The Under Ground (Strong Women Book 4)

by Sarah Till

  My supervisor touched the non-designer clothes with a little disgust, picking the items between her thumb and forefinger and placing them into a fresh black bin liner. When her task was complete, she turned to me and smiled.

  “Could you just pop these into the skip at the back?”

  I stared at her for a moment.

  “Will they be collected from the skip then? To take to the women? In Africa and the earthquake?”

  Her lips thinned and she blushed.

  “No, Virginia, they will not. We sell the good stuff in the shop and the money goes to head office. They distribute it how they see fit. The rest of the stuff gets thrown away. Did you really think we sent it all to Africa? Really? Can you imagine the work involved in that? No, no, Virginia. Just put them in the skip, please.”

  I stood in the back room with my mouth hanging slightly open. In the same way that I had believed Swiss Steve was involved in only petty crime, I had believed that the clothes would be shipped directly to Africa. Similar to the way I had not understood that my parents were desperately unhappy, I had somehow not understood that the charity shop was not all it seemed. I had been so trusting and gullible that I had truly believed that people were, for the best part, good.

  Not wishing to expose any more of my unintentional stupidity, I worked in the shop for the rest of the day in a trance-like state. I barely spoke to the other helpers and dutifully sorted through the clothes that were brought in. I reluctantly pushed the designer labels onto hangers and into the shop, whilst the rest of the clothes piled high in the skip. In the seconds of the exchange between my supervisor and I, my faith in humanity had been seriously dented and cynicism had crept into my soul.

  Even so, that night I had driven back to the shop and parked up at the skip. I had pulled the double-bagged clothes out and quickly shoved them into the boot of my car. Driving onward on my covert clothing mission, I stopped at a homeless hostel. The bags were unceremoniously trundled to their door and left ready for the poor helpless souls who inhabited the stark building. I subsequently discovered that most of the homeless people in London were single men and it was unlikely that the people in the hostel had used the clothes, but I still felt I had done my bit. My fight to keep the small flicker of altruism in my heart alive had been a battle ever since.

  Now, Lynus and his organisation just seemed like another do-gooding scheme that was secretly amassing millions in an Icelandic high interest bank account. On the other hand, it was my job and I had to do it. I walked back towards the tube, the inky skies bearing down on the horizon. I could detect the feel-good aura shared by Lynus drain out of me and realised that for the last couple of hours I had felt happy. Now my mind drifted back to my mother's funeral and the underlying theme of my current existence burnt back into my psyche: who killed my mother?

  Loneliness

  Back into the tunnel and a gentle downward slope. By the time I reached the gates I was almost back to my cynical pre-Lynus state. I scanned my Oyster card and noticed two men step forward. I thought for a moment that they were going to stop me, but they let me pass and I made my way onto the platform. One train was just leaving and the neon dots forecast another one in seven minutes. I sat down and looked up towards the exit. My instinct was to go to the exit and back to the park. To try to recapture the optimistic spirit I seemed to have left on the bench by the ice cream van. I knew that I had to go back to work and although Lynus had defused the pressure of the project, I still felt responsible for closing up my office.

  I dug into the pit of my stomach and dredged up a feeling that I had been trying to digest away: I had no idea what would happen at the funeral, as even my own behaviour was an unpredictable factor for me. Progressing this concept, I equally had no idea how long I would be away from my desk. If it all went well, I would be back by Friday morning. My gut instinct told me that I would be absent longer.

  A sense of loneliness shrouded me as more people flooded onto the platform. I thought about the South Asian boy and girl who had been hauled from the inward-bound train. On a different day, I knew that the incident would have chilled me and occupied my thoughts for weeks, had it not been for my mother's death. Everything seemed to have shrunk back into the backdrop of my life, the whole of my attention focused on the particular players on the stage of tomorrow's uncertainty: Swiss Steve, John, Jupiter and Shiralee. Ellis and the vicar were supporting cast with the police as extras.

