Visitors to the West Country are sometimes surprised by the endearments lavished on them. Doreen answered with a nod.
Rose was looking back at the hostel. She felt no regret at leaving the place, only at being parted from Ada, who had been a staunch friend. She was sure Ada would not let the parting get her down, and neither would she, if she could help it.
‘At least you’ll have a room to yourself tonight,’ Doreen said, trying to be supportive.
‘Will I?’
‘It’s like a furnished flat. Your own bathroom, kitchen, everything. I’ve done some shopping for you. Hope you don’t mind pre-cooked meals.’
‘I’ll eat anything, but I don’t have much cash to pay for it.’
‘Forget it, darling. We’re family.’
They drove past the fire station at the top of Bathwick Street and over Cleveland Bridge.
‘Did you walk along here while you were staying at the hostel?’
‘No. It’s new to me.’
Doreen smiled. ‘Different from Hounslow High Street.’
The joke was lost on Rose. The street they had just joined, with its tall, terraced blocks with classical features, might as well have been Hounslow for all she knew.
The taxi moved across the city at a good rate into some more modern areas built of imitation stone that looked shoddy after the places they had left. But presently they drove up a narrow street into a fine, eighteenth-century square built on a slope around a stretch of garden with well-established trees.
‘Your temporary home.’
‘Aren’t you staying here as well?’
‘Just around the corner in a bed and breakfast. You don’t mind having the place to yourself?’
Truth to tell, Rose preferred it. She was drained by the effort of accepting as her sister this woman she had no recollection of meeting before. They got out at the lower end of the square. Doreen had a hefty fare to settle: she counted out six five-pound notes and got a receipt, which she pocketed. Then she escorted Rose to the door. ‘There are shops along there, in St James’s Street, newsagent and grocer combined, deli, launderette, enough for all immediate needs,’ she said, sounding like a travel guide. ‘Oh, and a hairdresser’s.’
‘Does it look that awful?’
‘Of course it doesn’t, but if you’re like me, you get a lift from having your hair done. If not, there’s the pub.’
From the arrangement of doorbells, Rose noted that the house was divided into flats with a shared entrance.
‘Hope you won’t mind the basement,’ Doreen said apologetically, when she had let them in. ‘That’s all I could get at short notice.’
They stood in a clean, roomy and impersonal hall without furniture except a table for the mail.
‘You must have been confident of finding me to have fixed this up.’
‘More than confident, my dear. I knew. Saw your picture in the paper, you see. It said you were being looked after by the Social Services, so it was just a matter of establishing who I was.’
‘And who I am.’
‘Well, yes.’ Doreen led the way downstairs and turned the key in the door. They stepped inside a large room that must have faced onto the square. All you could see through the window was the outer wall of the basement well and, high up, a strip of the street with railings.
‘The living room. Better than the hostel?’
‘I don’t think the hostel had a living room.’
Affectionately Doreen put her arm around her. ‘So this will do?’
‘Home from home.’
In reality, it was just another strange setting for Rose to get used to. She was impatient to get back to her own place, whatever that turned out to be. She hated being under an obligation to people. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do while Doreen and her partner Jerry chose to linger in Bath.
Fitted green carpet, two armchairs, glass-topped table, bookshelf with a few paperbacks: it would do. The only thing she disliked was having to keep the light on during daytime, a fact of basement life.
‘I’m going to make us a cuppa,’ said Doreen, crossing to the kitchen.
Rose looked into the bedroom. Clean, if rather spartan. Two divan beds with the mattresses showing. A sleeping bag had been arranged on the nearer one. Fair enough, she thought. I could hardly expect them to go to the trouble of buying a full set of bed linen. She put her carrier bags on the spare bed. Unpacking wouldn’t take long.
Back in the kitchen, Doreen showed her the food shopping she had done. There was enough for a couple of days at least. ‘Didn’t know whether you’d gone back to your vegetarian phase, so it’s rather heavy on veggies,’ she said.
‘If I have, it’s all gone by the board in the last few days. I simply don’t remember if I’m supposed to be a vegetarian.’
‘You were always taking up new diets. I could never keep track of them.’ Doreen poured hot water into the teapot and swirled it around. ‘But you like your tea made properly. The pot has to be warmed.’
‘It’s so strange being told these things. I’m wanting to know everything about myself, of course, but it’s still like talking about another person. If I make tea for myself, I suppose I’ll go to the trouble of warming the pot now that you’ve told me I always do it, but it’s the strangest feeling – as if I’m trying to be someone I’m not.’
‘It will all start coming back, I expect,’ Doreen said, ‘and then it will make more sense. Did the doctors give you any idea how long you’ll be like this?’
‘Not really. All I was told is that I’ll get that part of my memory back. It isn’t like concussion, when you lose a small chunk of your life for ever. I may have had concussion as well, of course.’
‘You have had a time of it.’
‘I’ll be all right soon.’
‘But it’s still horrid for you while it lasts.’
‘Yes.’
‘How will it come back, all at one go, or in little bits?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You haven’t noticed anything stirring at the back of your mind?’
