All the Nice Girls

by Barbara Anderson

  The rain had stopped.

  They took a long time to get there. There were two of them. The driver turned at the gate, backed the ambulance up the track beside Edward and left the headlights on. The men leaped out, sucked their teeth and worked out how they would play it. They agreed it wouldn’t be easy, not at this angle and both of them broken, and the mud didn’t help. The lights were dazzling against the darkness. There was no world, nothing beyond the blazing circle of light. Blades of black grass framed the tableau: the rain-drenched ‘Death of Nelson’ at the bottom of the track. Macrocarpas lashed and sighed above them.

  They agreed he would need a tetanus shot immediately he arrived. It was a pity they couldn’t give him morphine but they were not allowed.

  ‘Shut up and get on with it,’ he muttered.

  They did so. The radio telephone crackled. They were being nagged from base. There was a pile-up on the main north highway. How long will you be on this one, Geoff?

  More lights. Lionel and Lettie sat blinking, two small owls in a Wolseley. They had come to help. Sophie got rid of them. She thanked them; she knew how they felt, she told them to go. They could be no use here. She would ring them from the hospital. He was going to be all right. Just two broken legs. Tears slid down Lettie’s face. ‘Two,’ she whispered.

  They would give him oxygen on the way in. It helped, they said. She held his hand. His eyes opened. ‘Sophie,’ he murmured, ‘did you mean to?’

  ‘No.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s all right then.’ He opened them wider. ‘Eighteen months, no more.’

  She could not go in the ambulance with him. There was the Holden.

  *

  There are no thunderbolts. Sophie and the children moved into the flat vacated by Mary and Ben who were now in the Coromandel. Sophie had asked Bertha. It had not been easy, but the tension was crackling at the end of William’s well-trimmed drive. Sparks snapped in the dining-cum-living, ignited in the blue-and-white-striped bedroom where they retreated each evening to fight. Perched on the bed, surrounded by small cushions in tones to suit, they hissed at each other. She had made them, the cushions; chosen her remnants with care and frilled them in blue to pull the colour scheme together. She had piled them at the head of the bed each morning and removed them ‘before retiring’ so she could pile them again next morning. Scatter cushions they were called. Mad. Quite mad. And never again. Sophie had abandoned decor, had scattered interior design to the four winds of hell. William shut the door. She hugged glazed polka dots to her chest as his voice rose.

  It was the first time he had asked, ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘It was the pineapple.’

  Details. He must have details. How had it rolled, whereabouts had it landed, how could a pineapple rolling at her foot result in such a débâcle? She tried to explain, became entangled in technicalities and feet and gave up.

  His face was more shocked than ever. ‘You don’t mean to say you used your left foot?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  He took no pleasure in Edward’s pain. But the situation appalled him. The mess, the sheer ludicrous muck-up of their lives, left him reeling. The flickering grass fire of rumour had become an inferno, the buzz had roared to scandal. Groper had been warned off Flynn’s wife, Flynn’s wife had tried to kill him. You couldn’t pick up a paper. ‘Com Auck breaks legs’ (Star). ‘Com Auck in freak accident’ (Herald). The Advertiser gave a resumé of Commodore Sand’s brilliant career—so far.

  Kit had a fight behind the boys’ toilets and refused further comment. ‘I hit him,’ he said.

  Nancy slipped through the hedge, took Sophie’s hand and pressed it. ‘I just came to say I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you’d better start,’ said Sophie, snatching back the hand from her friend to peg socks on the whirlygig.

  ‘What did she want?’ said William.

  ‘She doesn’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘I always knew she was nuts.’

  Large, dark and fighting for his life, William was forced to reappraise the situation again. Forces beyond his control were causing their craft to founder. Action must be taken. They were destroying each other and their offspring. They could not go on like this. He must take charge, lower the boats, abandon ship temporarily. They would return later when the storm had passed. Salvage would be achieved, the ship would be saved eventually. William knew this.

