by Peter Corris
Bright came closer to the bed. 'We don't want to tire you, Mr Briggs. But you were a big help before and—'
'Did you see the old prof? How is he?'
'Not too well,' Bright said. 'Wandering.'
'Sorry to hear it. Not me. M' chest and heart might be packing up but m' mind's clearer than ever. There was something you wanted?'
Reg Weldon came into the room carrying a tea tray with a pot and cups on it. Bright looked around, irritated by the interruption. Craft moved to take the tray. 'Thanks, Mr Weldon. We'll manage. I'm sure Mr Bright will want to talk to you downstairs soon. And you shouldn't smoke in a sick room.'
Weldon retreated. Marsha looked around the bare room; several photographs of men in uniform and of groups assembled against Walsingham backdrops were the only nonfunctional items. She looked through the window and saw that the room commanded a good view of slate rooftops, ancient trees and lofty spires.
Craft poured three cups of tea after Bright shook his head. The big man sipped from his cup. 'Cold,' he said.
Briggs nodded. 'Always is.'
'We've been given three names of women Basil Craft knew in Oxford,' Bright said. 'I wonder if you happen to know anything about them—Peggy Mclntosh, Maureen Darcy and Gwenneth Williams?'
'I know old Maudie Darcy,' Briggs said. 'Know her well. Saw her just the other week, as a matter of fact. She must be bloody nearly as old as me. In better nick though. Never heard of the others.'
Marsha flipped open her notebook. 'Do you know where she lives, Mr Briggs?'
The old man drank his tea in two long gulps. 'Course I do. She lives at the back of the Towpath.'
'The Towpath Inn,' Randloph Craft said. 'Many's the jar I've had there. They used to do a pretty good spread, too.'
'Give her my regards,' Albert Briggs said. 'And tell Reg not to bother about supper. I think I'll have a kip. D'you remember the Yank, Mr Craft? The one what called you Randy? Bloody nerve.'
The Towpath Inn retained few traces of its origins as a rough river pub, but those few had been carefully preserved. A paved walkway ran down to the river at the rear of the building and several wooden plates bearing the names of barges were mounted over the entrance. The public bar was decked with photographs from late Victorian times which showed the pub as a low, thatch-roofed structure, barge cargoes being unloaded and bargees drinking heartily. Over the bar a long pole was mounted on brass supports.
Bright ordered drinks and the three settled down to consider their next move. The bar was moderately full with an assortment of young and middle-aged people. A darts match and several electronic games of the quieter kind were in progress. Randolph Craft read from a chalkboard: 'Rack of lamb, beef medallions, veal stroganoff. It was fish, pies and sausages in my day. Good though.'
'Randolph,' Bright said, 'forget your stomach for a minute. We're here on business.'
'And expenses,' Craft said.
Marsha intervened. 'She's probably an old retainer of some kind, maybe a relative. I'll see what I can find out. Vic, stop glowering. Business first, but we have to eat somewhere.'
Mollified, Bright reviewed his notes as he drank his beer. Craft gazed around at the clientele and drew some interested looks in return. 'English politeness,' he said. 'It never fails to amaze me. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. My mother used to say it was a form of hypocrisy, but I'm not so sure.'
Bright grunted. 'What else did your mother say—about Basil Craft?'
'You'll see, when her story is translated. Do you realise we're here to talk to a woman who may be the mother of my half brother or sister. It seems Crafts are a glut on the market.'
'How does that make you feel?'
'Hungry,' Craft said.
Marsha came back to the table. She grabbed her drink. 'She's here. She lives out behind the pub and she sings in this bar two nights a week. Tonight. She's on tonight.'
Bright grinned.
Marsha drained her drink. 'The man I spoke to says we can go and see her now. He suggests we take a pint of Guinness with us.'
Craft reached for the change Vic had left on the table. 'What a truly splendid notion,' he said.
They left the bar and moved down a dark, carpeted passage towards the back of the building. Craft carried the brimming pint carefully in his huge hands. Marsha opened a door which led out onto a bricked courtyard; a dim shape was visible at the end of an overgrown path. Bright was suddenly aware of smells from his childhood—vegetables and a chicken coop. He moved forward more confidently and a dog barked in the darkness. A light came on.
