He looked, and found it where it had been kicked under the bed during their furious love-making on the floor and their glances locked for a moment as he brought it to her, both remembering at the same moment.
She put her hand in the pockets, rifling from one to the other, and then she found it and pulled it out.
‘There, you see? That’s all that’s left. He’s got all the rest. But this was in my pocket. Just like the key was the last time he tried –’ and she held up the photograph of Morty and Dolly and Andy.
‘Just like the last time,’ she said, and laughed again. And then cried, as suddenly as a baby, the tears rolling down her cheeks as she looked at Theo and the doctor, and they stared back.
15
She slept badly, waking, it seemed, every few minutes and then feeling she hadn’t been asleep at all, really. She thought and dreamed and remembered and dreamed again, and couldn’t tell one from the other as images tangled themselves behind her closed hot eyes.
Beside her Theo slept, infuriatingly, and at one point she lay on her back, listening to him breathe and thinking sulkily, I could be dead. The doctor told him to keep waking me up to make sure I was all right, not unconscious or anything, and there he is, sleeping like a pig, I could be dead. And then rolled over and tried to sleep again, knowing herself to be absurd because obviously she wasn’t dead, so why be angry with him?
They had sat squabbling interminably after the doctor had at last gone, about her refusal to let him call the police.
‘What’s the point?’ she had said wearily. ‘What can they do? What did they do last time? Nothing, nothing at all. It’s not even as though it was a real robbery. All that’s gone is a pile of old papers and photographs and rubbish – why have the police prowling around over that? I couldn’t be doing with it. No.’
‘But for Christ’s sake, Maggy, you can’t go on being pushed around like this! You’ve got to have some protection –’
‘Protection? A fat lot of protection I’ll get! They’ve got better things to do, the police, than send a copper following me around all day to keep off muggers. Even if they’d do it – which you know damned well they wouldn’t – can you imagine what life’d be like being body-guarded? It’s bad enough being jumped – I couldn’t stand being shadowed by a policeman as well –’
He’d given in at last out of sheer weariness, unhappily, and swearing he’d have to act the protector himself if she refused to get the professional kind. ‘I’ll go everywhere with you,’ he had promised, and yawned hugely, and patted her shoulder as she lay with her back to him.
‘No, you won’t,’ she muttered into her pillow. ‘I told you – I couldn’t stand being shadowed by a policeman, so why should I put up with you?’ But he’d fallen asleep, suddenly, too worn out to argue any longer.
And she had lain awake, trying to make some sort of sense out of the cat’s cradle of events and memories and feeling a dull ache at the back of her head and in her neck and occasionally deep in her pelvis and not knowing which bothered her most. It’s never like this in films, she thought at one point; people get bashed about and then jump up and they’re fine, and I just had a little tap, the doctor said and I feel lousy, lousy, lousy –
I won’t think about it, I won’t think about the way I feel. I’ll think about something else. Who was it? Who took that silly stuff from Dolly’s safe deposit box? Who’d want it? Someone who knows about the money she’s left. Someone who knows it’s there somewhere, but doesn’t know exactly where and wants to find it before I do. That’s who. That’s why they took the stuff. They’re looking for my money.
Who wants my money? No, not mine, Dolly’s. Who wants Dolly’s lolly? That made her giggle, lying there with her pillow bunched under her head, the hot linen against her damp cheek. Dolly’s lolly, Dolly’s lolly, Dolly’s lolly, and she crooned it silently over and over, using it as a lullaby, hoping it would send her to sleep. But sharply the spell was broken as Oliver’s face seemed to come looming out of the red blackness behind her eyes and she snapped her lids open and stared at the luminous clock face on her bedside table.
Oliver? Would he have bashed her on the head to get that stuff? Maybe. He’s never really been the violent type, as far as I know, but if he wants something badly enough, who knows what he mightn’t do? Oliver. Just the sort of man who could knock out a naked woman and turn his back on her and not be interested –
Rubbish. Not Oliver, wet weak Oliver. Ida then. A woman could ignore another woman’s nakedness easily enough, and she wanted the Westpark, didn’t she? And that meant she’d want Dolly’s lolly.
