by Gee, Maurice
Gloria rat-tatted in the corridor in her heels; she came in, switched on the light, making Ailsa draw the sheet over her eyes.
‘Hey,’ she protested.
‘Sorry,’ Gloria said, but did not switch it off.
‘You’d better tell him not to blow his horn. What time is it?’
‘Two minutes to one.’ She had beaten the curfew. Ailsa imagined her mother in her bedroom looking at her clock and giving a sigh. She heard her pad down the stairs to double lock the door.
‘The MPs are on duty,’ Gloria said.
‘It’s her job,’ Ailsa said sharply. ‘And thanks for waking me up.’
‘You get enough sleep. Old droopy was out there.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy on the bike. In the raincoat. He was standing on the corner when we arrived. He raised his hat. He’s a gentleman.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Rode away.’
‘Did you tell Bevan?’
Gloria laughed. ‘He had other things on his mind.’ She had taken off her stockings and her dress and pulled on her wrap-around dressing gown. It had Chinese dragons embroidered on it and made Gloria look cheap and rich at the same time.
‘What a waste of a night.’
‘Why?’
‘The men talked about footy. The girls sat and kept their hands in their laps.’
‘I bet you didn’t.’
‘Stop talking,’ someone called from the next-door room.
‘Cheeky cow,’ Gloria said. She took her toilet bag and towel and went to the bathroom. Ailsa got up and slid the peg in the window. She looked both ways along the street. How late did the man on the bike stay out? Had he been waiting for Gloria? If it had been her she would have made Bevan follow him and find out where he lived and call the police.
Pipes clanged distantly. Ailsa stayed awake. When Gloria came back she whispered, ‘What did he look like? Did you see him close?’
‘Who?’
‘The man on the bike.’
‘Does he worry you? He’s just some poor geezer with no wife.’
‘He wears glasses, doesn’t he? I thought I saw them under the tree.’
‘Sure. Round and shiny. And black hair. He needs a haircut.’ Gloria yawned. ‘Go to sleep. I don’t want to talk. What a hopeless night.’
She had wiped off her make-up in the bathroom. She scratched herself in a vulgar way and yawned again, showing her molars. It would be interesting, Ailsa thought, if Bevan — or the man on the bike — could see her now.
Gloria turned off the light and got into bed. In a couple of minutes she was asleep, but Ailsa lay awake listening to the house creak, listening for noises in the street. Gloria was probably right, the man was just some lonely bloke with nothing to do but ride around — but this made twice; twice he had lifted his hat to Gloria. As she drifted off to sleep his glasses got shinier and took horn rims and his raincoat brushed the ground. It flapped like vulture wings when he mounted his bike and rode away.
She dreamed about him. Calum Page wasn’t in her dreams.
Ailsa rode home fast on Monday and changed out of her school uniform. Light rain started falling. She had to put her mackintosh on, which made riding back more difficult. Calum was waiting in the garage with his bike.
‘You’re late.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s the rain.’
‘The river’s no use. We’ll go to Elbe’s.’
‘No,’ Ailsa said.
‘OK. So I might just as well go back inside.’
Ailsa saw Mrs Page watching from a window. She was standing in a posed way, smoking a cigarette.
‘Your mother’s watching.’
‘Let her. Trust it to rain when I want to have some fun.’
‘It’s raining on other people too.’ She was cross at the way things had gone wrong. It would have been easy for him to say something nice. ‘Come around to my place. I’ll show you the hostels.’
‘Big deal.’
‘All right. Stay here.’ She got on her bike.
‘Hey, I didn’t say I wouldn’t come.’
She saw how difficult it was for him to get his leg over the bar. But once he was on it was easier. His left leg did the work and the right one in the callipers went up and down. She thought it might be good for exercise.
They rode past Mrs Page, who gave her almost non-existent smile, one hand drifting smoke and the other cupping her elbow. Women at windows stood like that in Hollywood films. They were tragic heroines.
