Finer Things

by David Wharton

  ‘That one’s fifteen pounds.’ The number hadn’t entirely come out of the air. A few months previously, a young man on the foundation course had received fifteen quid for his painting of a cow – the only piece anyone in her class had sold all year. A butcher had bought it to hang in the shop.

  ‘How about we give you a fiver for it?’ said the man, reaching into his inside pocket.

  Tess understood. This was haggling. She could probably get herself ten pounds – for a picture that only a few moments ago she had dismissed as substandard. She should say ‘twelve’ next, she supposed, and he would say ‘seven’, then they would split the difference. But, though she knew that would have been correct form, the words she found coming out of her mouth were, ‘No, sorry, it’s fifteen pounds. That’s what it’s worth.’

  ‘I see,’ the man said, stuffing away the pair of five-pound notes he had taken out of his wallet. Tess cursed herself. Chance had just offered her the possibility of more money than she had ever held in her hand at one time, and she had refused it out of capriciousness. He replaced the wallet in his inside pocket and made as if to continue walking. ‘Well, best of luck.’

  His companion stopped him with the lightest of touches on the arm. ‘Good for you, young lady. Stick to your guns. Fifteen pounds it is.’ With that, she took the picture and began rolling it up. ‘Give her the money, Graham.’

  He laughed and reopened his wallet. ‘You’ve sold yourself short there my dear. The mood my wife’s in today, you could probably have got thirty out of her.’

  ‘It’s only worth fifteen,’ Tess replied.

  ‘Quite,’ the woman said. ‘Don’t be such an ass, Graham. The girl knows her own value. What are you, dear, an art student?’

  ‘That’s right,’ answered Tess. ‘At Moncourt Institute.’ The more she said it, the truer it would be.

  ‘Good school. You should make the most of it.’

  After they had moved along, Tess thought the woman had been right, she did know her own value. But it seemed others might estimate it more highly, and she would have to remember that.

  At Victoria Coach Station, she found her mother sitting on one suitcase and holding onto another, looking warily about her as if at any moment some passer-by might push her to the ground and make off with all their possessions.

  ‘Whatever happened to your clothes, Theresa?’ Mum said.

  She realised she’d forgotten to change back, but she was becoming used to lying now. The falsehood came smoothly and easily. ‘I went and bought these after my interview,’ she said, ‘so I’d be more comfortable on the journey home.’

  Her mother looked unconvinced. ‘With what money? I only gave you enough for your lunch.’

  ‘Ah. I sold a picture.’

  ‘Sold a—? Which one?’

  ‘Mum, aren’t you going to ask how my interview went? I think I passed it.’

  ‘Well, I hope you haven’t. This is a terrible place. I’m glad to be on my way home, and I’ll be happy if I never have to see it again.’

  Tess realised, with a wave of guilt, how her mother had spent the day. ‘Did you not go shopping, Mum?’ she said.

  ‘I was going to. But I had such an awful time on those undergrounds getting here. And when I went to the left luggage place, the woman in charge didn’t look too trustworthy.’ She had already dropped to a whisper. The last word she mouthed silently. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d best keep an eye on our things myself.’

  So she had waited since ten that morning at the coach station, too much on edge even to go and buy herself a cup of tea. Thinking about it now, Tess saw that had been inevitable. She ought to have known; ought not to have deserted her.

  ‘There isn’t anything worth stealing in those cases. It’s only our dirty clothes.’

  ‘A thief wouldn’t know that until he opened them up, would he? And you’re forgetting the cases themselves, Theresa. Good quality cases can fetch quite a bit, even second-hand.’

  ‘Well, it’s still ages until the coach comes. I’ll buy you a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Like I said, I sold one of my drawings today.’

  ‘Oh yes. Which one? Not that nice picture of our Sally, I hope?’ Mum had been trying to convince Tess that the portrait of her sister would look lovely framed in the front room, but the idea had met stolid resistance from both of her daughters. Sally was so shy, it had been almost impossible to persuade her to sit for Tess in the first place – putting the image on display in the house would be agony for her. And Tess felt no desire to subject her work to the ill-informed praise her mother’s friends were bound to shower over it.

