Reprise

by Claire Rayner

  And so it had been, a weekend of fury and misery, imagining Susannah at her house, imagining herself there with her, the awfulness of not being with her. The even worse awfulness of Susannah being remote, her voice tinkling with ice, at school on Monday morning. ‘Oh, there you are – yes I had a lovely weekend – there’s Jenny, what are you doing next Friday?’ Oh, the pain of that rejection!

  But thank God, she’d got over it, and asked her again, casually, looking at her sideways, and this time Margaret swore she’d go, no matter what Dolly said, and started asking about it as soon as she got home from school, following Dolly about the house, nagging, whining, refusing to eat. She had to buy chocolate from the corner shop to make it possible to sit at the table for meal after meal and stare at her plate tight-lipped while Dolly cajoled and bullied and coaxed and at last, unwillingly, had given in.

  That weekend. Maggy finished her drink and started on her steak, trying not to remember that weekend with the Goldmans, but it wouldn’t go away.

  13

  The car had been the first marvel. It was big and the seats were wide and soft and the windows whispered up and down when you pressed a button. There was even a little cupboard with bottles and glasses in it.

  Papa was tall and white-faced and talked a great deal, scooping up the two girls with loud cries of welcome, being immensely affable with Mrs Cornelius, who bridled and laughed and bridled again, and behaving in a way that, were he a child, would have been labelled as showing off. Since he was a grown-up, of course, it wasn’t. It was just Susannah’s Papa, a very satisfying answer to her weeks of wondering what he would be like.

  Once they were in the car and driving out of London, equipped with bars of chocolate and fruit ‘to stay your vitals until we reach the haven of our own hearth and home, my beloved!’ Susannah settled down to chatter the journey away. She talked about so many things that Margaret knew nothing about; holidays, for example, holidays abroad, going on the cross-channel ferry, staying in hotels in the South of France, taking taxis to restaurants; a world of glamour and marvels that left her wide-eyed and enchanted, and she listened and asked questions and could feel Papa in the front seat somehow approving. He seemed to bask in his daughter’s chatter, reminding her sometimes of small details she had forgotten about a particular journey, adding his own share of tinsel to the decoration Susannah was weaving round her life.

  The house, when they arrived, frightened Margaret at first. It was so very like TT, with a red-brick wall in front of it, even a couple of huge stone balls flanking the gateway. She whispered as much to Susannah, who looked at her in some surprise. ‘Oh, most houses like this have those,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

  She didn’t, and there was a lot more she didn’t know, but by now she knew enough to keep quiet about her ignorance. To hold on to Susannah’s esteem was important; more than important, it was essential. A life in which Susannah did not figure, a world in which she did not stand where Margaret could circle round her was unimaginable. So, she kept quiet, as much as she could, and watched and listened and learned.

  She learned about Muvver, first. Tall and thin and with dark hair, as dark as Susannah’s own, pulled to the back of her neck into a thick knot, not a bit like Dolly’s fuzz of wild redness, she wore clothes that at first Margaret thought were very dull. Soft smudgy colours and no frills at all, quite unlike Dolly’s extravagant satiny dresses with their bright colours and brooches and necklaces of diamante. But after a while they didn’t look so dull. They seemed to move on her when she moved to look different, changing their colours, making surprises. It was like the difference between that Sousa march she had learned once and the Fauré piece she was working on now. Delicate and quiet, and very, very clever.

  And then she learned about eating. About not picking and choosing or talking about the food you were given – though it was different enough and exciting enough for Margaret to want to talk about it – and not letting the top of your fork show when you held it, and not holding your knife like a pen, but hiding the handle in the palm of your hand, and not making sounds with your mouth as you chewed, and not starting your food as soon as the plate was put in front of you but waiting for everyone else. A lot to learn about in just two days, but she learned fast. She had to, because Susannah told her, laughing as though it didn’t matter, that things like that were worth getting right, it made it so much easier all round, didn’t it?