‘I wish I could say I had. You said my real name is Rosamund. I didn’t even know that.’
While the tea was brewing, they sat on two stools facing each other across the kitchen table. People with impaired sight or hearing sometimes develop their other senses more sharply. Rose, deprived of so much of her memory and experience, found she was becoming acutely observant of the way others behaved towards her. She could detect insincerity as if with a sixth sense. For example, she had found Imogen, the social worker, friendly, but unwilling to get involved beyond the limits of her job. She carried out her duties without really throwing herself into them whole-heartedly. Ada, on the other hand, had come across as totally committed, dependable and sympathetic, however brash her utterances were.
She could tell that Doreen’s motives were more complex. Doreen had a strong, honest concern, though it came out less obviously than Ada’s. Maybe that was only the difference between family and friends. No doubt Doreen was trying to reconcile different loyalties, to their mother, her partner, Jerry, and to Rose. The important thing, Rose concluded, was that Doreen clearly had her welfare at heart. She might appear manipulative, bossy, even, but she had gone to all the trouble of arranging this flat, and it was done with Rose’s interests clearly in mind.
She was trying her best to warm to Doreen.
‘Will I meet Jerry soon?’
‘Jerry?’ There was hesitation, as if Doreen’s mind had been on other things. ‘You threw me for a moment. It won’t be a case of meeting him. He knows you almost as well as I do.’
‘Sorry. You’ll have to make allowances. Remind me what he’s like.’
Doreen blushed a little. ‘I think he’s special, or I wouldn’t have moved in with him and shocked the family. They’ve accepted him now, even Mother.’
‘Good-looking, then?’
‘I think so, anyway.’
‘You live at his place?’
>
‘Yes, but we don’t crowd each other. Today I told him I didn’t want him with me when I called at the Social Services place. Jerry can be a bit abrupt with people like that. It called for some tact and persuasion, if you know what I mean. So he’s doing his own thing, which probably means test-driving a new car at some posh garage. You’ll see him soon enough.’
‘Tonight?’
‘I thought you’d want an evening at home. Nice bath, chance to put your feet up and relax.’
Rose took this to mean that her sister wanted dinner out somewhere nice with her partner. And why not? This was their short break in Bath.
‘About tomorrow,’ she thought it right to say. ‘If you two want to spend the day together, sightseeing or something, I don’t need to tag around with you. There are plenty of things I can do.’
Doreen ventured no immediate response. She went to the fridge and took out a carton of milk. ‘Is semi-skimmed all right?’
‘Fine.’
When the tea was poured, Doreen said, ‘Look, I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but you’ve got to be on your guard.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, come on, darling. Someone tried to force you into a car yesterday.’
So much had happened since that Rose had put it out of her mind. She shrugged and said dismissively, ‘I don’t know what that was about. You get some weirdos these days. I suppose he saw my picture in the paper. He knew my name, the name I’m using, anyway.’
‘Good thing your friend Ada was there to help you.’
‘And how!’
‘I think you should keep your head down now,’ Doreen continued the sisterly pressure. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell the social worker exactly where we’re staying. I told her Bathford, which is on the other side of town. You don’t want too many people knowing.’
Rose didn’t have much patience with the cloak and dagger stuff. ‘I don’t think Imogen goes round talking to all and sundry about her clients.’
‘All I’m saying is better safe than sorry. You’ll be all right here. You wouldn’t think of going out tonight, would you?’
Rose giggled at that. ‘It isn’t the back streets of Cairo out there.’
‘But you’ll stay in? Promise me.’
‘Your hotel is nearby, isn’t it?’
‘Hotel?’ Doreen said with a pained expression. ‘I keep telling you it’s only a private boarding-house. Yes, it’s very near, just around the corner in Marlborough Street, in fact. What’s that got to do with it?’
‘What’s it called if I need you?’
She was evasive. ‘Look, you won’t need me if you do as I say and stay in tonight. I’ll show you where we’re staying tomorrow.’
‘Why the mystery?’
‘No mystery at all. I feel responsible for you, right? Look, this may sound high-handed, but I think I’d better hold on to the keys of this place. Then you won’t be tempted to go for an evening walk if you know you wouldn’t get back in.’
Rose reddened and said, ‘That’s absurd.’
‘Not after all the trouble I’ve been to for your sake, it isn’t.’
They finished the tea. At Doreen’s suggestion, they explored the central heating system and succeeded in getting the boiler going. Rose, trying her best to be appreciative, said she was looking forward to a bath.
Before leaving, Doreen showed her the spyhole in the door and urged her to use it if anyone called. ‘It should only be me, anyway, and I won’t be back before ten tomorrow. Don’t open the door to anyone else, will you?’
Rose assured her that she would not.
‘If your bell rings, ignore it. Nobody knows you’re here except for me.’
‘Hadn’t I better have the keys? What if there’s a fire?’
‘You open the door and walk out. You don’t need a key to get out.’
‘All right.’
‘And there’s a chain on this door.’
Rose rolled her eyes upwards. ‘All these precautions. I should be so lucky – strange men beating a path to my door.’
