Reprise

by Claire Rayner

She moved across the room then and opened the curtains, pulling on them gently so that the rings wouldn’t rattle, but they clanked a bit and she stood still, listening hard. She had every right to be here if she chose, but the last thing she wanted was for anyone else to know. Paranoia again, maybe, but that was the way she wanted it.

  There was the whine of a vacuum cleaner coming from somewhere and a clatter of dishes; breakfast in rooms, now? Ida was changing her tune, she thought sourly; in the old days anything extra of that sort that Dolly had wanted to give her boarders had been stamped on hard by Ida as a waste of money, bad business, stupid. She’s probably making them pay a bomb for it, she thought now, and then, irritable with herself, pushed it out of her mind and turned and looked at the room again.

  Where to start? That was the problem. Where on earth, in this cluttered overcrowded room with its little tables and cabinets and chests of drawers and boxes piled on wardrobes was she ever to begin looking? It wasn’t even as though she really knew what she was looking for; old letters with a return address on them? An address book? What?

  She started with the wardrobes, feeling obscurely that they were so big that it would be easier to get through them quickly. An illogical thought, but it gave her a jumping-off point, at least.

  There were three of them, two in birdseye maple with fat curves and angled, stepped mirror decorations and one in mahogany with a heavily ornamented front. Dolly had bought that at a junk shop in Ealing, ages ago. She had been so proud of herself, coming home and bubbling over with it. ‘Fifteen pounds, my dears!’ she had cried, throwing her coat down on the long bench in the hallway and running into the sitting room where the boarders were sitting waiting for their lunch. ‘All I went down for was a few bits and pieces, but you know how ’tis on a Saturday morning, all busy and exciting, and there it was, fifteen pounds and solid mahogany, the man said –’ And then when it had been delivered that afternoon by a couple of sweating men in an old van, Ida had looked at it in disgust, and said it was hideous, a waste of fifteen shillings, let alone fifteen pounds, and Maggy had thought the same but would have died rather than let Ida know she agreed with her, and so had said nothing. But she had hated it and thought Dolly a fool to buy it. But now, looking at it, she had to admit she had been wrong. It was a beautiful piece of Victorian craftsmanship and would fetch a fat three figures in the Portobello Road and a hell of a lot more in trendy Kensington. Looking at the rest of the furniture with this morning’s fresh eyes she realized that a great deal of it was equally good in its own period way. Handsome art deco pieces jostled with well-made Edwardian ones; any antique dealer would dribble at the chance to get his hands on most of it. Maybe that’s where the Westpark’s future lies, Maggy thought, selling off Dolly’s old bargains, and wanted to laugh. Stupid ignorant Dolly with no taste at all, managing to collect money that way!

  The mahogany wardrobe breathed lavender at her as she opened it, a great wave of dusty smell and she rifled her hand along the clothes hanging there, and was suddenly sharply embarrassed. They were all men’s clothes, every one of them. Suits carefully arranged on heavy wooden hangers with plastic shoulder covers over them; overcoats and raincoats and slacks, and sweaters carefully set on padded hangers to hold their shape. There were shoes ranged tidily on the top shelf and a couple of hats, a grey trilby with a curved brim and a heavy glossy black bowler.

  She shut the door sharply on them, and moved quickly to the birdseye maple wardrobes, and there she found Dolly’s clothes. Rows and rows of them, dresses and skirts and frilled blouses and long nightdresses with matching negligees in sugary pinks and pallid greens and blues, and they reeked of her usual perfume, that chypre smell that had been so much a part of her.

  Maggy worked her way methodically along the rail, flicking each garment away, still not knowing what she expected to find, but knowing she had to touch each one, just in case. But all there was was clothes, clothes, clothes, and she tried to remember Dolly actually wearing them and couldn’t. Yet all these were familiar somehow, all part of the fabric of her growing-up years. Dolly had loved clothes, had bought something new whenever she could, even when they were waiting for the bailiffs to turn up and make trouble, hadn’t been able to resist a pretty scarf in a shop window. There had been some lovely times, long ago, when the two of them, she and Dolly, had gone giggling through the stores, buying, buying, buying, to come home and find Ida tight-lipped and furious. And that had been the best part of it –

  Both wardrobes were the same, and so were the chests of drawers, filled with piles of clothing that hadn’t been worn for years. But no bits of paper, no envelopes or address books; nothing that said anything at all about Morty.

