Dear Doctor Lily

by Monica Dickens

  ‘Brim too wide, crown too low. Won’t do. The beret is good on you, though. The wink and the knowing leer may come in useful.’

  ‘That’s a smile, not a leer.’ James reached familiarly across the desk to turn the picture towards him. Randy old goat. Maybe it was a leer.

  ‘I could have used you last week, for a cheese promo.’

  ‘You mean, you’re going to take me on?’

  It was easy. It was dead easy. He’d done it. Pyge was right. He had a lot to offer. He was in.

  When he first saw Henrietta, on the phone when he went into her office, as they all always were, all the time, he had decided she was much too young to run an outfit like this. She was younger than either of the two women in the front office. But she had started this agency by herself when she gave up dancing, and, in spite of her fresh baby face and flat ballerina’s shape, she was tough as old boot leather, and she knew her trade. She knew it all.

  James could have fallen for her, but there wasn’t time. He was too busy hearing what she had to say, as she assessed him swiftly and skilfully.

  ‘You’re a big fellow. Big hands too. They can be used in close up. Strong too, are you? I placed a couple of dustmen last week. Sometimes they need a load carrier.’

  Jam’s back cried out in fear. He shifted sideways in his chair and recrossed his legs and swung his foot, so that she would notice his new suede shoes.

  ‘Pot belly we can always use, and balding is good. Dressed right, you could be a labourer or a businessman. There’s a steady demand for executives. Let’s see you with glasses.’ She came round the desk and put dark-rimmed spectacles on him. ‘Ah, yes, I like that.’

  ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘You get a pair with plain lenses, idiot. At Woolworth’s. You free tomorrow, James Spooner?’

  ‘You bet.’ His mind flew to Nora, cheerful and comfortable behind the bar, she’d be at this moment, sending the lunch-hour drinkers back to work in a good mood. How many excuses could he get away with? He would have to come clean sooner or later.

  ‘There’s a job for you, if you want it.’

  ‘Lead me to it.’

  ‘Get the glasses. Wear a business suit with a white shirt and club tie. The still should take a couple of hours in the studio.’

  ‘What am I?’

  ‘A balding executive who buys a little discreet toupee. Before and after.’ Henrietta reached for the phone. ‘Mr Arnold? Confirming your balding model…’

  A model. I am a male model. Whoops, dearie.

  ‘I am in show business,’ he wrote to Pyge, enclosing one of the cards that Faces gave him with his name and description, and his pictures as they would be in the catalogue. ‘Who’d have thought it? You would, I know, and what an inspiration. This is just the beginning, adverts, crowd work, TV background commercials. If I can get my Equity card, I hope to be featured.’

  He took Pyge’s picture out from under the sweater, and puckered his lips at it, like a kiss. ‘Yours always, Paige Tucker.’

  ‘Yours gratefully,’ he wrote across one of the pictures on the lower part of his shirt, to hide the pot-belly. ‘And with love. Jamspoon.’

  In Ida’s old home in Staple Street, Bernie slept in what had always been called the box room, although Ida’s parents never went anywhere, and had no boxes or suitcases. It was a narrow space below the sloping slates, with a bed, but no door or window. Ida slept with Maggie in her old room next to it, whose low doorway was rounded at the top to fit under the pitch of the roof.

  ‘Like a big staple, see.’ She pointed it out to Maggie, as they lay in the bed together, because Maggie would not go to sleep in the strange house unless Ida lay down with her. ‘When I was your age, I thought that was why our road was called Staple Street.’

  ‘Wa’ go pee,’ Maggie said.

  That meant going downstairs, through the kitchen and out to the toilet at the back. Ida waited outside to go back through the kitchen with Maggie, since Clara Lott, butchering a pale turnip at the chopping board, couldn’t be trusted not to pounce on the child with a ‘Twelve minus eight divided by two?’ and point the knife, at her for the answer.

  When Ida had tried to explain Maggie; her mother’s pumice-stone lips set firm. ‘Never anything like that in this family.’ She thought Maggie was faking, and tried to catch her out.