  ‘Just a drawing I did on the bus of some old man.’

  ‘But, who bought it?’

  Obviously, she couldn’t tell Mum about her encounter on the riverside; that she had gone wandering around this dangerous city on her own. ‘Someone at the college,’ she improvised. ‘Jocelyne Weaver. She’s one of the teachers there.’

  ‘Well, they would know good stuff from bad, wouldn’t they? How much did she pay you?’

  Tess really should have thought her story through before bringing this up. The three five-pound notes currently sandwiched between a couple of pen-and-washes in her portfolio would be incomprehensible to Mum, who knew art could be expensive, but would surely not countenance any picture costing more than—

  ‘A fiver.’

  ‘Five pounds! Oh, Theresa! Was it one of the big ones? I suppose it must have been.’

  ‘No Mum, it was just a little sketch.’

  ‘A little one! Well! How long did it take you to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Twenty minutes.’

  Mum went quiet, probably thinking of the hourly rate. Finally, she said ‘You should put what’s left of that into your savings at the Post Office.’

  ‘I’ll need to buy art supplies,’ Tess said. ‘Paint, paper. Brushes are really expensive.’

  ‘But five pounds!’

  After a couple of hours, the coach arrived and they boarded for the long journey back to Yorkshire.

  Relieved and exhausted, Mum fell asleep soon after they departed, her head against the window and her daughter reading silently beside her. Every once in a while, however, she would stir in her seat and repeat some variant on the same theme.

  ‘Five pounds, Theresa. For a little drawing. Wait till Dad hears!’

  3

  Panic was the enemy. No matter what happened, you stuck to the routine.

  Delia headed out of Barkers’ revolving doors, her pace brisk like she had an appointment to keep. She became someone other than herself: a housewife late meeting her husband. In rapid strokes she built a mental picture of the life such a woman might lead. The details she’d invented formed a picture. Kids away at private school. Long, silent evenings. The menace beneath the comfortable superficialities. Her waiting husband was five years her senior, balding, with an office in the city. A stockbroker, drumming his leather-gloved fingers on his Daimler’s steering wheel. Bruises under her clothes. One time, when he was hitting her, she’d pissed herself in terror that this might be the time he finally, inevitably, lost all control. Both of them gracious at dinner parties with his colleagues: everyone guessing; nobody saying.

  Delia had used this trick before. Humiliation and pain, if you imagined them properly, could become part of who you were, would turn anyone’s eyes away from you. That was why nobody saw her as she made her way out of the store and up the Kensington Road.

  Sticking to routine. Not panicking. The long hike across Kensington Gardens with the fox coat swinging between her legs all the way back to Peter Pan, to Lulu, now surrounded by more shopping bags. The others had done well today, it seemed. Delia took a seat next to the old girl and explained what had happened.

  Lulu peered around her. There was nobody to be seen in either direction. ‘You’re sure you weren’t followed?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Sounds like it was just one of them things. Give me the fur.’

&nb
sp; Delia dragged the fox jacket out of the top of her bloomers and dropped it into one of the bags.

  ‘Good,’ Lulu said. ‘Itchy Pete’ll be along in a bit to help me carry all this lot to the taxi. You’d better get off before he turns up. Don’t worry, I’ll explain to Stella when I see her. You can talk to her later on.’

  At seven that evening, when Delia arrived at the Lamplighters, she found the pub door obstructed by a huddle of pavement kids, some playing jacks, some eating fish and chips out of newspaper. She recognised one of them, an unkempt ten-year-old girl with coarse yellow hair and gypsy features.

  ‘Your mum and dad in there, Maggie?’ Delia asked.

  The girl was sucking a lolly. She pushed it into her cheek with her tongue. The thin white stick hung from the corner of her mouth like a cowboy’s cigarette. ‘Dad is. ’E ’ad a win this afternoon. Give us all sweets an’ fish an’ chips.’

  ‘Spending the rest on drink, is he?’

  ‘Fink so.’

