by Isla Dewar
It was after eleven o’clock when Nell got off the bus. She walked from the bus station to the stop where she could get a second bus to take her home. She waited for fifteen minutes and then decided to walk to the next stop to keep warm. The number forty-two passed her midway between stops. Not knowing if there would be another one at this time of night, she decided to walk home.
It was a route littered with memories. This was where she and Carol had jived in the middle of the pavement singing an Eddie Cochrane song. And here was the spot where she and Alistair had seen Carol and Johnny share their first kiss, with Carol doing her one-leg-behind-her stance. It was the walk she’d done with Alistair when he’d taken her home after they’d been introduced at the Locarno. She’d decided on that night that she’d marry him. How foolish it all seemed now. How young she’d been. All this was too painful, so she turned her thoughts to May, wondering why she hadn’t paid Annie. Certainly the restaurant hadn’t been making money recently but, still, people didn’t work for nothing. May knew that. Nell decided it was a glitch. May had been worried about Johnny and had let the business of making up the wages slip. Still, May had promised Annie a big bonus. Perhaps she’d get one too. It would all be sorted out soon.
By the time she reached her parents’ house, Nell was adding up the pros and cons of being back home. Well, there wouldn’t be the same privacy. Her mother would want to know where she was going when she went out and at what time she would be back. Then again, her laundry would be taken care of. And her mother had promised she’d leave a flask of cocoa on the kitchen table for her to drink when arrived home. Nell was looking forward to that.
Her father was waiting for her when she got in. ‘Where the hell have you been? You left work hours ago. I’ve been phoning.’
Nell told him she’d walked home.
‘Your mother’s died. She was making a cup of tea and I was watching television and heard this awful clatter. It was her dropping to the floor.’
Nell stared at him, paralysed.
‘I got the doctor, but it was too late. Heart attack, he said. Could’ve happened any time. She’s in the living room. Undertaker will pick her up tomorrow.’
Nell felt numb.
‘She’s gone,’ her father said. ‘Just like that. Gone.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Gone to Visit
Aunty Dot
May was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs for breakfast. She was wearing her fur coat over her nightdress. ‘It’s a comfort with all this misery going on.’
Harry, sitting at the table, told her everything would be fine. ‘Just hold on. Don’t pick up the phone and don’t answer the door.’
‘Wasn’t going to,’ said May. She buttered three slices of toast, poured the tea, piled the eggs onto the plates she’d laid out and brought them to the table.
‘Where’s Johnny? He’s usually at the table soon as he gets the first whiff of food.’
She got up, went to the foot of the stairs and shouted, ‘Johnny, breakfast’s on the table.’
Nothing.
‘God,’ she said, ‘that boy can sleep.’ She climbed the stairs, still shouting, ‘Johnny. Food’s up.’
She stood at his bedroom, knocking on the door. ‘Johnny?’
Nothing.
She went in. He wasn’t there. His bed was made up. Didn’t look as if it had been slept in. The plaster cast that had been encasing his leg was lying on the floor.
‘He’s not here,’ she shouted. ‘Is he down there?’
Harry left the table and looked in the living room, the dining room, the bathroom and then peered out into the garden. He shouted to May that there was no sign of him.
Harry went upstairs, picked up the plaster cast, looked round and saw May’s carving knife and her kitchen scissors. ‘He’s cut this off himself. Bloody idiot.’
They went to the bathroom, peered in, and then searched the remaining rooms, opening doors, calling Johnny’s name.
‘He’s gone,’ said May. She opened his wardrobe and peered in. ‘His clothes are gone.’ She turned to Harry. ‘Where’s he gone to?’
‘Just done a bunk, I suppose.’
Back in the kitchen, they noticed a small note. Gone to visit Aunty Dot. The leg’s fine. Don’t worry about me. Johnny.
‘Is that it?’ said May. ‘Not even “love Johnny” or a kiss at the end?’