  ‘Ny, Nan.’ Innocent Maggie blew her a kiss as she plodded back through the kitchen in the pyjamas that were like a bolster cover on her stubby shape.

  ‘Time you were in bed.’ Her grandmother tossed chunks of turnip into furiously boiling water.

  ‘She shouldn’t have had the orange drink with her tea,’ Ida explained.

  ‘Well, goodness, she’s old enough to know that.’

  It was rum. Now Ida’s mother was the one who would not see the child as she was. Since that terrible weekend when Maggie had wandered away with poor Adam, Ida had faced the truth, and it made life much easier.

  ‘Kiss Gopher.’ It was the nearest Maggie could get to Grandfather.

  Gopher was in the front-room, reading brutal bits of the Old Testament aloud, while Bernie put a model plane together at the table. It was a chilly October day, but the fire had not been lighted until November since time began, or as long as Ida had known this house. The electric fire stood in the empty grate, with the orange bulb glowing, but not the heating bars.

  George Lott sat in his grey shirt and a thick dun cardigan, swinging one foot in a backless leather slipper. He claimed he did not feel the cold, but his hands were always chill to the touch.

  Ida could look at and even touch his hands now without revulsion. Those horrible years with him were all gone far behind, and done with. Marriage to Buddy had wiped out the power of those memories, at least.

  Her father put one of the hands flat on the open page of the big Bible, and curved the other arm round Maggie to draw her close to him with a solemn look.

  ‘Pay heed that thou respect thy elders,’ he charged her, bringing shaggy grey eyebrows down like stern caterpillars; but the great thing about being Maggie was that she went her own way, regardless. She stood on tiptoe and reached up to plant a messy kiss right on those prim, tormented lips.

  ‘Ny, Ber.’ She made a dive at her brother.

  ‘Night, Mags.’ Bernie protected his model with his arms.

  She scooted out, and up the dimly lit stairs. Before Ida turned to follow her, she saw George Lott pass his hand across his mouth, not the back of it, but the cupped palm, as if he were collecting nectar; then he wiped off Maggie’s slobber down the side of the armchair.

  It was weird being back at home. Ida looked up some of her old friends, and took her children to meet theirs, since trying to invite anyone to Staple Street wasn’t worth the hassle.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t fall in with your footloose American ways,’ her mother said. Or, ‘Linda Strong? The James girl that was? Her people and ours haven’t spoken for years. Why does she want to come nosing round here?’ Reminiscent of Verna Legge with her neighbours.

  ‘I can’t have any strangers here at this time,’ her father said.

  ‘These aren’t strangers, Pa. This is Linda that I worked at the hotel with, and her husband who you used to know at the hospital. They’ve had me and the kids for two meals. I want to pay them back.’

  So easy to do at 1009 Pershing, with the Commissary a few streets away, and the convenience store open until eleven at night if Buddy brought someone home, or anybody stopped by unexpectedly.

  Ida had thought that England might have improved in the dozen years since she left, to her mother’s farewell: ‘You’re a bigger fool than I thought.’ True, there were pizza parlours and McDonald’s, and a shopping centre and a multi-storey car park; but women with baskets still popped round to the baker’s or grocer’s every day. Swarms of raucous boys and shrieking girls owned the pavement, in a way that Ida and her lot could never have done, without being told off by the old duffers, who now stepped warily into the gutter; but the
re was still early closing, No Wet Fish, and ‘Sorry, love, we don’t stock that, there’s no call for it.’

  Nothing had changed at 39 Staple Street. Clara Lott was her same suspicious self, but with twelve added years of life which had lived down to her expectations. George was a nut case. Had he always been, or was he pottier now?

  After a mysterious illness, he had retired from the hospital records department, from whose basement lair he used to issue forth pushing a trolley stacked with files and X-rays, which took up room in the lift when they wanted to get a body in; but he was still the nominal leader of the Church of the Completed Spirit. They had not rumbled him. Newer and younger members had taken over some of the organization, ‘because my low blood pressure must be kept for higher affairs’, George explained to Ida. He had been disfellowshipped from Healing, since that unpleasantness with the father of the terrified little deaf boy, but he was still called upon to preach to the faithful in the upstairs room of Winifred’s mother’s house, where the old lady lived in the downstairs front, and whacked her stick against the ceiling, like a morse message from the shades.

