by Pip Granger
I changed my smelly clothes, dumped the soiled set in a sink full of water and was back at the kerb in seven minutes flat. I was about to climb into the motor when someone called my name. ‘Zelda, yoo-hoo!’ I turned, and even in the open air the wave of Evening in Paris almost knocked me over. I swear it made my eyes water at ten paces.
‘Oh, wotcha, Mavis. Can’t stop, got to get to work.’
Mavis smirked and raised her sandy eyebrows until they almost disappeared into the long roll of hair above her forehead. ‘I see …’ she said, voice so slimy with suggestion that I realized how it must look to her, what with me diving into a strange car with a strange man, very late for work and with Mavis having a dirty mind and putting two and two together and coming up with ninety-eight. But I didn’t have time to argue the toss.
‘No you don’t …’ I managed to say, but then a masculine voice came from behind us.
‘Hurry up, Zelda, I haven’t got all day.’
‘I’ll see you later, Mavis. I’ll tell you then,’ I said hastily and climbed in beside Frankie.
‘I bet you will!’ She grinned, rather nastily I thought.
Frankie dropped me off at the mouth of the Gardens and drove away. I hurried to Zinnia’s. I wanted to know how Mrs Dunmore was. I had almost forgotten my own sore head, which probably meant I was on the mend. If tearing around like a blue-arsed fly all morning had made me neither sick nor dizzy, I reckoned I’d do.
‘I’ve given her a wee sedative and popped her into bed, hen. She’ll do for now,’ Zinnia told me. ‘It wasn’t a serious attempt anyhow. She’d hardly had any gas at all; it was mostly gin, I believe. Had she really meant to do away with herself, she’d not have done it in a kitchen where she was expecting the workers to arrive at any moment. No, hen, she’d have done it in the privacy of her own kitchen, well away from everyone. She lives alone, I understand.’
After a brief discussion with Zinnia, I felt reassured enough to get back to work. Zinnia promised that Mrs Dunmore would be safe enough with her for the day and that she would do her best to get to the bottom of what had led to Mrs Dunmore’s drunken act.
Cook and Beryl were all ears when I got back to work, but I wasn’t able to tell them anything beyond what they already knew. Naturally, I left out all mention of the word ‘suicide’, although Cook had her suspicions. They oohed and aahed over my encounter with Mavis, agreeing with me that it could be seen as very iffy by those unacquainted with the facts.
‘Who was the bloke with the motor, anyway?’ demanded Beryl.
I decided to go with Zinnia’s story. It seemed best in the circumstances, what with Beryl and her gob. ‘He’s my mum’s mate Zinnia’s long-lost nephew, Francis,’ I told her. ‘He’s come to stay with his auntie,’ I added.
‘Yes. If you say so. But what were you doing coming to work with him in the morning? That’s what we’d like to know.’ Beryl was like a terrier with a bone, and if that was the way her mind was working, I could see that Mavis’s mind would definitely be going along the same route. It didn’t do for married women to be seen in strange blokes’ motors first thing in the morning, I could see that now, but it was too late. I’d been too worried about being late for work, when I was already in my boss’s bad books, to think how it would look if I was seen. Then of course, when I was worried about Mrs Dunmore, appearances hadn’t crossed my mind. Bugger!
I explained about my clonk on the head, let them feel the bump to prove it, and hoped like mad the counter-rumour would run round the manor as fast as the first one was bound to. Everybody liked a scandal – except the object of it, that is. The last thing I needed was for Charlie to hear that I had been playing fast and loose, especially when I hadn’t.
I turned the subject to speculation as to why Mrs Dunmore was drunk on duty. We were all agreed – Percy Robinson!
‘Stands to reason,’ Cook assured us. ‘We haven’t seen him in a while: she’s been bad-tempered and running us ragged for ages: it’s got to be him. He’s given her the old heave-ho. Or his missus has cottoned on and given Mrs D. a piece of her mind. That’s enough to send anyone on a bender, a mouthful from her. She can be ferocious about her Percy.
‘His last bit of sly, Lily Matthews, told me his wife can be very firm, very firm indeed. She says Percy’s bleeding terrified of her, and dumps his lady friends as soon as she finds out about them. Of course, her dad is his boss, so she’s got him tied up in both places, home and work.’
