Echoes of the Past

by Maggie Ford

  But for the kindheartedness of Joe Wetzel, who gave him jobs that often didn’t need doing to keep him going with an odd dollar here and there, he’d have gone under months ago, his body hauled on to a truck and driven outside town to be buried. But even Joe was getting fed up with being kind-hearted.

  “You’re a good-fur-nothin’ bum,” he’d said yesterday, or was it the day before that? Hugh couldn’t remember – maybe it had been days ago.

  “I used to be well off,” Hugh had told him, his Englishness making the man grin. “My cousin owns a high-class London restaurant.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” had been the caustic reply. “An’ my sister’s the Queen of England!”

  Hugh had refused to be knocked back. “My cousin is a wealthy man.”

  “Then he can send some dough to get yuh home outta my goddamn hair!” The smile had vanished. “I’m givin’ up givin’ yuh money fur doin’ nuthin’. Instead I’m gonna buy yuh breakfast now’n’agen, so’s yuh can’t buy cheap liquor or lose it in some two-cent crap game. How’s that grab yuh?”

  When Hugh could find nothing to say, he’d continued affably, “Yuh go on like this, yuh’ll be dead in two weeks. Yuh’re a dead-beat drunk, and it beats me why I go on financin’ yuh. I should let yuh kill yourself, but I’m too much of a soft-hearted guy. Write to yuh so-called rich cousin and get him to pay fur yuh to go home.”

  He’d done that well over a month ago and had heard nothing. Edwin had no doubt washed his hands of him – and at a time when he had needed help, some friend or other, more than he had ever needed anything in his life. The only friends he now had were Joe and May, another lush like himself, a painted, fat, two-bit hooker of doubtful years who dressed like a teenager, making a ludicrous sight of herself while quite unaware of it.

  She’d stagger into his room and, after dropping a kiss on his sweaty forehead, would make a play of tidying his room, though it still looked the same when she had finished. Not that he cared. But her company was most welcome as she sat on his sagging bed and showed her large breasts to him, perhaps to make herself feel more of a success, since very few customers were ever tempted by her. In his drunkenness he would fondle those breasts, feel the soft pliable mound of quivering flesh, and she would press her thick wet lips on his, but that was as far as it went for him. Moaning in ecstasy, she would fondle his limpness, drink having stolen all virility from him, and he would sigh and finally fall asleep.

  * * *

  The next morning at around eleven, with the heat already pounding in from the surrounding desert, May stole into Hugh’s shabby room after a fruitless night trying to entice a customer or two. The room next to the garage was on the edge of town and was a trap for the windblown sand that about this time of day started to be swirled up into small dust devils by the hot breeze.

  She would take a broom and stir up the invasive desert dust from the floor. It would settle back exactly where it had been before, but it made her look good. She would try the ramshackle cupboard as she always did when Hugh was dead to the world, knowing it would be locked. It always was. She had never seen him open it yet or even go to it. He probably had the key somewhere but she had never seen it, and she wondered what it was he needed to keep locked away – unless of course it was just jammed. Often she’d creep over and try to pick the lock with her fingers but all to no avail.

  Far away the endless trucks of a freight train stretching from horizon to horizon and drawn by two, sometimes three engines whistled plaintively. This morning, as always, Hugh’s silent room reeked of body odour and booze but a little fondling would make up for that, make her feel better, make her feel as though she could still do her stuff.

  He was lying prone on the bed. She’d turn him over and then vent her lonely existence on him. She might even get that dick hard enough to ease it inside her. He’d hardly notice but she liked to feel that he had, and God knew she was in need of some comfort.

  She plonked herself down beside him on the bed and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Wake up, honey. C’mon, wake up.”

  There was no response. She leaned over towards the bare floorboards and picked up an empty bottle of cheap bourbon.

  “Ah, poor honey,” she purred. “Had a skinful, ain’t yuh? Well, come to Momma, then. And she’ll give yuh a little love.”