  His doctrine convinced him of perfection. All life was his, and portions of it could belong to the small group in the back room that smelled of the fish the home-helper cooked for Gertrude’s mother, if they would believe that their words and deeds were sanctified, and man could go no farther.

  Maybe, just maybe – for every cloud has a silver lining – it wasn’t Maggie’s horrendous birth and ‘minimal brain damage’ that had retarded her, but her Lott inheritance. While Bernie looked around for escape, Maggie received Gopher’s harangues with a serene blank smile, as if they were nursery rhymes.

  Poor kid. But if she had got it from George, then Ida was off the hook and could drop the guilt that had been partly the reason she would have no more children.

  A third child might have brought her and Buddy closer, as the dog Adam had done. Now that Buddy was so far away, in danger perhaps, afraid, in a foxhole crying for his Momma, Ida’s anger had softened. Cora and Duane had sucked him into their game. He had been doing all right with the Elite Jewelry business until they started their fancy stuff. He didn’t mean no harm.

  ‘What’s your Buddy really like?’ Linda kept asking Ida. ‘Are you close? I mean, I can’t imagine me and Frank separate now. Is it like that for you?’

  Ida could not answer. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ she said. ‘I feel better about him when he’s not here.’

  Linda was disappointed with Ida for being fat. She had expected her to come back from America a knock-out, but here she was in those sack dresses and straining slacks. Linda made her buy a dark knitted suit with a long loose jacket and a low-cut oyster blouse enriching her heavy breasts. She took her off to the hairdressing school to have the long straight hair styled by one of the students. Judy, whose instructor had once studied with Vidal Sassoon, took the scissors to her. Ida came out draughty, but delighted. The short bangs she had cut herself were now the longest part of her hair. What was left of the rest flew backwards in a wedge shape, as if she were going fast against the wind.

  ‘Buddy will kill me.’ He had liked to grab her horse tail of hair and swing her head round. ‘My mother will have a fit.’

  When Ida went home, Clara’s narrow head with its knot of tired hair moved once from side to side. Her gritty grey lips said nothing, which said it all.

  George, always up to scratch, proclaimed, ‘But the shearing of the sheep shall not cast away evil with the unclean fleece.’

  Ida felt years younger and pounds lighter. She began to use eye make-up again. She tried all Linda’s lipsticks and settled on a blackberry frost, that her mother said looked like the plague.

  One sunny morning, Ida took the children to the park, as much to parade her new agreeable self as to let Maggie play on the swings among smaller children, and Bernie visit the tatty little fake farmyard, where he talked to the calf and kid goat and the rabbits with the same serious concern he used to show to Adam.

  A father had a reluctant three-year-old boy by the hand, impatient with him, frustrated in an ‘I brought you here now bloody well enjoy yourself way.

  ‘Don’t bust a gut,’ Ida told him. ‘He’s too young for the chickens.’ The spoiled bantams were pecking everywhere round the wailing child’s feet and fluttering up against his legs.

  The father turned to see this new annoyance. He was Jackson.

  He did not recognize Ida at first, but he had not changed. He was still lean and hard, with that wiry light orange hair and conceited Irish mouth.

  ‘Remember me?’ Ida looked at him boldly.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘I had my hair cut.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. You’re –’ he let go of the child to sketch Ida’s shape with his hands. The little boy moved closer to Jackson’s leg and clutched it.

  ‘That your kid?’

  He nodded. ‘I take him out a bit, weekends, so Diane can clean the flat.’

  ‘You’re married, then.’

  ‘So are you. Or did you leave him?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m here to see my folks.’

  ‘You sound like a Yank.’

  ‘Gimme a break, Jackson. I’ve been over there for twelve years.’

  ‘Got out of here in time, didn’t you?’

  ‘In time for what?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  They said nothing much, but there was something risky in the way they talked: Jackson aggressive as always, Ida defensively jaunty.

  She looked round for Bernie and called him to her. ‘This is Mommy’s friend.’