I made the last few customers bolt their food, skimped on the tidying up and closed the door bang on closing time. I was in a hurry to get back to Zinnia’s and check on Mrs Dunmore, and while I was at it, I thought I’d pop in on Vi and Tony too, to see how the land lay with them. Also, I could tell her the story of my previous evening and my morning, in the hope she’d pass it on to Mavis. I was praying it would stop the rumours before they started. Charlie was due home and I was a nervous wreck.
I burst in Zinnia’s back door to find Mrs Dunmore sipping tea at the kitchen table. I won’t say she actually looked rosy, but she certainly looked heaps better. She smiled a wan smile at me and I was stuck for words. How do you behave when your boss is sitting in your ‘second mum’s’ kitchen, where she has no place to be? What do you talk about when you’re dodging tricky subjects like toe-rags called Percy Robinson, suicide and gin? What do you do when someone’s already given her a cup of tea, so you can’t even break the ice with questions like, ‘Tea?’ ‘Milk?’ ‘Sugar?’ and ‘How many?’ and you can’t break the tension by buggering about with a kettle, a tea caddy and a teapot?
You talk about the weather – what else? That’s why we have so much of it in England, to provide a subject for small talk to cover those awkward situations and the pauses between cups of tea.
‘It’s a nice day out,’ I said lamely.
Mrs Dunmore smiled a pale smile and inclined her head slightly. ‘Is it? I’ve been asleep for most of it.’
I took the plunge. ‘How’re you feeling now?’ I asked, half hoping she wouldn’t tell me.
‘A lot better, thank you.’ She took another sip of tea. ‘I understand from, er … Zinnia’ – she thought for a moment – ‘I understand …’ – she faltered again – ‘that it was you that saved me.’
‘Not really. Well, it was me and Frankie,’ I said. ‘He’s Zinnia’s nephew.’ I might as well keep the myth up. ‘Nobody knows. Well, not Beryl anyway. I think Cook’s probably guessed, but she won’t say anything.’
God, it was difficult. I was trying to let her know that it was more or less OK, that everyone understood a bit of drunken hysteria now and then, even in one as snooty as Mrs Dunmore, but I didn’t say it. Without mentioning words like ‘oven’, ‘gas’, or ‘topping yourself’, it was really hard to reassure her that she could go back to work, head held high and nose in the air as usual.
To my horror, a large fat tear started up in her right eye, the one I could see, then spilled over and began a long, slow journey down to her chin. I watched it, rather than look into her stricken face. Bosses aren’t supposed to be stricken. The tear clung to her sharp chin for a moment, then splashed on to her navy blue cardigan, which was done up to the neck, as if she was cold. Where was Zinnia when I needed her? I patted the skinny hand that lay trembling on the table. She was cold. Her hand was icy.
‘I’ll get us a fresh pot of tea,’ I said. Tea and the weather, every Englishwoman’s twin social saviours.
She started to talk as soon as I sat down again, steaming cups in front of us. ‘It’s Mr Robinson, of course.’
I nodded. ‘I guessed.’
‘His wife …’ she said faintly.
I nodded again. ‘She always does. Percy’s terrified of her, they say.’
‘Who says?’ For the first time, her face took on some colour and stopped looking quite so pinched.
‘People. Everyone knows Percy Robinson. I’ve never met his wife, but I hear she’s got a gob, er, a mouth on her.’
Where the hell was Zinnia?
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Dunmore in a very small voice.
Just then, Zinnia walked in from the garden holding a trug with some tender, new runner beans laid in it, the first of the season. They weren’t very big, but way ahead of anyone else’s.
‘Wotcha, Zin,’ I said, voice hearty with relief.
‘How’s your bump, hen?’
‘Fine, fine,’ I told her. I got to my feet. ‘I’m just nipping over to see how Vi and Tony are doing.’
‘Will you be back for your tea?’ she asked.
I thought about it. I couldn’t really leave her lumbered with my boss. ‘If you’ll have me,’ I answered.
‘Aye, I’ll have ye. You can keep Sylvia here company until Frankie gets back. He’ll take her home. I’ve some folk coming for their remedies. Be back here in an hour,’ she instructed.
Sylvia? The penny dropped. Mrs Dunmore! I shot out into the fresh air like a drowning woman.
