And they’d gone across the room to her bed, and he’d said something, his voice deep and heavy, but she couldn’t do anything about what he’d said, because suddenly there was her door wide open and Dolly was there staring at them, her hair on end and her face looking a mess because she’d been putting her make-up on and hadn’t finished, and then shouting and carrying on and generally being –
Oh, God, Maggy thought. Oh, God, it must have been funny! But she didn’t laugh, dropping money on the table to pay for her coffee, going out into the street, walking towards the underground station. What a bloody fool I was! But it mattered to me, silly though it must have looked to them, it mattered dreadfully to me, and she shouldn’t have done it, she really shouldn’t.
Gerald being sent away, the fights, the arguments between Dolly and herself, the tears and the fury when she told Mary that Maggy was only sixteen, not twenty, as she’d pretended, and getting her sacked. And after that being sent off to spend a few weeks at the seaside with Dolly’s old friend Minnie, as virginal as she had been all her life and sick with fury and disappointment although she told herself it was love, Real Love that was causing her pain. Not that she had really believed it, even then, but at sixteen you have to have something to be dramatic about.
And then the message to go back. No, Minnie didn’t know why. No, she didn’t think Dolly was ill, anyway Ida’d never said she was. Just that Maggy was to go home to Creffield Road, that Dolly wanted her. And the journey back from Deal, sitting in the train watching the soft Kent countryside dribble away past the windows, not knowing what she was going back to.
Walking down past Fletcher Street, towards Ealing Common, deliberately going the long way round so that she wouldn’t have to go along Creffield Road, not wanting to see it again after all these years, Maggy felt tired, and her head began to ache. Yesterday had been pretty awful, after all. It wasn’t every day you got knocked out; she was entitled to have a headache. But she knew her headache wasn’t really due to being knocked out. It was all the old pain coming back as the memories moved from the absurd to the really hateful.
Dolly was sitting in the kitchen, crying, when she came in, dropping her case in the hall and walking through to the back with dragging feet and a deliberately sulky expression on her face. I’ll show her she can’t make me do what she wants, she thought, pushing the kitchen door open. I’ll show her I’m an Individual, that I’ve Got My Own Life to Live. She formed the words in her mind, seeing them written up, almost hearing them. I’ll Show Her.
But Dolly in floods of tears, her face blotched and swollen, was so shocking a sight that she forgot the sulky expression and stood in the doorway staring, her mouth half open, frightened, because sometimes Dolly got angry and sometimes wept easy comfortable tears, but she had never, not ever, looked like this. Desperate and bleak as though she’d been totally abandoned.
‘What’s the matter?’ she’d said, staring at Dolly, not able to come any further into the room. ‘What’s happened?’
Ida’s voice then, from the other side of the kitchen, coming out from the corner where the fridge was, walking towards her, jerking her head at Dolly.
‘She’s had bad news and she’s upset. Been like this for two days. She wants you.’
‘But what’s the matter?’ Still standing by the door, too frightened to come in any further, too alarmed by the sight of Dolly being so strange to risk coming near her.
‘She’ll tell you. She wants to – go on, girl – for God’s sake, don’t stand there like a stuffed dummy!’ And she’d given her shoulder a push so that she had to come in, and she’d walked over to the table awkwardly and said, ‘Mum?’
Which was odd, really, because she hadn’t called her that for years and years, hardly ever called her anything directly, always thought of her, spoke of her as Dolly, never as Mum.
Dolly lifted her head, peered at her through half closed puffy lids and her face folded, became saggy and shaky and she said thickly, ‘Is that my baby? Is that my little one? Oh, Margaret Rose, my lovey, what shall I do? She’s dead, an’ I never said I was sorry nor anythin’ an’ now I never can – oh, Margaret Rose, what shall I do now she’s dead?’
