A stitch in her side from all the walking – she had better sit. She found a bus shelter; nice to get out of the rain, and no one else was using it. Marie was alone. She could think.
It was the money that made her do it: knowing she had money in the bank fortified her in some way. She didn’t feel afraid; she felt strong. She was going to have a new life. She would have to arrange an increase in allowance with Mr Wye and Mr Dagger-Davis and she knew she could do that now.
But Flavia – what would she tell Flavia? So many questions would come of telling, and Marie didn’t have the answers herself yet. If Flavia knew that she had quit, she would panic: the loss of income, no matter how it was spent, for Marie contributed to their household budget and always had done, as arranged by her father long ago. If she told Flavia one thing, she would have to tell her everything else, too.
It was time to go home. Marie was undecided the whole way, right until she walked through the door.
‘Ma?’
She didn’t have to ask: Marie knew where Flavia was and what she was doing, knew from the windows misted over and the fact of it being Monday: Flavia was ironing bed sheets. She would be finishing up, the kitchen full of steam, the surfaces and Flavia herself dripping. Their supper would be all but ready to eat.
Marie put the ironing board away under the stairs while her mother set the iron to cool in a corner. Flavia washed and dried her hands. Marie laid the table. Flavia filled their plates, made the tea. They sat and faced each other.
‘So,’ Flavia said.
‘Yes?’ Marie answered, somewhat anxiously.
‘How was your day?’
‘Fine. The same,’ Marie said. ‘It rained, so it was slow.’ The thing that was inside her now did not come out and show itself.
7
Rita was having the time of her life, so she kept saying. Edward poured the wine, ordered a second bottle. They drank it. When the bill arrived and he had paid, he put his hand over hers. ‘What do you say we move on? I know a little place.’ She didn’t even blink.
On the walk to the hotel, he put his arm around her proprietorially. Rita liked it when a man did that: she wanted to be owned – paid for and taken home. She remembered a time when she had accounts all over town in every fine store, and flats for which she didn’t pay the rent, ready-furnished, not another woman’s hairpin in sight, nothing for her to do except be there, waiting, ready, purring like a pretty pussycat.
She leaned into Edward, trying not to wobble as they walked. Legs like jelly. Edward was saying something she didn’t quite catch. She threw back her head and laughed. How was it that she didn’t know where they were? Rita knew Soho like the back of her hand. She stumbled, grabbed at him: he was solid, capable, and she felt the strength in his arm, to keep her afloat. He was almost eighty but his arm was a young man’s arm.
‘Steady on now,’ he said.
They passed a girl half obscured in the shadows of a stairwell; she shivered in the shortest of summer dresses and her bare skin prickled. The days were hot but the nights were cold, for as soon as the sun went down the temperature plummeted. She wanted a coat, the lamb. She clutched a teddy bear. Rita, the drink in her making her sweet, smiled at the girl, swelling with feeling. They were the same person, she and the girl. The girl curled her lip. She called after them, ‘Come see me later, Grandpa. Tuck me in.’
Not tonight, Rita thought. Tonight the air sang for Rita Sourbeer. Edward seemed not to have noticed the girl, determined as he was on their hotel. His feet chopped at the pavement in good leather shoes; he marched, keeping a firm grip on Rita. She talked for two. What did he think of the new vista? The Gherkin, she meant. Seemed a silly thing to build, she thought, sticking up in the middle of things like that. Like a you-know-what. She laughed. He didn’t reply, just looked straight ahead and kept walking. None of the new buildings made sense to her, she continued. They looked like petrol stations, most of them. Who wanted to live in a petrol station? What she liked was comfy, warm rooms. Square rooms, painted yellow.
‘I love a yellow room. What you want is a friendly yellow room to beat all this grey weather we have in England. If I were rich I’d get away every winter and go somewhere sunny. When I married my third husband, we went to Turkey and it was pure heaven, I tell you. Pure bliss. All them beaches and nothing to do but lie around.’ Rita was off, remembering. They went out on a boat, she said, but the sea was rough and Paul – her third husband, she was sure about that – he went green around the gills with seasickness, and then she was sick, just from thinking about it too much. ‘You can talk yourself into anything,’ she said. ‘Any fine mess.’