  Little Maggie Chisholm’s mum, also called Maggie, had previously been a sort of brass. She was a remarkable-looking woman, and her husband, Albie, whose many vices did not include jealousy, had quickly seen the potential. During the early, romantic days of the marriage he’d only pimp her out once in a while, when he couldn’t get work for himself and cash was short – but by six months in, Albie never got work anymore and cash was short all the time. One night at the bar in the Lamplighters, he had offered his wife to a Soho businessman, out East to do some deal or other with Stella. This businessman, who was called Finlay (first or second name, Delia wasn’t sure) wasn’t interested for himself, but he saw Maggie’s potential and took her on, maybe just in time to save her from hardening off, from losing the sweetness that had made her profitable for Albie.

  No more amateur pimping for him. That was done with now. Instead, Maggie worked as a hostess in one of Finlay’s Soho clubs, making blokes feel welcome and encouraging them to buy drinks. Men there came in two sorts, she said: big mouths who pretended they had full wallets and others, not always big mouths, who really did. Her job was to sniff out the latter sort and introduce them to people who’d help shake off their burdens.

  Albie had mixed feelings about his wife’s new position. He wasn’t going to stand in her way, especially since the money was so much better, but he’d preferred it when he was boss. There was a bit more dignity in that, as he saw it. The current situation left him, the man of the house, to look after the kids, a task to which he was not well-suited. Mostly he’d spend his afternoons in the bookies and his evenings in the pub, leaving his eldest daughter in charge of the others. He wasn’t a bad bloke, as blokes went, Delia thought; just a selfish drunk, none of whose children looked much like him.

  ‘Where’s your brothers?’ she asked Little Maggie.

  ‘Sleepin’,’ the girl replied. Then she added proudly, ‘I made ’em Ovaltine.’

  Out of nowhere, Delia had a hideous presentiment of Albie staggering home and deciding to fry himself an egg for supper – the house burning down with all the children inside. The Imps whispered the story in her ear. She wanted to ignore it. It was probably nothing. The Imps’ messages didn’t always mean what they seemed to on the surface. Except, what if it were to come true? The guilt would be unbearable.

  ‘You ought to go and sleep ‘round your aunt Jemima’s tonight, Maggie,’ she said. ‘Take your brothers too. Go and get them now.’

  The girl pouted, spotting an opportunity. ‘Dad says he’ll give us another two bob when he comes out.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Delia said. ‘And you think he’ll have two bob left, do you? When he’s finished drinking?’

  ‘Prob’ly.’ Maggie had chosen her story and would stick to it. Delia admired that, in a melancholy way.

  ‘Here, I’ll give you thruppence.’

  ‘Ain’t you got six, Delia?’

  ‘Sixpence, then. Now promise you’ll take yourself and them boys to Jemima’s house?’

  Maggie pocketed the coin, removed the lolly for extra solemnity. ‘I promise,’ she said, and turned and ran.

  It was busy tonight in the Lamplighters, and passing through the pub door took Delia right back to her own childhood, the years before the war. There was an old familiarity in this transition from cool, quiet night into hot, noisy fug; from dark isolation into bright society, into a horde of miserable people pretending they were happy. Maybe it was because of the encounter with Little Maggie that it reminded Delia so unpleasantly of every time her own mother had sent her out to retrieve her father.

  Off to her left, a drunken cluster sang around the out-of-tune piano. Little Maggie’s dad, Albie, was among them, his hand on the arse of some old bird twice his wife’s age and without a quarter of her looks. He seemed happy enough, though.

  Delia pushed through the crowd of men, through the muddle of jokes and arguments and boasts, through all the competing stinks of beer and bodies, until she found Stella at work behind the bar, flustered and aggravated. The boss was forty-eight years old, peroxide blonde and so thin you might imagine she was breakable. That would be a mistake.

  ‘Short-handed,’ she said to Delia, scrunching her face to keep her nostrils closed as she pulled a pint of Watney’s. ‘All I got tonight’s Scotch Tam. Christ! How can anyone stomach this stuff?’ Though she was the landlady of an East End pub, Stella disapproved of alcohol worse than any Methodist. Hated the smell of it too. She lifted the glass to the bar, and a little liquid slopped over her hand. She shuddered in disgust. The fact that the boozer’s profitability trumped all her objections to drink told you things about Stella you’d be wise to pay attention to.

