In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘He can’t do it all,’ she said.

  ‘He’s going to have to, the way the rest of them are playing.’

  The next morning Annie, tired from the previous week and having spent Saturday evening doing the accounts, hauled herself out of bed, roused Melanie and they set off for Gravesend.

  ‘You’ve got to promise me something,’ she said, once they were in the car she had persuasively conned from the housekeeper at her sister’s small house in a Kensington mews the previous evening. ‘You’ve got to promise me that if we can’t find Uncle Jim or any sign of him at all this time, you’ll ring your mother and father and have a serious talk about what’s going to happen next.’

  Melanie was enjoying the leather upholstery of the small but expensive car. ‘They must have a bit of money, your sister and her husband. What does he do?’

  ‘Melanie – don’t change the subject,’ Annie said.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone. But it’ll only be my mum I speak to because my dad’s gone off.’

  Annie drove through Foxwell and entered the streets of Leadham Common, an area of small suburban houses, with neat front gardens. A long road of identical houses, under a leaden sky, lay ahead.

  ‘Gone off?’ she said. Over the past few weeks, Melanie had given her an impression of a sad household, facing many difficulties – shortage of work, shortage of money and a general despondency which made these things harder to bear. Annie wondered if it had been her sister Ruth’s disappearance a year ago which had made Melanie’s mother so worn out and hopeless, or the depressing atmosphere that had driven the girl from home in the first place. Now, here was Melanie’s father, David Pickering, also gone. And, of course, Melanie herself.

  Melanie explained, ‘He went off to find work. There hadn’t been any jobs since the summer.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Annie asked suspiciously.

  ‘I rang Mo Patel at the corner shop,’ Melanie explained. ‘I paid for it myself,’ she added. ‘In a call box. Anyway, I told Mo to keep it a secret I’d rung – he told me Dad’d come south, he thought, looking for work.’

  ‘What does he do?’ asked Annie, impressed, as usual, by Melanie’s initiative.

  ‘Bricklayer,’ Melanie replied shortly.

  There was a silence. ‘What drove Ruth away from home?’ Annie suddenly asked.

  Melanie did not reply. Annie recalled a girl at her school who had arrived at mid-term and had shared her room. At fifteen Annie had sensed that Celia, her pale, sleepless companion, who lay in bed at night surrounded by hosts of furry animals inappropriate to her age, who never thought of film and pop stars or, for that matter, escape from the school into that other world they all craved, had an affliction – a secret that, given encouragement, she might have wanted to discuss. But Annie had been afraid: without having any idea of Celia’s trouble she flinched from the idea of finding out. She’d even been out to tea with Celia’s family one half term, and had observed, with disquiet, the way Celia’s father compulsively touched his daughter whenever he could – on the hand, as she passed him a plate, on the cheek, as they spoke, how he laid his arm across her shoulders at the table. She’d seen Celia freeze when this happened. It was with Celia’s chalky, expressionless face in her mind’s eye that she asked, ‘What drove Ruth away?’

  There was another silence which Annie broke by saying, ‘I won’t tell anybody—’ and Melanie at the same time burst out, ‘If you want to know my dad was too fond of Ruth – not me, she was the one he really loved. I don’t know how bad it was but Mum knew, so did I and I expect the boys noticed something. He used to say, “Come over here, Ruth, and sit on my knee.” This was when she was getting big, even when she was coming up fourteen, and she used to go but she didn’t like it. He used to come in our room, too, and sit down on her bed and – and – well, I don’t know but we both knew it wasn’t right, me and Ruth. He had his hands everywhere. We all knew what was happening. It was embarrassing,’ she said resentfully.

  There was a silence. ‘I had to ask,’ Annie said eventually.

  ‘I know,’ Melanie replied. After a pause she said, ‘I suppose it had to come to an end. At first, Ruth wouldn’t come home from school till late. She started just coming back when Mum got back from work so she wasn’t in the house without Mum, and Dad’s saying, “Where’s Ruth?” and that. We’d say, “She’s hanging round with her mates”, which was true, but it was because he’d be there – I think she asked Mum to make him stop but she couldn’t explain it – I don’t know—’

  Melanie stopped, confused by having to describe what she could hardly understand and had put out of her mind as much as she was able. She went on, ‘Then Ruth started not going to school at all. She’d start out pretending she was going but she’d turn off at the recreation ground, where the other kids playing hookey would go – and one day she didn’t come home. I wish I’d told on her now. I wish I knew where she was. I wish I could see her again. Mostly, I wish I knew she was all right.’