‘Use it. Promise.’
Reluctantly, she said, ‘All right, I promise.’ She smiled at Doreen. ‘Just my luck.’
‘What’s that?’
‘To have Bossyboots for a sister.’
At about this time a woman called at the Central Police Station at the top of Manvers Street and handed over a sheet of paper. She explained that she was from the Tourist Information Office and she had been asked to translate something a German woman had wanted to tell Detective Inspector Hargreaves. It was about an incident in Bathwick Street the previous day. The desk sergeant glanced through it, thanked her, and had it taken upstairs to Julie’s desk.
The same evening a phone message reached the sergeant with responsibility for missing persons. He noted the details and turned to the computer operator on the adjacent desk. ‘When you get a moment, you can close the file on this one. She’s one of the Harmer House women, the one found wandering on the A46 suffering from loss of memory. Her family have surfaced now. Taking her back to Hounslow, where she lives. The name is Rosamund Black.’
‘Nice when there’s a happy ending,’ the computer operator said.
Fourteen
A bell was ringing intermittently and the sound fitted into a dream Rose was having. After the third or fourth time, she wriggled down in the sleeping bag and covered her exposed ear. Then the idea penetrated that this had to be a real sound. But if it’s the doorbell I’m supposed to ignore it, she told herself, remembering enough of yesterday’s instructions to justify her sloth. Fine. She felt so drowsy she could sleep for another six hours. Soon, surely, the bloody thing would stop.
Through the padded sleeping bag she could hear the ringing almost as clearly as before. Please give up and go away, she silently appealed to it.
Now the sound changed to knocking. Whoever it was had no consideration. Angrily she freed one arm and felt for the small digital clock on the shelf by the bed.
10.08.
She sat up and took in the scene, registering that she was in a strange room and that it was daylight and that her head felt like a butterfly farm.
The doorbell started up again.
Her surroundings began to make sense – the twin divans, the chipped tallboy, the wardrobe with a door that wouldn’t close properly – a job-lot of second-hand furniture to fill a flat. She remembered being brought here by her sister Doreen. Squirming out of the sleeping bag, she put her feet to the floor, padded through the living-room and looked through the spyhole. Doreen was out there, alone.
Rose released the safety-chain.
‘I thought you’d never come,’ Doreen said as she entered.
‘Asleep. Sorry.’
‘Why don’t you swish some cold water over your face and wake yourself up?’
‘Sadist.’
‘I did say I’d be here by ten. I’ll make coffee.’
Still light-headed in a way she didn’t like or understand, Rose went into the bathroom. The sensation of the water against her face helped a little. She took a shower and then remembered there was no bath-towel. After the bath last night she’d had to improvise. Fortunately the kitchen-roll she had used was still here and there was enough left, just. The coarse feel of the paper against her goose-pimpled skin did more to waken her than the shower. She slipped the nightdress over her head again. She could smell bacon cooking when she stepped into the living-room.
‘I’m getting you some breakfast,’ Doreen called out from the kitchen. ‘One egg or two?’
‘One’s enough. I feel just as if I took a sleeping-tablet.’
‘You did, darling. I popped a sedative into your tea last night.’
There was a second of shocked silence.
‘You didn’t?’ She went to the kitchen door and looked in, to see if the remark was serious.
Doreen said without looking away from the frying-pan, ‘It’s always difficult sleeping in a strange place, so I helped you out.’
‘You had no right.’ If she had not felt so muzzy, she would have objected more strongly. ‘I’m trying to get my brain working properly, not make it even more woolly.’
‘I guessed you’d say something like that. Get some clothes on and don’t be too long about it. This’ll be ready in five minutes.’
She didn’t feel alert enough to stand there arguing, but she would later, she would.
Over breakfast, she registered another protest about the sedative, but Doreen dismissed it. ‘That was only something herbal that I take myself. It might have a very good effect on your amnesia.’
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Relaxing you.’
She made it as clear as she could that she didn’t want any more sedatives secretly administered. ‘Look, if we’re going to stay on speaking terms, there’s got to be some trust between us.’
Doreen started to say, ‘I was only doing it-’
‘… for my own good? Well, I’d rather decide for myself what’s good for me.’
Doreen suggested a walk. The sun was out, she said, and they should make the best of it.
They strolled around St James’s Square and left at the north-west end to make their way up the hill in search of a good viewpoint.
Rose asked, ‘Are you and Jerry planning anything today?’
‘Planning anything?’
‘Sightseeing.’
She sounded relieved. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. No plans. Jerry’s not feeling too good. Last night’s wine, I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Some little Italian place in the centre of town. I didn’t even look at the name. We made the mistake of ordering a bottle of the house wine. Jerry had most of it. The taste put me off.’
‘Is it a headache, or what?’
‘Tummy. He doesn’t dare go out. I don’t think you’ll be seeing him today, poor old thing.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I’m assuming it was the wine. We don’t want our holiday ruined.’
‘How many days are left?’ Rose asked.
Doreen frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Of the holiday. When do we all go home?’
Upon A Dark Night Page 11
