And now the memory faded, blurred at the edges into nothing. Maggy, concentrating in today’s train on the way to Holland Park, tried to see what she had done next. She could remember walking up the stairs of the little hotel towards her room, but that was all. What had it been like? Had she had a meal? Gone straight to bed? What had she done? But the memory had blanked out completely. There was nothing until the shop, that horrible dingy smelly shop.
She could see herself there, all right. Greengrocery on all sides, piles of earthy turnips and sagging carrots and onions and a few sad cabbages, and some apples too, bruised and yellowish in a box by the door, giving out a faint smell of rotting, but not strong enough to overwhelm the stink of paraffin from the stove in the corner.
There had been the old woman sitting there on a box with a sack over it, wearing an old overcoat that had obviously once belonged to a man, with the worn cuffs turned back to show the stained lining, and mittens, heavy woollen mittens out of which her fingers poked rough and red and as knobbed as the potatoes piled behind her.
‘Wotcherwant?’ the old woman had said, not getting up, holding her newspaper folded into a tight wad between her fingers. ‘Wotcherwant?’
‘Someone – I asked – I was told –’ Margaret had begun and the old woman had stared at her and sniffed, horribly, the dewdrop that had been hanging on her nose disappearing into it and then, disgustingly, oozing out again.
‘Wotcherwant?’ she’d said again, and stared up at her, and Margaret had to look away, for the pupils, pale as boiled gooseberries, had white rings round them and somehow that frightened her, made her feel sick.
‘I was told that you knew Mrs Dundas,’ she said then, and was pleased with herself for getting the words out properly. ‘I wanted to ask about Mrs Dundas.’
‘What abour ’er? She’s dead,’ the old woman said, and then laughed. ‘Dead and layin’ down now. She’m been dead for years but wouldn’t lie down –’
‘I know she’s dead, but –’ Margaret had swallowed and looked desperately out of the window into the street. A dingy narrow street with a few shops as dreary and miserable looking as this one. This was the dingy part of the town, obviously the worst part, the wrong side of the tracks, she had thought and then, absurdly, tried to remember where the railway station was, as though it really mattered.
‘The thing is, she – I think she might have been a relation of mine.’
The old woman was suddenly alert and not laughing at all. She stared at Margaret with her eyes wide and now she had to look at her, boiled gooseberries or not.
‘It was a proper will. I made sure o’ that, I did, long time ago. It were a proper will and there’s no one can say otherwise. I got the lawyer to prove it an’ all –’
‘Will?’ Margaret had said, puzzled. ‘What will?’
‘She left me what there was, fair ‘n square. No strings, she said, no strings. I looked after ’er all those years, kep’ this place goin’ an’ she left it me fair ‘n square. It’s mine and no one can say otherwise.’
‘No, of course not,’ Margaret had said, and frowned. And then understood. ‘I don’t want anything of hers, you know. Just some information, that’s all. You see – I never even knew she existed. I mean, I thought she was dead. I mean, I thought she was dead a long time before she was, you see –’
The old woman was still staring at her, her eyes as wide and horrible as ever and suddenly she said, ‘Your ’air natural like? Or does yer dye it?’
‘What?’
‘Does yer dye it? Like them tarts do?’
Margaret reddened. ‘Of course I don’t. Anyway, what’s it got to do with –’
‘She had ’air that colour. Once. When she was young, like. Bin bald, almost, this last ten years, but once she ’ad red ’air.’
At once Margaret was on edge, ready. ‘That’s the thing, you see. I – my mother came from here. And I understand that she – that her parents had died when she was young – and – well, then I was told that my – that her mother had died only recently and I thought – well, that was the thing, you see. It was just that I wondered –’
The old woman bobbed her head, folded her newspaper into an even smaller wad and then looked up at Margaret, grinning. ‘Well, well! ‘Oo’d a’ thought it? ‘Ow old are you, then? Would you be about – let me see now – sixteen, I reckon it’d be. Eh? Sixteen, are you? Be seventeen come next November?’