  Melanie’s voice cracked. Annie had tears in her own eyes. She spotted a café sign and found a place to pull over. They sat down in a tea room full of stained and polished tables and shelves of blue china.

  Across the table Annie looked at Melanie, drinking Coke from a glass with a straw. ‘Did anybody tell the police?’ she asked.

  ‘Mum reported her missing and gave them a photo.’ She paused, then added, ‘There’s hundreds, probably thousands, of kids go missing every year. They don’t find half of them.’

  The sky became darker as they drove and Annie yet again regretted the trip, which she thought would be futile anyway. They’d already checked the local telephone directory and, by means of a fraudulent call to the council offices, discovered no record of Melanie’s uncle as a local poll-tax payer. Their aim now was to approach the local police in such a way that they would check their computer for Jim and Muriel Allardyce without their asking too many questions about Melanie’s status. Melanie also suggested that, her uncle and aunt being strong Methodists, visits to the Methodist churches of the area and a word with the ministers concerned might reveal the Allardyces to be members of one of the congregations.

  Annie turned up the heater in the smart little car. Sleet began to lash the windscreen. Four hours later they left the streets of Gravesend, which were silent, dark and swept over by crying gulls. The Methodists had been no help. The police, accepting Annie’s story that she was a family friend who had driven Melanie to Gravesend to stay with her uncle and aunt, only to find on arrival that Melanie had left the letter giving the address behind, conducted a friendly search of the computer. Annie and Melanie sat in the police station waiting for the verdict feeling cold and depressed. Annie tried to prepare Melanie for disappointment. ‘I’m not too sure they’re going to find them,’ she told her.

  ‘I know,’ Melanie had said. ‘He’s gone somewhere else, that’s what I think. I’m sorry, Annie.’

  A woman officer came back and said there was no record of the Allardyces – Annie and Melanie made their escape as fast as possible and headed for London. It had begun to snow. Melanie wanted to stop for a snack and Annie said they couldn’t. They must keep going in case the snow got even heavier and finally trapped them. They were both irritable. Annie, pondering Melanie’s account of her sister’s disappearance, had to conclude that the plan for Melanie to return home wasn’t as good as she’d previously assumed. Feeling stuck in a situation she didn’t want, she drew a deep breath and said to the girl, ‘If you stay here any length of time – if your mother will let you – you’ll have to start going to school.’

  Melanie protested. ‘What’s the point of that? I can be very useful to you while you get the snack-bar going, looking after the kids and lending a hand. What’s the point of me being at some school? It’s not worth it. Have you thought how you’d manage that café without me?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Annie said with resolution. ‘I can’t see any justification for keeping you away from
school just because it’s convenient. That’s simply exploitation. Also it’s illegal.’

  ‘Did you have a car, before?’ enquired Melanie.

  Annie, who had spent her adult life among grown-ups, was wiser now to these diversionary tactics. She responded, ‘Yes – but I shared it with Julian and he took it. Listen, Melanie. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t go to school and get some qualifications. In any case, learning has some value – you should do it just for the sake of it.’

  ‘Have you seen that school?’ she asked. ‘Jasper Rayburn Comprehensive? They’re hooligans in there. Drug-pushers and everything. It’s just not worth it. Look at it like this – Uncle Jim and Auntie Muriel are somewhere. I’m going to get the Sally Army on to it. They can always find people. So, in the meanwhile, if Mum says I can stop on, what’s the point? I don’t want to go there. I’ll learn nothing. I can read and write and do sums. That’s all I need.’

