‘I think you’d better come inside,’ Mrs Woodrow said. Still sobbing uncontrollably, Tess followed her into the house.
For ten minutes, she sat at the kitchen table trying to bring her choking and snivelling to some kind of dignified conclusion. Meanwhile Mrs Woodrow busied herself with chores, discreetly ignoring her guest. Tess had just about calmed down when an agitated Professor Woodrow appeared at the door. ‘Of course! You’re here to see Jimmy, aren’t you?’ he exclaimed. ‘That other chap I mentioned was years ago! Don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘Thank you,’ Tess said. ‘Your wife explained about all that.’
‘Well. Things to do. I’m giving a lecture on the Rockingham Whigs next Thursday. Have to write the blessed thing.’ And he beetled off again. Smiling indulgently, Mrs Woodrow watched him go, then took a seat opposite Tess.
‘You’ll be relieved to hear he’s not giving any lecture,’ she said. Tess could see that not far beneath the brisk practicality she was quite exhausted. ‘Jimmy’s wonderful with him, you know – far more patient than I am. Takes him out for long walks, listens to all his muddled-up nonsense, doesn’t mind being mistaken for Maurice – that’s Charlie’s older brother. Late older brother. He died of exactly the same thing, though it took him rather differently. They say it exaggerates the strongest aspect of a person’s character, don’t they? Maurice was always a bit of a monster.’
Tess nodded mutely, still on the edge of tears. This kind young man she was hearing about was a stranger to her. She realised how little she actually knew about her so-called closest friend, how she’d never thought to ask Jimmy anything much about his life away from Moncourt.
‘Anyway, we’ve never said anything to him outright,’ Mrs Woodrow continued, ‘but Charlie and I aren’t at all bothered by his inclinations. It doesn’t matter at all to us whom a person chooses to go to bed with. I suppose we’ve hoped he would understand—’ She stopped and frowned. ‘Forgive me. It isn’t we anymore, obviously. Charlie’s still perfectly sweet and decent, but these days he can’t— that is, we’ve always done things together, and it’s rather difficult for me to stop thinking that way.’
‘Do you know why Jimmy decided to go home?’ Tess asked.
‘Not precisely. I assumed it was something to do with men. Or a man. I could be wrong, though. He certainly didn’t say anything, and one doesn’t want to intrude. Really, sex is such a lot of nonsense, isn’t it!’
‘I suppose so.’ Tess did her best to impersonate someone accustomed to hearing this sort of pronouncement from elderly women all the time.
Mrs Woodrow gave her a shrewd look. ‘Ah.’
‘We had an argument on the way back from the march. A stupid disagreement, about nothing. I was worried that might have been why—’
‘Oh, I doubt that. You’ve probably noticed Jimmy’s been unhappier than usual for a while.’
‘Didn’t he speak to you at all before he went?’
‘We were out. I’d taken Charlie to the doctor’s. He left a note, though – here—’ From a drawer in the kitchen table she produced a page torn from a sketchbook, folded in half, which she laid on the table for Tess to read.
Dear Val,
I’ve decided to go to my dad’s for a while. I don’t know how long I’ll be, but I’m certainly not going to stay there forever, so please don’t let my room out to anyone else! If I’m not back by the end of the month, I promise to post the rent. There’s no reason to worry, honestly. I just have to think about a few things, and I can’t do that in London.
Give my best to Charlie.
Love,
Jimmy
PS
The rest of the message lay out of sight, folded underneath.
‘What does the PS say?’ Tess asked, wishing she could be rude enough to snatch the paper before Mrs Woodrow had a chance to answer.
‘Just his address in Trencham so I can forward any post. And his aunt’s telephone number, in case of emergencies.’
‘I don’t suppose you could let me copy the address down? I’d like to write to him.’
Mrs Woodrow gave an apologetic smile as she scooped up the note and deposited it back in the drawer. ‘I think that would be betraying a confidence. But I’m sure he’ll be in touch when he’s ready.’