‘Who’s dead?’ She wanted to back away, to get out of reach of the hands Dolly was holding out to her, but she couldn’t, and just stood there staring and Dolly took hold of her, her hands feeling hot through the cloth of her coat sleeves, and pulled her closer. ‘She’s dead, my darlin’ an’ I never saw her, no said what I ought nor did what I ought –’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dolly, tell the girl properly! You’re just maudling on – you wanted her back, and now you’ve got her, so make a job of it!’ Ida’s voice was sharp and loud, but there was a warmth in it, a deep compassion that made Maggy look at her sideways, surprised.
Dolly seemed to shiver a little and then let go of Maggy’s arms and stood up, heavily, and leaned forward and kissed her, and again Maggy wanted to pull away, for her face was wet and unbearably hot against her cheek, for she was still cold from the outside air. But she didn’t, feeling the need that was in Dolly and after a moment, she put her hands out, touching Dolly’s shoulders.
‘What is it? What’s happened? Who’s dead?
‘It’s my Mam, my little love, my old Mam. She’s dead of a stroke, an’ I never knew it till it was too late. I swear I never knew –’
‘Your – who?’ Maggy stared, and then turned and looked at Ida. ‘What does she mean?’
‘Your grandmother,’ Ida said shortly and came and took Dolly by the shoulders and sat her down again, and taking a handkerchief from her apron pocket wiped her face, mopping at her eyes and nose, and Dolly sat with her face tilted upwards, and let her, like a baby.
‘My – but I haven’t got a grandmother.’
‘Not now you haven’t,’ Ida said shortly. ‘Oh, come on, Dolly! She must have been an old woman, for God’s sake, and she gave you a hell of a life, one way and another, as far as I can tell. No need to get into this sort of taking, is there? Life has to go on, you know.’
‘I wanted Margaret Rose, because she’s my girl. You can understand that, can’t you, Ida? I lost my Mam so I need my girl. You can see what I mean?’ Dolly still had her face tilted up, staring at Ida, her eyes more open now, looking appealingly at her.
‘Me? I wouldn’t know any such thing,’ Ida said. ‘How could I? What do I know of what a mother feels like?’ And she moved away, went to the stove and put on the kettle.
‘You said they were all dead,’ Maggy said, confusion building in her. ‘You said that you were an orphan and that after my father died his family all died and – how can I have a grandmother?’
That was when the door opened again and she turned to look to see who it was, and Gerald came in. Gerald, in pyjama trousers, yawning and obviously just out of bed.
18
After all this time why does it matter? Why should you beat your brains out over someone you only thought you cared about and who certainly never gave a tuppenny damn about you, who used you and your mother as he would have used a box of paper tissues? One wipe and chuck it away –
It mattered then, that was the thing. Even now, thirty-seven, poised, adult, sophisticated, successful, big name in her own world; Maggy reeled off the words inside her head, working at convincing herself; even now, I can still feel the hot thick feeling that I got when I realized what had happened and why he was there. He’d stood there in the kitchen door looking at her with his gritty unwashed eyes under his tousled hair and grinned, a wide-eyed self-congratulatory sort of grin, and said, ‘Hello, my dear! Fancy seeing you! We can’t go on meeting like this!’
It had been Ida who had saved it, who had moved in and prevented Maggy from disgracing herself by crying or shouting or throwing herself at him or something.
‘Shut up, you,’ she’d said and her voice was as gritty as his eyes. ‘You’re the last thing any of us need. Lay off. And get the bloody hell out of here –’
‘No, Ida, don’t – leave him be. He don’t mean no harm,’ Dolly had said, her eyes still wet, her face still horribly puffy but not, thank God, crying now. ‘You don’t have to go away, Gerry. But don’t go upsetting no one –’ and she’d looked at Maggy sideways and then smiled, a silly soft smile, and standing on the underground platform, waiting for a train to take her back to Holland Park, Maggy saw the smile again and tried to understand the message in it. Had she been saying I’m sorry? Saying – I just tried to make everyone comfortable, I never meant to hurt you, but you didn’t really give a damn about him, and anyway the man was a shit, just a nasty little user and you know me and users, I always let them get away with it, it was the only way I knew how to be, whatever people wanted, I always let them have it, because I didn’t know any other way to be –
Maybe. Maybe that was what she meant, Maggy thought now, thirty-seven poised etcetera Maggy. But I was sixteen then and I couldn’t understand the message. All I knew was she’d robbed me, destroyed all my fantasies about the first man I’d fallen in love with, the first one I’d imagined sex with, the one I’d planned to be the first. It had hurt dreadfully, dreadfully, and as the train came into the station and she moved forward to get on to it, she felt the tears she hadn’t shed twenty years ago behind her eyes, making them feel bulging and hot.
