Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘Then off home to the bosom of the family,’ her sister told her. ‘The perfect life.’

  ‘For me,’ Hannie said.

  ‘You’re a buccaneer,’ Cath remarked. ‘I’m glad I’m not.’

  ‘Well, thank God I am,’ Hannie told her. ‘Sailing blue Caribbean seas with a knife between my teeth.’

  ‘Have I missed anything?’ Margaret Wilkinson asked, coming in at speed, stuffing a foolscap pad into her big handbag.

  ‘We still seem to be in south London,’ Elizabeth Lord said mildly. She stood up. ‘Can I get anyone a drink while we’re waiting for the action to start?’

  ‘I’m getting there,’ Hannie said. As Elizabeth poured them all a drink, she continued her story.

  AFTER LUNCH WITH CATH, HANNIE WENT STRAIGHT to her office above a furrier’s in South Molton Street. When she went in there was a pile of mink stoles on her desk. She sat on them as she listened to the messages on her answering machine: one came from a woman who plainly thought Hannie was a hitwoman, and seemed to want someone, probably an absconding husband or lover, bumped off in Tenerife; the second came in the kind of voice she instantly recognized—a voice that meant drug-smuggling; the third caller had a strong East European accent, gave a number and asked her to call back. The last message was from a woman with a West Indian accent. She said, ‘I need some help, but I can’t afford to pay you very much. Jackie Fraser thought you might help me. If you’re prepared to work for only a little money, to start off with, I hope you can phone me.’ Then she gave a number and said, uncertainly, ‘Thank you—goodbye.’

  At that moment in came the proprietor of the shop, Gordon, with a pile of shaggy orange jackets over his arm. He looked embarrassed when he saw her, then said, ‘Just popping these down in here while I make space in the cold store.’ She sat on her desk with a heap of furs beside her, staring at him. Gaining confidence, he continued. ‘Fancy one of these? Hundred and fifty—you can have it for a hundred.’

  ‘What is it?’ Hannie asked. ‘Orang utang? Look, Gordon, this is meant to be an office. I come in—the door’s open and there’s dead animals all over the place. This door’s supposed to be locked unless there’s a fire—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry,’ he told her, hastily putting the coats on a chair. ‘I’ll just clear a space, then I’ll pick the coats up—’ And he was gone, leaving Hannie thinking it was time to move on again. She could never stay anywhere for very long. Gordon’s heavy doors and security locks had impressed her, but what was the point if he left her door open so that anyone could get in to play over her recorded messages?

  She thought about the calls. She telephoned the number of the woman with the West Indian accent. There was music in the background as a young man’s voice said, ‘Who do you want?’

  Guessing, she said, ‘Your mother.’

  ‘I’ll get her,’ he said. The receiver went down on a table, the music, a reggae beat, went on and she heard him calling. Then the music was turned down and the woman who had telephoned said, ‘Hullo—Mrs Bennett? This is Sarah Fevrier.’

  Hannie, to prevent her talking too much over the phone said, ‘I’m interested. Can we meet?’

  The woman hesitated. ‘What are your fees?’ she asked.

  ‘It depends,’ Hannie said. ‘We can discuss that later. How did you come to know Jackie Fraser?’

  The woman understood. She said promptly, ‘She’s on a course in child-care with my daughter—her best friend. My daughter—’

  ‘Fine,’ Hannie said. ‘Well—shall we meet at your place?’ She had found out long ago that it was better to visit the client at home, where indications of who someone is and what they want lie about, a clearly blazed trail any intelligent woman can read. After a pause Sarah Fevrier said, ‘You can come if you want—but I’m watched.’

  ‘Who by?’ asked Hannie sharply.

  ‘That’s it—I don’t know,’ said the other woman. ‘Maybe the police—but I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter to me if you know who I am and where I am. I can’t post a letter without a car following me, but you—’

  ‘They’ll see me anyway, if they’re following you,’ Hannie said. ‘I might just as well come to your house. I’ll look like someone who might call anyway.’

  ‘In disguise? Looking like the milkman?’ Sarah said. She had a deep, husky voice and sounded amused.