Maybe. What about Theo? Now you’re really being mad, paranoid screaming mad. He didn’t have to knock you over to get that stuff. It was on the coffee table when he came in. He could have taken the lot any time he fancied. Looked through it, got the information he wanted, whatever it was, and left it all there, and you none the wiser.
Hardly Theo. So who else? Mort and his bully boys? They don’t even know where you live. How could they? They could have followed you. Seen you come to the house, worked out that your flat was the Only one without a name over the bell. And the man in the city suit, what about him? Could he have –
You’re a fool. You’re not a policeman. What do you know about detecting? Stop trying, think about something else. Think about something else –
Think about Susannah. That’ll do. Go on remembering, can’t do any harm. That’ll send you to sleep. Maybe.
Daniel following her all over the place, finding her whenever she was alone, kissing her. It had been weird, really weird, for she had found it exciting even though she didn’t like him. He was as nasty as the girls at school, in lots of ways, talking at her instead of to her, laughing at her in that sneering way, yet whenever she was anywhere in the house on her own, there he was, waiting for her to come out of the lavatory, standing by her bedroom door whenever she went there to get something, his hands ready to hold her shoulders and her face, his busy red tongue alert to push itself wetly into her mouth. She didn’t like it, felt his grip painfully hard on her skin, and yet he excited her, so that she began to find reasons to wander away from Susannah, went to the lavatory more often –
And then it was Sunday morning, and she had been there for half the weekend, though it felt as though she’d been there for years and years, in a sort of way. Sunday morning and the weather had changed. Rain pushed itself noisily down the wide windows, and a fire was lit in the biggest room with the lowest softest furniture and there was a drift of newspapers everywhere and they ate breakfast from a long low table in front of the fire. It’s like a magazine, she thought at one point, sitting awkwardly on a sofa with her feet neatly side by side, trying not to look at Daniel sprawled in his pyjamas on the hearthrug, a plate of toast and smoked salmon in front of him. She didn’t want to look at him because his pyjamas were thin and his skin seemed to shine through them, and that made her remember his kissing. It’s like one of Dolly’s film magazines with pictures of people eating biscuits or drinking hot chocolate, she thought, and experimentally ate some of her smoked salmon. It was salty and slippery and she didn’t like it much.
‘Margaret, dear, after breakfast, I’ve got a plan for you,’ Susannah’s mother said and smiled at her, a small neat smile that didn’t move her face very much. She was wearing a long yellowish-coloured dressing gown that looked soft enough to eat. Margaret found herself wanting to pick up a fold and chew it.
‘Oh,’ Margaret said, a little blankly. What was she supposed to say? ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re a slender child, and there should be no problems,’ Mrs Goldman murmured and smiled at Susannah who looked complacent. She was wearing a bright red dressing gown and very fluffy slippers that looked like bundles of feathers. Margaret, carefully dressed in her checked organdie, felt awkward, looking at them all. Papa was wrapped in a great shaggy green dressing gown with a hood on the back, with white pyjama legs sticking out underneath. Checked organdie. Oh
dear.
‘I’m sure your mother won’t mind,’ Mrs Goldman said serenely. ‘These days, after all, it can be such a help to find a child marginally larger than one’s own, don’t you agree?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Margaret said, and tried the salmon again. It seemed rude not to when they were all eating it, but it still tasted nasty, ‘I’m sure too,’ and didn’t know what she was supposed to be sure about. Only that she was having a marvellous time, ‘I’m having a marvellous time,’ she whispered to herself, because she had to be sure about that.
The plan turned out to be a session in Susannah’s room, going through her wardrobe. Susannah changed, put on trousers and a sweater, looking very daring, Margaret thought, for she had never worn trousers, and sprawled on her bed while her mother stood in front of the big wardrobe, taking out garment after garment.
‘That should fit you, my dear,’ she murmured, taking from its hanger a green plaid dress with a wide belt and white collar. ‘Slip it on, there’s a good child, and we’ll see what we can do –’
Puzzled and deeply embarrassed because of showing herself in her vest and knickers, but feeling obscurely it would be rude to refuse, Margaret obeyed.