  The train arrived and I absently pressed the button to open the door and climbed on. Taking my usual stance near the door, I stared out of the windows as the blank walls sped by. Lynus' voice echoed around my mind and mixed with my thoughts of the funeral until I reached the conclusion that, if nothing else, I could focus on what people do in a church. If things got too much and I felt pushed into a position where I couldn't keep my mouth shut, I will meditate on how I was going to collect information about people asking for what they wanted. Prayer would save me! “Imagine that!” I said out loud as I laughed. The woman standing next to me moved slightly away from me and towards the door. I checked myself. The countdown to the funeral had begun now and laughter suddenly seemed highly inappropriate.

  The train halted and I alighted, a stern frown worn on my face and in my heart.

  Chapter Seven

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. I returned to work and pottered around in my office. There was no coffee room gossip to listen to as the plumbing was being fixed. Martina was busy trying to figure out Ted Brierly's handwriting in order to construct the project specification for the job. I tried to summon the motivation to note the meeting with Lynus, and every time I thought of him my heart lifted. Even so, the ink blot of my mother's funeral spread over the day and I was super-restless and jittery.

  I decided to call it a day. I gathered my things together and slunk into the lift. No one batted an eyelid. Today's one-minute wonder was that someone from wages had won the lottery. Only days had passed since my mother's murder and it was half forgotten. No one even gave me a look of sympathy or mouthed, 'I'm sorry.' As the lift doors shut I slightly missed the minor celebrity status it had brought me. Of course, this was an exaggerated part of the madness I would summon before any event I was dreading. I would involuntarily feel 'special' and feel like people were talking about me. It happened just before my father's funeral and during my divorce. I hated the feeling, as I wanted to bask in my anonymity forever, but when the feeling faded, I craved for it again.

  The lift sunk to the ground floor and I walked through the doors and past security. My mobile rang and I saw the word 'babe' flash across the screen.

  “Hello?”

  “Jinny, it's me. I just around the corner. Do you want a lift home?”

  Ellis to the rescue. Slightly disappointed that I couldn't have the solace of the tube just one more time, I feigned delight.

  “Ooh, yes! You must be psychic. I'm right outside now!”

  As I spoke, I saw him around the corner, grinning from ear to ear. A corner of my heart melted like warm chocolate.

  “Better go. I'm here.”

  The phone clicked off and I got into the car. He leaned forward and kissed me.

  “Had a good day?”

  Sometimes, when I meet up with Ellis, it’s almost like we are strangers. I have always thought that it was due to my awkwardness and lack of man-skills. When I met Ellis, I had only had one serious boyfriend: Swiss Steve. Steve connived his way into becoming my husband and we immediately settled down into the roles I had feared. He was the philandering husband and I the doting wife. I dutifully turned a blind eye to his criminality and his influencing of our children in the same manner. I now regretted this deeply and constantly analysed why I did it. It was as if he had some kind of power over me. I, at the time, had deluded myself into thinking it was ‘the power of love’. I did ‘it’ because I loved him. ‘It’ was hiding his criminal friends from the police, providing him with a constant alibi, washing the blood from his clothes in the nig
ht. ‘It’ was tolerating his mood swings, enabling his whims, and massaging his hugely oversized ego. ‘It’ was sex: the hollow act we performed always in the martial bed to seedy, ever-more freaky porn videos with me on top and Swiss Steve peering round me to see the screen. ‘It’ was the way that twenty-four-seven caring was forced upon me and any attempt to escape this was met with Swiss Steve's ‘you’re not a real woman’ crossed with ‘I’m using you, you stupid bitch’ look.