‘That isn’t his way. He’d never write love. Doubt if he’s ever even said the word. Besides, he was doing a bunk. He’d have been in a hurry.’
May snorted. ‘Aunty Dot’s in Australia. How’s he going to get there?’
‘In an aeroplane, I should think,’ said Harry. He looked at his watch. ‘He’ll be well on his way. Might even be there.’
‘It’s not right. He’s not able to look after himself. He never has been.’
‘No more, May. You’re about to say he’s too beautiful. He’s cursed with beauty. Stop it. Let him go.’
‘But what if I never see him again? He’s my boy. My best boy.’
‘You’ll see him again. And if you don’t, you’ll always know you did everything for him. Stop looking out for Johnny. Time to look out for May and Harry.’
May said she’d never stop worrying about him. ‘It’ll be part of my life for the rest of my life. You know what I think happened. Alistair was the one who shopped me to the taxman, and then he tipped Johnny off and told him to do a runner before things got hot.’
‘You’ve been watching too many old films. Alistair never told anybody about us. He’s not like that.’
‘He’s the only one who knew.’
‘He may have been the only one who knew, but plenty must have guessed the way you were splashing cash about.’
May admitted she might have got a little carried away. ‘But I was only doing good. I was employing people.’
‘I know. You were making them happy. And you emptied the money cupboard doing it.’
‘How was I to know you’d get closed down? How was I to know the cash would dry up? I thought in time I’d be adding to the cash.’
‘Well, it’s happened.’
May’s face crumpled. She hid it in her hands and wept. All she could say was, ‘Awful. Awful. Awful.’
Harry dug into his pocket, fished out a hanky and gave it to her. ‘C’mon. No tears. You have to see this as the end of one thing and the beginning of something new. We’ve got to look forward, think about the future and forget all this.’
Blowing her nose, May said, ‘I suppose.’
Harry nodded and leaned towards her. ‘Tell you what, let’s fill a flask with coffee, make some sandwiches and have a picnic.’
‘It’s March. We’ll be freezing,’ said May.
‘So we’ll put on our coats,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll go to Princes Street Gardens and watch the world go by. We’ll dream and plan.’
‘Dreaming and planning are the best bits of life,’ said May.
She phoned Annie and asked her to hold the fort. ‘Got one or two things to tie up at this end. Can you manage the lunches?’
Annie said it wouldn’t be a problem. This was because there were no bookings but she didn’t mention this.
‘Where would I be without you? This has bumped up your bonus big time,’ said May and put down the phone. She turned to Harry. ‘Let’s go. I feel naughty doing that. It’s like skipping school. Used to do that all the time. Never felt so free as when I was walking the streets watching the world, enjoying myself when everyone I knew was sitting at a desk learning their times tables.’
They prepared their picnic, left the house and used some of Harry’s tiny remaining funds to take a bus to Princes Street. They held hands as they strolled the Gardens. May held up their entwined fingers and looked fondly at them, ‘Haven’t done this for years. It’s nice.’
Harry reminded her that this was where they’d first met. ‘You were walking with your pals and I was walking with mine. I saw you and said to myself, “There’s a girl
I’ve got to get to know.”’
‘You and your mates started walking behind us whistling and asking our names.’
‘“Hello, beautiful.” That’s what I said.’
‘I thought you were talking to someone else, not me.’
‘It could only have been you. You were the loveliest of the bunch.’
They found an empty bench, sat on it and unpacked their bag. May unwrapped the sandwiches as Harry poured the coffee. ‘You wouldn’t talk to me.’
‘I was playing hard to get. That’s what you did in them days.’
‘You weren’t that hard to get, thank goodness.’
‘Didn’t want to put you off. I fancied you. You were such a dandy.’
‘Still am,’ said Harry.
‘Who’d have thought then that we’d end up where we did? Two kids from the wrong side of the tracks like us. The Christmases we used to have – everything lit up, huge tree, huge turkey and fairy lights all over the garden. Oh, it was lovely.’ May gazed into the distance, smiling slightly, drifting into fond memories.