Margaret stared at her, her mouth dry now. She’d found something and now she didn’t want it. She didn’t want horrible smelly old women in men’s overcoats and mittens staring at her out of boiled gooseberry eyes and telling her when she’d be having her birthday. She didn’t want that, no matter what else she did want, she didn’t want that –
‘Well, ’oo’d a’ thought it! Dorothy’s brat come back! Eee, but wait till I tell ’em, just you wait! Won’t they be in a takin’! Won’t they just!’ And she rocked on her box a little, laughing, holding her wad of newspaper in both hands and banging it on her lap in an ecstasy of private delight.
Margaret turned, began to fumble with the door of the shop but now the old woman was on her feet.
‘No need to go runnin’ off, my dear, no call to make strange! You’ll be Ruby Dundas’s granddaughter, clear as you like, and it’d ill behoove me to let you go off without a sup o’tea. Or somethin’ stronger. Yer ma always liked somethin’ stronger, even when she was just a girl, poor cow!’
Margaret turned back, not looking at the old woman, her face stiff and awkward. ‘No, really, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I really didn’t mean to –’
‘It’s no bother, it don’t make no nevermind,’ the old woman said, and at that, Margaret gave in. The sound of her mother’s familiar phrase on this woman’s lips was like a leash tied round her neck. She could no more have run away now than flown through the roof. She had to stay now.
And so she had, sitting on another upturned box, holding a tin mug of thick yellow tea which she couldn’t drink, for the old woman had put a dessertspoonful of thick sugary condensed milk in it, listening to her talk. A couple of customers had come to buy pennorths of carrots and onions, staring at her curiously, and she had sat with her head down over the mug of disgusting tea, pretending not to know they were there, grateful when they went away and the old woman was back beside her, talking, talking, talking.
‘Looked after ’er all those years I did, after ’er old man died, like. Went to pieces she did. Never ’ad more’n the one, you see, that Dorothy, an’ spoiled ’er somethin’ rotten, not that ’er dad did, I’ll tell you that. He was a right tartar, took ’is belt to ’er soon as look at ’er, ’e did, and that was often enough, because she was a right piece, was that Dorothy – a right piece –’
Another customer, another scrutiny, another moment of wondering whether she could just get up and run while the old woman fiddled in her pocket for change. Could she get out? Hear no more? It was hateful, hateful, hateful –
‘– an’ then o’ course, after ’e died, she went right soft in the ’ead, an’ what was I to do? ‘Er with no kin, like, wouldn’t never see Dorothy again, so someone ’ad to take ’er on, di’nt they?’ She looked sideways at Margaret, drank some of her tea, making a slurping noise that made Margaret want to retch, hearing it. ‘So I did. All this time, an’ never got nothin’ for it, only she made ’er will, fair an’ square, left me this shop, proper like, so there’s no call to go thinkin’ –’
‘I’m not thinking anything,’ Margaret had said desperately. ‘Really I’m not. Tell me, why did – I mean, why did she – why didn’t my mother – oh –’ and she floundered and stopped, staring again at those awful white-rimmed eyes.
‘Well, natural, wasn’t it?’ The old woman seemed to understand. ‘I mean there she was, respectable woman, respectable family you might say, because ’e drank a bit, yer know ’ow men is, but respectable enough, worked for the Carters on the side ’e did, kept a decent enough place down
in Watermoor Road, never no talk about them or anythin’. And then young Dorothy goes and gets ‘erself into trouble – well, natural enough, wasn’t it? Neighbours can be right nasty, some of ’em – anyway it was a respectable neighbour’ – ood, one way or another. But me, I didn’t, I mean, I just went on like I always ’ad, being a friend, you know. That will, it’s all square and proper –’
‘Got herself into trouble?’ Margaret stared at her, not seeing the white-lined eyes now, only seeing confusion and unhappiness. ‘Into trouble?’ But she knew, really, for how could it be otherwise? Ruby Dundas, Dolly Dundas, Margaret Dundas –
‘Well, it was you, weren’t it? Funny when you think of it, really, talkin’ to you now, I mean, a real laugh –’ And she did laugh, heartily, wiping her nose on the back of one of the mittens.