‘Yes, that’s fine. Tell your mother it could do with being let down an inch, perhaps. There’s plenty of hem. Now there’s this one – it was always a little small for Susannah, so I’m sure it will be splendid for you –’ This one was a purple dress in a heavy material with ribs in it. Margaret hated it at sight.
‘That’s charming on you, dear,’ Mrs Goldman said, standing back and looking at her with her eyes slightly crinkled, as though she was a painting. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Oh yes,’ Margaret said fervently. ‘Lovely.’
And then there were skirts and jumpers, rather skimpy ones that were tight round her middle and made her chest itch, but she couldn’t scratch and stood there miserably smiling while Mrs Goldman tweaked at them and nodded and Susannah watched, her lips curved into a contented line.
‘What about the pink, Muvver?’ Susannah said then, stretching out on the bed and lying with her arms behind her head. ‘I’ve always loathed it –’
‘Darling, that one cost a fortune! Surely you can –’
‘I won’t wear it,’ Susannah said and grinned at Margaret. ‘Not ever.’
‘Oh well –’ Mrs Goldman sighed and took out the dress, a confection of deep pink silk, with tight long sleeves and a stand-up collar. Against Margaret’s red hair it looked sickly and for a moment after she’d put it on Mrs Goldman looked at her doubtfully, turning her to the mirror and staring at their reflections over Margaret’s shoulder as Margaret too stared, trying not to let the colour upset her.
‘It looked so lovely on Susannah, with her dark hair –’ she murmured. ‘Darling, are you sure –’
‘Positive,’ Susannah said firmly. ‘You have it, Margaret. It’s nice. Cost a fortune.’
‘I –’ Margaret began, not looking at the dress, feeling worse and worse. ‘It’s – thank you.’
‘There, dear,’ Mrs Goldman said expansively. ‘I’m sure that will help at home. Talk to your mother about some shoes to go with them, won’t you? Patent leather – not quite right at your age –’ and she drifted out of the room, leaving Margaret standing there in the pink dress feeling as though she’d been punished for doing something unspeakable. Which was an odd way to feel when you’d just been given things.
‘There!’ Susannah said and got to her feet. ‘Isn’t that nice for you? And won’t your mother be pleased? Muvver says it must be frightful to cope as a woman alone – she’s going to let you have all my things when I’m finished with them. Say you’re pleased.’
Margaret took the dress off, pulling it over her head, trying to hold on to the fact that she’d been given presents, but it didn’t work. She felt the tears pushing out of her eyes and her nose running and she couldn’t stop it happening. It was dreadful.
‘There!’ Susannah said, delightedly. ‘I knew you’d be grateful. But you don’t have to cry – put the green one on, now, and we’ll go and play with Daniel. He’s changed ever such a lot since he went to France, but I suppose that was inevitable. I think I’m going to ask if I can go, later. It seems madly sophisticated, doesn’t it?’
‘Madly,’ Margaret said obediently, and put on the green plaid dress. What else could she do?
Dolly looked at the things spread on the bed, and picked up the purple corduroy between two fingers, distastefully, and let it go.
‘She gave them to you? Why?’
Margaret shrugged, not looking at her. ‘I don’t know. She just said I was to have them.’
‘What does she think you are, for God’s sake? Some sort of workhouse brat?’ Dolly said, and Margaret had to look at her now, for she sounded different. Her voice was blurred, the words coming out more countrified than usual. The London sound that was usually there, and which was so much part of Margaret’s own speech, seemed to have gone. ‘I don’t take no hand-outs from some Lady Bountiful, and never let it be thought I do! Who does the bloody woman think she is, then, givin’ you her cast-offs? You just take them back an’ tell her she can take ’em down the church jumble sale and not go treatin’ you as though –’
‘I can’t,’ Margaret said flatly.
‘You can and you will, my duck! I’m not havin’ you made some sort o’ charity object by these damned –’
‘It would be rude to take them back. Unsophisticated,’ Margaret said, wanting to shout, sick about the whole affair. She didn’t want the dresses either, hated them, felt the humiliation of the Goldmans’ lazy generosity as sharply as she had ever felt anything, but it was her friend, her Susannah, and no one, no one at all, was going to spoil things with Susannah.