Harry sighed. ‘It was lovely.’
‘To think we were almost posh,’ said May.
‘We were posh,’ said Harry. ‘We are posh.’
May shook her head. ‘Us? No, we’d never make it as posh. I was never one to wear a twin set and pearls, and your ties are too loud. And we have a naked-boy peeing fountain in the garden and we laughed too much and played music late at night. I’m a bottle blonde with a brassy laugh who drinks too much gin and tells dirty jokes. Harry, we’re not posh. We were born to be cheap and snazzy. And I love it.’
Annie watched four men lift the red piano and heave it out of the restaurant and into the back of a van. Well, that’s that, she thought, and locked the door. She looked at the empty space the piano had once occupied and at the dead embers in the fireplace. The place looked forlorn. There wasn’t a lot of food in the kitchen, and certainly not enough to cook any of the dishes on the menu. Then again, these days there was hardly anybody to cook for.
Back in the kitchen she made a pot of tea, and then sat at the special table where May and Harry had entertained their guests with free meals to consider her future. Nell had phoned to say her mother had died and she wouldn’t be at work today. Shortly after May had called to say she wouldn’t be in today either. After that several suppliers had phoned demanding to know when they’d get paid. The butcher had called in person and hadn’t been polite about the amount he was owed. ‘Thirty years I’ve been in business and never have I been owed so much by one customer. I must have been mad to keep delivering to her, but that May would give me a whisky and tell me how well she was doing and how good my meat was. I’ve been duped. I want my money now.’ Annie had apologised and had told him it was really nothing to do with her, saying, ‘In fact, I haven’t been paid either.’
Annie heard a car pull into the car park outside. She went to the window, saw two people get out and head for the door. Annie slid to the floor and crawled under the table. She’d had enough.
The two people rattled at the door, peered in, decided the restaurant must be closed and walked back to their car. Annie found a sheet of paper at the bar and wrote a note.
Closed due to family beere beree breav. How did you spell bereavement? She scored out her last attempts and instead wrote disaster. She pinned the note to the door, helped herself to three bottles of whisky and as much wine as she could cram into her shopping bag, thinking this would help cover some of what she was owed. Then she put on her coat, went out the back door and fled.
Harry and May finished their picnic and walked arm-in-arm to Princes Street. They gazed into shop windows. ‘Isn’t the world changing,’ said May. ‘Skirts are getting shorter. Everything’s for the young these days. I feel I didn’t get the chance to be young.’
Harry said that was true. ‘When we were young, we were expected to be old. Live the same lives as our parents.’
‘Yes,’ said May. ‘I feel like I only had a few weeks of being young. Then I got married and had to get stuck into being a wife and mother – cooking, cleaning, and working my fingers to the bone. Worrying.’
‘Shoplifting,’ said Harry.
‘That was only to survive,’ said May, defensively. ‘I never stole anything I wanted. I just took food for the kids.’
‘I know that. You took risks for your family.’
‘Exactly,’ said May. ‘If I’d had a proper youth, I wouldn’t have had children and I wouldn’t have had to do that. I want my youth. I’m going to have it now.’
‘Too right,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll start being young and we’ll stay that way for the rest of our lives, though I’m not going to grow my hair long and wear tight trousers and pointy toe shoes.’
‘Of course not,’ said May. ‘That’s for proper young people. They only dress that way so us older young people can disapprove. If we liked it, they wouldn’t do it. They’d do something worse to shock us.’
‘True,’ said Harry. ‘Still, I like the idea of starting being young after being old for such a long time.’
At six, when the shops were closing, Harry said that it was time to go home. May didn’t want to go. ‘There’s too much there. Too many happy memories that I’m sad to remember, and too many worries. All those letters in the drawer – bills, final demands, threats, court orders and God knows what else. Also, it’s cold without the heating.’
Harry suggested they light a fire.