And as if that hadn’t been enough, there had been the whole bloody business about her grandmother. Her dead grandmother.
In a way, Gerald had acted as the plug to Dolly’s cascade of tears. From the time he had appeared in the kitchen her crying had stopped. She seemed to slide back into being her usual self, albeit a woebegone version, but still her usual self, relaxed, easy, thinking only of the pleasure of now and the pains of now.
‘It’s lovely to have you home, my little love,’ she’d said when Gerald had taken himself off with a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of toast in the other to go back to bed. ‘I’ve missed you somethin’ chronic. I’m that glad to have you back.’
‘It was you sent me to that stinking place,’ Margaret had said tightly, leaning against the dresser, staring at her. ‘Is that why you wanted to get rid of me?’ And she’d jerked her head towards the kitchen door through which Gerald had gone. ‘So’s you could get yourself all –’
‘Oh, don’t mind him!’ Dolly had said. ‘He’s a soft thing, no use to anyone. All talk and show he is. Wind and water like the miller’s cat. Him and that stupid cow as you got that fancy job with! I told you, tell me what’s goin’ on and what you’re up to, an’ I’ll know if it’s all right, but there, you would have it you knew better’n anyone, wouldn’t tell me nothin’ –’
‘Anyone who tells you anything has to be out of their minds,’ she’d said then, still sick with rage and hurt and shame. That he could treat her like that, stay here with the woman who’d torn them asunder, that he could so demean himself as to drink her tea and eat her toast – and whatever else it was he’d got from her, a deeply hidden voice in her mind whispered – that he could be so easily deceived; the fancy words had twisted themselves in her head, in and out between her eyes, making her face feel stiff and making her words come out thick and sulky. ‘I’ll never tell you anything ever. You’ll only use it against me.’
‘Oh, my love, as if I would! Didn’t I always want the best for you, didn’t I? Didn’t I try all I knew how to –’
‘What’s this about a grandmother?’ she’d said then, very loudly. ‘You told me they were all dead. Said we were alone in the world. What’s all this about me having a grandmother?’
Dolly’s eyes had filled with tears again then. ‘Oh, my love, I didn’t want to upset you, did I? I don’t want ever to upset you! An’ I thought, I always thought, least said soonest mended. And my old Mam, she –’ She shook her head then, and looked at Ida. ‘It was better I never told you, weren’t it, Ida? Tell her it was better.’
‘It was better. Now can we shut up about it? You’ve got the girl back, you’ve cried Lake Windermere, now shut up about it. She’ll have to get a job, now she’s back, won’t she? What are you going to do about that? The way this place eats money you can’t afford not to have her working – and paying something to her keep –’
‘She don’t have to pay nothin’, nor never will!’ Dolly had said loudly, ‘I told you before, Ida, I’m glad to have you lookin’ after business an’ that, but I don’t have my own child payin’ anythin’ to me, not now, nor never. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Then you’ll be in Carey Street and good luck to you,’ Ida had said shortly. ‘I’m sick of it. You let anyone put their feet under your table as wants to, and to hell with everything else. Him and her and – I’ve had enough of it, I’m getting out.’ But she went on crashing the pans as she always did, organizing the next meal, and they all knew it was just talk. She was as much a part of Creffield Road as they were, as she had always been and always would be.
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,’ Dolly said vaguely and stood up. ‘I’m feeling poorly, my love, I truly am. I don’t often feel poorly but I – I’m that glad you’re back, really I am. I should never have sent you down to Minnie, but it seemed the best thing at the time –’
She stood at the door, looking at Margaret. ‘It’ll be all right now. We’ll just go on as we always have, eh, love? Yes, that we shall. I want a bath –’
And she’d gone wandering out of the room, leaving Margaret standing with her back to the dresser, her arms folded tightly over her chest, her head sizzling with different feelings and thoughts and confusions.