  She learned about living in a house so big that she couldn’t remember where all the rooms were. The Creffield Road house had always seemed enormous, with its tangle of little rooms for the boarders, but now she knew it was cramped and crowded in a way that this house could never be. It had high wide rooms with low soft furniture in them, and great expanses of shining glass windows looking out on to trees and grass and more trees. It had broad shallow stairs, not a steep narrow climb like the one at Creffield Road. It had a big kitchen which was tidy and shining with pots and pans hanging on hooks, and an empty draining board, not the cluttered mess that was the Creffield Road kitchen where even Ida couldn’t prevent the draining board from always being piled with dishes because the kitchen was so small for all that had to be done in it. This house was peace and comfort and music – for someone was always playing an instrument somewhere – and felt to Margaret to be the most right place she had ever been in. She was bedazzled by it almost as much as she had been bedazzled by Susannah.

  And then Daniel had come home, arriving from Paris on Saturday morning for the half-term break, they said, coming in a clutter of cases and presents and bottles of wine for his parents and laughter and noise. Susannah squealed and leaped at him, but he fended her off, lordly in his seniority, and Margaret stood and watched and fell even more deeply in love with Susannah and all her appurtenances.

  Daniel was thirteen and as good-looking as the rest of his family, and kept lapsing into French and then translating himself with a casual ease in a way that was very impressive indeed. Margaret was happy to be impressed.

  In the afternoon, after playing with Susannah in the garden with a croquet set Margaret was left alone for a while, because Papa and Muvver called Susannah in to play for them. ‘Not an assessment, dear heart, just the joy of hearing you!’ Papa said with loud bonhomie, winking at Margaret. ‘Your young friend here will forgive you for a while, I’m certain, hey, little Margaret?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and watched them go, feeling bleak suddenly. It was a very big garden, and the house looked huge and unwelcoming from where she was standing and for one brief moment – the only one in the entire weekend – she wished she was at home in Creffield Road.

  ‘Well, let’s hear all about you, then.’ Daniel seemed to appear from nowhere, standing there with his hands in his pockets and looking down on her. ‘Where did young Soos find you then?’

  ‘I’m at school,’ she said, after a moment of puzzlement. She hadn’t been lost, so how could she be found?

  ‘Are you, then! Sacré bleu, but the place must have changed! You’re not precisely like the others who go there, are you? A right little cockney, hey?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Pardon!’ he mimicked. ‘Ma chérie, do not, I plead with you sully the air with such an expression. It is not comme il faut –’

  She stared at him, saying nothing, thinking how like his Papa he sounded, and he made a face and shook his head.

  ‘Nom d’un nom, but you really are – tell me, what do you and Susannah do together? You’ve hardly much in common.’

  She thought for a moment, not understanding, but holding on to what she could pick out of his tangle of words.

  ‘Do? Talk. Play games, things like that.’

  ‘Fings like that –’ he said, mocking again. ‘Dear heart, you can’t have been at dear old Thomas Tallis long. Not sounding like that. How long?’

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘How-long-have-you-been-at-school-with-Susannah?’ he said, enunciating each word as though she were an id
iot, and she felt her face go red.

  ‘Since September.’

  ‘Six weeks – hmm. Well, I dare say you’ll improve. Mind you, silk purses and all that.’

  ‘Pardon? I mean – what?’

  ‘I’m not sure what isn’t worse than pardon,’ he said, and moved closer, taking his hands out of his pockets, and folding his arms over his chest. He seemed taller suddenly. ‘You’re a right little cocksparrer, ain’t yer?’

  She knew she was being mocked, knew he was laughing at her, and couldn’t work out quite why. The other girls at school said things about the way she talked, and she knew she didn’t speak as they did, but still she couldn’t understand why, and she tried to do what she could to protect herself and could only do as Susannah would; she tossed her head as though she had curls to bounce around her ears and it seemed to work because he laughed, and unfolded his arms and took her chin in one hand.