  At the other end of the bar, Scotch Tam winked at Delia and handed a couple of whiskies to a customer.

  ‘Ginny and Alf both off with the flu,’ Stella continued. ‘I’d put Teddy on it, but—’

  She let out a sigh of dispirited realism. Teddy was too prone to giving free drinks to his pals and couldn’t be bothered working out anyone’s change. If he thought nobody was looking, he’d fill his wallet from the cash register. Little brother or not, Delia thought, Stella knew how useless Teddy was. Delia, on the other hand, had always been reliable, always a good earner. This thing with Maureen wouldn’t change any of that.

  ‘You need any help, Stell? I can take over if you like.’

  ‘God love you, Dee. Can you do an hour for us?’

  ‘Course I can.’

  ‘I’ll pay you for it. Double rate.’

  ‘No need for that,’ Delia said. ‘You go round the back. I’ll come and see you when it quietens down out here.’

  Stella smiled, maybe out of relief to be getting away from the bar, maybe to acknowledge this act of atonement for transgressions as yet unspoken of. She handed Delia an apron.

  Barmaid: another career she could have chosen for herself. She had a knack for this work – remembering all the orders, keeping the crowd moving, not letting anyone wait too long. Delia could be charming too, flirtatious but not slutty, pitching her tone just right to make the men laugh and still keep them from pitying her or thinking they had any chance. All the tips she made, she dropped into a pint glass behind the bar for Scotch Tam. You never knew who you might need on your side. Always worth sacrificing a few bob to keep someone friendly.

  She noticed Teddy wasn’t in the pub. Nor were Itchy Pete or Tommy the Spade. That was something to take into consideration. If Delia was to find all three of them waiting for her in the back room with Stella, she could be certain her punishment had already been decided. Most likely, in that case, she wouldn’t see the end of the night.

  After an hour and a half, the pub was still full, but everyone was running out of money, and business had subsided enough for her to leave Tam on his own at the bar. In the landlady’s kitchen she found Stella sitting at the table, pouring tea from a big brown pot. Teddy was there too, lounging against the back door like he was guarding it. From his self-satisfied look, she could tell he’d been putting the
knife in; but he was on his own, no Pete or Tommy. They might be waiting in the garden. It was dark out, and she could see little through the window.

  ‘Sit down, Dee,’ Stella said.

  They waited a moment in silence. Stella pouring a cup of tea for Delia, Teddy smirking behind his sister’s back.

  ‘It’s calmed down out there now,’ Delia said.

  ‘What happened with Maureen today, Dee?’ Stella said. No messing around.

  Delia had her strategy ready. Don’t apologise. Explanations not excuses. Careful to keep her voice level, her tone factual, she said, ‘Girl got herself caught. I’d told her and told her, don’t try nicking anything till I say otherwise. She was only supposed to watch me hoist the fox coat, see how it’s done, like—’

  ‘Nice bit of stuff, that coat,’ Stella said. ‘You done well there.’

  Teddy’s expression soured. So Stella had seen what Delia had brought her, knew the day hadn’t been a total loss. That would be thanks to Lulu. Delia pressed the advantage. ‘Went down beautiful, that fox, Stella. And the girl was watching to see how I did it.’

  ‘Then I suppose she got carried away, did she?’

  ‘Must’ve done. She tried to shove a great big fur hat down her skirt.’

  Stella exploded with laughter, halfway through a mouthful of tea. ‘Fucking fur hat? Jesus Christ!’

  Delia felt droplets land on her face. Knowing better than to wipe them away, she laughed too. ‘One of them enormous Russian ones it was. Girl didn’t even have proper bloomers on – I don’t know how she expected to keep it down there.’ It felt mean, making fun of Maureen like this, but there was the compensation of Teddy’s obvious displeasure at how well Delia was getting on with Stella. Out in the darkness of the garden, only just visible through the kitchen window, something or someone moved.

  As abruptly as Stella’s hilarity had overtaken her, it vanished again. ‘I’ve seen it before with these young ’uns,’ she said, regretfully. ‘Think they can’t be caught, don’t they?’

  Who was out there? Was it Tommy? Pete? Getting ready to come in and hold Delia’s arms while Teddy popped a bag over her head and—