Edward grunted. She hummed a few bars of ‘Tampico’. Did he know it? Stan Kenton and June Christy. ‘I used to be crazy about “Tampico”. We listened to it constantly. All night long. All day and all night. We wore the record out.’
‘Here we are,’ he said, stopping suddenly.
Rita looked around – the gaudy lights, the latrine stink of the narrow street. There was broken glass under foot. That was Soho for you. It never changed. Even with the new shops and clubs and restaurants, all of them upmarket places, it was still a dirty cave. Piss in the puddles, scraps of rotten sandwich sleeting the cobbles. Always something on your shoe in Soho, and the feeling of someone’s eyes following you – Rita looked over her shoulder as they went in.
They checked into the hotel as man and wife. Edward counted out some notes and handed them over. Rita smiled at the receptionist. What was the harm in what they were doing? Two adults having a bit of fun, nothing wrong with that. They went up in the lift, Edward quiet, not looking at her. Did he know there were hidden cameras in every lift? There were cameras everywhere and people sat in front of tellies in big office buildings, watching the whole of London, Rita told him. Did he know that? It was all the crime, proper murders with knives, and carjacking. Had he read about carjacking? Terrifying. She had never learned to drive. There was no need to in London. She could go anywhere she wanted on public transport. She could take the Green Line if she wanted some fresh air. The lift stopped at the fourth floor. The doors opened. Down the hall they went, up to their ears in carpet, Rita chattering all the way. She liked the look of the hotel, she said. Businesslike. She was sure a lot of businessmen used it. Edward expertly swiped the key card and they were in.
‘Isn’t this nice? A yellow room. I do love a yellow room. How perfect. How charming,’ Rita said, and really, she was delighted.
The line of his mouth softened at last. ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ he said, locking the door to the bathroom.
She drew the curtains, feeling the weight of the gold brocade. Very nice. She hung up her coat and turned before the mirror, fluffing her curls. She re-touched her lipstick and eyebrows. No sign of Edward. She sat on the bed to wait, crossing her legs. She inspected her nails, nipping the cuticles with her front teeth. Tidying. A woman’s hands said it all. Rita always wore rubber gloves when she did the washing-up, and she varnished her nails red every Sunday evening, when she packed her face in mud and sipped sweet sherry through a straw.
A long time passed. Rita still smiled but she began to feel a bit of hollowness somewhere deep inside her. It wouldn’t go wrong now, she told herself. He was just having a wash, and then it would be her turn to wash and she would go to him like a vision in expensive black knickers and bra, high heels on to make her legs look long. She still depilated, she shaved and plucked and oiled herself from head to toe. She would twirl and ask him, did he like her now? They never said no. Once she had him in bed he would never want to leave. She took hold of her knee to stop it jigging. What she needed was a drink. She helped herself to the minibar: a glug of gin, a splash of tonic. She drank it down like sunshine and lay back on the bed. Yes, that was better. The overhead lights made her squint. She closed her eyes. The sound of running water relaxed her no end. He splashed like a baby in the bath; Rita smiled to herself to hear it.
When she woke she didn’t know where she
was. The yellow walls – not hers. The smell of strong disinfectant, the patterned carpet showing stains, the bedspread on which she lay, creasing her dress; none of it was hers. She wiped her chin and sat up, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: her flattened curls, a loose look to her mouth, the hump in her back showing. She reached for the glass on the bedside table, drank the nothing that was in it – she felt a fool for doing that. The minibar, she thought. Any old thing would do. Get it down. Then she knocked at the bathroom door.
‘William?’
There was no reply.
She knocked again, harder. ‘William?’ She tried the door handle, which was locked. ‘William, open the door before I call for help.’
The door suddenly swung wide and a gentleman appeared, red-faced, his trousers gathered about his waist in one hand. ‘What’s all the racket? What are you on about?’
