If she mentioned it, Jo would say that she would do it some time; she was too tired or busy now. George would start to cough at the mere idea of straining his chest with heavy work.
They opened late and often closed early, missing the home-bound workers. As soon as he had pulled the blind down the glass door, whose buzzer he had not yet bothered to refix, and had emptied the meagre till partly into the safe and partly into his pocket, Mr Abinger would escape from his depressing place of business.
He had given up the Debating Society because he could not afford the subscription. He had given up the Bridge Club, because losses had to be paid in cash, and he seldom had the cash. He did not have to stop playing bowls, because he was treasurer of the Club.
He escaped to it, as Jo escaped to the cinema. He forgot his troubles as he loitered and pottered in the slow-motion ballet on the green where the balls of five or six matches passed and crisscrossed between the groups of solemn men, each fallen into some attitude of repose. It was balm to his discouraged soul to get his fingers round the great satiny wood and send it bumbling over the billiard-table sward, curving in just where he wanted, to chuckle and chock among its fellows. Balm too were the murmurs of admiration, and the desultory technicalities tossed from one group to the next. Even the women on the benches round about gossiped less strenuously in the infectious peace of this tree-shadowed oasis in one of the nastiest parts of North Kensington.
In Avondale Park he was not a failure, nor was he in the Sun in Splendour, where he was in his element among the loquacious bores who did not mind being listened to if they did not have to listen to anyone else. Nobody in the bar bothered about the state of the other man’s business, and his brother Reg was too happy-go-lucky to wonder how George managed to keep up with his betting losses.
Mrs Abinger, hating to be of so little use, had begged to help with the accounts and the paper work, but George would not let her. She did not understand much about figures, and although she sometimes looked at the books, she did not fully realize the position until she read a letter which he had cast to the floor in fury and forgotten to retrieve. It was a dunning letter from a firm of wholesalers with whom they had dealt for years and should have had good credit.
‘Of course I can pay them,’ he snapped, when she plucked up the courage to tackle him. ‘Things have been a bit tight, but I’ll pay next month.’ He had lately been inveigled into greyhound racing by a bare acquaintance called Spider Knappett. He was banking on Spider’s wonder dog for the big race in October.
‘George,’ said Mrs Abinger, who had never owed money in her life, ‘you must pay. They won’t supply us else, and there’ll be all our fats to whistle for.’
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Don’t nag. I’ve got troubles enough without that.’
Ellison’s had their eye on the Corner Stores. Like vultures they waited to pounce on it for their new cooked meats department. Prompted by bulletins from his spies across the road, Mr Ellison pounced too soon. He made George an offer. George refused with umbrage. The wholesalers wrote threatening to withhold supplies. Spider Knappett’s wonder dog came in fourth. The wholesalers wrote again threatening to go to Law, and Mr Abinger paid the bill at last out of the Bowls Club funds.
When the Bowls Club accounts were due for audit, Mr Abinger sat down to write a letter, glancing over his shoulder, unconsciously shielding the paper with his arm although Mrs Abinger was in bed and Jo was downstairs reading an old newspaper from the wrapping pile instead of tidying up the shop.
It was cold down there, and she could not bring herself to get out the broom, or even to flick a duster at the shelves, but it was too wet to go out, and this was better than the eternal reading or knitting in the sitting-room, which smelled to-night of burned semolina and was chill as well as stuffy, because Mr Abinger’s chair blocked out the small fire.
When he called down to her, she went slowly up the stairs, pushing back her hair. She did not wash it so often now and it shone with grease instead of with electric life. She had not bothered to renew her flowered overalls, but wrapped any old apron round herself. Nothing could alter the shapeliness of her figure, the blueness of her eyes or the delicacy of her pert, square-chinned face, but she looked pale and tired and older than seventeen.
‘What is it now, Dad?’ she asked, with the slight Cockney whine that crept sometimes into her voice.
‘I want you to deliver a letter for me,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong with posting it?’
‘The last post’s gone. It’s urgent.’
‘Well, I can’t. It’s pouring. Make Greg take it tomorrow.’ Gregory was Reg and Phyll Abinger’s youngest child, lent to George for pocket money and to keep him out of mischief. Knowing himself an underpaid errand boy, he did just as he pleased and no more.