  ‘There’s a pretty little girl then!’ he said, and bent his head and kissed her, pushing his tongue between her lips in a way that first startled and then excited her. He closed his eyes, but she didn’t, staring at his face so close to hers that it seemed to be distorted. This was kissing. This was what the girls at her other school had been on and on about. This was kissing.

  She finished her steak and asked for coffee and leaned back in her chair. Daniel Goldman. Odd to remember him, after all this time. What had happened to him? For all his supposed genius he hadn’t ever made any name for himself as far as she knew. Violinists – she cast her mind across the list of those whose names mattered, and his was nowhere. One of these days she’d find out, perhaps, if it mattered. If she ever played a gig in Israel, maybe she’d look up Susannah, living there with her husband and three children. She’d written to her a couple of years ago, a gushing letter full of chat and exclamations, as though they’d never lost touch, being oh-so-casual about the fact that she’d seen reviews of Maggy’s big London concert, the one that had got all the attention, pretending she hadn’t been impressed.

  Maggy’s lips curved, remembering that letter. Still trying to put her down, after all this time, poor Susannah. Going on and on about her marvellous children, how clever they were, little Rivka’s genius on the piano, young Adi, already composing, even the baby Uri positively crying in tune; how satisfying motherhood was, compared with a mere career …

  You’re playing silly games, she told herself, stop it. Think straight. You’ve got into an orgy of nostalgia. Stop it.

  Not nostalgia, another corner of her mind argued. Nostalgia is pleasant. Nostalgia is the Good Old Days, Wasn’t It All Lovely?, but this is hurting. This is new, this is finding about what I was, how things were. Not wallowing in the familiar, the comfortable. This is a journey to my mother.

  ‘No.’ She whispered it aloud and then looked up, embarrassed. The place was filling up now, and she looked round for familiar faces, an old friend to share a drink with. Anyone would do to get her out of this flat sick mood she’d fallen into.

  There was no one. Her eyes flicked over the tables, straining a little to see, for Joe Allen’s basement was always dimly lit. And saw just the usual tight-trousered boys from the boutiques, the heavy men in crumpled sweaters from Bush House, talking interminably about Bulgarian broadcasts and the African service, a few early journalists, sour and tired at the end of another Fleet Street day, a man in a city suit, tidily eating a hamburger –

  Her mind jerked then and she stared at him, almost furtively. Oh, God, is it that man again, the one who was following me? But then she relaxed and breathed more deeply, because she saw now that this man had a beard and was extremely tall; that his city suit was tacked on to a far from average person. This man was one she’d never seen before. But, Christ, she was getting uptight! Imagining trouble all the time. Mad.

  Not so mad, really. She had been mugged, she had been followed, and those boys this afternoon at Mortimer Lang’s house had been threatening. Ever since Dolly’s death there had been real cause for her tension; she wasn’t imagining it all, she wasn’t. No one could say she was. Tonight, maybe, she’d got worried for nothing, but she was entitled, damn it.

  Moving sharply, she pushed her coffee cup to one side and began to rifle in her bag, looking for a pen and paper. Writing things down had always helped her, making lists of things to do, problems to consider. And it would be something to do now.

  She found an old envelope, and after a moment drew a line to make two columns and headed one ‘Pros’ and the other ‘Cons’. And then sat and chewed her pencil and thought.

  What was she getting from this search she’d started on? A lot of memories she didn’t want, wasn’t enjoying much. A lot of worrying about people following her. A dig at Ida, who wanted to get the Westpark to herself. The chance of money.

  Money. She wrote the word in the column headed ‘Pros’ and contemplated it. Money. She’d never cared much about it, oddly enough, considering the sort of pinched childhood she’d had, the constant awareness of money problems that Dolly had carried round with her like an aura. She’d been dazzled by the Goldmans, all right, by their big house, their big car, the sheer luxury of their life, but it wasn’t because of money. It was their self-assurance, the knowing-how of everything that was as much a part of them all as their riches. That was what had mattered.