12
The Sunday after the robbery the girl Tess didn’t come back to Fenfield. Maybe she’d lost interest. Thinking about it, Delia supposed they hadn’t exactly made an arrangement. And what with the added complication of Bill two or three secret nights a week now, perhaps it was a good thing not to have to deal with Tess too. Even so, Delia held on to all the drawings she’d given her, including the one with the girl’s address on the back, but she moved them to her secret place. It wasn’t safe to leave such things lying around her flat.
Making the right next choice was such a puzzle. So many people, promises, responsibilities; so much truth and lies, and they all needed to be squared off. Nevertheless, Delia had kept faith with the Imps, certain that if she waited long enough for a sign, one would eventually be delivered. And she was right – though when it came she soon discovered that receiving a sign from the Imps might be all well and good, but working out what it meant was something else entirely.
Maureen brought it to her. One morning she knocked at Delia’s door, desperate to pass on the gossip she’d picked up the previous night.
‘I heard it from Kathy,’ she said. ‘You know how Pete is when the itch gets bad. You can’t look at him wrong, even.’
People who didn’t understand Pete Yates’s itching thought it was funny. Actually it wasn’t at all. It was relentless, something untreatable in his nerves, and it had turned him vicious. When he was a kid, his nickname had been Fleabite, but by the time he left school, everyone knew never to call him that. Not to his face. Not if you knew what was good for you. These days, he got skin cream and tablets from the doctor, which mostly made the condition bearable, though he was still nasty to be around, never in a good mood, always scratching; and there were times once in a while when the medication failed – then you were wise to keep out of his way. Delia guessed that was what had happened last night.
‘He was at this bar up town somewhere, trying to drink himself out of it,’ Maureen said. ‘Everyone was leaving him alone. And, you know he’s not supposed to scratch at all, ‘cause it just makes the itch worse.’
Delia murmured an acknowledgement. A really bad bout of itching brought out a fury in Pete that would find whatever target it could.
‘Anyway,’ Maureen continued. ‘He’s at this bar, scratching and scratching, and a bloke sits down next to him.’ She stopped to mull over this element of her story. ‘I suppose the geezer mustn’t have noticed to begin with. Otherwise, why would you go near Pete when he’s in that sort of a state? But once this bloke’s there – you know how it is if you see someone else scratching. Makes you feel like you’ve got an itch yourself. So the bloke – not much, just a bit – starts to scratch too. He’s trying to do it without Pete seeing, and he thinks he’s got away with it. But then maybe he gets the idea whatever Pete has is catching, because he gets up and leaves the bar, without even having a drink.’
‘And I suppose Pete did see him after all?’
Maureen applied her lipstick before finishing the story. ‘Went out after him. Bloke stopped outside the door to tie his shoelace, so Pete comes up from behind and shoves him on his face, out onto the road, right under a car.’
‘Christ—’
‘Car was going pretty fast too. Didn’t kill the bloke, but he’s in a right mess, apparently. All sorts of broken bones. Cracked skull. Ain’t woken up yet neither.’
‘So – what’s happening with Pete now?’
‘Hiding out. There was a few people around on the street when it happened, witnesses. It was down the West End somewhere, I think. All tourists and that. I heard he’s gone to his sister’s in Brighton.’
Delia was worried. This didn’t sound like the kin
d of situation Stella could contain. Most likely, the police would come knocking on Pete’s sister’s door in Brighton, and he’d end up in jail for GBH, or worse. A victim still unconscious in hospital could die, and that would make it manslaughter – or even murder. The ripples from that could affect everyone in Stella’s gang. One thing causing another causing another.
This is it, whispered the Imps. Something needed to be done to wipe the slate. Something needed to be fixed at the root. Delia began to think she understood.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘It’s time I went back into Barkers. I think I’ll take a walk around there tomorrow.’
‘God, Dee, you sure?’
Maureen looked appalled. But Delia knew it was necessary. Why, and even if, it was connected with what Itchy Pete had done to some stranger, or what it might have to do with Bill, or with Tess, she couldn’t say yet, but at last things were coming back into focus again. After ten months, she had to face up to the jinx Maureen’s capture had caused. Straighten her own mind. Let the poison out. Start paying off her debts.