  Hannie was saying, ‘Can you think—?’ when she heard what seemed to be the young man shouting across the room. Sarah said to him approvingly, ‘That’s right.’ Then she said to Hannie, ‘Simon says come pretending to be a social worker. There’s so many round here you won’t be noticed. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I’m getting my bike out now,’ Hannie reassured her. ‘About four o’clock this afternoon?’

  ‘All right,’ said Sarah Fevrier. ‘Not too much later. I’m on shift at six.’

  After she’d put the phone down, Hannie sat on the fur coats and stared glumly at the address. Not exactly a smart neighbourhood, she thought. Just off Portobello Road, Notting Hill Gate, probably a council house. And the woman had a job which took her out to work at six in the evening, probably to a local hospital, or a café. You couldn’t say the situation smelt of big money lying around in heaps. And she, Hannie, needed a good £10,000 and preferably more by the New Year to cover the overdraft and the cost of three new slate roofs on the farm workers’ cottages, not to mention next term’s school fees—and yet, she thought, the woman sounded straight and her credentials were all right. That mattered, in her business. The girl she’d mentioned, Jackie Fraser, had been part of Hannie’s scheme to get the semen of a former Derby winner to an Arab oil sheikh who couldn’t be bothered to wait his mare’s turn in the queue for the popular stud. Jackie had been the stable-girl Hannie had suborned to help. She’d told her she only wanted the money to escape her low-paid job at the stables and get to London to take a course in nursery-school teaching. Which, evidently, she’d done. A sensible girl, Hannie thought; too sensible to put Sarah Fevrier on to her unless the prospective job had some possibilities for both of them.

  Gordon came in, picked up the orange coats from the chair, looked at the pile of mink on which she was sitting and went to the door without saying anything. Taking pity on him, she stood up. He slipped back, picked up the mink stoles and, feeling bolder, asked, ‘Sure you won’t change your mind? If it’s a question of principle this lot haven’t been near an animal.’

  Hannie was scandalized. ‘With my hair?’ she said. ‘They’d call the fire brigade.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ he said, and went out.

  Hannie thought she’d better change offices in less than a week.

  At that moment a tall, big, dark-skinned woman, wearing a mushroom-coloured raincoat and a light-patterned scarf tied tightly over her head, was coming out of her front door. She paused on the step and looked directly at the two white men in the large, dark blue car parked opposite her house. Neither looked back at her. The woman’s expression hardened. She walked down her garden path, where two rose bushes and a clump of pampas grass struggled in a small flower bed against the diesel fumes from the traffic surging overhead on the motorway a hundred metres away. She opened the front gate and turned down the street. The car turned on the paved area under the motorway, travelled beside the railway line opposite the house for a few metres, then swung back on to the road. It followed the woman slowly as she walked, stiff-shouldered and angry, into Portobello Road. Later, buying yams, oranges and fish from the market stalls lining one side of the street she saw the car parked on the other side. Two men, dark-suited and wearing very white shirts, leaned against a shop front, watching her. She took her change, picked up her bag of fruit and looked across the street again.

  She stopped dead as she saw a lean, tall boy of nineteen in jeans and anorak hurrying, almost bounding, along the pavement towards the men. Her son Simon. Behind him, travelling just as fast, was his friend, Selwyn, also in jeans, wearing a big, crocheted hat in gre
en, red and gold. The woman was angry. She stuffed the fruit into her shopping bag and hurried across the street shouting, ‘Simon! Simon!’ If he heard her, it didn’t prevent him from grasping one of the suited men by the upper arm and talking into his face. As a white van moved slowly past her, she stopped, then saw that the older man now had her son by the arm and was talking urgently back at him. Selwyn, standing close to both of them, was saying loudly, ‘What you want, man? You tell us what you want.’ As the woman came up the man dropped her son’s arm, looked at his companion, who stood a little way off, and walked away. They both went to the big blue car and started to get in. Selwyn ran after them. ‘Selwyn,’ she cried, ‘Selwyn—let them go.’ He stopped in his tracks and all three stood on the pavement, watching the men as they drove away.

  Sarah, turning to the two young men, said, ‘You two have caused enough trouble in your short lives. What do you want to go and do all that for? Your mothers don’t need any more trouble.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to the police?’ demanded her son. ‘How many times I ask you?’

  ‘I don’t need more trouble,’ she repeated. ‘Come home now, both of you. People are staring at us.’

