‘There is tunnels, and I know there’s kids down there, too, ’cause I’ve heard stories about them. Only it’s cold and dangerous. You don’t live in rooms like up here but in holes like rats. What I mean is – well, it’s better to be honest, isn’t it? – me and Abbie and Kevin’s young, but you, Gawdalmighty, how old are you?’
‘Ninety-seven.’
‘Well, then, you’re a bit old to go pot-holing, innit? Do your gran or whatever she is a favour, Abbie. ’Snot fair if we have to drag some old dinosaur around with us. She’ll be much better off in a home. I know it’s not the same as having your own place, but she’ll be warm and safe and, I mean, she’s not gonna live for ever, is she?’
‘I’m not going anywhere without my mum.’
Mum’s angry. ‘Do you think only children like to be free? That I can’t hear or feel just because I can’t see? I don’t know what you look like, Rosa, but I know how much you love Kevin, how you two need to be together. And that’s even more important than being comfortable. So don’t write me off.’
‘OK, we’ll take the old bat – I mean, we’ll all go down there together. First sign of illness we dump her at the nearest hospital and run. Don’t wanna be stuck with a fucking corpse, innit? No disrespect and that.’
Mum starts to sing in a funny high voice like she really is a bat. Don’t go gaga on me, I think. This is her song: ‘My baby as gawn dahn the plughole, / My baby as gawn dahn the drain. / The poor little fing was so skinny and thin, / ’E should have been washed in a jug.’ Mum sings some more, then she says we’re all going down the plughole like dead skin. But we aren’t dead; we’re very much alive.
So then me and Rosa go off to explore the tunnels, and that’s our Christmas. All over London children are too excited to sleep and mums and dads are wrapping presents. There’s parties and skiing holidays and pantomimes and concerts and ballet and lights and carols and brilliant trees. Most people in Sandringham House have gone home to families. Tomorrow there’s a free Christmas dinner at the church. I was looking forward to it, but Mum and Rosa say we’ve got to leave now while the hotel’s empty and nobody can follow us.
‘Mum, don’t die yet.’
‘I’ll try not to.’ I hug her. I don’t mind her smell now. Rosa hugs Kevin. We have to go, but I don’t want to.
Mum’s talking to Kevin. ‘Never mind, my darling, we’ll be all right. Takes more than bureaucracy and a few rats to kill me off. When I could see the light I’d have been far more frightened of plunging down into the darkness. Now I can’t see the sky or the trees. But how will you grow up, little toad in a hole? I’m not giving up. I won’t be shoved into an institution or let Abbie be brought up by strangers.’
And I wish I was little again. I wish I knew where Daddy was. I wish I was Kevin sitting on Mum’s knee just laughing and crying and being sweet. But I’m not. I have to go down there with Rosa, and I’m terrified.
Finn used to let us play in the cellars when it was raining. There’s a boiler-room, and that’s where me and Rosa go. There’s this tunnel behind the boiler. I don’t want to go down there, but Rosa says beggars can’t be choosers. We follow the tunnel. It’s just big enough for me to stand up in, but a grown-up couldn’t. Rosa’s not much taller than me, but Mum would have to stoop. You can feel water all around you and the walls drip and there are all these weird noises. Every time a tube train goes past there’s a hurricane, and you can hear crying and singing and animals snuffling. It’s like you’re in another world with just memories and echoes of London. I’m glad Rosa’s with me, but we don’t talk. It’s freezing. The tunnel goes on and on. We don’t know which direction we’re going in or what time it is.
Suddenly there’s water, and this man’s shining a torch in our faces and yelling at us. I think he’s a policeman arresting us. He opens a door at the top of the tunnel and shoves us through, and when I look down there’s a river where we were standing.
We’re in another tunnel, only this one’s dry, and the man’s wearing shiny black boots and a shiny black raincoat, like a bin bag on legs. And he yells at us again and says we’re stupid. ‘I’m fishing bodies out every day, and I’m sick of it. Used to be a nice peaceful job, but now it’s like bloody Piccadilly Circus down here. Bad enough having to work Christmas Eve, never mind rescuing ruddy damsels in distress.’
