying. ‘You know how he feels about Winnie. We both do.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Simon found it hard to concentrate, watching the hard kids approach. He had a sudden vision of himself trapped inside the phone box. But it was OK. If he could just finish this conversation with Kelly, he could make a dash for home. He didn’t want to get into some scene with these kids tonight.

  ‘Terrance really cares for her, Simon,’ Kelly was saying earnestly. ‘He’s actually started to confide in me. I’ve never heard him talk like that about anyone. He usually keeps things so close to his chest. He’s not been close to anyone since he lost his family. That was a fire, too, you know. Lost them all. Two kids. Both under five. And his wife. They all went up in a fire in the first bookshop he owned, years ago…’

  ‘When did he tell you this?’ Kelly’s timing was terrible. He really wanted to hear the rest of her story, but as he stared through the scratched, graffitied glass of the call box, he could see that he’d been rumbled. His cider-swigging Nemeses had clocked him making use of their telephone.

  ‘Like I say: he’s been opening up to me lately. Telling me stuff. And it’s all down to Winnie, Simon. I really think he’s in love with her…’

  ‘Er, Kelly,’ Simon said. ‘Really, I’ve got to go now.’ With no further ado he dropped the receiver and slammed out of the phone box. To the astonishment of the kids who hung around that spot each night, he came hurtling through them like a bat out of hell.

  ‘Simon? Simon?’ Kelly was still shouting. Her voice came out of the dangling receiver, tinny and distorted.

  The oldest lad picked it up. ‘Hello?’ he said.

  That’s how he burned his arms,’ Kelly said, thinking she had Simon’s attention again. ‘Going back to drag his kids out of the flames. Imagine. He must have held on and held on to them until… until ..

  The kid in the phone box put the receiver down with a bang. He didn’t know what she was on about.

  Sixteen

  Grandad Ray was just going to have to look after himself.

  He had been waited on, hand and foot, all week. Spending Friday alone in the bungalow wouldn’t hurt him one bit.

  ‘I don’t understand, though,’ he said. ‘Where are you both going to?’ He looked flummoxed, peeping over the bedspread as Winnie dressed in the corner of their room. She was reaching into the heavy old wardrobe and picking out her very best, pale cream suit. It had pink piping and a neat little hat. It was her wedding suit, really, but it was many years since Winnie and Ray had attended such an event.

  Winnie looked at Ray, and for a second — just a second — her heart went out to him.

  He looked helpless, there in the bed where he’d lain for a full week, coughing and spluttering and hoping she’d forgive him. He still looked a little singed around the edges, but she knew that must be her imagination. She reached into the wardrobe for her best blouse. All those ruffles at the front could do with an iron.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Ray said weakly. ‘Somewhere posh?’

  She forced herself to shrug and to look away from his imploring eyes. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘You’d… You’d not be going out with some other fella, would you?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’d tell me if you were going to leave me, wouldn’t you?’

  Winnie struggled to keep her voice steady, startled as she was by his question. ‘No, I’m not going out to see some other fella,’ she laughed. ‘Who’d have me? It’s you who’s had the best years of my life, you silly old fool.’

  It was just before nine on Friday morning. There was a pleasurable, rising tension about the place; a tingling anxiety’ that the old man couldn’t help but notice.

  ‘I haven’t heard Simon leave for school,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t popped his head in here, to say goodbye.’

  Winnie thought about Simon, pressing his favourite shirt in the kitchen, his hair all slick with wax. He would be her perfect gentlemanly companion today. He looked so handsome and grow n-up. Winnie would be so proud to introduce him to Ada. This is my grown-up grandson, Ada. That was something Ada didn’t have — as far as Winnie knew. No kids, no grandchildren. That was something where Winnie beat her hands down.

  ‘Simon’s not going to school today, Ray.’

  ‘What? What’s going on? You’re letting him skive off…?’

  ‘He’s told me that nothing very important is happening at his school today. Where he’s going with me today — that’s more important.’

  ‘And you really won’t tell me where that is?’

  ‘No,’ she said, folding her outfit over her arm and preparing to leave him. ‘Like I say. It hasn’t got anything to do with you, Ray.’

  As she left him, closed the door and scooted through the hallway towards the kitchen, Winnie was marvelling at herself; at the way she had handled Ray. Since his efforts at destroying all her books — and her nerves, and her happiness — last Saturday, the one thing that she had firmly resolved was that she wouldn’t let him upset her again. She wouldn’t let him touch her. None of his niggling or needling, his hissing or bullying. She would deal with him lightly but firmly. It was the worst thing she could imagine doing to him: never to take him seriously again.

  The postman was standing in the kitchen. Simon, shirt-less, concentrating, was signing for the parcel which lay, invitingly, on the table. It would be that Kelly again, sending him things. Vaguely Winnie hoped that Simon was reciprocating and that he wasn’t just taking off her.