'Who's there? Quiet, Danny!' A woman's voice, firm and unaccented.
'Mrs Darcy?' Bright called. 'We're from London We'd like to speak with you.'
'About the singing, is it?' The voice was now a thick brogue.
'Yes, and other things.' Bright had kept moving forward towards the light. Marsha and Craft followed. They saw a large wooden structure supported on piles. The woman, holding a Tilley lantern, was three metres above ground level. Access to where she stood was by a ladder to which the dog was tied. It strained on its leash and growled softly. Chickens clucked from somewhere underneath the building.
'Come along then or we'll be shoutin' instead of talkin'. Mind your step on the ladder.'
'What about the dog?' Bright said.
'Don't interfere with him and he won't interfere with you. What's that you're carryin' there? You, the giant feller?'
'A pint of Guinness,' Craft said.
'For Jesus' sake don't spill it.'
The three skirted the dog and climbed the ladder. Craft passed the pint up before he mounted and Marsha handed it to the woman, 'Mrs Darcy?' she said.
'Bless you, dear. Miss, Missus, Mistress, whatever you want to call me. I'm Maudie Darcy. Welcome aboard the Birmingham Nag.'
Craft stepped carefully clear of the ladder. 'Good God,' he said, 'it's a barge.'
'To be sure. One of the finest that ever worked these waterways and my home these many years. From London, you said? You'd better come to where we can put something under your behinds. London people can't stand on their legs more than a minute or two in my experience.'
The barge was a broad, solid structure with heavy timbers and narrow passages between lockers and posts and massive metal cleats. It smelled of age and tar but the deck was firm underfoot. Maudie Darcy held the Tilley lantern high and led the way to a cabin mounted towards the stern. She opened a smoothly swinging door and ushered her visitors into a tiny room in which a bunk, table, bookshelves, sink and gas ring were crammed without an inch of space to spare.
'You two men sit on the bed and don't break it. The young lady'n me'll sit at table. You'll excuse me if I drink what you've brought. I'm afraid I've nothing to offer you.'
'That's all right,' Bright said. He studied the woman closely with the film-maker's eye. She was old and her hair was white. There was no mistaking the fine bones which had once given her face great beauty. Even now, it was handsome and noble. Her mouth was wide and generous and her hooded dark eyes were dramatic. She wore a cream cable-knit sweater and a long skirt. She was tall, spare and sat very straight at the table as she raised the pint to her lips.
Bright realised that he was getting pleasure from watching her drink. He cleared his throat and introduced himself and Marsha. Maudie Darcy merely nodded and slowly sank the pint. 'And this is Randolph Craft,' Bright said.
The old woman lowered the glass and stared at Craft. 'Oh, my God,' she said. 'I can see him in you through the Chinese or whatever it is.'
'Mongolian,' Craft said. 'Basil Craft was my father.'
'That's why we're here, Mrs Darcy,' Marsha said. 'Will you tell us about him?'
'Why?'
Marsha explained about the film, outlining something of Craft's career, suggesting questions that needed answers. She said that investigations at Walsingham had led them to her via Albert Briggs.
'Call me Maudie. If you keep on calling me Mrs Darcy everything'll take twice as
long. How is Briggsy?'
'Not very well I'm afraid,' Marsha said.
'Never drank enough. Never relaxed. I had a romp or two with him when he was younger but never more than that.' Maudie emptied the glass and set it down carefully on the table. 'Basil Craft, that devil.'
'We know, Randolph Craft said quietly. 'Will you talk to us?'
Maudie smoothed her sweater and picked at the knobbly material of her skirt. 'I'm singin' in the bar in a little while. Come along and hear me. I'll think about it.'
18
Craft Project—Interview with 'Maudie Darcy' aka Sarah Austen, 12 October
VOICE OF M. DARCY: Well, 'You Londoners', that's one of the things I do. I've been doing it for sixty years or so—singing the old bargee songs my dad taught me. I've been on the radio and the telly, even made a record or two, but there's no real money in it.
VOICE OF M. PRENTISS: It was wonderful, Maudie. You were wonderful. I had no idea the songs could be so funny and, well . . .