41
Vi and Tony were all right, but the skulking around was beginning to tell on them. They both looked strained and tired. I told an open-mouthed Vi all about the previous couple of days and urged her to tell Mavis as soon as possible, because I didn’t want Charlie to hear anything about Frankie to set him off. After all, we were as pure as untrod snow and it wasn’t our fault that Mavis’s mind ran on grubby tracks. Vi promised me that she’d do her best.
‘But I hardly ever see her any more,’ she added. ‘She always stops in at night to save money for her wedding. It wouldn’t cost her nothing to come here for a visit of an evening, but she’s been scarce all the same. We still haven’t heard a word about who she’s supposed to be marrying and when. I’m beginning to think she bought her own ring in Woolworth’s. I could’ve sworn it left a green mark on her finger the other day, but she said she’d been painting the lino in her mum’s kitchen.’
The piano upstairs suddenly burst into life with a fairly good rendering of ‘Chopsticks’. Vi grinned. ‘Tony,’ she told me proudly. ‘Mrs Cattermole says he’s got a good ear. He’s having a practice while Dad’s out. You know how he does carry on so.
‘You stopping for your tea?’ she asked. I told her that I was expected back at Zinnia’s. ‘Oh well, never mind, another day.’
‘How about you and me going up West together when Tony has his lesson?’ I suggested. ‘We could look around the shops – not that they’ve got much, but there’s the market, that’s worth a look. We could have a bit of dinner at the caff I go to and you could meet Mr Burlap. I’m sure he’d love to meet Tony’s proud mum.’ I was rewarded by one of the sunniest smiles I had ever seen on our Vi’s face.
I went back to number 23 just in time for tea, which was boiled ham, new spuds and the precious runner beans. The plates had just landed on the table when Frankie appeared. Another place was set while he washed his hands, and we started tucking in. I noticed ‘Sylvia’ – I couldn’t get used to the fact that Mrs Dunmore had an actual name – was pushing her grub around her plate, and I vowed to get first dibs on the leftovers. She hadn’t touched hers with anything other than a clean fork.
‘Well,’ Frankie told us, ‘looks as if I’ve narrowed the source of the trouble down to three faces, probably linked, according to one helpful bloke. There’s Ma Hole: we all thought she’d be in there somewhere. Joe warned me about her. Nasty piece of work by all accounts. There’s this geezer from down the docks, and last but not least …’ – Frankie paused and turned to me – ‘there’s your old man, Charlie.’
I almost choked. Zinnia had to pound me on the back. ‘Charlie!’ I managed to splutter at last. ‘Charlie? How could he be plaguing the life out of Zinnia? He’s in Catterick most of the time.’
‘Seems he was shooting his mouth off last time he was home,’ Frankie explained. ‘It was something about you interfering in his family business once too often, Miss Makepeace.’
There was a gasp from my left. Sylvia muttered, ‘Miss Makepeace?’ under her breath. I had almost forgotten about her, she’d been so quiet.
‘Charlie reckons that you’re a snooty bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone else,’ Frankie continued. ‘What’s more, Ma Hole agrees with him, according to some spotty tyke who was listening in at the King’s Head.’
‘That still doesn’t explain how Charlie managed to pull all those tricks, does it?’ I had no trouble believing Charlie could be that vengeful and stupid; I just couldn’t see how he had done it.
‘Did you say Makepeace?’ Sylvia Dunmore asked suddenly.
‘That’s Zinnia’s name,’ I told her, answering for the lady in question. ‘Zinnia Makepeace.’
‘Good Lord!’ Mrs Dunmore said faintly. ‘I’ve heard about you from Percy. Makepeace is the sort of name you remember.’ She turned to me, face pale, eyes wide. ‘I didn’t realize his friend Charlie was your husband, Zelda. Why should I? I’ve never even met your husband, or at least, I thought I hadn’t.’
We were mystified. What was she talking about? I asked her outright.
‘Percy said he was helping his friend, Charlie, to, er, “tease” a woman called Makepeace who had upset him. I didn’t think it was nice at the time, and said so, but he said it was a harmless prank. He and a few lads swapped the furniture around in two of her rooms. He thought it was hilarious. A practical joke, nothing more, he said. But I thought that if I came home and found that, I’d be really frightened. I wouldn’t want to think just anyone could simply walk into my home and fiddle with my things. Especially as I live alone and I understood the lady in question did too. I told Percy so, as well, but he just laughed at me and said women had no sense of humour.
‘And it was you, was it, Zinnia, the one he was tricking?’