  She came back to the big mahogany wardrobe and stood in front of it, and stared at it. Whose clothes were they? Morty’s? Not after so many years, surely. Oliver’s? Never. He wouldn’t have worn those heavy expensive suits, those thick overcoats, and never, never either of those hats. Not Oliver. Anyway, he’d have had them out of there so fast after Dolly’s death if they’d been his – and he had a room of his own, besides, and wouldn’t need to keep any of his gear in Dolly’s wardrobes – the thoughts chased themselves round and round her head and suddenly irritated with herself, she reached forward and pulled the door open again, so sharply that it swung back and clattered against the side.

  It was absurd, really, as though she had expected the sound to coincide with the opening of the bedroom door, because when he came in and closed it behind him and stood there staring at her, she stared back coolly, her eyebrows raised, unsurprised.

  ‘Well, Oliver? Was there something you wanted?’

  ‘I knew there was someone in here!’ He said it dramatically, standing with his back to the door. ‘I said to Ida, there’s someone up in Dolly’s room and she told me it was impossible, but I knew – I felt the vibes coming at me – you can’t fool Oliver, you know. I knew someone was here –’

  She held out her hand, palm upwards. ‘Give me that key, at once.’

  ‘Key? What key? What are you talking about?’ He sounded blustering now, less dramatic.

  ‘The key you let yourself in here with. I’ve got the only one – Ida gave it to me. So you must have had one cut for yourself. Give it to me at once, or the police’ll be called.’

  ‘Police?’ He stared at her, his face blank. ‘What are you talking about, police? What’s it got to do with them? Don’t be silly –’

  She felt all her suspicions rising again, bubbling up into a thick anger, mixing with the frustration of her fruitless search and her confusion and gave in to the resulting tide of feeling with luxurious abandon. ‘It’s got everything to do with them, you scrounging, scavenging pig – you’d take anything that wasn’t nailed down, you would! You’re the sort of sneak thief who’d rob helpless blind old women, you’re so –’

  He blinked and shook his head and tried to speak, opening his mouth to interrupt, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t stop, spitting out the harshest words she could lay her tongue to, knowing that most of what she was saying was nonsense, had no basis in fact, but needing to say it, calling him thief and liar and beggar and then thief again, and he stared blankly at her and made no attempt to stop her. Until, at last, her breath ran out and she was standing there with her hand still absurdly outstretched and shaking in the receding tide of her fury.

  There was a little silence and then he said quietly, ‘Oh, my dear, did I hurt you that much? I never meant to, you know. I really never meant to –’

  The snow was thick, heavy and clotted in the gutters, tight packed and slippery in the middle of the roads where the cars were cautiously slithering by and her hands and the end of her nose were solid with the cold and her boots, clogged with the frozen slush they had picked up, hung on her feet like lumps of dead metal. The physical discomfort was almost the worst she had ever known, and she was desperately, lunatically happy. She clung to his arm as they picked their way over the lumpy pavements, laughing breathlessly when i
nevitably she slipped and he had to catch her. What more could the world possibly hold for her? What other bliss could there be? Twenty-one, part of the band, in love, and loved back. What more could she ask of life?

  Certainty, whispered the silly little voice inside her head as they turned into the entrance to the club, round the corner from Hammersmith Broadway, certainty that he loves you back, and she tugged on his arm again and he stopped and looked down at her.

  ‘Oliver –’ she said, and then smiled, a little tremulously, looking up at him. It was such a joy to look at him, those dark eyes with the heavy shadows underneath and the thick tangled brown hair on his forehead and the long narrow cheeks; they made her melt and made her words come out all wrong.