  * * *

  In the end Hannie thought she might be overplaying her role if she took a bicycle. She settled for a pair of round glasses, trousers, boots and a shoulder bag, out of which peeped a bag marked ‘Portobello Health Stores’ and a copy of the Guardian newspaper. The rest of her disguise consisted of a hurried walk, a concerned expression and a big brown beret to cover her too-noticeable hair. She walked up the cul-de-sac where Sarah Fevrier lived. A train raced past her on her right. Overhead the traffic on the motorway thrummed insistently. Pretending to ignore the big blue car parked opposite the house, she checked the address in her notebook, went up the path and rang the doorbell. The woman who opened the door was tall and strongly built. She had a prominent nose and her brown face was sombre.

  ‘Mrs Fevrier?’ enquired Hannie. ‘I’m from the Social Services Department. We wrote to you.’

  ‘I got the letter. You want to come in?’ the woman asked, looking sternly at Hannie.

  ‘May I?’ said Hannie, stepping quickly inside.

  In the hall Sarah Fevrier smiled, and Hannie smiled back.

  ‘You looked really unwelcoming,’ she said. ‘You looked really—concerned,’ Sarah said. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Bennett. Come in here.’

  She led Hannie into the small front room, where there was a dark red three-piece suite, many photographs on the mantelpiece and a crucifix on the wall. One bar of the electric fire burned, driving off the chill of early autumn. A tall boy was sprawled in an armchair. He stood up when Hannie came in.

  ‘No one can see in,’ Sarah said, gesturing at the thick net curtains at the window. ‘The problem is, when you’re being watched you think they can.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’re not fitted up to listen,’ Hannie said.

  ‘The car looks normal inside—no special equipment,’ Simon said.

  Hannie took his word for it. She sat down. Sarah sat opposite her. ‘How long have they been there?’ she asked.

  ‘Three weeks,’ Sarah told her. ‘They’re there all the time. Follow me to work—follow the bus home. Follow me shopping, going to church, even visiting the neighbours. I’ve tried talking to them—asking them what they want—they just look at me as if I wasn’t there. One day I came out of work and I’m waiting at the bus stop in the rain. I went up to the driver and said to him, “We going the same way home—why don’t you give me a lift.” He just looked at me and drove away up the street. Next thing, I’m on the bus and there’s the car again, still following.’

  She seems a little too philosophical about it, thought Hannie. ‘You didn’t ring the police?’ she asked.

  The big West Indian woman shook her head. ‘You think they’re going to let the police catch them—clever men like that? And what else have they done—rob me? Attack me? They’ve done nothing.’ She added, ‘They may be the police. I don’t know.’

  But Hannie thought she did.

  ‘You’ve got an idea what this is about, or I wouldn’t be here,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman agreed.

  ‘You never tell me that,’ cried her son, who was standing in the doorway, on his way out.

  ‘It’s not you I’m afraid of,’ Sarah told him. ‘It’s that Selwyn with his big, large mouth. What I tell you, you tell him, and then he tells everybody in the whole world, and then I’ve got trouble on my hands.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ demanded Simon.

  ‘Interference—the kind we don’t need. Now we’ve come to the important point. I want your solemn promise you say nothing to nobody till it’s over.’

  The boy was silent. ‘You promise me,’ she insisted.

  He nodded. ‘In words,’ she told him.

  ‘In words, I promise,’ he said.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  ‘That’s Francine,’ said Sarah. ‘You open the door.’

  ‘You tell her, though,’ he called, going out.

  ‘That’s right,’ his mother called back. ‘Because your sister hasn’t got any friend called Selwyn.’ She said to Hannie, ‘Excuse all this.’ Hannie shrugged. ‘Family life,’ she said.

  Simon came back into the room with a tall slender girl of about twenty. She had a smaller version of the family’s big, straight nose. She smiled at Hannie.

  ‘This is Mrs Bennett, come to see if she can help us,’ Sarah said. To Hannie she said, ‘Francine—my daughter. And you, Simon, don’t stand there sulking at us, not till you know about everything. I told Francine because she’s older and she was telling me about Mrs Bennett. And also,’ she added, ‘because, like I say, I don’t want Selwyn and his back-to-Africa friends coming around making bad things worse. Sit down and listen to the story, which you are not going to like.’