‘She doesn’t like me,’ Ailsa said.
‘She doesn’t like anyone very much. Especially me now I’ve got this leg.’
‘Do you mean that?’
‘She used to be all over me once but not any more.’
They turned into the road and went towards Woburn with the rain behind them.
‘People like us don’t get polio, it’s working class,’ Calum said. ‘She kept on trying to work out who I’d been seeing. My rough friends.’
‘Ha!’
‘What she is is ashamed of me. She’s always telling me to wash my hands.’
They leaned their bikes outside House 4 and hung their coats in the hall.
‘The lounge is along at the end,’ Ailsa said.
‘I can make it.’
‘We’ve got a kettle. Would you like some tea?’
‘Sure. Hey, this is all right. How many girls live here?’
‘Forty.’
‘I bet your mother goes mad looking after them.’
‘She does. Someone got expelled last year.’
‘What for?’
‘Staying out all night. They can bring their boyfriends home until 10 o’clock. We have dances too.’
‘In this room?’
‘Along in the big lounge over the dining room. There’s two pianos. Sometimes we have a band.’
‘Can you play the piano?’
‘No.’ She could, a bit, but she wasn’t going to let Calum hear her mistakes. They drank cups of tea, sitting in armchairs like a married couple. Calum told her about having polio. At first the doctor thought he had the flu but then he got pains so bad in his head and neck that his father carried him out to the car and drove him to the hospital at three o’clock in the morning.
‘I could have died,’ Calum said. ‘I couldn’t move. All I could move were my eyes and tongue. But I was lucky. It only turned out to be my leg. There were people there who went in the iron lung. Some of them died.’
He told her about being in isolation, about the Kenny treatment, and about getting callipers, but Ailsa couldn’t see him sick, she saw him just as someone who was limpy and rather nice. Someone bad-tempered too, but that was understandable. He asked about her father and she told him what she knew: he had grown up in Glasgow and gone into the shipyards at 14 as a plater’s boy, then become a boilermaker’s apprentice.
‘But then it was the Depression,’ she said, ‘so he lost his job. After that he came to New Zealand and married Mum.’
‘Helen said he was killed in the war.’
‘Yes, in Crete. What about yours? Is he a lawyer?’
‘Yeah, Page Endacott. Grandad started it and it’s pretty big. Dad’s a partner. But what he really wants to do is build a yacht and sail it solo round the world. The solo bit is the bit he likes.’
They looked at each other with interest. They were talking about their fathers but talking about themselves.
‘Why doesn’t he?’
‘Mum won’t let him. I don’t know why. They hardly ever talk to each other.’
‘My mum says talking is the best thing when you’re married. If you can’t you might as well stay single, she says. She doesn’t want to get married again.’
‘Do you want her to?’
‘Maybe. She’s only 36. She dances with the boyfriends at the dances sometimes. The girls get jealous because she’s better looking than them.’
It was the first time she’d seen Calum grin. She was surprised to see that
his teeth were crooked.
‘Your mum’s good-looking. In a way,’ she said.
‘That’s why Dad married her. He can’t think of any other reason.’
‘What was she? When she was single?’
‘Nothing. She didn’t work. She was in plays. Amateur.’
‘No kidding?’
‘Sure. She was the lead, you know, with men chasing her. She gave it up when she had to be the older sister.’ Calum laughed. ‘And one time they cast her for the maid. She didn’t like that. But she and old Errol were a pretty good team.’
‘Errol?’ Ailsa said.
‘The guy next door. Where you hit the ball.’
‘Do you know about that?’
Calum blinked. ‘I know you hit a ball there. What else?’
‘I met him. I climbed over when you were asleep.’
‘What about the dog?’
‘It came out and baled me up. He just sat and watched.’
Calum laughed.
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Why not? He didn’t bite you.’
Ailsa felt as if he had slapped her. She stood up and turned her back and in a moment said, ‘The rain’s stopped. You can go home.’