  ‘I couldn’t forgive myself,’ Annie said.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you,’ Melanie said desperately. ‘I don’t think you’re accustomed to the kind of school I am. Those schools are places you have to go to to keep you out of harm’s way while your mum’s at work, while you’re too young to go to work yourself. They teach you what you need in the primary school when you’re little. After that, it’s a waste of time. Education suits a few. Some take to it naturally. And it keeps teachers in work. But I’m not clever, never have been. I don’t come from a clever family. Practically nobody bothers about school – pop stars and that. And footballers – do you think Vanessa’s brother’s got a hundred O levels? There’s a man in our town plays for England …’ she reminisced.

  ‘But you’re not going to play for England, Melanie.’

  ‘No need to take up my words like that,’ Melanie said reproachfully. ‘You know what I mean. I’m not going to turn into some brain surgeon or – what are they? – cabinet minister no matter if I go to school for a thousand years—’

  ‘Why not?’ Annie said indignantly. ‘Why can’t you be a cabinet minister, tell me that?’ She’d noticed that all her arguments with Melanie soon reached the level of a playground squabble.

  ‘Because I’m a girl and I’m working class,’ Melanie said, with finality.

  ‘There’ve been women cabinet ministers, and working class ones, too,’ Annie informed her.

  ‘When was that? When dinosaurs roamed the earth? Anyway, I don’t want to be a cabinet minister. I just want a job, good pay—’

  ‘Well, it would help you do that if you got some schooling first.’

  ‘So I can be a teacher on fifteen thousand a year, less tax,’ retorted Melanie.

  ‘Melanie,’ appealed Annie. ‘You say you’re not clever, but you are—’

  ‘How many O levels have you got, Annie? You went to university, didn’t you? What good has it done? You’re running a snack bar.’

  Annie didn’t reply. Tired, hungry and infuriated, steering through thickening snow, she reverted to the playground again. ‘You’ll see. Just wait and see, that’s all.’

  Melanie sat stolidly strapped in her seat, exuding scepticism.

  That evening Annie at last spoke to Mrs Pickering, Melanie’s mother. She had a flat voice. She sounded tired, but she was sensible. She said, ‘I can’t ask Melanie’s dad about her stopping on with you because he’s gone away to work and hasn’t got in touch yet, but if you’re happy to have her, then I’m happy. I’ve spoken to her and she wants to stay. Only one thing …’ she paused. ‘I can’t have her not going to school. I know she’s useful to you. She’s a sensible girl and I miss her. But you’ll know there’s not much of a chance for young people round here so I’m content to let her stay if she goes on with her education. I’m afraid if you can’t see your way to putting her in a school, then she’ll have to come home.’

  Next day, even Vanessa, whom Melanie had counted on as an ally, joined in the process of forcing Melanie to take a trip to Rayburn Comprehensive. ‘You get yourself up there straight away,’ she said firmly, unstrapping Alec from his buggy. ‘I know now a woman can’t have too much education. Look at me – no CSEs, definitely not maths. So, I have to rely on Annie. If I’m lucky, when and if all this packs in, or if we can’t get a living wage from it, I’m back at work five days a week, forty-eight weeks a year, Alec in a nursery all day long, or if I can’t get him in, with some childminder who may be no good and keep him strapped in his chair all day long while she smokes fags and talks to the neighbours. What about your mum? In the packing department at the factory, you said? Working all day for eighty quid a week, I bet, not more, then home to the kids and the housework. Don’t be a fool to yourself. Get an education and some proper training …’

  ‘Annie’s got a degree from a university and look—’ Melanie said, pointing at Annie wiping down the counter.

  ‘That’s right,’ Vanessa said. ‘And she’s doing all the paperwork.’

  ‘You could, if you had the confidence – you could take a course …’ Annie intervened.

  ‘That’s another thing an education gives you – confidence in yourself,’ declared Vanessa. ‘If I’d had anything behind me do you think I’d’ve let Geoff Doyle make a fool of me like he did? No way. Anyway, you’ve got no choice, Melanie. Your mum says you can’t stay if you don’t go to school. And so does the law. I don’t want coppers round here asking questions.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ conceded Melanie.