  When Steve finally left in the midst of the confusion over my mother and the children, I found myself alone in a large house and I loved it. I quickly made acquaintances – not friends, as these were people I would use to stand next to in bars – and I went through perhaps two years of one-night stands. The anonymous pleasuring of myself with a faceless person in a dark room with the enhancement of alcohol. In the morning, the hurried rush to leave the house, get rid of the evidence, watching it walk down the street with shoulders low. Then the relief of being alone again. I always picked up these men in bars and quickly caught on to the fact that even though we middle-aged people frequent bars because we are lonely and want to meet someone, inevitably the milky mist of drunkenness produces nothing but the soulless one-nighters. We would all meet again the next week on the same circuit and politely ignore that we had all slept with each other at one time or another. One woman was actually on her third ‘lap’. She was nearing sleeping with every man on the circuit three times. I marvelled at her persistence when she asserted her belief that she would meet ‘the one’ right here in low-life city.

  I tired of the one-nighters and longed for a kindred spirit. I fantasised about someone male who would actually hold an adult conversation with me. It had been difficult to shed the habit of going to the bars, and in the process, I felt that I had become a little eccentric, retuning my radio to a ‘talk station’ and reading the broadsheets. I even found myself making a programme of visits to art galleries and museums. I was so lonely that even being in a room with a handful of strangers felt like I was not alone. In one of those rooms, I saw Ellis. He was standing, well, more loitering, around a painting at a lesser-known gallery that I had happened upon in my boredom. Over the months of visiting these establishments I had studied the fashionista of art and bought myself an emerald-green fringed mohair wrap and a nice pair of brown leather boots with matching bohemian handbag. I prided myself on ‘looking the part’ and actually, at the moment I met Ellis I definitely was. I wasn’t so much admiring the picture he was loitering beside, rather trying to catch my reflection in the glass that held it. I had chosen a raspberry beret, attempting a middle-aged stab at being the girl from the Prince song, and was now wondering if it actually made me look like a mad old woman. I had heard a voice beside me.

  “It looks fine.”

  I turned to see Ellis, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  “Thanks,” I smiled, “Sorry. You knew I wasn’t looking at the photograph.”

  “It’s an oil and acrylic.”

  I felt more and more embarrassed.

  “Oh, sorry. Is it...?”

  “No, it’s not mine. I didn’t paint it and I don’t own it.”

  He had a twang to his voice that told me he wasn’t born in London. His feet were still now and he was smiling. He sort of slunk up to me and I gulped.

  “I erm, well, I’m just here to...”

  His features softened and I felt immediately at ease when he touched my arm.

  “Would you like to go for a coffee and some cake?”

  Not vodka, beer or Italian food. Just coffee and cake. I was relieved that I seemed to be talking to a normal person who wasn’t all that interested in getting my knickers off. I hurried along the corridor beside him and strained to see if he was wearing a wedding ring. He wasn’t and I reasoned with myself that these days men don’t always, and even if they do, it doesn’t mean they are happy. We reached the cafeteria and he turned to me and held out his hand.

  “Ellis,” he stated.

  “Virginia,” I stated back, then corrected myself. “Jinny.”

  We both nodded and pointed to the delicious goodies that confronted us. We emerged from the food melee laden with cake and faced each other at a Formica table.

  “So, Jinny. What do you do?”

  I wanted to explain to him that once I had been a mother and wife but now I was a single, lonely person. Eleanor Rigby. That I was desperately looking for someone to share a new life with, because this one was worn out.

  “I work in advertising.”

  Ellis had rolled his eyes.

  “Oh. I see. I work in art galleries. I organise exhibitions. I paint a little myself but nothing too substantial. I also sculpt a bit.”

  His eyes were a deep green with specks of some colour I couldn’t describe. He was beautiful more than handsome and small-boned. He picked up the sugar lumps and dropped them into his tea with an action that told me he was free. There was no containment, he just plopped them in. I did likewise. We could not drag our eyes away from each other and were both overawed. I considered him, an artist and exhibitor, out of my league. He has told me since that he considered me far, far above his punching weight and almost didn’t bother to call me. But he did. I had given him my business card and he called me three days later. We went for dinner and he explained about his past life.