It was Ida who had started her off again. Did she do it on purpose, I wonder? Maggy, staring out of the train window at the swooping black pipes on the blacker tunnel walls, tried to work that one out. Did she want me to do what I did, go shooting off to Cirencester like that? Silly childish thing it had been to do –
‘Well, now, what are you going to do?’ she’d asked, not looking at Margaret, mashing potatoes with a heavy wooden mallet, banging the pan on the table.
‘Do? I don’t know,’ Margaret had said and stared down at her feet. Gerald and grandmothers – it was all too much.
‘Well, well! And you the one that always knows her own mind! You amaze me!’ Ida had put milk and margarine in the potatoes and was mashing them harder than ever now and Margaret watched her, liking the way the yellow of the fat disappeared into the white of the potatoes. ‘I didn’t think you’d give up that easily.’
At which point the idea had come into her mind. Had Ida meant it to? Possibly. But why should she? What difference would it make to her whether I found out or not? And what the hell does it matter now, anyway? Forget it. Don’t think about Cirencester. You’ll only get yourself all stirred up –
But of course, she did think about it, all the way home to Holland Park.
Getting the money to go had been easy. She’d walked into Dolly’s room while she was in the bath, and gone to her bag and taken out all she could find in the way of cash. Not a lot, just seven pounds fifteen shillings, but it would do. And then, deeply aware of her daring, full of her own sense of will, she’d gone out of the house and taken the bus to Paddington. Just like that. She was going to Cirencester to find out about her grandmother. Just like that.
She’d thought first of all about hitch-hiking. She had no idea where Cirencester was, only that you went there from Paddington, Dolly had told her that long ago, when she had told her all the stories of the handsome soldier from the big house and the pretty girl and all that had happened to them. Paddington, she’d said, change at Swindon Junction. But how could you hitch-hike that way, not knowing exactly where it was? So it had to be a train – but there was no need to spend good money on it. Margaret was pleased with herself, planning how to travel free, buying a platform ticket at Paddington, getting the information she needed about the trains at the information desk, and then getting on the train and watching out for the guard. She knew how to do it, even though she’d never tried it, because Gerald had told her
once, laughing about it, describing the way he’d travelled all over the country when he’d been very young and cheeky, hiding in the loo, getting right behind the door so that when the guard opened it he thought it was empty and went on his way collecting other people’s tickets.
‘It’s easy if you’re small, and I was thin, pitifully thin and half-starved,’ he’d told Maggy, laughing at the idea of successful Gerald being underfed and thin enough to hide behind lavatory doors on trains. ‘And if you’re cheeky enough –’
So she’d done it on the train, watching to see the man come along the corridor, slipping out and into the lav, and then hearing him go away, shouting, ‘Tickets perlease,’ above the noise of the train. It had been fun, that, made her feel she was really living in a big way.
Until she had arrived at Cirencester and had the awful business of having to pretend she’d lost her ticket because you couldn’t get past the barrier with just a tuppenny platform ticket from Paddington, and having to give a name and address. She’d given them Dolly’s, taking a malicious pleasure in that. She’ll have to pay for it when they get on to her, she’d thought, marching out into the road, dark and shadowy and smelling of dead leaves. Then she’ll be sorry.
It had been worse at the hotel. She’d walked into the middle of the town, trying to discover what it was like but failing to see more than blank house fronts in the lamplight and feeling the quietness of it like a blanket. Some of the houses had lights in the windows but mostly they did not, showing blind shuttered fronts to her as she went hurrying by, and she was filled with a vast loneliness, a feeling of being the only person alive in all this dead town. But at least there had been a hotel, a small place, little more than a pub, and she’d walked in, casual, supercilious, and asked for a single room, and had been rapidly deflated by the cold fishlike stare of the man behind the desk, finishing up almost pleading with him to let her have a room, agreeing to pay in advance as she had no luggage. A horrible experience.
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