I didn’t give poor Zinnia a chance to get a word in edgeways. ‘I’ll say it was! And the bastard didn’t stop at that.’ I was about to give her chapter and verse when Zinnia finally managed to butt in.
‘That’s enough, Zelda. You mustn’t shoot the messenger, they’re invariably innocent. Let’s just say that things took a wee bit of a nastier turn and leave it at that, shall we? Sylvia is not responsible for that man’s actions any more than you are responsible for Charlie’s. They’re both grown men who make their own decisions.’
She had me there. It was true, so I kept my lip buttoned.
‘Do you know of anything besides the one incident, Sylvia?’ Zinnia asked. Mrs Dunmore was a shadow of her former self. Her face was pasty and, if possible, even sharper with her hangover – which must have been a blinder – and all the strain she’d been under. I was sorry for her, which meant that I didn’t feel in the least bit scared of her any more.
‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure it was only meant as a joke. It was about the time things began to go wrong between us. He kept telling me that someone was pressurizing him, “putting the squeeze on” as he put it. He seemed very nervous, anxious all the time. That was why he kept getting into tempers, he said. He suddenly found fault with everything I said and did. He even struck me once.’ Her hand went absentmindedly to her cheek, as if she could still feel the sting. Perhaps she could.
‘And then he stopped coming to see me altogether. And then, his wife called on me. I hadn’t known about his wife, although I was beginning to suspect …’ Tears were welling up, so we tactfully turned our attention back to Frankie, who had taken the opportunity to clear his plate. I patted her hand vaguely. The poor duck. Percy’s missus was famous for the short shrift she gave his floozies. Charlie used to say that they were a double act. When Percy got fed up with his bit of sly, he made sure his wife found out and she saw them off for him. It must’ve been mortifying for Mrs D. I patted a bit harder, but made sure I didn’t catch her eye. I didn’t think she’d want to see pity in my face, somehow.
Frankie wiped up the last of his gravy with a hunk of bread and grinned at us. ‘Sounds about right. Geezer by the name of Percy Robinson, a mate of your Charlie and, of course, an acquaintance of Charlie’s close relative, Ma Hole
.
‘Seems introductions were made before Charlie joined up, and after that, Ma often used Percy in her quest to liberate certain items from warehouses, docks and even ships. He was the middle man. Ma’d tell him what was wanted and when it came in, and he’d organize handily placed geezers to do the liberating. Dockers, warehousemen and sailors, blokes like that. So, of course, Ma had something on Percy boy, didn’t she?’
We agreed that she certainly did. Frankie grinned evilly. ‘And, of course Ma, being Ma, and totally without a single, solitary scruple, did not hesitate to use her man from the docks when the need arose. She’s not above a spot of blackmail, that one. A real charmer. Anyway, she was aware of Charlie’s grievances and his plans and she decided to up the ante. She was behind the fire, the cats, all of it.’
Zinnia looked bewildered. ‘I can believe it. There’s never been any love lost between us. But why now? I’ve been here more than thirty years: why has she become so hostile all of a sudden? She’s always restricted herself to being generally nasty in the past.’
It was a good question and one that had been nagging away at me.
‘She’s taken a fancy to your gaff,’ Frankie told Zinnia. ‘She wants your house and land, ’specially the land. Envy, simple as that. My man on the inside says she always has been green with it, but it’s only now that she could see her way clear to do anything about it.
‘She saw a way to drive you out, get your house and, more important, your plot. She reckons she could make a packet developing it. Homes for our homecoming heroes; you get the idea. She could probably stick a good few prefabs on the site, even a block of flats. So she jumped on Charlie and Percy’s little bandwagon and turned it into a socking great campaign. She’s had Percy working on persecuting you, Miss Makepeace, her own boy Brian’s been at it and so have some of her lads. It was a combined effort, to kill two birds with one stone, kinda thing. Get Charlie’s job done and her own at the same time.’
We talked for a long time about what we’d learned. What it boiled down to was that Charlie was a resentful swine who had the needle to Zinnia for taking me in and shaming him when he’d beaten me up. That had led to a chain reaction of other nasty business involving Ma Hole. She’d seen an opportunity to make a fortune and milked Charlie’s spiteful vendetta for her own ends. And there you had it – mayhem. Any lesser woman than Zinnia would have been terror-stricken by recent events and even she had shown signs of mounting fear. The bastards! All of them.