The first thing she noticed when she arrived at the store was that they’d done something new with the window displays. Each now contained a scene assembled from various departments: a story of how one might live a Barkers life.
In the first window, a Doris Dayish mannequin loaded children’s clothes (Pierre Cardin, second floor) into a washing machine (Hotpoint, fourth floor), while her Rock Hudsonesque husband (suit by Tristan Johns, first floor) read his newspaper at the kitchen table (Harrison Interiors, fourth floor), and a girl of seven or so shook a rattle for her little brother, a baby in a highchair (Cosco, second floor).
Delia walked along the store front, past three more dumb shows: the same family at different times of the day, in different clothing, demonstrating different products. Here they were taking a picnic lunch against a painted backdrop of hills; here watching television together in a lounge; and finally, here they were at bedtime, both in pyjamas, Doris reading in bed, Rock brushing his teeth in the en suite bathroom. She supposed she was meant to wish this life were hers, but she’d turn down a decade of sexless luxury with Rock for five minutes with Bill in her single bed.
It was good to be back at Barkers. As she entered the revolving door, she found herself imagining what fun it would be to saunter out this afternoon with a few hundred pounds’ worth of stock under her clothes. But she wasn’t here to hoist, not today. She was going to feel her way back in, look for a way to placate the Imps, and that was all.
Straight away she recognised a shopwalker: a squint-eyed woman wearing a tweed dress, pretending to try out the Chanel testers in the perfumes department. This one had been working at Barkers for a couple of years, and before that Harrods, and before that House of Fraser.
Delia took a slow walk around the store, checking for other shopwalkers, and everywhere was reassured to find familiar faces in familiar locations. It looked like the system hadn’t changed at all in the intervening months. Finally, she headed for Lingerie to look for the fat man who’d caught Maureen. He was mooching around the bras and panties, the same as last time.
Now she saw he was nothing to be afraid of. She’d built him up in her mind, turned him into an embodiment of terror, but he was only an ordinary shopwalker, as predictable as all the rest of them, and quite a bit slower than most. She remembered Maureen stamping on his foot, how absurd he’d been, how easy it had been to walk away from him that day. And she decided what she had to do. To set things right again she’d need to steal from him; from somewhere along his route, something expensive. Maybe even steal the very thing that Maureen had tried to take for herself, that ridiculous fur hat, if it was still here.
Once more, the temptation to act right away was strong. But she held herself back. For now she would only shadow him for a while, be careful. It had been carelessness that had caused the problem last time, and she wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Taking a position at the far side of the department and pretending to examine a basque, she kept the fat shopwalker in her peripheral vision. He wouldn’t recognise her, she was sure, after so long. He’d only seen her briefly, and she’d been careful today to make sure she looked different from last time, in a black wig and fake spectacles.
There were no other customers in the underwear department, only an assistant busy putting baby-doll nighties out on hangers. After a few minutes, she went off somewhere, leaving Delia and the shopwalker alone together.
‘Excuse me – Miss.’
Forced to look directly at him, she saw he had a bra in his hands.
‘I wonder, could you help me?’ he said. ‘I don’t know a lot about this sort of thing.’ He held up the bra and ran a pudgy thumb around the interior of one cup. ‘Do these come in different sizes? I mean, obviously the ones for women do, but what about these?’
What did he mean, ‘the ones for women’? Looking more carefully, Delia realised he was holding a training bra, one designed for pubescent girls.
‘You should ask an assistant,’ she said, turning away from him. This felt dangerous. She got ready to abandon her plans, started looking for a way to escape.
He took a step closer. ‘It’s for my daughter. She’s only eleven, but I’ve noticed she’s started to – I can’t think of the word for it – not bud? That’s more poetic, isn’t it? There’s a scientific term—’
She saw a sly eagerness in the shopwalker’s face. He had recognised her after all. He was cleverer than she’d thought. He knew, and he knew she knew he knew. Still, Delia played it suburban, disapproving.
‘Perhaps you could ask your wife to deal with this.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sad story. Wife died last year. Just me and my little girl now.’