‘William, I thought – I thought you were ill, or had fallen, or – something.’
He made an incredulous gesture. ‘I was taking my bloody Viagra.’
Of course he was. Viagra was all the rage. ‘Well.’ She smiled at him, flapped her false eyelashes.
‘Who’s this William, anyway? My name is Edward!’ He shut the door.
Rita blinked. Edward? Oh yes. Lunch.
*
She had been doing it long enough to know when the moment was coming. It came. Never a surprise, after all that shoving. First there was the tussle with her brassiere – she wanted it left on. She insisted. It cost her a pretty penny and held everything together. Her other bits she didn’t half mind in their collapse, but her bosom needed lifting if she wanted to be the fantasy.
Then a bit of spanking. She whispered, lots of whispering; filthy things to spur him on, nonsense, really. She got the raisin of his withered earlobe in her mouth and nibbled. The tufts of hair that burst from the ear itself tickled her nose. She moved on to the fine mesh at the back of his neck; she covered every inch of his trunk with her hands, smoothing things out. He licked his lips. When he’d had enough of all that, he turned her over and the bed began to shake.
It could go on and on, the engulfment, the occupation, especially when Viagra had been taken.
It took an hour with Viagra, at least.
She heard another room’s shower running. She heard the television, not theirs. She heard the lift ping. When he twisted her round like that her eyes overflowed. Her old bones did sometimes feel as if they would break. He never looked at her. He kept his eyes closed and his face raised as if to praise the heavens, as if to call down an angel and place her beneath him instead.
It was just sex – she could bear it. Rita knew when an affair wasn’t going anywhere. Dinner and a room. Well. A nice little earner, she told herself.
He cried out and was done. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered. A quick nap with his back to her, snoring heartily, and then he returned to the bathroom where she could hear him washing again. He soon emerged, fully dressed except for his tie, which bulged in his breast pocket.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’re still here.’
She had been thinking of what she would spend the money on. Her heating bill, first off, and there might be something left over for her to treat herself. She had no doubt that he would pay; he’d been generous with the dinner tip, and she provided a good service, if she did say so herself. Plenty of conversation, all of it cheery stuff, nothing about death. She stayed off the subject of death as best she could: nobody wanted to talk about that. She never ordered the steak unless she was sure of her companion’s deep pockets. One never knew with pensioners. Oh, she liked a drink or two, but who didn’t? They were out enjoying themselves. They’d worked hard all their lives, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they just.
And in the bedroom, well. Well.
‘Fancy a drink?’ she said.
‘I better be getting on for home. It’s gone midnight.’ He took out his wallet and, without looking at her, laid some notes on the bedside table. She counted with him: one hundred. ‘Be a good girl now and get yourself ready to go.’
‘We’ve got the room for the night, haven’t we? Seems a shame not to put it to use.’ Rita patted the bed. She liked Edward. She didn’t want him to get away. She couldn’t be sure that she would have another chance with him if he left, and she wasn’t the kind to chase a man. She was old-fashioned like that – her generation, she always said.
He cleared his throat. ‘You’re welcome to stay. The room is paid for.’
That’s not what she meant at all. He was slippery, this one. She heard her voice, light and easy. She was clever like that. ‘I had a lovely time, Edward.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
The door closed. She listened for the lift. She waited for him to ride down, exit and nod – or not – at the sleepy receptionist on his way out. When she was sure that he was quite gone, she emptied the contents of the minibar into her handbag.
Rita used to work in hotels and so she knew her way out of one, the quietest way, the way to leave without being seen, except, of course, on CCTV. Not the lift, but the stairs, which no one ever used, except for the maids, and which needed paint and were badly lit and smelled of drains. Rita hurried as best she could – she had been a zippy thing in her day. She didn’t mind stairs. She carried her shoes. She prayed she wouldn’t meet a soul, for she wasn’t decent under her coat, plus she had the minibar clanking away in her handbag, and then there was the question of what she was doing on the stairs in the first place, clearly leaving the wrong way when there was a perfectly good lift and front entrance to the hotel.