  The young man gave her a sideways look, but sat down. He shot a glance at Hannie too. She said nothing.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Francine said, going out. Hannie asked Sarah Fevrier, ‘You think the men watching you aren’t just the police? And you don’t want to involve the police in case they start asking awkward questions? Is that it? And, by the way, is there a Mr Fevrier?’

  Simon cast a look at his mother who replied placidly, ‘Mr Fevrier lives most of the time in Birmingham.’

  ‘So those men haven’t got anything to do with him?’ Hannie asked. Simon’s breath huffed out. He seemed about to speak. ‘I’ve got to talk like this,’ Hannie pointed out. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’ She knew she must look and sound like yet another white person demanding the answers to questions which were none of her business. Sarah, however, just said, ‘Those men can’t have anything to do with my husband. They came about a month ago. At first I thought they were DHSS snoopers, come to find if someone in the street was claiming benefit when they shouldn’t. About that time I got the letter from home saying my mother was dying.’

  Francine came in with the tea tray and began to pour the tea. ‘You’re not going to like all this, Simon,’ she told him.

  ‘That’s what you keep on telling me,’ he said. ‘I’m getting tired of waiting to find out why.’

  Sarah drew a deep breath and said to Hannie, ‘We came to Britain in 1958, my husband and me. He was from the same island in the Caribbean, my grandfather’s brother’s son. Francine and Simon were born here, and we never went back—never could spare the money. But my sister, Angelina, and my mother and father are still on Beauregard, where we all come from. My two brothers are on St Colombe, the big island.’ She gestured towards the photograph hanging on the wall. Hannie had already seen it; there was a couple in their thirties and two big girls and two younger boys. They were all in their best clothes, boys in suits, girls in starched dresses. The girls were tan-skinned, the boys blacker.

  Sarah went on, ‘Beauregard, our island, is just a small island, coral, very beautiful.
The big island, St Colombe, is only five miles away across the sea. There’s a few other islands there, but nobody lives on them—they’re too small. The whole of Beauregard belongs to one family—the Corringtons. They’ve owned that island for hundreds of years. The family used to be French, like most of the families round there, but in my granny’s time the owner’s daughter married a Corrington; that made the island English, in a way. Then it went independent, along with St Colombe, just after we came here to Britain.’

  Sarah Fevrier paused, looked at both her children, then said, ‘And here’s the real story. This goes back to the nineteen thirties, when Edmund Corrington married a Miss Hugon, from Martinique, and they had a boy, Victor … No need to go looking at me in that way, Simon,’ she said suddenly to her son. ‘If you think this is one of those old island stories, then you’re wrong. This matters to you and the whole family.’

  She went on, ‘So Miss Hugon, Mrs Corrington, died having the second child, and the child died, too. And Mr Edmund Corrington, he shut himself up with the boy in the big house on Beauregard and never saw any other white people, just took my mother, Sarah, into the house to look after it, and the boy. She was only fifteen.’

  Hannie, suspecting what was coming, saw Francine sigh. So did her mother.

  ‘That was how it was in those days,’ her mother told Francine. ‘So,’ she said, ‘two years after that Angelina was born and a year after that, I was born. Edmund Corrington was our father.’ She paused. ‘I think he loved her,’ she said. ‘I don’t know—Mother never told me about it. Then he married again, and after that I don’t think he was happy. The boy, Victor, turned out weak, and maybe he wasn’t content with Mrs Julie Corrington, his new wife, although she was a rich heiress with property all over the place—St Colombe and Barbados and other places. Mr Corrington never came back to the island after the honeymoon. The old house fell to pieces—he sent a lawyer over from St Colombe to collect the rents from the islanders. He never took any more interest in the island, but he never sold off one inch of it either. Before he got married, he gave my mother a little bit of land, about an acre, for herself. The rest of the land he rents to her and her husband, just to make it look like he didn’t give her anything. After that, of course, she married another man from the island, my father—’ She looked at her son. ‘Don’t blame your granny. Things were like that in those days, in that place. What was she to do?—a poor girl only fifteen years old who’d never been farther than the next island in her life. And she wasn’t ashamed—not my mother. She was proud of Angelina and me, like she was proud of the boys, your uncles.’