‘Hey, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. The nurses start getting home soon.’
‘What’d I say?’
She kept her back to him. There were tears of disappointment in her eyes. But how could she expect him to know how horrible it had been, the dog and Errol?
‘Ailsa?’ he said.
‘I’m all right.’
‘What then?’
‘Who is he, Errol over the fence?’
‘Just a guy. He’s a civil servant, he’s pretty high up. His wife’s sick all the time, she’s always in hospital.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Errol Parkinson. Hey, he’s not important.’
‘So what about him and your mother in plays?’ She turned to him. ‘He was all dressed up. Like an Englishman. Like in the tropics.’
‘Sure, that’s old Errol. He’s play-acting all the time. He’s harmless though.’ Calum smiled. ‘He and Mum used to be the romantic leads. They had to kiss on stage. Dad didn’t like that. But then he kind of gave it up, like Mum. They tried to make him be the butler, bringing in the sherry, all that stuff. He still acts though. You can hear him doing voices in the garden. Cockneys and Italians and Yanks.’
‘His dog’s not harmless.’
‘Old Bruce. He’s all right. I’m sorry if he scared you. You needn’t try and get balls back from there.’
‘I won’t any more.’
‘We’ll keep on with the tennis though? So you can beat Helen?’
‘If you want to.’
A nurse came in. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘This is my friend. We’re going,’ Ailsa said.
Mrs McGowan was in the hall, wiping her feet on the doormat. Ailsa introduced Calum to her.
‘You’re the boy who’s had polio?’ Mrs McGowan said, bringing it out in the open, in her way. Ailsa blushed.
‘That’s not important, Mum.’
‘I imagine Calum thinks it is.’
‘Sure it is. But I get by,’ Calum said.
‘I just want to show him my room before he goes,’ Ailsa said.
‘All right. Don’t be late for tea.’
They went along to the bedroom, which smelled of Gloria’s powder and scent.
‘This is mine. I share it with a girl called Gloria. It’s not much.’
‘It’s pretty small but it’s all right. Which is your bed?’
‘That one.’
Calum sat on it. She saw that he was tired — perhaps in pain.
‘Where do you do your homework?’ he said.
‘In my mother’s sitting room. I can’t even read here. Gloria kind of fills it up.’
‘Is she fat?’
‘No, she’s thin. She’s, I don’t know, glamorous. She’s got a boyfriend with a snazzy car. A Jaguar.’
‘Big deal.’ He seemed fond of that term. ‘I better go.’ Suddenly he jerked his head. ‘Who’s that?’
Ron Stock was standing on the lawn outside the window, pretending to look at something on the ground.
‘That’s Ron. Clear out, Ron,’ she said through the open window. ‘He’s the boilerman. He’s smitten with Gloria.’ She grinned at the word. ‘He probably thought she was in here with some man.’
Calum looked pleased. ‘Helen said you used to have a peeping tom.’
‘Yeah, they caught him. He wasn’t the worst one though. A while ago, about six months, I was in one of the bedrooms with two of the girls. They were practising dance steps and one of them said, “I wish I had a man to dance with”. A voice outside the window said, “Will I do?” ‘
‘Who was it?’
‘We don’t know. When we looked out no one was there. He must have ducked away. We never found out.’
‘Spooky,’ Calum said.
‘That’s why I always put the peg in the window. His voice was, you know, kind of like that actor, upper class.’
‘George Sanders.’
‘Yeah, him. I suppose I’d better go to dinner soon. I’m sorry you can’t come.’
‘I’ll go home.’
‘Is your leg all right?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘At least there’s no more rain.’
They were suddenly awkward, saying goodbye. Gloria came in.
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Calum. My friend.’
‘How do you do?’ Calum said.
Gloria put down her bag and sat on her bed. She was flushed and plain, not at all glamorous.
‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘Some oaf.’
