‘She wanted you to know what happened, you mean?’
‘Wanted me to know? Well, yes, I think she did. We – I have to tell you we weren’t on very good terms. We – I didn’t spend much time with her in the last few years. There were reasons – I won’t bother you with them now. But she left a will, you see, and a safe deposit box – but, oh, this sounds all so confusing –’
‘Your mother.’ Miss Lucas was staring out of the window now, her lips curved into a faint smile. ‘Oh, but I liked her! I was the only one here who did, you know! The headmistress then, I remember her well, told me the woman was no more than a – oh, there I go again! I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t mean to be so rude but –’
‘You’re not being rude. And she was. Dolly was – awful. Noisy and vulgar and –’
‘She was fun,’ Miss Lucas said. ‘She made me laugh. I liked her.’
‘Yes. People did. But you didn’t have to live with her, did you?’
‘No, I suppose not. But – she did try so hard for you, you know.’
‘Please, Miss Lucas, will you tell me what happened? Did I have a scholarship?’
Miss Lucas shook her head. ‘No. You were put in for one, but they said you had the wrong temperament. Talent, they said, but not the temperament to make a first-flight performer, and scholarships only went to those who had –well, who could be sure to do well for the school. That’s what they said. But I knew you could do it and I told your mother so. Told her you ought to be there, and to try again. But she came back, with – with a friend.’
Her voice changed and her gaze slid away, so that she was looking out of the window again.
‘A friend, she said, wanted to pay the fees for you. They asked me if I could persuade the school to take you as a fee-paying pupil, so I did. But they wanted you always to think you had a scholarship –’
She turned her head and looked at Maggy again then. ‘I’m afraid, my dear, that the scholarship was refused not because of you but because of your mother. She was so – well, she wasn’t their sort of parent, you know!’ She laughed then. ‘Oh, but they were full of themselves at Thomas Tallis School. They could get away with it of course, because they were so very good – they really were the best music school there was then, so they could pick and choose, and they didn’t choose your mother. And she knew it. That’s why she said you were to be told it was a scholarship, and why I took you for your entrance exam and why she never used to come to the concerts and end of terms. I went for her. She was a very sensible woman, your mother, you know. Had no illusions at all.’
Maggy said nothing, staring at her, trying to see Dolly as she was that day they had first gone to TT. She could remember her own clothes, the blue coat, the matching hat, but Dolly – what was it about her that had made them refuse to accept her child? Suddenly her eyes felt hot and dry. It’s anger, she told herself, anger. I’m not upset. I don’t want to cry, I’m just angry.
‘And her friend – well, he wanted to do whatever she wanted, he said. So there it was. I paid the fees for you with money they gave me. And you were told you had a scholarship. I would never have said anything, you know, if your mother were still alive – but now she’s dead – it’s good for you to know, don’t you think? She was really –’
‘Yes, I know. She was really –’ Maggy said. ‘Really something. Who was he?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The friend. Who was he?’
Again Miss Lucas looked blank and Maggy leaned forward. That look, she was learning, only appeared when Miss Lucas was trying to decide whether to answer or not. ‘She wanted me to know, really she did. She left me a message to say there was money available to sort out the financial problems she left, but didn’t say where. But she wanted me to know.’
There was a long silence and then Miss Lucas sighed, a soft, tired sound. ‘Oh, well, after all this time – and they’re – well, he was not a very nice man, I’m afraid. Hornby, his name was.’
‘Jim Hornby. I rather thought so.’
‘Yes. Well, afterwards, I mean, once you’d started there at Thomas Tallis, there was a great fuss because, you see –well, he –’ Her voice dropped. ‘He went to prison.’
‘A wages robbery.’
‘My dear, you know! Then why ask –’
‘Because I don’t know all of it. I don’t know what happened to him after he went to prison.’