‘You know I can’t make him do anything,’ said Mr Abinger.
‘Well, you can’t me either. My mac lets water.’
Hearing their voices, Mrs Abinger called from the bedroom: ‘Is that you, Jo? Not going out, I hope dear? It’s pouring of rain.’
‘It’s all right, Mum.’ Jo flung towards the door.
‘It’s to friends of yours anyway.’ Mr. Abinger lowered his voice. ‘It’s right for you to go.’
‘Who?’
‘The Moores.’
‘The Moores? You must be mad, I haven’t seen them for years. Nor want to. What do you want writing to them? They don’t want no more to do with us.’
‘I – I had a query from Mrs Moore asking if I’d reconsider taking her account.’ That sounded well, and he did not care if Jo believed him or not, as long as she went. The sight of her might touch Mrs Moore to generosity for old times’ sake. She had always been a bit soft.
Jo went in the end, because she could not be bothered to argue. She would drop the letter through the door and run away.
‘Where are you going?’ her mother asked, as she fetched her hat and raincoat from her room.
‘Out,’ said Jo.
‘I can see that, dear,’ said Mrs Abinger patiently, ‘but where on a miserable night like this?’ Jo went out without answering, and Mrs Abinger flopped back with a sigh and took up her mending again. She was used nowadays to people not telling her things.
The street was empty of everything except the cold rain, falling as if it never meant to stop. On the way up the hill, Jo stepped into a doorway under a street lamp and looked at the letter. It was carelessly stuck down, and she managed to open it without tearing the envelope. When she had read it, she turned and began to walk home, but before she got there, she turned again and went back up the hill. Why shouldn’t she go? It was not her fault; she was not supposed to know what was in the letter. She did not want to know. She would have no truck with Dad doing such a thing, but at the same time, she could not resist the excuse of going to the house again, perhaps a peep into the hall before she ran. No one would know that she had anything to do with it.
She had not passed the Chepstow Villas corner for a long time for fear of meeting the family. The house glistened in the wet lamplight. It had had a coat of paint, and the door and window boxes and tubs in the front garden were picked out in fresh green. New curtains too, by the looks of it; the Moores must be prospering. Outside the gate stood a little red sports car without lights. Whoever it belonged to would have the police after them soon, thought Jo with jealous satisfaction.
She had dropped the letter through the box and was peering through the glass panel into the lit hall, when a maid came out of the dining-room and seeing her, came quickly to the door before she could escape.
‘Good evening, Miss,’ said the maid, a cleaner, smarter maid than the Moores had ever had before. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Oh no – it’s all right thank you,’ mumbled Jo. ‘I just brought a letter.’
‘Will you wait for a reply?’ The maid picked it up.
‘Oh no, thank you. I – ’ Jo was turning to go, when a voice floated through the open door of the dra
wing-room.
‘Who’s that, Rose? Anyone want me?’ Mrs Moore felt bored and hoped it was someone to see her.
‘No.’ Jo lingered. ‘Oh well.’ She could not resist it. The house looked so warm and bright and comfortable. Mrs Moore’s voice sounded as friendly and soothing as in the old days when she had run to her in tears with a grazed knee. Margery Moore had never been much practical help, but she had been very good at comforting.
‘Bring them in, Rose,’ her voice called again. ‘Don’t keep them standing there in the cold.’
Jo went in, tucking away some ends of wet hair, and buttoning up her raincoat. Not meaning to be seen, she had not bothered to remove her working apron.
The first thing she saw was the fire. It leaped and glowed in the wide grate, and sparkled on the brass dogs and coal scuttles. The Abingers had not had a fire like that for a long time. They had been burning coke and slack because it was cheaper.
On a sofa in front of the fire, her lap full of magazines, hardly a day older except for a soft streak or two of grey in her upswept hair, was Mrs Moore in a long velvet housecoat. Was she an invalid too then? Jo wondered, but Margery Moore jumped up, scattering the magazines and knocking her coffee off a stool.