‘Un – what did you say? My God, but they’ve taught you some strange things at that damned school o’ yours! You were better off at Fletcher Street, that you were. Them an’ their fancy ideas and fancy talk an’ bloody insults. I never ever heard o’ such a thing –’
It was rare that Dolly was angry and looking at her now Margaret was suddenly afraid. Her face was blotchy, and her eyes were wide and staring so that Margaret could see the whites at the top as well as at the bottom of the pupils and it gave her a mad look that made Margaret want to cry, made her want to run and throw her arms round her neck and hide her face in her shoulders, so that she couldn’t see that furious glare. But then she’d have to take the dresses back and be rude to Susannah and that wasn’t to be thought of –
‘I shan’t take them back, I shan’t! And she’s right, Mrs Goldman, she’s right! I wear all the wrong things and I talk wrong and the other people laugh at me and I hate you, I hate you. I won’t take them back –’
It wasn’t the first time she’d found refuge in shrieking and she began to shriek now, stamping and shouting until, suddenly, Dolly hit her and the shock was so profound, for Dolly never hit anyone, that she was silent at once, not even sobbing or panting, just standing and staring back at her.
‘Now, there, see what you made me do!’ Dolly was all contrition, her soft overwhelming self again, all widespread arms and crumpled face, but this time Margaret wasn’t going to let herself be swept up and hugged and fed on hot milk and cake. She pulled back, folding her arms across her narrow chest and staring at Dolly with her face twisted and tight.
‘I didn’t make you do nothing – anything.’ Even as she corrected herself she could hear Susannah’s light high laugh. ‘You might as well get it right, Margaret. One just doesn’t say do nothing that way –’ and she scowled even more. ‘All I did was tell you I can’t take these back. I don’t want to take them back. I’ve got to have something better to wear than I’ve got – they all laugh at me at school when I change to come home. All of them. It’s horrible. My shoes are wrong too –’
‘Such fancy notions –’ Dolly said, but she sounded uncertain now, and Margaret pushed home.
‘I want new shoes, and a new coat,
and better dresses of my own. I want to be like the others. They don’t like me because I’m not like them.’
‘I knew it! I knew as it’d be like that!’ Dolly threw herself down on the bed and sat with her knees hunched up, staring at Margaret over her folded arms. ‘I said when it all started as it’d be all wrong for you. Piano lessons fine, I says, she’s got a talent o’ course, piano lessons. It was my idea, but why such a fancy school an’ all? Can’t she have her piano-playing lessons separate like? I said. But no, he would have it it was the best –’
‘Who did?’
‘Eh? Oh, it don’t make no never mind! Listen, my duck, wouldn’t it be better to go back to Fletcher Street and we’ll ask Miss Lucas to arrange for separate lessons for you? Eh? Won’t that be better than all this traipsin’ off across half London an’ having all these horrible girls givin’ you notions and –’
‘Who made me go to Thomas Tallis? Miss Lucas said I got a scholarship.’
‘And so you did, my duck, so you did, clever girl that you are an’ all. You got a scholarship to that fancy school like Miss Lucas said, but I don’t know – it’s not workin’ out like I thought it would. I wanted you to get your piano-playing an’ all, it was all my idea at first, that bit of it, but now, I don’t know – it just isn’t working right, is it? Goin’ away weekends an’ coming home all shook up like this, and people treatin’ you like a measly charity child –’
She sat and stared at Margaret, broodingly, her face still crumpled, and Margaret stared back, silently. She’s not talking about the dresses now, she thought. I won’t have to take them back. I wish I did. I hate them. But Susannah –
‘I want to stay at TT,’ Margaret said flatly. ‘It isn’t fancy, and the music is very good and I’m learning a lot. Mrs Cornelius says I’m very good indeed.’
‘I know. They’ve said all along as you’re exceptional an’ all that, but I don’t know – it’s making it different with you. You used to be my girl, my lovely girl, but now you’re all –’
Reprise Page 17