  The sight of her grandson’s pale, bare shoulders surprised her. She hadn’t seen his bare chest like this since he was a proper little boy, years ago. Now the sprouting hairs around his nipples and across his chest alarmed her. He’s a man, she thought. Of course, he’s a man already. Absurdly, she thought about chewy crusts of toast and telling him to eat them up so they’d put hairs on his chest. So he had grown up properly and it was partly down to her. He had grown up kind and thoughtful, too, and today he was treating her. She would dress up in her finest outfit and they would have a wonderful day together
.

  The postman nodded and said good morning. He left as she checked that the iron was still hot. ‘Another present from Kelly?’

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said.

  She hurried over. The label was written out extremely tidily. Unnaturally tidily, really. As if someone had to take extreme care to make it legible.

  ‘Heavy,’ Simon said. ‘It feels like—’

  ‘Books,’ Winnie sighed happily, once — a matter of seconds later — she had ripped off the brown paper and opened the box. ‘Terrance,’ she said, though at first she couldn’t find a note inside. She knew it was him. This box exuded that spicy scent of the Exchange, and it was crammed with fifteen thick, worn paperbacks. They were Ada Jones’s first fifteen novels: fat, yellow, second-hand and familiar. She let her fingers walk across their ridged spines. In the first page of the first novel she discovered a short message from the owner of the Exchange, written in that distinctive, extra-neat hand.

  ‘He says he heard about our… disaster,’ Winnie told Simon. ‘He wanted to do something. He wanted to give me these novels.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ Simon said, suddenly conscious of being half naked in the kitchenette. He slipped his warm, green paisley shirt on. ‘Kelly must have told him what’s been happening here.’

  Winnie went on, ‘He also says he was furious that my husband could ever do such a thing. He can’t believe that I’m not… cherished and protected. He says that’s what I deserve…’

  ‘He put all that?’ asked Simon, surprised.

  Winnie nodded. She slipped the books back into place in the cardboard box, where they fitted snugly into chronological order. ‘Let’s take this with us. Let’s ask Ada if she will sign them all for me.*

  ‘I’d better ring for a taxi,’ Simon said. ‘We don’t want to get a bus. We want to arrive in style…’

  Winnie agreed distantly (usually she would have questioned the expense). ‘He signed his note with all his love, Simon,’ she said. ‘What do you think of that?’

  Simon swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’

  Winnie frowned. ‘I’m amazed he can write at all, with those two plastic hands of his. Yet alone so neatly. He’s amazing, really, isn’t he?’

  The route to Kelly’s town seemed different. All the landmarks — the fields and the buildings and the long streets of shops — looked quite different when you were sitting low down in a car, and not up on the back seat of a bus. It felt luxurious, sliding through the streets like this, skimming along the frosty roads, in the cramped, cosy plash of the taxi.

  First they picked Kelly up at the flats where she lived with her dad. She was standing waiting in her latest Goth ensemble. ‘Something to frighten the old ladies,’ she’d joked on the phone. But actually, in her scarlet and black lace and velveteen, she looked puckish and punkish, like a strange kind of fairy’.

  ‘You got your parcel, then,’ she said to Winnie as she slid into the car.

  ‘He’s very’ kind.’

  ‘He’s smitten.’

  ‘Oh, hush.*

  ‘Smitten’ seemed like a very old-fashioned word in Kelly’s mouth, Simon thought. It was an Ada Jones-type word.

  ‘Are we all excited?’ Kelly grinned.

  Winnie nodded quickly. ‘A bit nervous. I’m not sure what to expect from one of these do’s…’

  ‘Just enjoy it,’ said Kelly.

  It wasn’t quite midday yet, but the sky was turning dark, woolly, congested and grey — as if it was deciding whether to rain or snow. But the temperature was dropping, severely. They could feel that, even inside the taxi. When they stepped out, right outside the King’s Amis Hotel in the centre of the town, the air seemed to tingle and shimmer with frost.

  Winnie, sighing and clasping her matching bag and box of books, gazed up at the impressively wedding cake-like frontage of the old hotel. Simon paid the taxi and watched it speed off. Kelly nudged him. ‘You look very nice, too, sunshine. You’ve scrubbed up well.’

  ‘Erm,’ said Winnie. ‘One of you will have to go in first. I’m a bit shy of places like this…’

  They swirled in through the revolving doors, disoriented and warmed, once inside, by the sight of scarlet furnishings, draperies, gleaming brass fittings and chandeliers. Everything was soft: the lighting, the music tinkling away, just out of hearing, and the luscious pile of the carpet as they shuttled across the foyer. Other people were gathering here too. They were having morning tea in the high-backed leather armchairs, half obscured by the potted palms, watching each new arrival with unconcealed interest. Lots of them were Winnie’s own age, dressed up to the nines in similar fashion. Kelly’s slick boots and studded belt raised a few eyebrows.

  Not from the concierge, though, who took their gold and white tickets and smiled warmly at the three of them, directing them to the Rainbow Function Room, on the third floor.