  It was still early as Annie and Melanie walked in silence down Foxwell High Street and along two back streets to the Jasper Rayburn Comprehensive School, Tredgarth Street. A few late pupils flew past them as they walked through the big metal gates and found themselves behind the wire in a big asphalt playground. They watched the backs of two large boys running for the entrance. To Annie Melanie suddenly looked very small. As if to herself, Melanie repeated, ‘I’ll give it a go.’ Looking at the pupils cramming in ahead of them, she remarked to Annie, ‘It looks like West Side Story here.’

  The comprehensive resembled no school Annie had ever attended or approached. It was nothing like the village school in Belshaw she had attended as a child, nor the Quaker boarding school Howard Browning, in spite of his strong support of a state education system, had felt it compatible with his principles to allow his daughters to attend. That school had been founded in the late nineteenth century by two female relatives of his. The Jasper Rayburn Comprehensive was the kind of school that up to this point Annie had only seen from the windows of cars and trains or read about in newspapers.

  As they walked through the front door, she thought of Hidge Lane Board School, which most of the Threpp Street children had attended in the year 1888 if not hiding from the truant officer or so unrecorded by any authority that no one had found them in order to compel them to attend any school at all.

  ‘Love, money and revenge,’ she said encouragingly to Melanie, who’d been told about the joke – or was it a joke? – she and Vanessa had produced between them.

  ‘I’m going to need new jeans,’ was Melanie’s reply. ‘These are disgusting.’

  After a long wait outside the headmaster’s office with four pupils, two of whom looked like escapees from Cell Block 11, one in heavy make-up and damp stilettos and one tiny red-eyed Asian boy, Annie and Melanie were ushered into the office of Mr Austin Framling, MA, a small man with a determined air. Melanie, with more haste than Annie expected, was enrolled at Jasper Rayburn Comprehensive and despatched to a classroom in the care of another pupil. She did not glance back at Annie as she left the headmaster’s room. Annie had discovered there were 1300 pupils at Rayburn Comp. ‘Fewer than at Eton,’ Austin Framling remarked jovially. Now she said to him tentatively, ‘She’s an intelligent girl – her actual attainments might not show this at first.’

  ‘We’ll take care of her,’ he told her. ‘We’ll be getting her records from her previous school, in due course.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie, wondering what she should ask next
. There was to be no chance. Austin Framling stood up, extended his hand and said, ‘Well, goodbye, Mrs Vane. Would you be kind enough to give your address and telephone number to my secretary on the way out. Don’t worry, we’ll look after her. If ever you want to contact me I’m here. I try to be as accessible as possible to parents. Of course, in these days of cuts and staff shortages I can’t do as much as I’d like.’

  Annie walked despondently back to George’s Café, wondering how Melanie would manage. How much more could she take? The revelations about her father on the Gravesend trip had shaken Annie badly. Melanie’s whole situation, including the new school, new demands to form friendships and avoid enmities, was entirely the fault of David Pickering, Annie knew. At that moment she could have killed him.

  6

  Lunch at Durham House

  At Durham House, one Sunday in mid-February, Nigel Fellows and his wife were entertaining a small party for Sunday lunch. The guests included Charles and Matilda Head and their twelve-year-old daughter, Amanda, one Max Craig, Annie Vane, Vanessa Doyle and Melanie Pickering. Also present were the estate manager, Adam Cranley, and Dr Sam Anstruther. Charles Head and Max Craig were both, in their different ways, employees of Samco Ltd, the large group of companies owned or controlled by Sir Bernard Fellows. It was quite a small, dull group for Durham House, where it was not unknown for royalty to meet rock star, millionaire to meet famous musician, titled beauty to meet beast in the house or its grounds, lit with lanterns for a party.

  Today, however, tall, fair, clear-complexioned Nigel Fellows presided over the big polished table in jersey and corduroys, his mother, Lady Mary, to his right, his pretty wife Jasmine on the left. Lady Mary, tall and thin, her fine skin etched with lines, said, as the housekeeper brought in a large joint of beef, ‘I expect you’ll carve, Nigel.’ He stood up readily, picking up the carving knife and fork from the plate, starting to carve and asking each guest in turn what they would like. Jasmine fidgeted slightly. As she’d whispered to Annie earlier, ‘I don’t know why we have to go through all this at lunchtime on Sundays. Most people would prefer to help themselves – what a Victorian palaver.’