‘It’s Jo!’ she cried. ‘Jo Abinger. I’d have known you anywhere. Why have you stayed away so long?’
‘Oh well, I – ’ Jo stood in the doorway, too shy to come into the room, but Mrs Moore drew her to the fire, sat her on the sofa and tried unsuccessfully to make her remove her coat and hat. She wondered why Jo had come, since she seemed to have nothing to say.
‘Billy told us he saw you at Seacombe,’ Mrs Moore said. ‘He was annoyed with you about something. Said you jilted him, or something. I don’t remember.’
‘Oh no,’ Jo said. ‘We had to go away. Mum was taken poorly.’ She sat very upright on the edge of the sofa, hiding her grubby hands when she saw Mrs Moore’s long, lily-white fingers, which she flapped about bonelessly as she talked.
‘I’m so sorry, my dear.’ Mrs Moore was very friendly, but Jo could not unbend. How could she, knowing what was in the letter? ‘Is that what you came about? Isn’t she well now? If there’s anything she needs … Oh dear, I wish I’d come down before, but I don’t like to, after – oh, well, never mind.’ She giggled. ‘I’m frightened of your father, you know.’
Jo smiled politely. The maid, who had been hovering, came forward with the letter. ‘The young lady brought this, Madam,’ she said, picked up the coffee cup reprovingly, and left them.
‘Oh.’ Margery Moore turned the letter over and over helplessly as if she had never opened an envelope before. ‘From your mother?’
‘No.’ Jo sounded unfriendly in her brusque shyness. ‘From Dad.’
The room had been lit only by the fire and a lamp which left half the sofa in shadow. Lighting another lamp and putting on glasses to read the letter, Mrs Moore got a clearer look at Jo, and was sad. Such a pretty, bright little thing she had been, and the mother always so proud of her. How had she come to look so shabby and down?
She understood when she had read the letter. Oh dear, why must people put one in such a dilemma? If only Geoffrey were here. He never seemed to be here when she needed him, only when the children did something for which he would be better out of the way. That dreadful Abinger man! How he had the face, after the things he had said about Jo’s friendship with the children … and such a sum!
‘Did you know what was in this letter?’ She looked at Jo, peaky under the unbecoming felt hat, sitting so prim, but leaning towards the fire like a flower to the sun.
‘No, Mrs Moore,’ said Jo, as if she were repeating a lesson.
‘I see. Well, I don’t know.’ Margery’s impulse was to go straight to her desk and write a cheque. But she and Geoffrey had a joint banking account, and he always scrutinized the pass book carefully. The Abingers had been anathema to him since the Wormwood Scrubs episode, which Margery had privately thought funny and touching. She would never be able to explain away fifty pounds. It had not taken him long to find out that she was supporting the old rogue on the corner of Ladbroke Square, whose patch covered a perfectly sound eye.
She sat down at her desk and tapped her teeth with a pen. She turned to look over her glasses at Jo, bending her neck like a swan. She had a sweet, compassionate face, and she was so bathed and fragrant that when she said: ‘Perhaps I’d better come and talk to your father,’ Jo said quickly: ‘Oh no.’
She could not explain that the state of the shop was not fit for her to see. Supposing she went upstairs and saw the poky flat which Mrs Abinger could not and Jo would not keep properly clean. She had been silly to come in here. This was like another world, with its fire and maids and velvet curtains. It was not for her; she would go away and never see them again.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She got up. ‘I’ll tell Dad you were out, or that I lost the letter or something. Please forget about it.’
‘Why?’ Mrs Moore got up too. ‘Jo dear, I believe you do know what’s in it.’ That was why the child was being so farouche.
She came and took Jo’s hand, and her gentle touch and lavender smell was Jo’s undoing. She pulled away and dropped back on to the sofa with her face in her hands. ‘Oh yes, I do, I do. I do know. I’m ever so sorry. It wasn’t my fault.’
Mrs Moore sank at once beside her, and Jo turned instinctively into her arms. Her hat fell off and Mrs Moore stroked the greasy hair, which was full of kirbigrips instead of being properly set.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said, in her old grazed-knee voice.