Rosa whispers, ‘Go on, Abbie, do your Oliver Twist number.’
So I tell him we’ve got nowhere to live and we’ve got to look after a baby and an old blind woman. At first he’s suspicious. He asks if we’re on the run from the police. Finally, he says there is somewhere safe we could stay. Says he’ll help us if we don’t tell anyone.
So we follow him for miles, until we come to a door in the wall of another tunnel. He takes this key off a ginormous bunch of keys jangling on his belt and opens the door, and we’re in this room with bunks and posters on the wall and there’s even a light. When he switches it on all you can see is dust.
‘’Snot Claridges, but you’ll be safe here. They built this place as a bunker during the war long before you two was born. There’s an air filter, and you get the warm air blowing in from the Central Line. I’m giving you this key, but if anyone catches you and asks how you got in here, you found it, right? Dunno why I’m doing this, but I’d rather think of you down here than in the morgue. You’re lucky I’ve got daughters your age.’
Under his bin-bag hat he’s got a real boozer’s face with a cauliflower nose all red veins. He gives us the key, and me and Rosa hug him. He says we’re under Marble Arch. He gives us this map of all the tunnels with red arrows marking the dangerous ones that flood. Then he shows us how to get up to the street. We pass all these people living in tunnels. He disappears, and we’re standing in the Edgware Road, and it’s eleven when we get back to the hotel.
Mum’s asleep with Kevin, but we wake them up, and we all agree we’ve got to go, so we pack three bags.
Mum says to Rosa, ‘You can choose a Christmas present.’ Rosa kneels on the floor and rummages through all our clothes and books. She chooses a green silk scarf and a book of fairy-tales for Kevin. Mum says we must only take what we can use or sell. I stare at my teddies and the little plastic people I used to play with and the red silk dress Mum looked beautiful in at my birthday party when I was nine. We have to leave them all behind for Finn and Eileen.
Then Mum takes my arm, and we leave Room 325.
Lunch
I sit in the noisy, crowded pizza restaurant in Holborn and watch David and Annette approach my table. On the phone David sounded abrupt and suspicious, as if Jenny was an illness he’d recovered from and didn’t wish to be reminded of. I’ll bring my sister, he said, as if Annette was the twentieth-century equivalent of garlic and a crucifix.
David is formally dressed in a three-piece suit and looks more defensive than at our last meeting three years ago. His sister is wearing a tailored apricot-coloured suit and carries a smart black leather briefcase, exactly like her brother’s. Her short wavy hair is determined to stay black, and her efficiently made-up face is tense with anxiety. I smile at them, wondering what they put in their briefcases and what they have to be so anxious about. I’m wearing a shabby black corduroy jacket, jeans and a grey polo-neck jumper. David’s thick pink hand brushes against my fingers; he kisses his sister and puts up the menu as a barrier.
I set out to charm Annette, as David is obviously immune. ‘How lovely to meet you at last. Jenny was so fond of you. I’ve heard so much about you – the papers are full of you. I must say, you’re doing awfully well. A friend of mine was saying just the other day perhaps you’ll be the first woman to become a Labour prime minister.’
Flattery always works. ‘Well, there’s a long way to go. Homelessness is one of my main concerns. There are lots of these dreadful bed-and-breakfast hotels being used to house homeless families in my constituency, and I want to see an end to it. Far too much council housing has been sold off. There shouldn’t be any beggars or homeless p
eople on our streets.’
‘I’m sure there won’t be, if you have any power.’
‘Yes, quite.’
‘This year East Plumford, next year the whole country.’
‘Yes,’ Annette replies, without any sense of irony. ‘Now we’ve got these bloody Tories out, and we’ll see some real socialism in action. I can’t wait.’
‘Did you get that ministerial job?’ David asks his sister, flushed with sibling rivalry and family pride. He wants me to know they’re important, not to be trifled with.
‘No. Maybe next time. I’m a bit old now, although they don’t tell you that, of course.’