M. DARCY (laughs): Dirty? Well, barge work was boring a lot of the time and that's what men think about, don't they? Also they were on the move, here and there, they had their chances for fun and games. But that's not what you're here for. You want to hear about Basil Craft and me.
VOICE OF V. BRIGHT: That's right, Maudie. Can I get you another drink?
M. DARCY: You can, and a good few more before I finish. They'll leave us alone over here, especially if you keep buying. You look as if you could sink a few jars, Mr Craft.
VOICE OF R. CRAFT: When I'm in the mood, Maudie.
M. DARCY: Ah, yes. As I said you've got a look of him, although he was probably the most impressive man I've ever seen and you're not quite that. No offence. Ah, thank you, Victor. Well, I was fifteen when I met Basil Craft. I'd been an orphan for a year or so. My mum and dad, Tom and Rosie Austen, were killed in a charabanc accident. We were on an outing to Birmingham. It was a rare thing for us all to be together. My dad had worked on barges all over the country but the business had fallen off of course; the locks were silting up and weeds were choking the canals. The rail and the road were the way of the future and my dad knew it. He had to travel to shipyards and other places to get work. My mum didn't like it but what could they do? They had cheap rent on a houseboat near here.
So, the charabanc was on the way back from Brum and they were killed and I didn't get a scratch. A family took me in for a time and I left school and started to work at whatever I could get—domestic, factory, shopwork, you know. My dad taught me all the bargee songs and he sang them in a thick brogue. I learned them that way. One day I was working at a house in Woodstock. Hanging out the clothes I was, and Mr Rogers, the publican of this place, heard me and liked the song I was singing.
'How would you like a job at my pub, lass?' he says. 'Bit o'waiting on tables and cleaning, bit o'laundry and such, and if you was to sing a song or two in the pub of an evening and earn a tip for your trouble it'd be no business o'mine.'
I jumped at the chance. He asked me my name and I said I was Maureen Darcy, called Maudie. I don't know why I did it, really There's a girl by that name in one of the songs. She meets a handsome feller and he takes her to London where she has a baby and becomes a whore. It was just a whim. I sang the songs in the brogue and spoke it too, when I felt like it. Which was what I did then.
'Irish as Paddy's pig, by the look o'you,' Mr Rogers said. 'Though I doubt any Paddy ever had such a pretty pig.'
I was a fine-looking piece, though I say it myself. White skin and green eyes and not with this grizzle you see on my head now. I had black hair to my waist. I suppose I looked the colleen they all took me to be and I played up to it. One night, this huge, fierce man came into the pub. He took one look at me and I returned the look and that was the end of my virginity and the end of my life, too. I've tried to write songs about it but I've never managed to get them right. Another Guinness while you're up, Marsha. That's pretty name. I suppose it's your own.
M. PRENTISS: I get called Marty. Vic calls me that.
M. DARCY: He would. I never met an Aussie yet could call a body by their real name.
VOICE OF BAR PATRON: You were in rare voice tonight, Maudie. Never heard you better.
M. DARCY: Thank you, Jack, to be sure. I had the certainty of this man's American Express card to lend wings to me fancy. Thank you, Marsha. Your health. Where was I?
V. BRIGHT: You'd met Basil Craft.
M. DARCY: God damn him to hell, yes. He said nothing that first night, came back the next and asked me to sing a song. 'The Haunted Lock' it was, about a couple that made love on the bank above a lock. Couldn't have what they wanted in the end and threw themselves into the water when the lock was being opened. Eejits. I sang the song. He thanked me and the thrill ran through me when he spoke. I feel it to this day, as much as I hate it. He had a marvellous speaking voice, that man, and he could sing passably, too. But mostly he used it for lovemaking and lying. He had me on the grass that night and for the next two nights. Then he found a room for me in the town and we went there to make a thin mattress thinner and frighten the mice.
M. PRENTISS: How old were you at this time, Maudie?
M. DARCY: Not quite sixteen. I became the girl in the song all right, in some ways. He promised me the moon and I believed him. He was going to be a doctor and then we'd get married and travel the world. And we'd have marvellous children that'd be clever like him and able to sing like me and beautiful as the both of us. I've met a lot of women in my life and read a lot of books and sung a lot of songs, but I never heard of a woman that was more in love than me. I'm almost grateful to him for giving me that.