  ‘It’ll be fun, mmm? Lots of fun?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said gravely, and looked at her broodingly. ‘It’s a great practical deal for me, and sure we’ll have fun. We’ll be into everything –’ He was being a bit American this week, slipping in words and intonations that mixed oddly with his basic London twang. She hoped he wouldn’t get tired of it for a while yet, the way he usually got tired of his games. This one was dramatic and exciting. ‘We’ll get on well, mmm?’ she said, trying to say what she really meant, trying to say, ‘I love you. Say you love me and that’s why you’re moving in with me. Please say it.’

  ‘Honey, I go down as easy as pecan pie, believe me. We’ll have ourselves a ball, that’s for sure –’ and he squeezed her arm against his side and they went on into the club for the rehearsal, and she wanted to burst with it all.

  He moved in that night, and she rushed about the flat and cleaned it all over again, although it had shone like a new pin anyway, and she plumped up the gingham cushions she’d bought in that madly smart shop in Brompton Road, and tweaked the mattress-ticking curtains into position and felt she was living on a magazine cover. They’d eaten spaghetti she’d cooked with all the care she could muster, and drunk some red wine she’d only paid six and eleven pence for but which tasted all right and then she’d washed up and he’d helped her dry, and it had all been so marvellous.

  He’d hugged her and kissed her cheek when it was midnight and thanked her gravely and then kissed her other cheek and gone to bed in the little room on the other side of her big bedsitter, and she had curled up in her own put-u-up telling herself stoutly that he wasn’t like other people, Glory be, he was a caring tender sensitive person and wouldn’t dream of pushing himself on to her too soon. Not mat she would have thought ill of him if he had –

  And she had gone on being happy, even when she realized just how big a problem he had. She had come home one evening after rehearsing all day, having left him in bed because he felt lousy, he’d said, tell George he’d be all right for the performances, but he couldn’t work today, and found him semi-conscious in a pool of his own vomit, and been frightened out of her mind. She’d got him to hospital somehow, sending for an ambulance in her panic, and they’d told her harshly that drug problems weren’t the sort they dealt with and gave her a letter to take him to a specialist – oh, they had been bad times then. But he had been abject, apologized humbly, told her, sitting beside her on the big floor cushions long into the night after they got back from the club at one in the morning, told her how he’d lick the habit, by jeez he would (he went on being American for a long time) and how much he needed her and how much he was grateful to her, and where would he be without her –

  So it hadn’t been all bad.

  And the days had drifted into weeks, and the weeks pleated into months, and he rehearsed less and less and his clarinet sounded – well, not as it should, and George had got mad one night when he zonked out on stage in the middle of a set and told him to bugger off. She’d have gone with him, so red-hot with fury was she as Oliver leaned against the wall in the alleyway outside and retched and George bawled at him, but where could she go? There weren’t that many bands in London that’d take a girl on piano, especially one who played her sort of piano, and there was the flat to pay for, and Oliver to look after and the impossible thought of having to go back to Dolly if she didn’t earn.

  So they went on, for a long time, in the same old way, Oliver cleaning the flat when he felt up to it, and cooking a little, and still, sometimes, sitting close to her on the big floor cushions and talking, talking, talking deep into the small hours. But only sometimes, for now they argued more, usually about money for his stuff, and about not keeping his appointments with the drug dependence clinic, and although she could not, would not, have put it into words, about the way he went, always, into the little bedroom on the other side of her big bedsitter when it came to sleep. He’d hold her close and hug her, and kiss her cheek, sometimes her eyelids and chin, but never more than that, though she clung to him and tried all she knew to show she was ready, that he needn’t feel bad about the way she was working to pay all the bills, she didn’t mind, he wouldn’t be pouncing on her or anything like that if they did it.

  But he didn’t get her message, and she watched him and loved him and needed him and for all her worrying was happy with him, but not as happy as she’d been that day in February when the snow was so thick and he’d been chucked out of his room and she’d offered to put him up at her flat.

  And then it was November and the band got the chance to play in Hamburg, the same place the Beatles had played and done so well, and the chance was too much, and she’d gone, even though it meant a week alone for Oliver. He’d been marvellous the night she’d told him they were going, fussed over her and packed her case for her and insisted he’d be great on his own, he’d paint the kitchenette and really fix the flat up ready for her to come back, maybe even play a little clarinet again for a bit, get his lip back, start a new life style before Christmas.