Miss Lucas shrugged. ‘I don’t know either. You’d left here by then, of course, being at Thomas Tallis, and your mother came to see me one day at my flat and gave me – oh, a lot of money. Enough to pay your fees for the next five years. She trusted me, you see – I appreciated that. And I paid your fees, and that was that. I never saw her again, or you, after you left Thomas Tallis. All such a long time ago –’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maggy said after a moment. ‘I suppose I should have kept in touch.’
‘Yes, I suppose you should.’ Miss Lucas smiled. ‘But people of fifteen or so are never quite as – well, you’re grown-up now, and here you are. And very nice too. It’s so pleasant to see what happens to one’s children over the years. So many of them, you know. Forty a year, for thirty-five years. I’m retiring soon, I’m afraid. Got to. I thought I’d teach piano privately, instead of just here at Fletcher Street. Not that parents care as much as they used to. Your mother cared. She was one who wanted the best for you, always –’
‘Hornby – please, Miss Lucas, Hornby.’
‘Well? What about him?’
‘What happened to him? After prison, I mean?’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m afraid I haven’t the least idea! None at all. I never saw them again, you see.’ She looked mournfuly at Maggy, clearly saddened at her own inability to help, and then her face lifted a little. ‘I can remember one thing, though – one thing that might help. He came from my own home city, you know. We made a joke about it, even though I didn’t like him. He said the town was always said to be poor, proud and pretty, and I could have the pretty bit and the proud bit, but he was going to do away with the poor bit – a silly joke, really.’
‘Where –’
‘Cheltenham, my dear. They call it the poor, proud and pretty city. Didn’t you ever hear that? In Gloucestershire.’
Maggy felt it lifting in her again, the cold anger that Dolly used to make her feel, the sick fury, the – ‘No.’ She said it aloud very hard and sharp. ‘No –’
‘Yes – indeed, not far from where your mother came from. We made quite a thing about it, all three, being from the same sort of area. Only she came from Cirencester. But then, I’m sure you knew that, didn’t you?’
17
Cirencester. The very sound of the town’s name made her feel sick. She thought she’d got over it, long ago, thought she’d come through the whole silly business and out the other side, because after all, who cared, these days? What did it matter where you came from, who your parents were? It hadn’t really mattered then, if she were to be honest.
It mattered to me. It mattered dreadfully to me.
‘I – thank you. I really shouldn’t have bothered you.’ She was on her feet now and Miss Lucas was blinking up at her, mild behind her heavy glasses.
‘It’s been so pleasant to see you again. I hope I’ve been of some help?’
‘Oh, yes. A lot of help. A great deal. I’m very grateful. It was good of you to spare the time.’ Stop gabbling, you fool. Shut up and get out. Stop gabbling.
‘You musn’t mind, dear, really you mustn’t. I mean, the way things were about your poor dear mother. She was a happy soul, and she didn’t care. She knew the people at Thomas Tallis looked down on her, but she didn’t think it was important, any more than I did. It made it – oh, much more fun to beat them, you know? We were all so amused, afterwards, that they hadn’t remembered you, when I took you back the next year. It really was quite funny, wasn’t it, when you think about it? And as for Mr Hornby – well –’ She stood up, shrugged. ‘Anyone ca
n make a mistake, can’t they? I never thought it was so dreadful, prison and so on. They did here, of course, you know how people talk, but I said to them then, and I meant it, his only fault was being found out. The world’s full of people everyone looks up to and admires and kowtows to, as long as they don’t get found out for what they really are. He just got caught –’
‘I’d forgotten how much she talked,’ Maggy thought, as the words went on and on, and she moved slowly towards the door. She talked a lot then, and I’d quite forgotten.
‘– and as for who paid your fees – well, there again, what does it matter? I mean, dear, the important thing is your talent was recognized and you were taught, that’s really the important thing, isn’t it? And I’m glad you’re enjoying what you’re doing now, and I’m sorry I didn’t know about the jazz, but there, I’ve always been classical, you see, my wireless is positively rusted on to the Third Programme!’ She laughed then, and held out her hand. ‘You’ll come and see me again? It’s so nice to hear from my old children, and I’m retiring soon, you know, going to teach piano privately if I can –’
‘Yes, of course I’ll keep in touch, I really will.’ Let me get out now. Please let me get out now and think a bit, will you? Do stop talking –
‘And I hope you find what it is you’re looking for. This financial thing – fortunate I never cared much for money – which is just as well, seeing I never made any!’ She laughed merrily, and her glasses glinted in the sunlight.
