The Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden

  She said, “It always seemed to make it worse, somehow. That he made so little money out of it, I mean. He did it because it gave him a feeling of power, I think.”

  She had taken the stuff herself. She did not say when she had begun to do so but I assumed that it was some time after I had known her. Piers had told her that there was no danger. She had not believed him but she had taken the stuff just the same. Afterwards, when she could not do without it, he had made it hard for her.

  She said, “He would say that I couldn’t have any more. He said it was for my own good, but it wasn’t that. He wanted me to have to beg for it, to go down on my knees to him. He knew that while I was like that I couldn’t do without him and that was what he wanted. Not because he loved me or valued me in any way but just because he liked to feel that I was tied to him. He wants, always, to be the centre of things. He’s not much liked and he needs to be liked. It’s necessary to his vanity. He used to make me run errands for him before he would let me have the stuff. I used to take it to the Flamingo in my handbag and deliver it to the people there.”

  I said, astonished that my voice should sound so steady, “But you gave it up, didn’t you”

  “Twice. The first time I went into a nursing home and it didn’t work. When I came out I still couldn’t do without it. I went back to Piers. He wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I threatened to give him up to the police if he wouldn’t help me and he laughed and said that I was as much involved as he was. That I’d delivered the stuff to people who had no idea that he was mixed up in it at all. Then he said that if I didn’t get out of the flat he’d call the police himself. He would have done—he’s so vain that he wouldn’t think there was any danger for him. I wasn’t exactly dignified. I screamed at him and at one point I went for him with a knife. I think I wanted to kill him. And he only laughed at me. In the end I realised that he meant what he said—that he’d finished with me. I was no fun for him any more. He’d enjoyed watching me destroy myself and now the process was complete he no longer found me amusing. He pushed me out of the flat and locked the door. I shouted and banged on the door until I was too tired to care any more, but he didn’t answer me. Then I went away and Carl took me back to the nursing home. They tried to make me say where I got the drugs but I wouldn’t. They cured me and they let me out about three months ago. They were very good. They even found me a job. My boss knows all about me; I think he rather enjoys having an ex-addict about the place. It makes him feel all noble and Christian. It’s nice for him.”

  She sounded very bitter and she had gone alarmingly pale.

  I tried not to look at her. I said, “Who did you give the drugs to?”

  “Most of the people at the Flamingo. Nowhere else. The staff and the people who go there. Carl, of course. That’s why he’s so scared, I imagine. He knows Callaghan was a sort of protege of Piers, and I suppose he thinks that if he says anything he shouldn’t that Piers will cut off his supplies. Piers has a controlling interest in the Flamingo, you know.”

  I said, “Did Jimmie Callaghan take the stuff?”

  “I think so. He didn’t start going to the club until after I’d gone into hospital for the second time. At least, he may have done, but I didn’t notice him until I came out. He was in the Flamingo with Piers the first time I saw him. He’s a nice-looking boy. Piers likes young boys, and not for the usual reason. Just because they’re easier to corrupt.”

  Her voice was hard and dry with anger.

  I said, “Why in Heaven’s name did you go on going there?”

  She said, with a kind of bravado that bordered on tears, “I was too deeply in, Willy. I told myself that I went there just to make sure that I was safe, that it was all over. But it wasn’t the reason. By then it was the only sort of place and the only sort of people that I wanted to know. I’m not happy with ordinary, decent people any more. They make me dislike myself too much.”

  I didn’t want her to get introspective. I said, “And Rose and Jasmine? Were they mixed up in this business?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Piers wouldn’t have thought them safe enough. Though they were mixed up with Jimmie’s gang right enough.”

  I said, “Gang?”

  “It’s just a way of speaking. They were a lot of young thugs who went about together. They were good ground for someone like Piers. They listened to his patter, you see, and thought he was God.”

  I asked her about Humphrey and she shook her head.

  “Not Humphrey. I’m sure about that. I don’t think Piers would want to do him that kind of harm.”