‘Old?’ I say. ‘Rubbish. Politicians and popes go on for ever. It must be very exciting to be part of the ruling party.’
‘I don’t seem to do much ruling. Mostly it’s chairing meetings in my constituency and helping to organize this wonderful party at the Dome.’
‘Ah yes, the pride of the new millennium.’
Determination is etched into Annette’s unflinching brown eyes, her stubborn mouth and firm jaw line. She might go far, if there’s anywhere worth travelling to in this feeble democracy. Her brother has a less developed public face, but I sense his hostility. Fool. Jenny can’t really have been interested in him.
‘I know how busy you both are. Thanks so much for coming along. Now, we haven’t got long, so let’s get straight to the point. Annette, any luck?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ She snaps opens her briefcase, and I glance at the interior of neatly organized layers of documents in crisp, geometric leather pockets. ‘I asked my friend at Kensington and Chelsea Social Services, Verity, to look out for them, but all she could find is this letter. They should have been taken into local-authority care, but they seem to have disappeared from the hotel at Christmas 1994. It must be them; the names are right, although I can’t understand why Jenny is described as elderly.’
‘She might have aged,’ I say. The brother and sister turn to me, and I feel I’m on trial between these two lawyers.
‘Jenny’s about my age,’ Annette says, ‘and when I last saw her, four years ago, she looked considerably younger. Are you suggesting she might have some mysterious illness that ages her prematurely?’
‘Something like that.’ I decide it would be a waste of time to try to explain the laws of my universe to this formidable one-lifer. ‘This is a photo of my – of Abbie, taken just before they disappeared. Perhaps you could give it to the police and to your friend in social services?’
‘That’s pointless,’ David says. ‘My daughter, Alice, changed beyond recognition between the ages of nine and twelve. Let me just see that – yes, I think it must have been her.’
He stares at the photograph and my hope almost chokes me as I ask, ‘You’ve seen Abbie?’
‘It must have been about three years ago. I was visiting my grandmother, and I parked near your old house – Phillimore Gardens …’ David blushes, emotion floods his face like water in a rusty tap, and I wonder again what the two of them got up to there. ‘A little girl ran in front of my car, her face covered in hair and tears, like a maenad. I nearly knocked her down, but I braked just in time.’
‘Why didn’t you talk to her? Follow her?’
‘I wasn’t sure it was her. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, and I was in a hurry –’
‘How could you just let her go?’ My voice is naked with rage, and they stare at me in surprise. From that moment our civilized lunch becomes a battle.
‘And what have you been doing? Have you been to the police?’ David glares at me.
‘No.’
‘Your common-law wife and daughter disappeared three years ago, and you made no attempt to find them?’
‘There were special circumstances.’
‘Then I think you’d better tell us what they were, or you might find yourself the subject of a murder investigation.’
‘Jenny and I had a quarrel.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’
‘It is if you want to stay out of prison.’ Annette looks at her brother in astonishment. The tables are packed close together in the restaurant, and people around us are riveted.
‘You’re married, aren’t you, David?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Twenty years.’
‘Jenny and I lived together for twenty-five. Sometimes we were happy, and sometimes we infuriated each other, just like you and your wife, I expect.’
‘Was it a violent quarrel?’
‘I never hit Jenny or Abbie. Jenny decided to leave me and take her daughter with her.’
‘Then why didn’t you make a proper settlement and make sure they were all right? You’re rolling in money.’
I struggle to stay calm. I know that antisocial things happen when I lose my temper. ‘There wasn’t time. As you must both realize, having known her for so long, Jenny’s very impulsive. One day I thought we were a family, the next she announced she couldn’t bear to spend another night under my roof. She went off to pick Abbie up from school and never came back.’
‘And what the fuck did you do about it?’
‘Calm down, you two, the age of duelling is past. Let’s just agree that we want to find them now. Show me this note Jenny sent you, David.’ He snaps open his own briefcase, revealing another meticulous leather interior, and hands Annette the note, which she reads slowly while David and I avoid each other’s eyes. ‘What is all this melodramatic rubbish? Is Abbie your daughter, David?’