A bell rang somewhere and the noise began again, children thumping, shouting, rushing in the corridors. Gratefully Maggy pulled the door open.
‘They’re back, I see – play-time over? Yes – thanks so much – very kind of you, thanks so much –’ and at last she was away, hurrying along the corridors, smelling the Jeyes fluid and the plimsolls and feeling the tight feeling in her throat the way she had when she’d first found out.
Coming back to London from Deal, sitting in the train, watching the soft Kent countryside dribble away past the windows, thinking how it will be when she gets there, not knowing how awful it’s going to be.
Thinking about Gerald. Gerald who had been so exciting and handsome and special. And old. At least thirty-five. Gerald who had been chosen to be The One. Gerald who had come to the Little Theatre under the railway arches at Gunnersbury and been so sweet to her, and made her laugh and took her out to buy her coffee and cheesecake –
But that was all over. She’d ruined all that, and sixteen-year-old Maggy, sitting in the train chattering its way across Kent to London, broods heavily on what she’s suffered. Plans how she’ll be when she sees her, practises the cool stare, the uncaring lift of the chin, the offhand way she’ll be. She’ll have to give up then, she’ll have to let me do what I like then, I’ll make her. I’ll be so horrible to her she won’t be able to make me stay there. She’ll have to let me go.
But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all.
I don’t want to go through all this again, do I? Why do I have to remember all this? Maggy sat in the Wimpy Bar, the only place she could find near the school where she could sit down, and stirred the muddy lukewarm coffee the bored waitress put in front of her and tried to keep her mind firmly fixed on the present, staring at the traffic outside the windows, concentrating on the todayness of today, the immediacy of now. But it didn’t help. Twenty years slid away and exposed it all, the confusion and the pain and the sheer silliness.
It had all started absurdly, in that tatty place under the arches. They’d called it a theatre but it was little more than a grubby girly show, with tired, thirty-five-year old women with stretch-marked bellies and incipient varicose veins posing in grubby chiffon while she played the piano, watching them, making sure her rhythm matched their movements because they were all totally incapable of following her beat, however hard she tried to show them. She’d told herself it was really Art, that she was on the first rung of a great career, but sometimes when she was tired and when Dolly had again been asking questions about her job it was difficult to believe. Had all the years at Thomas Tallis, the practising, the studying, the hour after hour of gruelling effort, been for this? To play sugary tunes for worn-out women to wobble their breasts to, while even wearier men watched them and tried to get some sort of excitement from it?
But then Gerald had turned up. Financial Director, Mary Duffy who owned the place had called him, grandly. ‘Going to sort us out, my dear, put us on our feet, probably get us into the West End –’ she’d said, and Maggy had looked at him and thought he was marvellous. Square and stocky with fair hair cut close to his head and a smile that always looked as though it was meant for her and absolutely no one else at all. And he saw me, daft and young and the only one there likely to be of any use to him, Maggy thought bleakly, stirring her muddy coffee, watching the bored waitress leaning against the counter in the Wimpy Bar, and I was stupid enough to think it was all real.
The coffee-bar visits that were replaced by lunches in the local pub, the gins and tonics that made her feel giddy and a bit sick, but oh-so-adult, the desperate kisses and groppings backstage when Mary was trying to fix those awful costumes and the performers dozed in the front row, waiting till the afternoon punters came in, how marvellous it had all seemed! She’d gone through her days in a haze of excitement, taut with her own sexuality, constantly aware of her breasts in front, her buttocks pertly rounded behind, so conscious of her own body that it was as though she could feel every inch of skin, all the time. And then she’d made up her mind. Just like that. He was to be the one who’d do it, and it would be marvellous, and then – well, afterwards, who cared anyway? Anything could happen, and probably would.