Basil introduced me to his brother, who was a nice chap. Quieter, Richard was, not as much fun, but nice. I thought: You lucky girl. You'll have a family. Well, things went along like that for a while but I began to notice a change in him. Little things. He didn't come to see me as often and said he was studying. I didn't believe him; when he studied his eyes got red and he had a way of running his hands through his hair that left it ruffled. His hair wasn't getting like that. Oh, it was still wonderful when he was there. I fell pregnant and he laughed that great laugh he had and made love to me gently. I'd sing to him and talk in the brogue the way he liked. In fact I never talked any other way with him. He called me 'his Irish' and that's what I was, until I found out about the others.
I followed him, you see. Simple as that. And I saw them—that great long-jawed thing with a face like a meat axe and that other one, the milk pudding. I saw him put their shawls around their shoulders and let his hands stay. I knew that feeling they were getting. I knew just how they felt. The worst thing was finding out that they were carrying too. A woman can tell, there's all sorts of signs. I almost laughed before I cried. Three of us. The devil. I didn't think. I went straight to the college and spoke first to the porter, who hated Basil as it turned out. He took me to the registrar and I gave him the whole story, chapter and verse.
As soon as I'd done it I was afraid. Afraid of what Basil Craft might do. I'd seen him in a temper once or twice, with servants and the like, and he was a terror. I had nowhere else to go so I stayed in the room and waited. Perhaps I wanted him to come and kill me. I don't know. But he didn't come. He left the college and Oxford without a word said to me, without a line written. I didn't get morning sickness or anything like that. I was as healthy as a horse and I went on working at the pub, singing too. Richard came to see me now and then. He told me that one of the women was the intended of a Fellow of the College, a Dr Devendish, and that Basil had been sent down. Richard said he'd help me when the time came. I thought: Well, Maudie you're not the first it's happened to and you won't be the last and you'll have a fine child to teach your songs to. If it's a girl I'll raise her to be smarter than her ma, and if it's a boy he better be more honest than his pa.
The next part's by way of being a bit hard for me. I've learned not to think about it but I remember it all so clearly . . . Could you get me anot
her drink?
R. CRAFT: Of course. The same?
M. DARCY: To hell with it, I'll have a whisky. Make it a large one . . . I'm crying. These tears are nearly sixty years old, d'you realise? Thank you. This'll help . . . One day, when I was a few months gone, I got a letter. It wasn't signed but I knew it was from him. It said to meet him in Birmingham at a hotel. He sent some money, more than enough. I went, God knows why. Women do, don't they? Unfinished business. I told myself it might be all right, that he might have decided I was the one and that we could do everything he'd said we'd do. I was young, remember. Very young.
So I went and I met him. He was just the same. The shame of being kicked out of the college, of losing his chance to be a great doctor didn't seem to have affected him at all. I waited for him to explain but he never did. He bought me a drink and he said, 'Your name isn't Darcy, it's Austen, and you're English, not Irish'.
The drink made me bold. 'What of it?' I said. 'You're not the one to bring lies home to me.'
He said nothing and his face sort of swam away from me, dissolved, but with a fierceness in it I'd never seen before. I woke up in the hotel feeling like death. There was blood everywhere. I thought I was going to die. Basil Craft had drugged me and operated on me. He took the money and the . . . and . . . everything away with him. He did more than just abort me, you understand. I was sixteen and what he did left me barren for life.
19
'I wonder what happened to the other women.' Randolph Craft said. 'The same thing?'
The familiar, bland fittings of the motel room, the cups of instant coffee and packets of biscuits had failed to calm Craft, Bright and Marsha. They were shaken by the experience of hearing Maudie Darcy's story for the second time within a few hours.
Marsha rewound the tape. 'Unlikely,' she said. 'It was being deceived that he couldn't stand. I imagine the other women had their children, unless their families put pressure on them.'
'It's hard to imagine being related to people named Williams and McIntosh,' Craft said.