  Bertha’s reaction was a surprise. Sophie had expected to be welcomed with joy and no questions asked. For the three of them to be enveloped in Bertha’s voluminous kindness and given space to rent for which Sophie would pay as soon as possible. To be given the key to her safe house with love.

  ‘I think you should stay,’ said Bertha. ‘The children need you both. Especially now with all this nonsense.’ She waved a hand, dismissing sex, slander and career scuttlebutt with a flick of a still graceful wrist. ‘In my book,’ she said, ‘William does not deserve this.’

  ‘We’re destroying each other. He hates me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bertha, I know what it’s like growing up in an atmosphere like that.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like growing up without a father.’ They both thought of Keith. Their thoughts differed. Bertha remembered bumbling incompetence, Sophie gentleness, rope-like brown arms lifting her up so she could see.

  But that was different.

  ‘William’ll be there, just along the road. He doesn’t want me.’

  ‘So you say.’ Bertha was slapping herself again: a gesture as individual, as characteristic as her damp kisses. ‘Where are my smokes?’

  Sophie handed them to her.

  ‘And what about the other man?’

  ‘My fancy man?’ said Sophie, her eyes pricking with grief for her good, her true friend Arnie and his lonely cantankerous love.

  The archaic phrase stopped the match in mid-air; the cigarette sagged in the corner of the mouth.

  ‘That’s all over,’ said Sophie. ‘And you’re going to light the cork

  Bertha gave a quick practised spin of her fingers. ‘You don’t love him any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s that then.’ Bertha paused, started a smoke ring and decided against it. The spiralling wisp of smoke held her gaze for some time.

  ‘I wish I believed you,’ she said.

  They moved in. William hired a truck and moved his bewildered children and estranged wife ten houses down the road; same side, worse view, semi-furnished To Let. Evan and Lou watched hand in hand across the road. Lou had nearly finished the bedcover she told Sophie last Friday and didn’t she miss Mrs Pickett now she’d gone back to the UK. ‘Yes,’ said Sophie. ‘Yes, I do.’ And Mary. And Arnie who is dead and Edward whom I used to love.

  William did not reduce the allotment. He was concerned for his family’s comfort, insisted they take this, that, the other thing. The Valor, why not, and all the stuff from the sitting room. He wouldn’t be using it. He packed and sorted, took things down, put things up, did what he could. He had cauterised the stump, sealed it with pitch. ‘Why don’t you stay here?’ he said suddenly as they loaded the last carton. ‘I’ll live on board. This is mad.’

  ‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No!’

  Bluey’s egg was infertile. What would you expect? Sophie suggested a change of name. Bluette, perhaps. ‘No,’ said Rebecca, ‘and why are we down here when Dad’s up there? Why, Mum?’

  ‘We both love you,’ she said, demonstrating yet again. ‘You know that, but Dad doesn’t love me as much as he used to. That’s why.’

  ‘Because you’re the Commodore’s girl?’ asked Kit from the senile leather pouf abandoned by Ben.

  ‘I am not the Commodore’s girl.’

  ‘Good. Boy, you should’ve seen his nose. Talk about blood. And where’re Arnie’s binoculars?’

  Their father could field this one. Law is men’s part of ship.

  ‘Run along and ask Dad,’ said Sophie
, trying it out, getting the words right. ‘He’ll be home now.’

  ‘Coming Becca?’

  They had come to see him. His children had been in the flat for a couple of hours and they had come back to see him. He welcomed them, showed Kit a new card trick. No, he wouldn’t tell him how it was done. He would have to work it out. ‘But Dad.’

  ‘What did the reprieved murderer say?’ he asked Rebecca, loving her white teeth, her smile.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You remember: “No noose is good noose.”’ He laughed to show her how funny it was.

  ‘But they don’t kill people now. Mum said.’

  ‘They used to,’ he said, hiding his flicker of disappointment at the flop. He told them that he’d get some Coke and chippies. That he would have to stock up. ‘And next time we’ll have saveloys and pink eggs, why not?’

  ‘Neat,’ they said staring at the depleted house, the empty spaces.

  ‘Dad,’ said Kit, ‘where’s Arnie’s binoculars? He said I could have them and I need them down there because there aren’t any.’