  I said, “He’s done him harm enough. He made him lie to the police.”

  She looked uncertain. “I don’t understand that. I never did. You see, I know that Piers wasn’t at home when he said he was. I know, because I went to his flat some time after midnight on the night the girl was killed.”

  She looked at me miserably. “It was for Carl. Not for me. Do you remember how drunk he was at the club? He’d run out of the stuff and he wanted it badly. He’d been to see Piers but he wasn’t in so he’d come to the Flamingo to look for him there. When he couldn’t find Piers he got drunk but it didn’t help. It never does. After you left the club he was so ill that I took him home. I tried to make him quiet but it wasn’t any good so that in the end I said that I would get the stuff for him. He’s a nice little man and he’d been kind to me. I went to Piers’s flat. I remember the time because the clock struck midnight when I went into the house and he wasn’t there. I waited for about twenty minutes and he didn’t come. I remember that I thought it was funny because he usually goes home so early.”

  I said, “Perhaps he wanted the police to think he was at home. Perhaps he wanted the alibi for himself and not for Humphrey.”

  She stared at me. “But why? He wouldn’t have wanted Humphrey to get into trouble. He loves him, Willy. As much as he loves anyone.”

  “Did he know about Rose?”

  She nodded. “Yes, he knew. I know that because the first time I saw her I was with Piers. She came into the club with Jimmie and the rest of the boys and Piers told me who she was. I remember because he laughed and said, `That’s my brother’s little whore.’”

  I said, “You nearly told me that once before. Look—if Piers knew about Rose, then he must have known that it would look bad for Humphrey if she disappeared. Why should he have made it worse for him with a lie?”

  She looked distressed. “It may not have seemed so awful for him. To lie to the police, I mean. And anyway …” She stopped and looked confused.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I was going to say that it wasn’t Rose who was murdered. It was Jasmine. And maybe Piers had no reason to think that Humphrey had had anything to do with her. So you see it might not have mattered if the police found out that Humphrey had lied about the time he came home. Only of course that doesn’t make sense because no one knew that it wasn’t Rose who was dead, until afterwards.”

  I said, with a cold feeling of horror, “But suppose Piers did know that it was Jasmine and not Rose who was dead? Then it would have been a reasonable risk, wouldn’t it? If the police accepted the fact that Humphrey was back at the flat just after twelve because Piers had said he was, then they would assume that Piers was there also. So he would be safe. And if they did find out—well then, Humphrey was only, being rather stupid and silly in lying to them. No more. Because it wasn’t Rose who was dead but a girl that he did not know and had no reason to kill. It would have worked, you see, if they hadn’t found Rose’s handbag by the canal. That was what put them on to Humphrey in the first place.”

  She said, “Do you think that Piers killed her, then?”

  My hands were sweating and I wiped them with my handkerchief. I said, “Oh, God, how should I know? If I say he might have killed her it will only be wishful thinking because I hate him so. Why should he kill her?”

  She screwed up her mouth and said, in a tentative, unhappy way, “I don’t
think you would need to go far to find a reason. Not among people like that.”

  The acceptance and the despair in her voice touched me like a cold finger. It brought into sharp relief for me the horror and the shabbiness of a world she knew too well. She looked at me with a kind of shame in her eyes as if she were suddenly aware of the depth of her own private knowledge.

  She said, with difficulty, “Willy, are you going to the police? Have you enough to go on, I mean?”

  I knew that if I said that I must go to the police she would tell them all she knew and not count the cost to herself.

  I said, “I don’t want you to be mixed up in it. There may be no need. It wouldn’t be pleasant, you know.”

  She said, with sharp anger, “Don’t be a bloody fool.” And then, more gently, “You don’t have to be quixotic about me, Willy.”

  She turned away from me and I was conscious, although I could not see her face, of the extent of her humiliation and self-disgust. Her air of careful assurance had gone and without it she was painfully vulnerable. Her voice cracked with the effort of sounding ordinary and casual and shot several tones higher.