  ‘Glad to meet you.’ Bernie held out his hand. He was so damned polite. ‘And that’s my sister.’ He pointed. Maggie was crouched like a toad on the low end of the see-saw, waiting for someone to sit on the other end and bump her up.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Jackson frowned. When his hair lifted in the breeze, it showed the box of his scalp. He seemed to have less hair, and his face was more battered, as if prison had aged him. Well, in twelve years, he would have aged, in gaol or out.

  ‘Look, sonny.’ Jackson gave Bernie his ‘do me a favour’ smile. ‘Take Ricky over to your sister and give him a swing, eh?’

  Ricky went happily with Bernie. Anyone would, children or old customers like Gopher, who went quite willingly on bus rides with his grandson all over the town.

  ‘Sit down.’ Jackson took Ida’s arm and pushed her towards a bench.

  ‘I don’t know that I –’

  ‘Siddown.’ She sat. ‘You’re a fat old sow, but you’re Ida underneath it, I know you.’

  He did, that was the trouble.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ He sat a little apart from her, head down, twisting and squeezing one hand in the other, as if to test its strength.

  ‘Do what?’ Ida’s mind raced over what she had told him about her interview with the CID, when she was still writing letters to the prison.

  ‘You killed my baby.!

  That was such a relief that Ida almost laughed. ‘What else would I do, with you inside for at least five years?’

  ‘It was my son.’ Jackson bent to pick up a handful of dusty pebbles, and chucked them angrily one by one away from him.

  ‘Could have been a girl. So what? You have a son now.’

  ‘Ricky is Diane’s, not mine. She can’t have any more. She had the tubes tied.’

  ‘Did you know that when you married her?’ Ida did not know what else to say.

  ‘Who says I married her?’

  ‘Oh.’

  He had stopped bristling. His hair was less electric, his hands were still, laid on his knee like an empty pair of gloves, his cocky, dangerous mouth was fallen in. He had lost some teeth in prison.

  ‘Jackson.’ Ida had to tell the lie now, because the children were wandering toward them. ‘I never said nothing.’

  He turned his light eyes sideways at her without moving his head.
<
br />   ‘At first I thought I’d kill you. Especially when I heard you’d got rid of the child too, as well as me. I promised myself I’d kill you. But they give you stuff, you know, takes away your energy, and after a bit, you lose the anger. You lose even that.’

  ‘You hate me?’ Ida put a hand on his powerful slack hands.

  ‘I’d ought to. It don’t matter now. The past’s gone. All of it. The whole thing was crazy, the guns and the drugs and the big money that was going to come so easy. All it got me was they took years off my life. I don’t care any more. But they’re not going to get me again. I’ve got my own business now. Junk car parts. I can live.’ The children came up. ‘I’ve got to take this bastard home. She’ll think I’ve thrown him in the duck pond.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Bernie said. ‘Nice to have met you.’

  ‘You too. Bye mate.’

  Jackson stood up. He was behind the backless bench. Instead of getting up, Ida leaned back. He leaned against her. When she moved to stand up, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her down.

  ‘Get rid of the kids tomorrow evening,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll meet you.’

  She stood up and faced him. ‘I promised to go with my father to his church service. It’s not a church, really, just a house.’

  ‘Where?’

  She told him.

  ‘What time does it end?’

  She told him.

  ‘I’ll meet you.’

  ‘I’ll have to go home with my father.’

  ‘Make some excuse, don’t be a fool. I’ll meet you at the Lamb and Flag, opposite the garage.’

  ‘I won’t be there.’

  Jackson picked up the little boy, and swung him, shrieking, on to his shoulder. He loped off, with his flat feet going out like duck’s flippers.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Bernie asked.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured. The kid was a real jerk. He made a huge great mess in his pants.’

  ‘Oh, poor Jackson.’

  At the thought of his shoulder, Ida began to laugh as she hadn’t laughed for years, bending double, gasping in pain, sucking her breath back for another shriek of laughter. Maggie rolled on the ground. Bernie, who did not laugh hysterically, like a child, went ‘Ha-ha-ha’ and put a fist in his mouth. His brown eyes screwed up and disappeared.