  Lying over him, she took off her two huge, cheap and garish rings to reach around him down into the front of his pants and fondle him with plump, eager fingers.

  “C’mon, honey. You like me doin’ this to yuh, heh?”

  She heard him mumble and was encouraged, but now noticed that his body was sweatier than it would normally be. Sitting upright, May eased him on to his back, an easy enough task with him being so thin and lightweight.

  Hugh’s face, putty-coloured and drenched in sweat, his half-open blue eyes staring at nothing, had her out of the room in seconds, hurrying across to the garage as fast as her plump legs could take her, breasts, stomach and butt bouncing like jelly.

  “Joe! Joe! F’godsake – Hugh’s sick. I think he’s dyin’. Get a doctor.”

  Joe was about to say he had no money for doctors for bums like that, but one look at May’s distraught face galvanised him into action. Dropping the wrench he was using on an ancient and banged-up automobile, he ran with her to the three-roomed shack he misleadingly called a motel, his narrow, weather-beaten frame arriving there before her.

  “He’s real sick,” she moaned as they tried to revive him. “He’s still breathing but he might not be much longer.”

  “I ain’t payin’ fur no doctor,” Joe said, his kindliness not stretching that far. “He ain’t worth it. We get him better, he’ll only go tryin’ to kill himself again.”

  With that he went off to make some strong coffee to force down the sick man’s throat, the only thing he could think to do that wouldn’t cost him a doctor’s fee.

  Meantime, May thrashed about the room searching in desperation for anything to assist the recumbent figure still gazing up into space. In doing so she discovered a key lying under the bed. She had never swept under there where the dust was out of sight. The key could be to the cupboard. Hurrying over, she tried it, wondering what she expected to be looking for.

  Not only did the key fit, it turned. Dragging open the flimsy door she saw draped over a wire hanger a grey suit of the sort a man of means might wear, though it was now limp and dusty, as were a pair of black shoes and a once white, now yellowing shirt. Why hadn’t he pawned them long ago? Amazed, she hastily felt in the jacket and trouser pockets. Nothing. But the clothes could bring in some cash.

  A groan from behind her startled her mid-search and she swung round guiltily. Hugh’s eyes were open, his hand to his temples.

  “Jesus!” she burst out, thankful that he hadn’t seemed to have noticed her rifling through the clothes. Quickly she closed the cupboard door and locked it, secreting the key in her podgy fist as she came over to him, angry now.

  “You bastard! You scared the shit outta me! There ain’t nothin’ wrong with yuh, God damn it!”

  But, going to him, she saw there was something very wrong with him. He had come to himself, yes, but there still seemed to be no life in his eyes. This man looked doomed to die, if not tomorrow, then this week.

  Her large heart went out to him. She’d come to love him in a strange sort of way, this man with his limp dick and his worn clothes and his gaunt though still good-looking face. Now this man, with a good suit of clothes in that wardrobe which he had never pawned while he staggered from one hand-out to the next, lay next to death’s door. She couldn’t have that.

  Hurriedly gathering up the clothes just as Joe came in with a steaming coffee pot, she waddled past him. “I’m gettin’ some money on these things,” she yelled at him over her shoulder by way of explanation. “You get that stuff down him. I’m goin’ for a doctor.”

  Most of the money went on a casual medic to pull Hugh round. A bit she kept back – for her trouble, she told herself – th
e rest she spent on a letter sent to the address on a creased and greasy scrap of airmail paper she’d discovered during a more extensive search of the suit’s breast pocket. What it said had shocked her rigid.

  I know you are my cousin and I should respect that, but I can’t continue financing you. The restaurant isn’t there to sustain you forever and I can foresee no hope of you continuing on in the business if you continue to behave in this way. All I can say is you are going to have to make your own way home.