‘But – my father – I mean. There was his family. The war and everything –’
‘His family? Well, that’d be a puzzle to know about, eh? Red Indians for all we knew! Though lookin’ at you now, they weren’t. But Gawd knows. Gawd knows.’
‘But they lived near here. Had a big house – flowers and fruit in bowls and –’ Margaret said it loudly, as though that would make it more obvious, would make this stupid woman understand how wrong she was being. Would convince Margaret herself that it was true.
‘Lived near ’ere? I should cocoa! No nearer’n t’other side o’ the world, my duck! One o’ they soldiers, I was told. One o’ they soldiers. Picked ’im up down the Fleece where she always ’ung out, when she could get away from her dad, and there ’e was. Never knew ’is name, so far as I could understand it, let alone anythin’ else! Oh, a right tart was Dorothy Dundas. One o’ they alley girls, down the back o’ the Fleece. Everyone knew that!’
19
One good thing about being so obsessed with the past, she realized as she poured herself vodka and tonic, is that it takes the fear out of the present. She’d let herself into the house and climbed the stairs to the flat without giving a thought to the possibility of danger, so absorbed was she in her memories. Something to be grateful for, perhaps?
She threw herself into a chair and sat there with her drink cradled in her hands, wanting to think about other things, but knowing she had to see this morning and all it had brought back to her through to the bitter end. Finding out that Jim Hornby had been from her mother’s part of the world had both shocked and reassured her. Shocked her into remembering that past misery, that sense of having been abandoned, of struggling to survive in an alien world; but comforted her because maybe it meant that he was an old friend, someone from the happy days, and possibly had helped Dolly not because he was just another of the pieces of human detritus who got themselves washed up in her sleazy boarding house, but a real, bona fide honest-to-goodness friend.
What bloody difference does it make to me if he was? she asked herself then. If your music was based on stolen money – which it is now very obvious it was – what the hell difference does it make if the thief was a casual pick-up or an old friend?
All the difference in the world. She whispered it into her glass. All the difference in the world. You do things for friends, take things from friends that you never take from or do for casual pick-ups. Casual pick-ups are for babies. Oh, Christ, casual pick-ups are for Margaret Roses. That’s how you get little princesses. That’s how you –
It doesn’t matter. You’re you, now and here. You’re a talented capable person. What the hell does it matter how you started out? Can’t you take yourself for what you are now, rather than for what they were?
But she couldn’t, still couldn’t, despite all the years of trying. Ever since that day twenty years ago when she had found out what she was, how the special uniqueness that was herself, that was Maggy, had started out she had been consumed with rage and fury. Against Dolly who had done it to her.
She remembered, now, the way Dolly had looked when she’d told her. The way she had sat there at the kitchen table, her head bent as she looked at her hands lying lax in front of her, and let Maggy’s fury burst over her like a breached dam.
‘You were a tart – a stinking lousy tart! You were just a filthy pick-up – they told me, that horrible woman told me, you were talked about everywhere – they all knew you – I hate you, I hate you –’
Ida had stood there too, behind Dolly, watching her, her face tight and closed. Ida silent and watchful and unmoving.
‘You robbed me, you know that? You go on and on about what you want to do for me, how I’ve got to have everything you can give me, how me learning music is so important and – and all the time you’re robbing me and killing the people I care about and – I hate you, I hate you –’
‘I never killed no one,’ Dolly said piteously, seizing on to it somehow, looking for something she could deny. ‘I never hurt no one, my love, I just wanted the best for you, that’s all, that’s why I never said –’
‘Yes you did, you did, you did, you did!’ She shrieked it, wildly, luxuriously, enjoying the fury and the feeling of letting go. It was like the times when you were little and needed to go to the lavatory, were bursting with it, and then you got there and you could let go. She was letting go now, bursting all the filth that was in her all over Dolly’s head. ‘You did, you killed my dad, you killed him, you –’
It was Ida who stopped it, leaning over almost casually and hitting her face hard with the back of her hand so that her cheek stung. Maggy could feel it still, the pain and shame of that blow.