She made it. The fire door slammed hard behind her and she jumped, oh lord, how she jumped! Rita put her hand to her heart. Then she slipped on her shoes and stepped to the kerb to hail a taxi.
*
A dog was following, a stray – if such a thing still existed in the centre of London in the twenty-first century. They were a couple of strays, he and she, identities unknown: one a barker, the other human but without the means to communicate.
They were looking for the den. Annetta remembered it being somewhere in the park. They searched a long time, and then, something familiar. The dog knew it too, running ahead of her, on the scent, tail erect. He marked at the den’s entrance and disappeared inside. She followed him, inhaling the musk. A fox had been there.
Church bells tolled. Her feet were heavy with mud. She stroked the bit of bacon she’d brought, the rasher warm as a hand. She held it.
The sound of a door closing. She was deep inside herself. She took nothing with her, not even her clothes. She was so cold. She jiggled herself, arms crossed over her chest, flattening her breasts – her breasts that were already hanging flat. The dog lay down next to her. Where she was, it was dark, still, not exactly quiet: there were the usual sounds of a distant world – cars, sirens, trains running north, blaring their horns to clear the tracks. She rocked. She comforted herself like that. The dog whined and smacked his chops. He was after the bacon in her fist. He licked her hand, nosed the fingers open. She snapped them shut. He lay down, whimpered, eyes appealing. He put his teeth around her hand and the pain of it startled her into being. Sometimes she caught hold of herself and knew it was her mind going. Worse than cancer, this death. Cancer you could treat – you could kill it, or if it killed you, it killed fast. Fast enough. But not what she had. It killed slow, dementia did, burying her inch by inch. She was already in above her neck.
The dog. She panted. After a while she didn’t feel the teeth going in.
At first they were just voices, anyone’s voices, much of a muchness. Then they were calling her: Annetta. Annetta! Ann! At least she knew that was her name. Her name was in the deepest part of her mind, near the beginning. As near to the beginning as she could get.
*
Oh, she got cross, Rita did. Every little thing set her off. His mother always said there was as much good in Rita as any other person, but he had his doubts. Bruised fruit, bad manners, dogs off the
lead, bike couriers speeding past, knocking everyone off their feet – but nothing made her angrier than Annetta disappearing, and lately Annetta was always disappearing.
At first, when Annetta’s dementia was beginning to show, she never wanted to be alone. Joseph minded that. He felt under siege. Everywhere he went, she followed, pestering him with questions, always the same questions: would it rain? Were the buses running to schedule? Where were her spectacles? Once or twice he had enough and really lost it: just bellowing. It was wrong to shout at someone who cowered and hid her face, who didn’t understand – who didn’t know what she was doing to make him so mad. Rita said she didn’t blame him. Annetta would test the patience of a saint, Rita said. But he loved Annetta. She had always been his favourite – from the moment she appeared at the house in the Crescent when he was two years old, according to Sal. He didn’t remember the other girls who lived in the house before Rita and Annetta, but he knew their names: Minnie, Louise, Ava, Charlie, Dot. None of them had lasted long. Rita and Annetta arrived together and never left. They all stayed put after that. Mama called them her family.
Annetta was so pretty when she was young, pink and white and golden, a proper dolly with a tinkling laugh. She loved to laugh. She favoured blue to set off her eyes. Her hands were small and soft and dimpled, like his own when he was a boy – he held her hand to keep her captive by his side. And he was her darling, better than any man, Annetta said. Joseph was meant to stay upstairs in his nursery, but he did sometimes creep down, and when he saw Annetta going off on the arm of one gentleman or another he was always crushed. Jealous. Given a chance, he would have had a go at those men, tied up their shoelaces so they tripped and fell to their deaths down the stairs, or stolen their wallets. That was before he understood what went on in the bedrooms – and when he did understand, when he was old enough to know, he hated those men all the more. If Annetta guessed his thoughts, she never said, but she was careful not to let him see her fully undressed.
The Ladies of the House Page 8