‘We’ve no coal and no logs,’ said May.
‘But we’ve got bills, final demands, court orders, threatening letters galore. That’ll make a fine blaze. It’s what a young person would do.’
‘Harry, you’re a genius,’ said May. ‘I’d never have thought of that. First, though, Alistair.’
Alistair had been banished from the kitchen. Carol had taken up cooking, moving between the cookbook on the worktop and the cooker, mumbling about ingredients as he’d watched. She’d told him to go away. ‘I can’t do this with you looking on.’ She flapped him out of the kitchen with a dishcloth. ‘Take Katy with you.’
He picked up the child and took her to the living room where he stood at the window. He was wrestling with his guilt. Nell had phoned him earlier in the day telling him her mother had died. His heart had gone out to her. Poor soul, he’d thought. She’d told him she wanted a divorce. ‘I expect you do, too,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t think it’d work. Not with me seeing you and Carol like that. I can’t get it out of my head.’
He’d agreed and apologised sincerely for what she’d gone through. He’d told her he cared for her, wished her happiness and would take care of everything. ‘If you ever need anything, anything at all, call me.’ But she’d already rung off. He wished she’d been angry. But she’d been depressed, diffident, almost as if she was in the wrong. Anger was easier to cope with. A shouting match might have cleared the air. It certainly would have helped the guilt. He could have accused her of being submissive, naïve, too dreamy to live with. ‘I can never get through to you,’ he could have said. ‘You were never here. You practically threw me at Carol.’ But no. She hadn’t quite apologised to him for his sleeping with her best friend, but she’d come close.
He was plagued by his vision of her discovering him entwined on the sofa with Carol drunkenly snoring, and he banged his head on the window pane to get rid of it.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Carol asked. She’d come through wiping her hands on the back of her jeans, having finished making the stew.
‘Giving myself a severe reprimand for how I treated Nell. Shouldn’t have got drunk, shouldn’t have fallen asleep.’
‘Shouldn’t have slept with me?’ asked Carol.
‘Should’ve done it sooner,’ he said. ‘Should’ve have broken it gently to Nell.’
He opened his eyes, and saw a garishly dressed couple walking towards the flat. The man was wearing a pinstripe suit, pink shirt and outrageously floral tie. The overly made-up woman mincing beside hi
m in six-inch stilettos wore a fur coat that was flapping open revealing a matching pink skirt and jumper. For a few blissful seconds he didn’t recognise them. Then he said, ‘Oh, God.’
‘What’s up?’ asked Carol. ‘More scoldings?’
‘My parents are heading this way.’
‘Hide.’
‘They’ve already seen me.’ Still holding Katy, he took her hand and made her wave to them. May waved back.
Alistair watched them reach the steps to the main door. They were arm-in-arm, moving jauntily. He wondered why. Considering their present problems, he thought they ought to look miserable.
They knocked and, without waiting for anyone to answer, walked in.
‘We were just passing and thought we’d drop in and say hello,’ said May. She looked round and took in the scene – Carol standing by the fire, Alistair in shirtsleeves, shoes kicked off, holding Katy, coffee cups on the table, a newspaper on the sofa, something savoury cooking in the kitchen – and said, ‘Very homey. I suppose Nell’s at work.’
Alistair shook his head. ‘Nell’s at home. Her mother died.’
May sank onto the sofa. ‘Poor soul. It’s awful when your mother goes. You feel alone. A huge hole in your life. Things happen and you think, I’ll phone my mum. Then you remember she’s gone. It keeps coming back at you.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll feel that way about Johnny. Though he’s not dead. He’s gone.’
‘To visit Aunty Dot,’ said Alistair.
‘You know?’ May was surprised.
‘I gave him the money.’
‘Without telling me,’ said May.
‘He was afraid you’d dissuade him from going.’
May said she would indeed have tried to keep him here.
‘I know,’ said Alistair. ‘Your beautiful boy. Your best boy.’