  She said, “Willy, you don’t have to mind about things being pleasant for me. I haven’t much to lose.”

  I suppose that I could have gone up to her and taken her in my arms. It might have helped her a little just then because she was lonely and in need of love. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to touch her. Instead, I delivered a little homily about starting a new life. It was sincere and well-meant but it sounded as flat as a cold omelette. The only good it did was to give her time to collect the shreds of her dignity. By the time I had finished her eyes were mocking me.

  She said, “Dear Willy, I’m sorry that I went emotional on you. It’s really your own fault; you brought back my blameless girlhood. But I’m not repentant, you see. I’m a bad bitch, and not ashamed.”

  Her voice was bright and hard. I think I apologised unsteadily, and we stared at each other for a moment or two.

  Then I asked her, to gloss over a bad moment, whether there was anyone else at the club that the girls had known. She said that she didn’t know who their friends were. That she had been out of touch.

  I remembered what Mrs. Castle had said about an old man who had died.

  She said, “You mean old Menhennet. He was quite a character. He’d been going to the Flamingo for years. He was a filthy old man. He smelt and his trousers were tied up with string. He was a bit pathetic in his way. He was a kind of Ancient Mariner—he used to button-hole people and tell them what a wag he’d been in his younger days. He didn’t drink much—he used to sit at a table near the band and mumble away to himself. I think the girls knew him. They were talking to him one evening, I remember. I thought they were doing it for a lark. I remember that we laughed about it because he couldn’t take his eyes off them. Afterwards I was sorry that I’d laughed.”

  I asked her why and she went pink. She said, “Partly because it was unkind. He could help being dirty but he couldn’t help being old and a bore. And because he did one rather sweet thing. He came into the club one evening when there were a lot of people there and he went up to your Rose. She was sitting with Jimmie and his friends and they were all pretty drunk. He pulled a bunch of violets out of his pocket and gave them to Rose. They were very dead violets—they looked as if they’d been in his pocket for days. Of course they all thought it was terribly funny. Except Rose. She smiled at him, she was a kind-looking child. But the others laughed and he went out of the club mumbling to himself. I don’t think he came in again. He died—they were talking about it at the bar when I went in a few weeks ago. They stopped talking as soon as they saw me, I’m not in with them any more, you see. So I don’t know any more—except that he is dead.”

  I said, “I don’t suppose there is any more to it than that.”

  She said, “No, I don’t suppose there is,” and we both looked at the floor. I said good-bye to her and thanked her in a stilted way. I think that she was glad to see me go.

  When I had left her I stood on the Embankment. There was no breeze and along the gutters the dirty paper lay still in the hot dust.

  I was weary and appallingly ashamed. My hands were hot and dirty and I rubbed at them with my handkerchief in a kind of frantic anxiety as if it were immensely important that they should be clean. Then I realised that it was a pointless thing to do so I put the grubby handkerchief away and got into the car and drove away.

  Chapter Ten

  The sandown road was long and grey and ugly; even on this hot day it seemed to provide a channel for a chill, unpleasant wind. At the end farthest from the canal the houses were well-kept and clean; half way along they declined dramatically both in cleanliness and respectability. By the time I reached the canal the street seemed both dirty and disreputable; I parked my car round the comer by the canal feeling that it would be less noticeable there. When I had locked the car, I stood for a moment by the fence that walled off the canal. It was quite low and I could look over it.

  The water was brown and thick with leaves and sludge; it gave off a sweet, rotten smell. About two hundred yards away was the bridge where Jasmine’s body had been found; it was an ugly, Victorian affair, high and rectangular, like the footbridges that span railway lines. There were some boys playing on the bank; I could hear their voices, shrill and sharp and cockney in the stillness of the late afternoon. I remembered that it had been boys who had found the girl’s drowned body.

