Walking Alone

by Carolyn McCrae

  “He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want people to think he couldn’t look after a wife. He said I should stay at home, looking after him and the house. He wanted me to get pregnant. But I said I had to do a year in a school as part of the course. He said I could do it as long as I gave up then. It was just like I was in gaol for a crime I hadn’t committed and I was chalking off the days of my sentence on an imagined cell wall.”

  Linda looked at her watch, she knew she should be mingling with the guests, but she couldn’t let Holly down. She had to keep listening as long as Holly wanted to talk.

  “In August we went to Spain with a group of his friends. I hated them but it didn’t matter, in a month I’d have my job and some independence. On the last afternoon in Benidorm we were on the beach. We’d been there for hours and Graham was pretty drunk. He had his arm round my shoulders and kept tugging the top of my bikini away. ‘S’not fair the others can’t see your tits Doll’ he said. I kept covering myself up but he kept pulling it down. ‘Can’t stop me doing any fucking thing I like can you Holl Doll? Not while me and your dad got you tied up tight.’ He was telling them all the things he did to her, all about the scale of penalties. They were all laughing at me and there was nothing I could do. ‘You should meet her dad’ he boasted to his mates ‘he’s a fucking fascist’. He stood up with the forefinger of left hand under his nose pretending it was a moustache and his right hand stretched in front of him in a fascist salute. He said my Dad used to do it with his sister. He said my dad knew how to treat women. He said my Dad had taught me what to do to please her man.”

  Linda didn’t like to say she could believe it.

  “He pulled at my bikini and showed me off to all his friends. He sat there on, the beach, wiggling his fingers, trying to get them in me. And they were all laughing. I pushed him away. I tried to get him to leave me alone but all he did was say what a ‘fucking clever fascist bastard’ my dad was.”

  “Here, Holly, have a drink.” Linda could think of nothing to say that could take away the memory her friend had of her humiliation.

  “I asked him what he knew about my dad. When we got back to the hotel I had to ask him. It’d gone on for years. He’d led me on saying he knew more about my dad than I did. All those Sunday afternoons they spent together. I had to ask what they did, what was going on. I shouldn’t have asked him. I shouldn’t have, not when he was drunk. It was my fault for asking him.”

  “What was?” Linda wondered what could be so dreadful compared with what had already happened.

  “He told me information costs. I had to buy it. First 5 points, then 10 points. I just shut my mind to what he was doing, waiting for him to tell me about my father. He told me to get him a beer so I got up and went to the cold box we kept in the room filled with bottles of San Miguel. When I got back to the bed he told me to get one for myself. He was enjoying the control, playing me like a yo-yo. I was just waiting for him to be ready. He told me stuff I already knew, he said Dad had been in the Hitler youth, how he had gone to fight for the Germans. But he wasn’t interested in telling me that. He wanted to tell me about the Sundays. He said ‘your Dad knows so much about people, he knows how to find out all the things they don’t want him to know. He’s found this rich man who he knows stuff about. But he’s stupid Holl Doll, fucking stupid. He’s got no idea how to make real money. He’s piddling around for peanuts when it’s me that’s got the real ideas. He’ll be pissing around with his hundred quid here and his two hundred quid there while I’ll be living it up in Brazil with millions. I waited for him to carry on. It explained how Dad managed without a job, if he was blackmailing someone. But Graham didn’t tell her who it was or what the secrets were that he was paying to keep quiet.”

  Holly realised she should not tell Linda everything she had learned that afternoon. There were some things that it was best she should not know.

  She hadn’t wanted to believe a word about the millions. The only way Graham could get his hands on millions was through her, and her grandparents.

  She had been unhappy for nearly two years but that afternoon, for the first time, she had begun to be afraid.

  As she shivered Linda made her take another sip of the brandy and she continued.

  “He told me what he did every Sunday.” Holly’s voice was dead. There was no emotion, no reaction to the words she spoke. They were only words.

  “He said he spent those afternoons being buggered by my dad and doing the same to him. He said it felt good, far better than anything I could do for him. He said Dad liked it… He told me what they did. He…”

  Linda did not know what to say. She couldn’t begin to think what Holly could be feeling.

  “I knew when I slapped his face I’d made a mistake. Even when he was pissed he was stronger and more determined than I could ever be. I bit through my lip trying to stay motionless, trying not to think that what he was doing to me he had done to my Dad.”

  “Oh Holly.” What more could she say. “Why didn’t you leave him? Why did you stay?”

  “I only had a year to go. And I had my job.”

  It took a few minutes before Holly could continue. “

  “It was a disaster from the first day. I hadn’t slept well night before. I’d watched the light growing until I could see the colours in the curtains. I hated those curtains. Graham had insisted on driving me to school but somehow he had kept finding things to do to hold us up. He wanted another cup of coffee, he spilt the coffee so I had to change my shirt, he didn’t think the shirt went with the suit so I had to change again; and then he couldn’t find his car keys. It was like a bad dream when you can’t do anything. We were nearly an hour late when we finally left the house. When I walked into the staff room it was empty and I could hear the sound of singing. I was missing the first assembly. I knew Graham had deliberately made me late. I wouldn’t be in the line of teachers on the stage at the front of the school, I wouldn’t be there to be introduced, as they had told me new teachers should be. It was all wrong. I was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room when the staff appeared. ‘Where were you?’ ‘Late on your first day?’ ‘What is your name, Mrs what?’ I had no idea who was interrogating me.”