‘Stupid bitch!’ she’d said dispassionately. ‘Stupid, spoiled, selfish bitch! She’s spent her whole life worrying over you, put herself into a business she’s no good at, always in trouble with, all for you, so that you could have a home. Spoiled rotten you are, spoiled rotten.’
‘Leave her be, Ida. She don’t mean no harm. She doesn’t understand, poor little love, how can she understand? I told her such tales – such tales I told her –’ Dolly, crying again. ‘I meant no harm, my lovely, I meant no harm. I never meant no harm, but it never comes out right.’
It never comes out right. It never did. Poor Dolly, Maggy thought, and was startled at the thought. Poor Dolly? After all these years, she could think that?
Yes, poor Dolly. I don’t know why, yet, but it’s there inside me somewhere. I’ll work it out yet. Poor Dolly.
Forget it now, for God’s sake forget it! She got up and went to the piano and opened it, lifting the heavy lid and balancing it on the stick and sitting herself down and then letting herself go on it. She played everything and anything; exam pieces from the old TT days, the new tracks she’d just finished recording, the stuff she was going to use in the States and then, at last, she loosened, came free, and the music began by itself, the improvisations that would come upon her sometimes, the notes pleating themselves into perfect patterns under her fingers, coming out of her hands like a fountain, bypassing her head, just leaping up out of her guts, rippling, banging, sharply dissonant music. Somewhere a small dispassionate Maggy thought – pity the tape recorder isn’t on. There’s some marvellous stuff here and I’m going to lose it all – but that didn’t matter. Just play, let it happen, let the piano sing, let her belly sing, let her head sing. Ripple, run, leap and die, form and reform. Music.
She didn’t hear Theo’s key in the door, didn’t know he was there until at last, sweating, her head hurting a little with the pressure she’d allowed to build up inside her and her legs trembling, she stopped, splaying her fingers over the dead keyboard, and looked up and saw him.
‘Christ, but that was – what happened? Did you record it? For God’s sake say you recorded it!’
‘No,’ she said dully and stood up, and smiled at him vaguely and wiped the heel of her hand over her forehead. It was wet. ‘No. It just – I just felt like it.’
‘It was bloody incredible,’ Theo said, and stood and stared at her, his face a little blank. He seemed suddenly like one of the fans, standing and staring and not daring to ask for an autograph. �
��That was incredible.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and went back to the armchair and fell into it, stretching out, pulling on her muscles, enjoying the sensation. She was drained and exhausted and it was marvellous. Better than sex, better than sleep, better than breathing. Music.
‘Are you all right? Don’t feel ill? How’s your head?’ He was fussing round her now, sitting on the arm of her chair, and touching her forehead, and she wanted to put her arms up round his neck and lie against him. She was feeling good now, marvellous in fact, and she opened her eyes and smiled at him.
‘I’m fine, really I am. I’ll sort it all out, you see if I don’t.’
‘Sort out what? The music? Can you remember it? It sounded fantastic. Fan-tas-tic –’
‘What? Oh. No. Maybe. I don’t know. One day. It’s all there somewhere. No, this other business. It’ll be all right.’
He looked doubtful. ‘How d’you mean?’
She closed her eyes again. ‘I’ll work it out. It’s all got to be linked together, somehow, hasn’t it? Jim Hornby and Cirencester and everything. I’ll go there, find out. I can manage it now –’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ His voice sharpened. ‘Maggy? Have you got a headache or anything? Maybe we ought to see the doctor again after all –’
She remembered then, and sat up. ‘Mmm? I’m sorry, love, I was half asleep, I think, for a second. Ignore it. How’d it go at the office? Are the tapes all right? What did they say about your stuff from Bristol?’
Fool, she told herself, smiling up at him. You nearly gave it all away then. Be careful, be careful. It could have been him, after all. I wish I could feel safe with you, Theo. I wish I could, be careful, be careful.
‘Fine,’ he said, doubtful still, staring down at her, his hand on her forehead. ‘You feel hot, you know maybe you’re a bit feverish –’
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