She thrust an opened letter at Ailsa. It was only one page, with the words printed in coloured pencil: Gloria, you are my heart’s desire. ‘Gloria’ was in blue and ‘heart’s desire’ in red. The rest was yellow.
‘Who is it?’ Ailsa said, handing it back. She wanted to show Calum but thought that Gloria might object.
‘How would I know?’
‘Bevan?’
‘He wouldn’t have the imagination.’
‘There’s not much imagination,’ Ailsa said.
‘What does it say?’ Calum said.
‘Gloria, you are my heart’s desire.’
He laughed. ‘Maybe that guy.’
‘Ron Stock? It might be. He reads comics.’
‘He couldn’t spell a word like desire,’ Gloria said. She took off her coat and shoes. ‘Excuse me. I’m going to lie down.’
‘Sure, I’ll go,’ Calum said. He and Ailsa walked along the hall to the front door.
‘Creepy things happen here,’ Ailsa said.
‘That wasn’t creepy. That’s a joke,’ Calum said. ‘I see what you mean, glamorous.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘She’s a looker.’
‘She’s too old for you.’
‘Sure. She wouldn’t look at someone in callipers anyway.’ He smiled at her. ‘One night soon will you come to the pictures?’
‘Yes.’
‘And come round and play tennis some more?’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘I’ll give you a call.’
Ailsa stood in the door while he got on his bike. She watched him as far as the overbridge then wheeled her own bike round the end of House 4 to the wash house. Ron Stock was gone. She couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t him who had written Gloria’s note. But there had been a stamp on the envelope. Surely he would have put it in the rack, not posted it.
She went back to the bedroom. Gloria was lying on the bed with her eyes closed.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Headache.’
‘Shall I get some aspros?’
‘No. Screw that damn thing up and throw it away.’
Ailsa picked up the note from the foot of the bed and dropped it in the wastepaper tin. It was definitely creepy,
she thought, but it tried to be poetic too.
It was not Ron Stock.
Chapter 5
NIGHT RIDE
‘Mrs Nimmo,’ Ailsa said, ‘does “You are my heart’s desire” come from a poem?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s more like a song by a crooner,’ Mrs Nimmo said. ‘Why?’
‘A girl at the hostel got a note. That’s what it said.’
‘From her boyfriend?’
‘It wasn’t signed. “Who is Gloria? What is she?” That’s supposed to be Shakespeare. She got it next day. In coloured pencil.’
‘It’s Sylvia, not Gloria,’ Mrs Nimmo said.
‘Yes, I know. I think she should go to the police.’
‘Is she one of the nurses? Has she told your mother?’
‘She won’t. She just laughs.’
In fact, it was a laugh that was not amused. Gloria screwed up the note and threw it in the corner. Ailsa saved it — and had saved the first one from the wastepaper tin. She kept them in the back of an exercise book. They were dangerous somehow, with their neat printing and coloured words and secrecy. She wanted to show her mother, and the police, who had said after the peeping tom that anything strange must be reported — but Gloria would be furious. She hated interference, she would handle it herself. She had told Ailsa the exact place where she would kick the man who was sending the notes. Ailsa was startled as much by her anger as her crudeness.
‘I think it’s someone with a screw loose,’ she said.
Mrs Nimmo was amused. ‘I do like your language, it’s refreshing. And Ailsa, so are your vowels, so don’t change them. Keep on sounding like a New Zealander not all these little misses trying to be Claire Bloom. Listen to what my school did to me.’
Ailsa liked Mrs Nimmo. She never knew what she was going to say. She liked the contrast between her haystack hair and baggy skirts and politics and her voice like Lady Bracknell’s in the play. But she was disappointed that Mrs Nimmo didn’t take the notes seriously. She was sure they came from the man on the bike. Every night before bed she looked out the window to make sure that he wasn’t there.
She walked down to the tennis courts, where Helen was playing a match with Amanda Summersby, the school’s number two. She knew she had no hope of beating Helen, even though she practised with Calum most afternoons, not at the house any more but along at the public courts.