  I felt a sudden upsurge of pity and of horror. I thought, with a pain that was almost physical, of the life cut short, the terror and the surprise. I wondered if she had known she was going to die or if the blow on the head had come too suddenly for fear. I remembered the photograph of Jasmine that her mother had shown me, and I wondered what she had looked like when they had taken her from the river.

  I was very cold in spite of the thundery heat. I left the canal and walked into the road. Then I saw Piers. He came down the steps of a house just ahead of me. He was hatless and he seemed to be in a hurry. He strutted up the street, away from me, like an angry barnyard cock.

  I climbed the steps of the house he had just left and examined the greasy line of cards beneath the bell-push by the open door.

  The bottom card read, “Callaghan. Flat Four.”

  I went in. The hall was crowded with bicycles and battered perambulators. A suitcase stood at the bottom of the bare, wooden stairs and I almost fell over it. I climbed the stairs slowly.

  The door was on the second landing. As I reached it, it jerked open violently and a man stood on the threshold. He was a very young man. His hair was like white silk and his eyes were wide and blue and sullen. He wore a loose linen jacket and a flowing tartan tie. Except for the clothes he looked like a clean public schoolboy. He held a suitcase in one hand and with the other he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth.

  He said, “What d’you want?” His voice was uneducated but surprisingly soft and musical.

  I said, “I want to speak to Mr. Callaghan.”

  Neither then, nor later, did I understand why he acted as he did. There was a spurt of pure panic in his eyes; he dropped the handkerchief and the blood from his cut mouth ran down his chin and on to his collar. His arm moved forwards and upwards and the heavy suitcase caught me on the side of the head so that I reeled backwards against the banister rail and fell. I put my arm up to defend my face but there was no second blow. The boy ran lightly down the stairs and his feet clattered on the stone of the steps outside.

  I lay where I had fallen for about a minute. I got slowly to my feet and felt a sharp pain in my head, just above the eye. I held tightly to the banister rail and went down the stairs. When I reached the street it was hot and empty except for two women gossiping on the opposite pavement. I went back into the house and climbed the stairs and went into the room the boy had left.

  It was a large, high room, furnished shabbily with a bed, a wardrobe and a few chairs. There was a
gas ring with a mess of dried fat about its base and a washbasin with a rough, wooden cover. The room was quite bare of personal possessions.

  Someone came into the room behind me. I turned and saw a vast woman with a body that bulged and billowed beneath a dirty, flowered apron. She had unpleasant eyes and a mouth with almost no lips at all.

  She said, “What was you wanting?”

  I said, “I was looking for Jimmie Callaghan,” and I put my hand up to my head. It came away tacky and dark with blood.

  The woman said, “You’ve cut yer’ead. Did’e do that?”

  I said dully, “There must have been an iron corner to the thing,” and felt for my handkerchief.

  She said, “Best come downstairs and I’ll give you a lend of a bandage.”

  I followed her and she took me down to the basement and produced a bandage and some warm water. She peered eagerly at the cut.

  “That’s nasty,” she said. “Looks as if you’ll want a stitch.”

  She spoke with some satisfaction. Then she said, “You won’t find Jimmie’ere. Give’im notice, I did, weeks ago. Only just got’im out. Waiting for the rent, see. Couldn’t let’im go without the rent, now could I?”

  I shook my head stupidly. She said, “You look as if you could do with a cuppa.” She put a kettle on the stove and went on. “Not that I was sorry to, see the back of’im, I can tell you. Didn’t fancy the company’e was keeping, though’e didn’t reelly give me cause to complain—not until a few weeks back. Then I saw me chance and I took it.”

  I said, “What sort of a man is he?”

  “Not a man, reelly. More of a boy. He wasn’t no worse than most boys when ’e come’ere. I’ve got boys meself and I know what they’re like. Then’e got into bad company, started throwing ’is money about, see, and we’ad the police’ere. Lets a house down, that sort of thing. Not that I said anything about that. After all, ’e paid his rent regular, which is more than I could say for some of the others.”