‘Do you have a relative?’ she said. ‘A female relative.’
The shopwalker abandoned all deception. He wheeled around, brandishing an enormous pair of red silk knickers. ‘These would have fitted my missus when she was alive,’ he said. ‘Great big arse, she had. You’d need quite a small pair, I imagine. Although, isn’t that where you lot all hide what you’ve taken? Great big bloomers under your skirts?’
It was a wild attempt to break down her guard. All she could do now was stay in character. ‘You’re being most offensive. I’m going to speak to someone.’
His voice was thick and glottal, choked by the fat in his neck. ‘Come off it. I remember you, darling. You were working with that girl I caught trying to nick a fur hat. I took you for a proper customer, remember? Asked you to make a statement. Then the other one stamped on my foot, and off you went, fast as you could go.’
He was trying to make her reckless, and he was succeeding. In a sudden fury, Delia almost wanted him to drag her into the back of the shop. He’d find she’d stolen nothing today. She could keep up her bourgeois persona. Insist on calling in the manager, demand a dressing-down for this bastard. Sacking, perhaps. Maybe this was it. Maybe the Imps had sent her in here today to defeat the shopwalker.
But she knew that was all fantasy. If he wanted to find something stolen on her, he’d make sure he did. It’d be his word against hers then, and once the coppers were here they’d soon find out her real identity. Her Fenfield address alone would prove to them that she was a criminal. Then she’d have no defence. Stella wouldn’t protect her either. Like Maureen, she’d be on her own.
‘You’re confusing me with someone else,’ she said.
He shook his head and peered at her. ‘Your hair was different. Dyed it, have you? Or is that a wig? It’s a wig, isn’t it?’
The longer she stood here, the more control she gave him, but she couldn’t find a way out.
‘You know, we lost a nice fox coat the same day,’ he continued. ‘That girl didn’t nick it. I worked it out afterwards: she must have had an accomplice.’
Finally, the Imps released her. Oh, it was simple. They’d punished her enough for now. Just turn and walk away, they said. So she did.
From behind
her, the shopwalker called, ‘I hear she went to borstal.’
She continued walking, tried not to listen.
He kept going. Needling her. ‘Her name’s Maureen, ain’t it? Not much of a shoplifter either. She was wearing ordinary knickers when I caught her.’
Out of the underwear section, onto the escalator. How did he know, she thought, how could he know what kind of knickers Maureen had been wearing?
Halfway down now. Legs shaking, heat prickling her face. She had to get out. It was fine. She just had to reach the street, but the escalator was slow, slow, slow. Everything in her wanted to break into a run, and that would be a victory for him, so she kept her feet planted, breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, to calm herself, remind herself there was nothing to fear, no reason to look back at him; while he stood at the top, flushed and sweating from having pursued her that far, and shouted down.
‘Ordinary ones, she was wearing. I know. I had to search her. Thoroughly.’
Outside the shop, on the other side of the revolving doors, Delia leant against the store’s wall until the shaking subsided. A fine, indeterminate rain, halfway to mist, had begun. There was the Doris Day mannequin, still in the window display, still frozen on the cusp of loading her Hotpoint, still smiling just as emptily as before. Nothing had changed for her. Rock’s newspaper, Delia noticed now, was today’s Times. It must be someone’s duty to replace it each day. Strange that anyone should think that necessary.
Now she was calm again, she could consider how the Imps had tricked her. They had always loved Delia, always kept her safe, but now something had changed, and there were warnings everywhere of their anger. First Maureen getting caught, then Albie falling on that spike, then Itchy Pete pushing some bloke under a car, and now this. Was it Bill? Had they seen where things were going with him even before Delia had realised it for herself? Was all this their way of saying, we won’t share you?
That must be it, she thought. The fat shopwalker was only a message. Not an actual danger, but a signal that danger was always there. He wasn’t even real, just a ghost of yet-to-come; to remind her she survived only at the Imps’ whim. They were telling her she could choose Bill or she could choose this life, but not both, and maybe she still had time to keep Stella on her side.
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