  “I am a bastard who walked out on my wife and children because she was unbearably controlling. I’m a broken man, guilt-ridden but free.”

  He had sounded ideal, a male version of broken me. Within six months, we had moved in together, my fear of marriage and the role of wife complementing his fear of commitment. Even to this day, he has a packed bag in the attic for a quick getaway. I was and am his lover. Each meeting is filled with uncertainty and whilst he has always, always been there for me in all eventualities, we have promised each other nothing. The unfamiliarity this brings between us is constant.

  I focused on him now and smiled, his familiar warmth breaking through the initial chill of strangeness.

  “Not bad. I went to the park to meet a client. Had a chat about the new projects. Came home on the tube.”

  Ellis sighed and started the engine.

  “Hmmm. I hope these aren’t diversionary tactics, Jinny. Have you thought about tomorrow? It’s not going to be easy. Have you decided what you will do?”

  I frowned.

  “Do? Well, I’ll just go and get it over with. Of course it will be awful but I suppose it will be closure.”

  I saw Ellis’ shoulders relax at the word closure, and he smiled a little.

  “That’s good, Jinny. Then you can have a rest and get back to normal.”

  I hadn’t really thought that I wasn’t being normal. I mulled this over as we travelled silently. A few minutes of wonderings about my normality went by and suddenly I thought about my conversation with John Baxter.

  “Oh. Yes. I forgot. John Baxter rang me today. It was a funny sort of call, like he wanted something. Well, he did.” I was a little stunned that because of the overwhelming comfort of my meeting with Lynus, I had forgotten about the call. “You’ll never guess. He wanted to know if there was any hurry to vacate the house.”

  Ellis guffawed.

  “Oh, right. The vultures have landed already.”

  “I half expected him to ask, after all it is his home. The problem was, he was a bit nasty. In fact, he was hostile. I really don’t know why.”

  Ellis made a little snorting noise and paused before replying.

  “Look, he’s probably heard all sorts about you. Sally wasn’t exactly complimentary, was she? And he might have been talking to Steve and Shiralee. Or Jupiter. Don’t worry, love, it will all be fine. By this time tomorrow it’ll be over. Then there’s only the will to be read on Friday.”

  I sighed.

  “Yes, and I have to go to the cottage on Saturday to sort Mum’s things out. It’s like a nightmare, Ellis.”

  “And I won’t be able to join you for the Saturday nightma
re, as I’ve got an exhibition going up in Chicago Rock. Sorry, Jinny.”

  I was a little disappointed but after two days of my family he would need a day off.

  “That’s OK. I’ll get the train. I might even stay over.” My mind lurched at this as I remembered John's nasty tone. “Or not. Anyway. I’ll have to see.”

  Ellis nodded and we arrived home.

  The evening was spent lying on the sofa under a duvet. Ellis brought me tea and toast at ten and no one telephoned me. I half expected one of my children to call to see how the ground lay for the funeral, but no one called. I tried to picture the scene in my mind as I dropped off to sleep and woke up in the morning with the same scene burnt into my mind’s eye.

  The night seemed to have intensified my sense of urgency and I rushed around trying to locate Ellis’ black tie and my black sling-backs. All of these things could have been done the night before had it not been for my catastrophic maelstrom of predictions for the funeral. I had imagined every combination of catastrophe in every possible sequence. I had learned long ago that there was no real point worrying about something when you had no idea of the outcome. On this occasion I had a perfectly sound model: the funeral of my other parent. That event had been so indelibly branded on my mind that even on a normal day it still sometimes cropped up. Every inedible aspect of my life seemed tangled in the roots of that day and the whole issue of funerals left me with incurable indigestion. The acid seared my soul and now I felt it more acutely than ever. The previous evening’s imaginings had scared the shit out of me and now I ran around like a scalded cat, looking for objects that I had not used in the past seven years. Eventually, Ellis intervened.