  In the way Holly imitated the voices of the staff Linda could feel her pain.

  “I felt like the lowest new girl as I tried to excuse my lateness. I had no time to get my books together. I had no time to find out what room I was in. The first lesson was at 9.15 and it was now ten past. I had five minutes to find out where I would be teaching the two lessons before break and get everything I needed for both lessons. It was impossible!” Holly spoke as if she was living it all over again.

  “I had to ask where I could keep all my books when I didn’t have a room and no one answered. The staff room locker was hardly large enough to hold my handbag. I’d just have to carry everything around with me, take it home every night and bring what I needed in every day. It didn’t just seem like a nightmare, it was one. I was late for my first lesson. It was with the Lower Fifth and they were to become the bane of my life. When I introduced myself I asked their names expecting them to tell me in an orderly fashion, one at a time, but it was the signal for them to start yelling across the room, pretending to introduce themselves to each other. I couldn’t control them. I yelled at them to be quiet but it made no difference. It wasn’t long before a senior teacher popped her head around the door. ‘Everything alright in here?’ Of course it wasn’t all right but it was the signal for the class to sit down looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, giving all their attention to the empty blackboard. When I said ‘Yes, everything was fine’ it was so obviously a lie and as soon as the door closed the noise erupted again. I had no idea how to control them, and they knew it.

  Holly was speaking as if she was there, she didn’t care whether Linda was with her or not, she had to get this all out in the open.

  “I shouted at a large girl with a round face who seemed to be the ring-leader who wa
s sitting on her desk, her feet on her chair, her back to me. I begged her to turn around. If she turned around the rest of the class would behave. But she just laughed. Nothing had prepared me for this. We weren’t like that at school,” she looked at Linda for the first time, “we were never like that were we?” Linda shook her head as Holly carried on living her nightmare. “It took half the lesson to get them to sit down and all I could do by the end of the 40 minutes was to explain what we would be doing in the 24 lessons that term. 24! I had to put up with them 23 more times! I dreaded every one. And then, when the bell rang, they all sat down. They were silent, waiting for me to leave the room. I packed my books in my briefcase and left. One of the loudest and rudest of the class demurely got up and opened the door for me. ‘Good morning Mrs Tyler.’ I could hear their laughter all the way down the corridor.”

  “They couldn’t all be that bad, could they?” Linda was horrified and so pleased that she had given up her training course if teaching was like this.

  “The next lesson was the Upper Thirds. It was their first day too. It should have been better. But it wasn’t. I couldn’t get any of them to say a word. When I asked a question not one hand went up, I was just faced with 30 blank faces. When I wrote something on the blackboard 30 heads went down to copy it word for word in their brand new exercise books. It seemed like years before the bell eventually went to signal break time and they silently closed their books and put them in their desks. I got through that first day somehow. As I left the woman who had spoken to me that morning reminded me not to be late. ‘You will be on time tomorrow won’t you, Mrs Tyler, not even the first years are allowed to be late more than once a term.’ She hadn’t been joking. I hated her, the school and that bloody grey and maroon uniform. I hated teaching and I knew I was never going to be any good at it. But I had to stick to it, just as I had to stick with Graham. Just for a year. And not a minute longer.”

  Holly could say nothing more. She was exhausted.

  I had noticed Linda’s absence with Holly but I didn’t interrupt them. Linda should have been with her guests but I remembered the funeral when it was I who had left the job of entertaining to others

  I talked to our clients and our friends and wondered what Holly could be saying that was taking so long.

  It was an hour before I saw Linda walking down the stairs to rejoin the party.

  “She’s lying down.” Linda said, and then recounted the bare outline of what Holly had told her. It was months before I learned all the details but even the brief details Linda told me then horrified me. I had not imagined anything that bad when I had decided that Monika’s happiness was more important.

  “I asked her if she wanted a job.” Linda spoke as she did in the office when she knew she had made a decision that would make other people’s workload heavier but knowing she had every right to make it.

  “What did she say?” I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Of course I wanted to help Holly but I didn’t want Graham and Matt thinking they could get back at Holly through the business.

  “She asked if I wanted to employ her.”

  “What did you say?” I really didn’t think this was a good idea.

  “I said ‘No it wouldn’t be anything like that’. She’d work in the office with us not for us. There’s so much that she’d be good at. I told her she had a logical mind and an interest in finding patterns in things.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked if you’d mind.”

  “And?”

  “I asked was she kidding? You’d be delighted! You know we desperately need someone we can trust and who can take responsibility. She’s still got to leave Graham, she still had to extricate herself from their home and marriage.” Perhaps she had noticed my lack of enthusiasm as she finished, somewhat lamely “I told her it’d all be all right. Anyway Monika had taken Holly up to her room and given her something to make her sleep.”

