It began to come back then. Memory again began to move in her head, odd snatches of pictures. She saw herself sitting at the table in the kitchen, playing with crayons. Dolly was there fiddling at the stove, cooking something. She could smell it suddenly, the scent of macaroni cooking in milk. Dolly was making a pudding for Margaret Rose because it was her favourite pudding, with spoonfuls of lemon curd on it. The kitchen was warm and happy as well as good smelling because Ida wasn’t there. Ida had gone somewhere. Ida wasn’t there, and Margaret Rose was singing under her breath, pushing the crayons about over the paper to make thick smudgy lines and liking them, and being happy.
But someone else was there. Someone leaning against the cooker and talking to Dolly, laughing sometimes, a thick soft laugh that made Dolly laugh too.
‘Stop it, Jim, do,’ Dolly said. ‘Give over. I’ve work to do, m’dear. You’m enough to drive a woman mad –’
‘That’s why I do it,’ he said, and laughed the thick laugh again. ‘I like you when you’re mad –’
‘Not now.’ Dolly’s voice was sharper now, more definite. ‘I told you, I got my little one’s supper to do – Margaret Rose, my duck, will you have it with honey for a change?’
‘Honey’s rotten, honey stinks,’ sang Margaret Rose. ‘Honey comes out of bees’ bums, honey’s rotten, honey stinks –’
‘Oh, where does she get it from, young limb o’ Satan!’ Dolly’s voice was warm and loving and admiring and only pretending to be shocked. ‘Such things as she says – Jim, give me that plate, no, not that one, lummox! The one with the cat on it – that’s the one –’
‘You can have a hundred plates with cats on soon,’ Jim’s voice said. Why can’t I see him? Maggy thought, walking down Greek Street, staring ahead of her at the cars and the taxis and the lights of the strip joints. Why can I only hear his voice behind me? What did he look like? ‘You can have anything you want, Dolly, my love. Just got to ask, an’ Jim Hornby’ll provide it. Just got to ask –’
‘Piano maybe?’ Dolly’s voice was laughing, teasing, but underneath it was real, and Margaret Rose stopped pushing the crayons over the paper and listened.
‘Piano maybe?’
‘Sure, if you want one. What you want a piano for?’
‘Margaret Rose. They told me at school she’s got a natural way with a piano. She can just sit down an’ pick out any tune you fancies, can’t you, my little love?’
Dolly was kissing the back of her neck now, pushing her paper and crayons to one side, putting the big plate full of macaroni and milk and lemon curd in front of her. Margaret Rose began to eat, blowing on it first because it was hot, seeing the cat peer out for a moment every time she dragged her spoon across the bottom of the plate.
‘Lessons too, if you like.’ Jim was sounding louder now, and Maggy, walking down Greek Street, nearly at Cambridge Circus, heard his voice over and over again above the traffic noises and the tinny pop music coming from the strip joints. ‘Lessons too, lessons too, lessons too –’
So that was where they had come from, Maggy thought, and stood still in the middle of the pavement, so that people had to eddy and twist to pass her; that was how it all happened. Oh, Christ, why didn’t I ever know that before?
12
Autumn leaves in the gutters, drifting across a wide road. A hill to climb that made her breathless. Odd houses, all looking different, and hardly any people. A quiet easy sort of place that made her feel funny, because it wasn’t the way places she knew were like. She knew roads where the houses marched on each side in exactly matching pairs, roads where people walked quickly with their heads down, not strolling like here, with dogs beside them. She knew roads with buses and crowded shops and lights and stalls on corners, not this sort of quiet politeness where the shops looked as empty and dull as the houses.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she announced, and stopped and stood still, looking down at her feet on the pavement, and then was entranced. She was wearing her new shoes and she’d forgotten. Red ankle-strap shoes over socks with a frilly edge. Her feet looked beautiful.
‘We’re not there yet, my duck. Give ’un a chance!’ Dolly said, a little breathlessly, and happier now that she’d looked at her shoes, Margaret Rose started to walk again.
‘When will we be there?’
Dolly shook her head. ‘Next on the right, I think. Then left, then right again, the man said. ’Tis a climb from the station, a climb and a half! Haven’t walked so much since I were a girl!’
‘Where did you walk?’ Margaret Rose demanded immediately, hoping for a story, but the time wasn’t right. Dolly shook her head and walked on, tugging her by one hand. Margaret Rose sighed and stroked Dolly’s hand. She was wearing her blue nylon gloves, smooth and silky to touch yet with an edginess under the smoothness that she liked. Sometimes the edginess turned into sparks, real yellow sparks, when Dolly rubbed her fingers over something rough, like a sofa cushion. Lovely gloves.
The place, when they found it, was too big. A wall, high with great stone balls on each side of the gateway in the middle, and a notice board beside the gate. ‘The Thomas Tallis School’. That was all it said. ‘The Thomas Tallis School’.
Dolly didn’t stop to look and whisper with her the way she wanted her to. She just walked straight in and up to the door and rang the bell even before Margaret Rose could say she didn’t want to go there, and then there was someone at the door and they had to go in, and it got dark and bewildering.
But there was a piano. That was the next bit. A big room with a floor of polished wood, not lino, and a huge piano, not a flatbacked one like the one at school, or the one that Dolly had brought home and put in Margaret Rose’s bedroom, but a great spreading one, with curves in its side, and a lid that was propped up on a thick stick. A great shining, singing thing, and someone (who was the someone? That memory had gone) pulling out the stool and lifting her on to it so that she sat there with her feet dangling even higher above the pedals than they did on her piano at home or the one at school. And she reached out and touched the keys and played some notes.