  There was no point reading any more. She had no family that she knew of, yet May’s heart went cold at the thought of anyone being that mean to a relative. At the same time she saw an easy way to get back something for her time spent on caring for Hugh. And why not? She’d probably never see him again and she had her own life to think about. She wrote a hasty note telling this Edwin guy just what she thought of him, and went on to say that his cousin was at death’s door and would surely die if Edwin didn’t do something for him. She added that it had cost her bucks caring for him – the guy wouldn’t know exactly how much – and that she was broke because of it.

  Eighteen

  Hugh was back, a bedraggled ghost of his former self. It shocked Helen and wrung her heart.

  “We have to look after him,” she told Edwin, his cousin having gone straight to bed in his old room after his flight. “He can’t look after himself.”

  Edwin too had been shocked by his cousin’s appearance, but he still couldn’t forgive Hugh for treating him the way he had after all that had been done for him in the past. “You’ll have both your father and him to look after,” he reminded her. “Don’t you think you’re taking on too much?”

  “Dad will be going back home soon,” Helen reminded him. “He’s been chomping at the bit for weeks to get back to London. He misses it terribly, and he’s quite well now. After all, it is July. He’s fine in spring and summer.”

  It left Edwin with no argument. Helen was one of those women who always needed to be doing something, looking after people – the lame dogs, so to speak. If she was happy to have Hugh here taking up her time now that her father’s illness was coming to an end, then he’d put up with it. So long as she didn’t ask him to hold out the olive branch to Hugh. He’d done enough in bringing him home, and at far more expense to himself than paying out for a mere plane ticket.

  A letter from some woman who said that she had been living with him – not the Amanda who had walked out on him the minute his money had run out, but someone named May – said, if her story was to be believed, that she had used up every bit of her savings caring for him. And because Hugh’s health was purported to have been in such a bad way, he’d had to take her at her word, the letter in fact making her out to be a treasure indeed.

  But he hadn’t been in business this long to have the wool pulled over his eyes that easily. He’d sent her enough to get Hugh into hospital, then contacted a firm of solicitors in that area to make sure the woman did indeed use the money for that purpose.

  A phone call from the American attorney had confirmed the woman’s honesty, but Edwin would never be sure that she was really owed the seven hundred dollars she’d mentioned as out-of-pocket expenses. Feeling generous, however, being that she had written so poignantly about Hugh and how much he’d come to mean to her, and seeing as she was probably pining over never seeing him again, he sent her eight. As he mailed the money he visualised a blonde woman, the sort Hugh had always gone for, alone in the world. He hoped she would soon find herself another young man who might care for her as she had for Hugh.

  Then there had been the fees for Hugh drying out in a clinic, and Edwin had had to forward the lawyer enough funds to kit Hugh out with some decent clothes, May having written that he only had what he stood up in. Edwin hadn’t dared trust Hugh with the money to buy himself a decent outfit; he would more likely have gambled it away in hopes of making another fortune. There had been a hotel bill to pay following Hugh’s recovery, then his flight home, coupled with the attorney’s fees. By the time Hugh arrived home in early July, a sizeable hole had been made in Edwin’s own funds.

  But at least Hugh was back in England, where he could keep an eye on him, though he wondered what lessons Hugh had learned from it all, if any. And indeed what lessons he himself had learned.

  “I just know,” he told Helen dismally, “that once he’s got over being penitent – and during the two days he’s been here he’s already flogged it to his very utmost, damned actor that he is – he’ll be off again. But this is the very last time I’m ever going to bail him out. No matter what happens to him, in whatever part of the world, I’m not lifting another finger for him.” He held up a forestalling hand as she made to protest. “It’s not a warning, Helen, it’s a promise, and you can tell him that from me. You’ll be seeing more of him than I shall or shall wish to. Tell him he can come back to work alongside me but I want no more of his prima donna nonsense. He’ll graft as hard as I do. I’m not jeopardising our business any more for him. If he can’t stick to it then he’s out and he can do what he damn well pleases with his life. I’m done with looking after him.”

  * * *

  It seemed Hugh had indeed learned a lesson from his experience. Full of gratitude for Edwin’s timely intervention and Helen’s dedicated nursing, he finally regained his strength and began to go into London with Edwin as regularly as clockwork, staying with him late into the evening during the busiest times.