  The guests were mingling. One thing about a New Year party is that everyone has something to talk to anyone else about, even if it’s only speculation about the year ahead.

  “1976. I wonder what sort of year this’ll be.”

  “A new US president.”

  “Concord…”

  “With an ‘e’.”

  “I bet Liverpool wins the league again.”

  “Well I’m glad to see the back of 1975, fancy a woman leading the party!”

  The guests who knew each other settled in to lively conversations and there was a comfortable hubbub in the room as Linda rejoined our guests. I watched as she worked the room talking to her old boss, Robin, and his wife, to Ted and some other women from Max’s firm; she looked and acted every bit the businesswoman.

  “Who’d have thought it Charles?” Jeff was looking at his daughter “What have you done to create this confident and efficient woman?”

  “Nothing to do with me.” Since I had been working with Linda and since losing something of my aversion to anyone who had a close connection with Carl, I had learned to have a lot of time for Jeff. He said little but he watched and understood people far better than anyone I knew.

  “She seems very happy,” Ted joined us “I always thought she’d be good at anything she turned her hand to. I see Carl and the boys are here. They all seem well.” He looked across the room to where three tall young men were talking politely to several older women who Ted understood to have been Linda’s colleagues in Birkenhead.

  “They are all well and all doing well. We’re proud of all our children, including the adopted one.”

  “The one I’m surprised at is you Charles.” Ted knew he could talk to me in a way no one else could. “You’ve changed out of all recognition in the past three or four years. You seem ten years younger.”

  “You’ve always had a soft spot for him, haven’t you Ted? Ever since you managed to get his father to take him away from that dreadful school.”

  “Nothing to do with his mother of course.” Pat interrupted her husband, gently teasing Ted who we all knew had been more than a little in love with my Mother.

  “It’s nearly five years since her funeral.” Ted commented to no one in particular, then turning to Jeff continued brightly “I remember your young daughter and Holly, schoolgirls wearing lovely hats of which Alicia would have approved heartily. They were very striking amongst the grey older folk. Are Holly and Graham here today? I haven’t seen them since their wedding, I was sorry to have to miss that.”

  For the first time since I had known him Ted seemed old as he reminisced. I was pleased to escape when the doorbell rang.

  “Is she here?” Graham was obviously drunk. “I’m going to fucking kill the bitch.”

  “Who?” I knew it was a stupid question but I felt I had to stall for time. I had no idea why a few moments would make any difference; I just wanted the conversation to be more on my terms than his.

  “Who the fuck do you think?”

  I stepped outside the door and closed it behind me, shutting us all out in the cold porch. “If you’re going to make a scene please do it another time.”

  “Sure as fuck we’re going to make a scene.” Graham shouted, pushing past me to ring the doorbell again. “We’re going to make a scene like you’ve never had in this pretty little house of yours.”

  “Where’s Uncle Max?” Matt screamed at me. It seemed they had both been drinking all morning. Max was in the living room with the other guests but I didn’t know whether or not Monika was still upstairs with Holly.

  I had to stop them getting in, or, if they did get into the house, I had to make sure they couldn’t get to Monika. God knows what they would think to tell her. What the rest of his guests heard didn’t matter.

  But I had to protect Monika.

  If they got to her all our efforts to protect her would have been wasted.

  All Holly’s unhappiness would have been for nothing.

  “You’re not going to go in.” I shouted rather more loudly than was necessary as my
suspicions that they were going to make as much trouble as they could were confirmed as they both tried to push past me.

  “I beat you up then I can beat you up now.”

  I offered a silent prayer to anyone who might be listening that someone would notice I had gone to the door and hadn’t ushered in another welcome guest. I had to keep them talking, but they were getting physical, barging at me and pushing to get through the door.

  “Come back another time. When I haven’t got guests. You’re not helping anybody. Come back tomorrow and we can all sit down and talk.”

  “And Rebecca will be miles away!”

  “We want to talk to Rebecca!” Graham shouted as loudly as he could at the still closed door. “Open up!” he was banging on the door with his fists.

  And it opened.

  “Can I help you?” Jeff and Ted now stood in the doorway and I noticed behind them Pat ushering other guests who had any proximity to the door away into the lounge.

  “You can let us in. I want to talk to my fucking Uncle Max!”

  “Come on in. He’s in his study. I’ll show you.”

  “I think they already know the way.” I wondered what Ted was up to as he caught my eye and I understood from his look that I shouldn’t worry.

  As Ted opened the door I understood.

  Max was in the room, sitting at his desk, and alongside him were Carl, Crispin and Oliver. With the three of us the odds were definitely on our side.

  “You wanted something?” Max addressed his nephew.

  “He wants to speak to his sister.” Graham answered.

  “I wasn’t addressing you. And neither of you will be talking to anyone. You are not welcome here. The police have been called and you will wait here for them. I understand you assaulted Charles Donaldson.”

  When he got no reply he picked up his pen and began to write.

  “You can’t do that.” Graham wasn’t used to being told what to do.

  After a lengthy pause Max looked up “What is it you say I cannot do?”