  *

  Dr Pleasance had not moved the binoculars. They lay beside the tartan-covered body, the slippered feet. ‘The police might want them,’ he said. ‘Don’t let anyone touch them.’

  ‘No,’ said William.

  ‘Well, I’ll be going. And keep people out of this room.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The thin cop interrupted him. ‘Where are the binoculars?’ The fat cop took notes. They were not meant to be fat. Steel, wire and whipcord. Fit. That was cops.

  William felt his mouth drop, a caricature of shock and idiocy. His foot pointed. ‘They were there, right there.’

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Hang on.’ Images, wheels turning, cogs slipping into place. ‘I’ll bet I do,’ said William.

  Ben had taken them. That fucken irresponsible shit had sneaked in and taken them. William would put money on it. He had admired them, dropped hints, sought them out every time he appeared. Where else could they possibly be? William did not rush it. His voice was slow. ‘I think I know where they might be …’

  ‘But why would Mr Underwood, was it, Underwood? Why would he take them?’

  ‘He wanted them.’

  The cops glanced at each other. They would call in on the way back.

  ‘I’ll come too. Show you the place.’

  ‘No,’ said the thin one. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘The thing is, Kit,’ said William holding the skinny body between his knees. ‘They are not ours, you see. They belong to the estate.’

  ‘What’s estate?’

  William explained.

  ‘But he gave them to me. They were mine. He said they were mine, didn’t he, Becca?’

  Rebecca was miserable. It was half-empty here, and it was no good down there and all the kids kept asking her why. She looked at Kit’s face and tried harder. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard him.’

  ‘Well.’ William clapped his hands together. Sophie would have recognised the gesture. It showed up in photographs. William leaving the ship kitted out for rugby. William on a run ashore, cheerful, laughing, at ease with his world. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You should’ve mentioned it before, Kit. I’ll,’ he paused, ‘I’ll write to the beneficiaries involved and request that they consider Christopher Flynn’s statement that the deceased, that Arnie, had said he wanted the said Christopher Flynn to have his binoculars.’ All it would involve was for the man who threw them to write a cringing letter to the Commies asking for his ball back. William’s knees hugged his son, held him tight. ‘That’s all,’ he said.

  Kit’s lips brushed his forehead. ‘Thanks Dad. Beat you home Becca.’

  Sophie flung herself at the dirty flat like a lemming bent on leaping. Life would be clean, it would shine, it would be splendid. She tried it out. ‘Glorious things of Thee are spoken.’ Later perhaps. She scrubbed harder.

  The stove was a challenge, the bath took some time. The Crown of Thorns in the bedroom had gone leaving a white patch on the wall in remembrance. Ben had not had room in the van for his three-dimensional art work but he would come up for it as soon as possible. Sophie must take good care of it. He was missing it like crazy, its absence gnawed him, his hands were twitching to get at it. He rang several times to check. She hadn’t touched it had she? No? Well don’t honey, don’t, and for God’s sake watch the kids. Sophie watched the art work. She gave it the benefit of the doubt but it had little to say to her. She lay on the bed at night reading The Woodlanders while the children slept, glimpsed its textured layers from the corner of her eye as she read about Giles who was a good man and did good things and smelled of apples and died for love.

  *

  They snapped her up at Eventide. Sophie was not surprised. She was competent and partly trained. She could cope, keep calm in a crisis as demonstrated, and, as Matron said, she obviously had a nice nature or she wouldn’t have applied in the first place. ‘You can always tell,’ she said, head nodding behind a leftover arrangement of gypsophila and lilies delivered by the recently bereaved after a funeral. ‘Frankly,’ said Matron, ‘flowers are not always the blessing people think they are but the hospital won’t take them, just being Emergency and that. They’re very stretched. But then again,’ she sighed, her eyes on a woman submerged by greenery, delphiniums and gerberas who was heading up the path, ‘aren’t we all, and flowers take a lot of time and sometimes I wonder whether the residents even notice them. People think just because they’re old they’re going to fall about when it’s flowers. Well, a few maybe, but why should they? It’s like peggy squares. Why would you suddenly want to knit peggy squares just because you’re eighty-five and your fingers are arthritic. We’re all different aren’t we? It doesn’t follow.’