‘I can’t!’ sobbed Jo, ‘It’s all so awful.’ But soon she was telling her everything, wallowing in the relief of having someone to wail to at last about all the things that had happened.
Mrs Moore was very upset. To think that this had been going on and she only half a mile away, never suspecting the degeneration of the Corner Stores, which had been such a feature of her early married life.
‘How he could!’ she said. ‘And to send you up here with a begging letter – It’s unforgivable. Oh hullo, Tess. Don’t you think it’s unforgivable?’
‘What is?’ Tess was used to her mother’s habit of roping you casually into the fag end of some scene with as little explanation as if you had been there all the time. She had grown up shortsighted, and had usually either lost or broken her glasses. She came forward, peering. She was a tall, big-boned girl with sandy hair and a face innocent of any of the lines and expressions of malice or temper.
Jo looked up and grinned in a sheepish, watery way. ‘Hullo then, Tess,’ she said.
‘Jo! How lovely.’ She sat down beside her and said, with all her old tactlessness: ‘But Billy told us you looked grand. What’s happened to you?’ So Jo, nothing loth, told her story all over again. Their ready sympathy and the warmth and comfort of the room inspired her to exaggerate a little, painting her father as black as they seemed willing to think him.
‘It’s a bit thick, you know,’ said Tess. ‘We must do something about this.’ She began to bite her nails, eager at the thought of a campaign. She was at London University and very much concerned at the moment with championing the underdog.
‘It’s all right,’ said Jo. ‘I’ll be all right. I better go.’ But she was drugged with warmth and sympathy. She could not get up.
‘You ought to have a job, Jo. Mummy, she ought to have a job and get away from drudging in the shop.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Jo nobly. ‘They couldn’t manage if I wasn’t there.’
‘They’d have to,’ said Tess. ‘How would they manage if they hadn’t got a daughter?’
‘Don’t forget she is their daughter though,’ said Mrs Moore. ‘She has a certain duty, I suppose … ’
‘Would you expect me to help you out if you’d muddled your-self into bankruptcy?’ asked Tess, in her definite, knee-thumping way.
‘I suppose so – ’ began Mrs Moore, caught unawares. ‘I mean, no no, of course not,’ she amende
d, seeing that Tess was being progressive and modern. She knew her Tess. She was the most loyal and clannish of the lot, but let her pretend she was a lone spirit, if that pleased her.
‘Look Jo,’ Tess turned to her eagerly. ‘If we help you to get a job, will you take it? Your father will manage; people always do’, She snapped her fingers. ‘The very thing! Uncle Arnold, Mummy. He’d get her something at one of his hotels. There must be masses of jobs.’
‘He must pay good wages too,’ said Mrs Moore innocently. ‘Because he’s so rich.’
Jo looked from one to the other of them. ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Mum and Dad.’
‘They’ll persuade you out of it,’ cried Tess. ‘Jo, you must make up your mind This is a crisis in your life, don’t you see? You never used to be so feeble-minded. You were the toughest of the lot when we were a gang. Don’t you remember how you went first into the sewer?’
Jo could not let her down. ‘Well, I’ll try,’ she said. Seeing Tess so enthusiastic, although she must be every day of twenty, made Jo think that her life at seventeen was perhaps not finished after all.
‘If you do,’ said Mrs Moore, ‘I’ll pay your father’s debt. That’s a bargain.’
‘Mummy, that’s clever of you,’ said Tess, surprised.
As they all went into the hall, a tiny old lady came up from the kitchen where she had been having her supper.
‘Hello, hello,’ she said, ‘where have you turned up from like a bad penny?’
‘Hullo,’ said Jo. She did not know whether to call her Nanny or Miss – whatever her name was. Nanny had never had a name. ‘Still having those heads?’ asked Nanny, remembering. She remembered every child she had ever known by its ailments, classing them bilious, nose-bleeders, or liable to come out in a rash in the strawberry season.
‘Wilf will be sorry to miss you,’ she said. ‘He was always fond of you. “Nanny,” he used to say to me for a long time after the upset, “I would like to see Jo again, Nanny,” he’d say. He was a funny little boy.’
Joy and Josephine Page 22