  With Christmas coming up Helen found herself doubly lonely, missing not only Edwin but his cousin too. As Hugh’s gauntness faded and he regained his beauty she found herself watching his every movement as he’d once watched hers. It seemed to her, however, that Hugh no longer had any interest in her, was in fact intentionally avoiding her as much as possible.

  Christmas was a lovely one with a good family gathering: he and Edwin; her father, who was keeping pretty well considering; the girls; Sheila and her family and Aunt Victoria. On New Year’s Eve, however, just after twelve o’clock had struck and they had drunk the new year in, Hugh announced that he had found himself a flat in London – to be nearer the job, he said.

  “I’m done with acting,” he said cheerily. “Utter waste of time!”

  Edwin was beaming, seeing his cousin as having turned over a complete new leaf, but Helen felt her heart sink. She immediately admonished herself, but the censure did little to make her feel any better.

  “You’ll be popping up to visit us, though?” she asked.

  Hugh gave her a steady look. “Don’t see much point really, being as I’m working with Edwin most of the week.” A mischievous light crept into in his eyes. “I expect he’d have seen enough of my ugly mug. And you don’t want me hanging around you, do you, Helen?”

  Oh, I do. The words came into her heart, but she merely smiled at him and told him not to be so silly and that he was welcome any time.

  “Then I’ll give that some consideration,” he quipped with such mock seriousness that Edwin burst out laughing in thorough approval of his cousin.

  “You and I between us,” he said, still chuckling, a little drunk from champagne on top of the spirits they had been consuming all evening, “are going to make Letts synonymous with our names, just as our fathers did. Nothing can stop us. This will be a fortuitous year and I guarantee we’ll still be around forty years from now, you and I, right into the twenty-first century. You know, I can’t imagine what the world will be like in 2006. Sounds so strange, don’t you think?”

  “No stranger than me becoming a restaurateur,” chuckled Hugh, “and not an actor. If you’d told me after my father died that this was what I’d be doing, I’d have laughed in your face.”

  Left out of the conversation, Helen stayed silent. Hugh had put her entirely out of his mind, and she didn’t like the way it felt.

  * * *

  Her father’s bronchitis had come back this winter, compelling her to spend more time with him, leaving the girls in Mrs Cotterell’s care. After all, Angel
was ten now and Gina eight; they were able to look after themselves to some extent, with Mrs Cotterell having offered to stay at night on the occasions that Helen elected to stay with her father.

  When Edwin employed a nurse to look after William, Helen was free to return home, a little reluctantly because she had seen Hugh twice that week when he had rung her father’s doorbell to see if she needed anything. He had asked her once to go out for a drink with him but she had refused. He hadn’t asked again.

  She had been mollified but her sole concern after all had to be for her father’s welfare. His condition was a worry to her. The man who had returned to his flat in London last July had faded yet again. Then he had seemed so strong, his old self, concerned about her nursing Hugh. When she’d spoke of coming to London every Tuesday to look after him he had said, “You’ll have enough on your plate looking after that cousin of Edwin’s.” Then the smile he’d given her had vanished and his face had grown serious. “But don’t let that Hugh run rings around you, poppet. He’s a manipulating sort and I worry about you. Don’t let him get too near you. I don’t entirely trust him.”

  Helen hadn’t been certain as to what her father was getting at, except that he was probably irritated by the way Hugh had twisted her husband around his little finger, and more than once. She remembered thinking at the time that it was a good thing he had no notion of how she really felt about Hugh. He’d be so angry. He saw her marriage to Edwin as one of those made in heaven – of course with its odd ups and downs, but perfect for all that.

  While her father had been staying with her, his company had taken the edge off Edwin’s absences, and she had been able to put on a brave face about it all. It was as well that Will knew nothing of the loneliness she still suffered. Edwin was married to his job rather than her, was protector to his staff rather than his own children.