  Christmas. She’d come back, the week after Dallas had happened, when Christmas decorations were appearing in the shop windows, and found he’d gone. She’d walked into the flat, lugging her case and the big box of goodies she’d brought from Germany for him, sausages and jars of sauerkraut and a big sugary apple cake, and she’d known at once he was gone. The flat felt dead and heavy and she’d stood in the middle of the big room and cried and cried, and George, who’d helped her bring her stuff up, had stood and touched her and crooned at her and told her he wasn’t worth it, and still she had cried. Until George saw the letter he’d left on the mantelpiece and she thought it was going to be all right.

  ‘Maggy, my own,’ he’d written. ‘There was a call from your mother, two days after you left. She was ill, pneumonia they said, and she needed you, and I didn’t want to send telegrams to Hamburg upsetting everything so I went over there. If this note is still here when you come home, then I’m still there! I hear you had a great time there. The word came back you went over very big –’

  She had laughed at George then, laughed in his face when he had read the note and shook his head and said heavily, ‘That guy’s still trouble, Maggy. Watch him,’ and gone away, and she had taken a cab, extravagant after their big Hamburg success, and gone all the way to the Westpark in it, instead of taking the tube the way she should have done. Even ready to be loving to Dolly, to wish her well, and hope she was better, she stopped the cab and bought flowers outside Notting Hill tube, and paid the cabbie a big tip when he dropped her in Bayswater. And ran up the steps, happy and bubbling.

  Ida had been sitting at the reception desk, and she’d looked up as Maggy came in, staring at her tight pencil skirt and tiny boxy jacket, the one she’d bought in Hamburg, and Maggy had wanted to laugh, she looked so dowdy. She had opened her mouth to say something but Maggy hadn’t waited to hear, but gone running up the stairs, looking for Oliver.

  And found him. He was in Dolly’s room sprawling at the foot of her bed, reading something to her from a magazine and she was leaning back laughing on her piled-up pillows, her red hair fanned out over the lilac silk and her shoulders a drift of white maribou feathers over a purple frilly nightdress that was tight over her heavy br
easts. They had both stared at her as she stood there in the door of the bedroom absurdly clutching her flowers and she had seen them in a golden fog, for lamps had been scattered about the room, and all of them were burning and they created a yellow haze that made her blink, that seemed to wreathe both of their heads with a halo.

  And then he’d got to his feet, sliding off the lilac counterpane and patting it tidy again and going to stand beside Dolly to put one hand on her maribou-feathered shoulder. They had stared at her and then they both smiled, wide happy smiles that made her feel cold, very cold and very frightened.

  ‘Maggy darling! Was it a marvellous trip? Did you make marvellous music? I bet you did! And I bet old George raked in millions of shekels and was happy for once. Doesn’t your old Mum look great? She’s nearly better – she really is. A bit of looking after, that was what she needed, poor old darling, didn’t you?’ And he bent and kissed Dolly’s cheek and Dolly grinned and patted his hand but didn’t take her eyes off Maggy.

  ‘Oh, I’ve missed you, love, I really have!’ she said, her eyes wide and very bright. ‘I was that ill, and I kept thinking of you, and then when I got so low they were going to put me in hospital, I told Ida I wouldn’t go, and made her send a message to you and this darling boy turned up – he’s been so good to me, my lovey, you can’t imagine – so good –’

  ‘And such a giggle, eh, my old duck?’ he said and she looked up at him and they giggled together, shrilly, and then looked at her again, wide-eyed and so pleased with themselves that she wanted to kick them.

  But she said nothing, only nodded and smiled, a hard little smile, and looked at Oliver and said tightly, ‘It was a great gig. Went great. We – they want us after Christmas, January, for three weeks straight. Maybe six. George says you can come and he’ll put us both on the payroll. The Germans are paying hotels for all the band, whoever George brings. They liked us.’ I can put it right with George separately, she thought, planning it at the back of her mind while she talked, while she stared at Oliver. ‘Should be great, eh?’