‘I wish I knew,’ David says.
‘And what does she mean about not letting Leo anywhere near your life? Are you so evil?’ she asks me with an amused grin.
‘The devil incarnate.’ I smile back.
‘God, what a mess you heterosexuals make of your lives! But you know – at the time I didn’t take it seriously – last time I visited Grandma she burbled something about Jenny. Said she’d been to see her with Abbie and Jenny looked a hundred. But Grandma’s gaga, poor old thing.’ Annette looks at her watch and says abruptly, ‘Well, I really don’t see what I can do about it. I’ve got to get back to the House for PMQs.’
‘No! Don’t go. We need to plan some kind of campaign.’ David doesn’t want to be left alone with me. ‘Let’s have a coffee and think about what we should do next.’
‘But it’s quite hopeless. They could be anywhere. It’s no good being irrational and emotional about this. Jenny could easily have just disappeared. The National Missing Persons’ helpline takes eighty thousand calls every year. She could have married and settled in Australia or South America. Knowing her, she probably has. She always was obsessed with men.’
‘Could we give Abbie’s photo to Interpol?’ I ask.
‘But she will have changed. And they’d only be interested if there’s a suspicion of foul play, which you claim there isn’t.’ David glowers at me.
‘I’d hardly have got in touch with you if I had anything to hide, would I?’
‘Honestly, David, I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers. Women leave their partners every day. They’re not obliged to tell anyone where they’ve gone. Perhaps she had some reason to think Leo would get custody of Abbie. I’m afraid we can only find her if she wants to be found. Perhaps we should advertise, making it clear that it would be to her financial advantage to turn up again. I assume it would be?’ she asks me.
‘Of course. I can’t bear to think of them living in some sleazy squat. Even if Jenny doesn’t want to live with me I could buy them a flat and support them.’
‘Fair enough. Which papers does Jenny read?’
‘None,’ David and I say together and then avoid each other’s eyes.
‘I see she hasn’t changed. The last of the nineteenth-century heroines. Apolitical, unemployable and addicted to romantic love. Poor Abbie.’
‘Jenny is quite tough,’ I say after a pause,
feeling I should defend her against the cold blast of Annette’s judgement.
‘So was Emma Bovary, and look where it got her. Well, I have a country to run.’ Annette stands up, prompting a competition between David and me to pay for lunch. My gold card wins. David clings to his sister. ‘I’ll help you get a taxi, Annette.’
‘I’m quite capable of getting my own taxi.’
‘No, really, we need to talk. We don’t see enough of each other these days.’
‘I think we see quite enough of each other.’
I kiss Annette’s cheek, bow to David and stride off into the crowds of Holborn. David and Annette are walking just in front of me, and I hear their conversation.
‘Well, I think he’s absolutely charming. Jenny was very lucky. What was the matter with you?’
‘Women are so gullible. It’s quite obvious he’s a sadistic, phoney bastard. I bet he treated Jenny badly even if he didn’t actually bump them off. And he’s so pretentious. Did you see the way he bowed to me? Nobody bows nowadays.’
‘He’s intelligent, stylish and handsome. There’s no evidence he’s a sadist. I’d fancy him myself if he wasn’t a man.’
I let them walk ahead, leaving me alone with my visceral hatred of David. Everything about him irritates me: his voice, clothes, face – can this be jealousy? But my alter ego is Harlequin, the heartless trickster, not Pantalone, that pathetic old cuckold. Confused, I get on a bus and sit upstairs, staring out of the window as we swoop down Oxford Street and Park Lane. I remember when Tyburn stood at Marble Arch. In the old days I would have sorted David out with a flash of lightning or a dose of the plague. What’s the matter with me? He virtually called me a murderer; I could sue for slander. But I don’t want to be vindictive. I just want to find them. Annette’s right. They could be anywhere.
Mothers
Abbie must be the same age as Jenny was when I first met her. Bright, beautiful, trouble.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 28