  A woman of empathy who leaves room for difference. A woman who does not automatically trip little accidents, peggy squares, floral tributes and confusion through the same slot of the grader labelled Old. I like this woman.

  ‘And Monday will suit you, Mrs Flynn? Lovely. And what about school holidays?’

  ‘I will have to make suitable arrangements,’ said Sophie.

  Matron was pleased. A brand-new, semi-trained permanent with plenty of savvy and pleasant to boot. ‘Well, you’ve got till August to arrange things, dear,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie as the doorbell rang.

  Edward spent several weeks in the Naval Hospital in Calliope Road. Both tibias were fractured. The alignment in the left one was not good enough. There would be gross deformity and trouble later if it was not reset. Nancy Ogilvie, up to her welts in sawdust, lips damp with drama, just thought Sophie would like to know. And then of course there would be months of physio. And what about Liz!

  ‘What?’

  She and Paul had gone to Hawaii for a week. A second honeymoon on the Outer Islands. Imagine. Nancy restowed her chops in her carrier bag. They had been too close to the Rinso. ‘Bye,’ she said. ‘Bye.’

  Sophie wrote to him.

  Dear Edward,

  I can’t come and see you. You would not want me to. Otherwise, I would be there. The pineapple slipped and I got my feet wrong. I know you know this. I am sorry beyond thought for your pain.

  Sophie.

  She walked down the road to post it in Devonport. Old Yeller was on at one of the cinemas. She would suggest it to William. How about taking the children on Saturday she would say. After rugby, or Friday even. They could sleep in, being Saturday.

  She crossed over to the sunny side of the street and felt the sun on her back. George Orwell had watched a man being marched to his execution. Watched him as he stepped over a puddle rather than through it. It was instinctive, irrelevant as his non-existent tomorrow.

  She posted her letter.

  As a child the face in the mirror had not reassured her. Its dreamy absent-mindedness had given her reason to fear she might be the one found hiding under the b
ed in a crisis, while others (Mary?) dealt with the situation. Giving up her place in a lifeboat she could understand; manning the pumps, parachuting into enemy territory, taking control in moments of stress, she had thought was beyond her.

  Not so. The meek are not stuck with it, apologies can cease. A sitting duck, even the vaguest, has wings on her back to soar.

  Her heart had gone underground, curled up and shrivelled to a corm. It was not dead. The throb of action, the one-step two-step beat of life was still thumping. She loved her children, would make them happy. Two jobs was nothing. The work at Eventide pleased her, tired her satisfactorily and paid the rent as well.

  ‘Why no letter?’ said Mary’s postcard of Hot Water Beach. ‘Come and stay in the spring. Plenty of room for the tent. Ben is sculpting Ches. All love, M.’

  Edward went home escorted by LSBA Butterworth who had been seconded from the Naval Hospital until the Commodore was on his feet again. ‘I suppose they’ve painted his stripes on his plasters,’ said William, who had come to pick up the children for Old Yeller. He watched her face above the cat mug.

  You have razed his world. His dogged decency is harrowing. He is allowed words.

  ‘Bye,’ she said later. ‘Have fun. Goodbye.’

  She walked along the road, past St Augustine’s locked and barred in safe-keeping from felons. Past a house which used to have a different pepper-pot tower till maintenance became too much and it was lopped off. She walked quickly, arms swinging, eyes focused straight ahead in pursuit of her mission.

  Mrs Featherston opened the door and shut it quickly. Sophie, exigent as a door-to-door survivor, slammed her foot in it. She had business here.

  Mrs Featherston was shaking. ‘He won’t see you. He won’t.’

  She shouldn’t do it. Not to an old woman. Sophie pushed past, flattening the backs of frail knees against a four-and-a-half-inch brass shell case filled with walking sticks. She knew her way around.