So when he’d said it to her, leaning close towards her over the bar at the King’s Head, breathing into her face, when he’d said it she’d lifted her chin and smiled and said cheekily, ‘My dear, I thought you’d never ask!’ and felt immensely proud of her sophistication. He’d looked startled for a moment, his eyes flickering oddly, but then he’d grinned and leaned closer and taken the lobe of her ear between his lips so that she’d shivered all the way through to the soles of her feet.
‘My place, or yours?’ she’d said then, feeling her sophistication growing by the moment, wishing desperately that Susannah were here to hear her, that’d show Susannah and her damned French chic, because she hadn’t got this far yet, that was for sure. She’d have been talking about it interminably if she had, so obviously she hadn’t.
‘Yours,’ he said, his voice low in his throat, smiling at her. ‘I have – tiresome neighbours. Yours, my dear.’
And that had brought her down with a thump, hadn’t it? Maggy, drinking some of her coffee now, and wishing she hadn’t, almost smiled as she remembered. What on earth was she to tell him? How could she possibly take him to horrible Creffield Road? And what about Dolly? Oh, God, why did I say it, why did I say it? thought young Maggy, pushing her face into her glass of gin, planning feverishly, trying to wriggle out of it.
‘Where do you live?’ he’d asked then, and she’d said, as lightly as she could, ‘Oh, it’s rather a dump, I’m afraid. One of those awful private hotels, you know. Ealing way.’
‘Darling, how clever of you! Much better than digs with landladies with noses as long as monkey’s tails. Private and peaceful – how absolutely marvellous of you!’
So that had been that. She’d made it a day when Dolly went buying. Wednesday it was, usually, though you could never be sure. She was so disorganized, so woolly that you never really knew what she’d do next, but Ida was usually able to get her there, nagging about supplies, going on at her about running out of lavatory paper, so Wednesday it was, and that morning she made up her bed with clean sheets and managed to get some flowers in, and put on her fanciest underwear, the trimmed lace panties she’d been given for Christmas, not the sensible stretch briefs she usually wore, and, daringly, didn’t put on a brassiere. Getting out of it could be a problem, and now she’d made up her mi
nd, she wanted it to be good, to be dignified, not struggling with hooks and eyes.
Asking Ida, casually, were they going buying hadn’t been easy because she hardly ever talked to Ida these days, she was so boring, but she’d managed it, and then gone to Gunnersbury to do the first show, almost shaking with the excitement of what was to come.
And up to a point it had gone marvellously. She could still remember the afternoon show, with hardly any customers at all and the way Gerald had said easily, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mary, give the buggers their money back. It’s not worth the girls’ pay or the electrics to put the show on for ’em. Tell ’em the star’s gone down with rabies or something and they can come in half price next time. I’ll absorb it in the books, don’t you fret. Give us all an afternoon off, can’t do us any harm –’ And Mary agreeing and then the way they’d left separately with loud and obvious farewells and met again at the corner, and gone back to Acton in the almost empty bus, sitting at the back of the top deck necking all the way – oh, it had been marvellous.
Until they got to Creffield Road. The house had been quiet, someone’s radio playing somewhere, but quiet otherwise, and she’d let herself in with her key and said as casually as she could, ‘I did tell you it was a dump, darling, didn’t I? But what can you do, these days? Rents are so horrendous –’ drawling it, sounding madly relaxed, very effective.
‘My dear, not bad at all as such places go!’ he’d said, looking round. ‘When I remember my first digs my blood runs cold! You could be much worse off. Decent people run it?’
‘Tolerable,’ she’d said, and took a deep breath and began to walk upstairs, not waiting to see if he’d follow her, unbuttoning her coat as she went and feeling her fingers shake. And he had followed her, right into her room and as soon as the door was shut he’d put his arms round her and gone into a marvellous kiss, a real standing-on-one-leg, head-thrown-back-in-ecstasy film-star sort of kiss, and she’d wished she could watch it happening as well as be in there feeling it.
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