  The dining room was much larger and busier than they had expected. The Rainbow Room had about thirty large tables laid out in a square. At the far end, one table was up on a tall podium. ‘High table,’ Winnie murmured, nodding and pointing. For the guest of honour. Now, where were they supposed to go? There were seat numbers on their tickets. She hoped they wouldn’t be put next to anyone awful. There was always that chance, even at a do as smart as this. You never knew who you’d end up rubbing shoulders with… Winnie was gabbling happily away as they slid between tables and brushed past other, well-dressed Ada fans. She’s gabbling because she’s happy, Simon thought. She’s letting her mouth run away with her because she’s so excited.

  ‘Oh, look at these beautiful centrepieces, Simon,’ she was saving. ‘Lilies and irises and whatnot. They must have spent thousands on the flowers alone… And look! This is proper, heavy silver, this.’ She picked up a knife and found the place setting with her own name on it. ‘Lovely penmanship,’ she said approvingly.

  The candles were lit and their small white flames bobbed gently, bathing them all in a flattering light as they scraped back their chairs and sat down. Already the room was mostly filled. Simon and Kelly were fairly unsurprised to find that they were the only young people there. The air was thick with old lady scents: violets and lilac and rose.

  Waiters and waitresses were flitting about, tending to everyone’s wants. They were coming round first of all with frosted, pale green decanters of wine. ‘I could get to like this treatment,’ Winnie said.

  They had time, as they settled, to examine the other people at their table. A very broad-faced, well-spoken woman called Marcia took control of the situation, and made everyone at their table introduce themselves to each other. Simon thought that this was a good idea, but he could see that Winnie wasn’t at all impressed with Marcia pushing herself forward. The woman had a plainly dyed magenta bouffant and was wearing dark glasses indoors.

  ‘I feel like I have been reading Ada Jones all my life,’ she was declaring to the table at large, as the waiter came to take their orders. ‘I was very young when she started publishing her novels, and I have read each and evey one, annually, as they have been published. I must say, I prefer her earlier ones, all about her awful, squalid background in the slums. They’re more authentic, somehow. But I won’t read a book by anyone else at all.’

  ‘No one?’ asked Kelly, aghast. ‘No one at all?’

  ‘Why should I?’ Marcia grinned ferociously. ‘All I need to know about the world is to be found in the novels of Ada Jones. All human life is there, as they say. I really think the woman is a genius.’

  Winnie was pursing her lips, Simon noticed. No, she wasn’t impressed with Marcia at all. Nor with her mousey friend Karen, either, who — it turned out — hadn’t read a single Ada Jones novel in all her life. She was just here for the lunch, the company and the afternoon out.

  ‘Some people have got more money than sense,’ Winnie whispered to Simon, over the rising, aviary-like noise of the ladies as their starters arrived.

  ‘So where is Ada?’ asked Simon. Their wide plates of colourful antipa
sti were being set before them. He toyed with slivers of Parma ham and chilled melon and all the while he was peering about with great interest. People from a bookshop were setting up a stall by the main entrance. They had put what seemed to be a golden throne by the signing table, where they were unloading heavy stacks of brand new, brick-thick paperbacks. (Winnie’s box of books was under their table. ‘Shall I look after that for you, madam?’ the waiter had asked. ‘No!’ Winnie burst out.)

  Simon scanned the high table, where some grand and confident-looking people were now sitting — eating and chuckling and chatting away. Who were they? Book trade people, publishers, booksellers, close personal friends of the author? All in a line, surveying this extensive crowd, tucking in happily to their Literary Lunch. But where was Ada herself? Simon squinted along the row of nodding, chomping, talking heads at the high table.

  ‘Have you seen her yet?’ Kelly asked, pointing into the air with a forkful of melon ball.

  ‘Where?’ Winnie gasped.

  They all saw Ada at the same moment. She was right in the middle of that exalted rank on the podium, but she was so tiny that her head hardly poked up over the table. She was talking to a huge bear of a man on her left, and he made her seem even more diminutive. Her hair was white and hanging down loose. It looked very soft in the candlelight. She was laughing as they watched her, and sipping on a tumbler of what must have been water. She didn’t touch her dinner at all.

  ‘That’s her,’ said Simon. ‘That’s really her.’

  Even as she talked to her fellow diners at the high table, Ada’s keen, intelligent eyes were observing the roomful of people who had come to bask in her presence.

  ‘Don’t you just want to go over there?’ Kelly whispered to Winnie. ‘You’ve got more right to talk to her than any of that lot.’

  Simon was thinking along similar lines. The old Winnie and Ada, all those years ago, wouldn’t have sat like this, so near and so far apart, unable to talk to each other. A thought struck Simon: would Ada have noticed Winnie’s presence already? He could see how Ada was taking in every detail of the well-heeled crowd. Her eyes — all heavy mascara and silver (silver!) eyeshadow — were flicking around the room as the delicious main course was served.