  And all through her career she had shrugged her shoulders at money. There had been offers of all sorts that would have made her big cash – like writing those jingles for catfood commercials. They’d offered her thousands for that, what with the repeat fees, but she’d refused, because it was such a tatty job they wanted. She’d chosen every job she’d done, every record producer she’d worked with, on the same basis; was it worth doing for the work’s sake? Interesting? Satisfying? The money came last, always had.

  So why was money important now? It must be, or why else would I be putting myself through all this instead of giving the Westpark to Ida and letting her have the headaches?

  Because of Dolly. She knew that, now. At first, when all this had started – was it such a short time ago? It seemed to have been going on for months – she hadn’t known what had motivated her, but now it was crystallizing in her mind. Now she knew she was looking for Dolly, for the reason for all the things that had gone wrong, the source of the anger and pain that still filled her when she thought of her. Even in this past few days she had begun to get a different picture, a murky confused one, but one painted in softer more blurred shades than the one she’d been carrying in her head for so long. That picture was of a hard Dolly, all sharp edges and violent colours and contrasts. The one she was finding, deep in her own memory as she replayed the course of their lives together, was different.

  That’s what I’m looking for. And I won’t find it till I find out what it was she wanted me to know. So, where do I go from here? Where do I look? She said Morty would know, but he didn’t.

  Concentrate on what Morty did know rather than on what he didn’t. He had said that two men who’d lived with Dolly for years had ended up in prison. They’d stolen a lot of money.

  Oh, God, she thought, as her memories pleated themselves together, does that mean that Dolly was a thief too? She was stupid and careless of her feelings and –

  Stop that. Was she a thief? She tried to visualize Dolly stealing, tried to see her taking things from shop counters, taking money out of a bank at the point of a gun, and wanted to laugh then. Dolly? It was a ludicrous picture. Feckless, casual, off-hand about money, yes, but the cold calculation needed to be a thief? Never. Not Dolly. Running up debts with an insouciance that by the time she was fifteen or so Maggy had found infuriating, being casual about her responsiblities in a way that seemed positively childish to the mature person Maggy believed herself to be as an adolescent; but that did not mean she was also a real thief.

  ‘Hornby,’ Maggy whispered the name again, and wrote it down on the other side of her envelope. He was the key. There was no point in talking to Morty again, not at
present anyway. Not unless she found out something else he could explain. The only lead she had to money at the moment was Hornby’s name. So she’d have to find him. See where she went from there.

  Miss Lucas. Why she thought of Miss Lucas then, she couldn’t be quite sure. The school teacher who had taken her to Thomas Tallis and then told her she’d got a scholarship, the one who had come every year to the Open Days, had been so excited when she passed all her exams. Miss Lucas from Fletcher Street school, where it had all started. Why think of her?

  Because she might know about that first journey to Thomas Tallis with Dolly. Did Hornby pay for my lessons? Did he send Dolly and me to TT? And if he did, what money did he use?

  She began to laugh then, leaning back in her chair, alone at her table at Joe Allen’s and laughing like a child, because of the ridiculous, terrible thought that her career, her whole career, had been based on someone else’s stolen money.

  14

  She needed to get home now as urgently as she’d needed to get away earlier, and she paid her bill quickly and made for the door. On the way out she met Danny and Chalky coming in, and they greeted her loudly, wanting to buy her a drink, wanting her to turn round and come back in again. But her mood had changed, and she shook her head and at last they let her go, and she found a taxi in the Aldwych and sat and brooded heavily all the way to Royal Crescent, This thinking back, this remembering, was getting to be a habit, a small portion of her mind told her dispassionately. It’s getting to be more important than the here and now.

  No, it isn’t, she argued back, staring out at the strolling tourists in Trafalgar Square and the pigeons who strutted, fat and scornful, among them. It’s because of the here and now that I’ve got to do all the remembering. I’ll never sort things out if I don’t make myself remember.