And oh, but it was lovely! Maggy standing thirty years away at Greek Street listened to the piano and felt again the surge of sheer pleasure it had given her then. The notes, so clear, so round, as perfect in their pitch. None of that twanging ugliness that she had to put up with at school, none of that wrongness in the pitch that on the piano in her bedroom made her stomach feel bad. Clean, clear round notes that sang the same on the piano as they did in her head.
‘Play it,’ someone said behind her. ‘Play whatever you like.’
‘Margaret Rose,’ said Dolly’s voice from somewhere, and she began to play. Nothing special. Just notes and chords, going up and down the keyboard, those lovely pale cream-coloured slivers of ivory, those plump black fingers with their plump black sounds, singing inside her head to match the piano. It was the best way she had felt for as long as she could remember.
‘What was that, Margaret?’ the voice said.
‘Music.’
‘Whose music?’
‘Mine. Can we go home now? I think I want to go home now.’ She was frightened suddenly. The music had been good, the piano had been beautiful, but now she was frightened, and she tried to get down from the stool, pushing away the hand that came on to her shoulder, holding her there.
‘Would you like to play this piano again, Margaret? Any time you wanted to?’
‘No. Yes. No. I want to go home.’ Margaret Rose was beginning to feel sick, now, the feeling pushing up from her stomach, into her chest, horribly close to her throat. ‘Home –’
‘She’s very young Mrs – ah – Dundas.’ The voice sounded dubious. ‘Too young, I suspect. Nine, you say – but young for her age. Some nine-year-olds cope better than others –’
The sick feeling got into her throat, and pushed out, and changed into crying on the way. ‘I want to go home!’
‘I’m sure you do,’ the voice said briskly. ‘It’s been a diffi
cult day for you, I’m sure. Come along, Margaret, and we’ll see about some lemonade for you while your mother and I talk –’
And that was all. A memory starting in a void, ending in blankness. Why? Maggy stared deep into her own mind and couldn’t find out why. She remembered being at TT; how could she not? She’d started there at ten, and stayed until she was fifteen and they had been the most – well, they’d been important years. Desperately important. But had she gone there a year earlier, with Dolly? That was crazy. It had to be crazy. She’d started there after Miss Lucas from school had taken her there to play a test piece. She had sat in that big room, as though she’d never been there before and played ‘Für Elise’ by Beethoven and ‘Rondo Alla Turca’ by Mozart, easy baby stuff and they’d said she was good, fine, she could start at the school, and they’d be glad to have her, and Miss Lucas had smiled her wide gummy smile, the one that always made Margaret Rose look away, and patted her shoulder and said how pleased the school would be. And on the way back to the train, she’d told Margaret Rose that she should be very proud, she’d got a scholarship to the best music school any little girl could hope to go to, ever, and to be worthy of it.
Maggy creased her forehead and began to walk again. I got a scholarship. Everything I got in the way of an education I got on my own. She had nothing to do with it, nothing at all. Dolly had nothing to do with it.
And yet, and yet – the memory refused to be erased. It clung on stubbornly, filling her head with its authenticity, convincing her that somehow Dolly had been part of her years at Thomas Tallis, where everyone was so much better than Dolly could ever be, where Dolly never came.
And behind that, the memory of the thick laughing voice in the kitchen. ‘Lessons too, if you like –’ repeating over and over again. ‘Lessons too, if you like.’
It had been an expensive school, T. T. She’d discovered that early. Very early. Sitting in the cloakroom, changing her shoes.
‘I like your shoes, the ones you go home in.’ A high clear voice, very clipped and tidy.
Margaret looked up. A neat child with very thick dark hair, cut in a pretty fringe, and curling over her ears. Dark brown eyes with absurdly long lashes, an enchantingly pretty child. Margaret Rose had noticed her from the first day there. She had laughed a lot and chattered a lot and the other children liked her, talked to her a lot, not ignoring her the way they ignored Margaret Rose.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ the pretty child said, in her high confident voice. She sounds like someone talking on the wireless, Margaret Rose thought; and blinked at her. ‘You’re interesting.’
‘Interesting? Me?’ Margaret Rose stared at her, her mouth half open. Me with red hair and all the wrong clothes and talking the wrong way? ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, they’re all half dead here.’ The dark child tossed her head, making her curls bounce over her ears. Margaret Rose was bewitched by that, and wished she’d do it again, and as though she’d heard her thoughts, the pretty child did, and then smiled. A nice friendly smile. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Margaret –’ and then stopped. Mrs Cornelius always lifted her lip a little when she used both the names, and Margaret knew now. It was common to have two names and use them both. Especially when you were named after a princess. That was very common. Vulgar, even.
‘Margaret,’ she said again, and smiled, carefully, not too much, not wanting to frighten the pretty child away.
‘I’m Susannah Goldman. I’m eleven. I’m a weekly boarder and my father’s a conductor.’
‘Conductor?’ Margaret thought hazily about buses and trams, seeing a man with curly hair that bounced over his ears putting tickets in his pinger.
‘The Westminster Philharmonic,’ Susannah said, and shook her curls again. ‘You’ve heard them on the wireless.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Margaret lied. ‘Lots of times.’ Dolly only ever had Radio Luxembourg on, or one of the cheerful popular programmes on the Light Programme. Philharmonics? Never. Though Margaret knew about Philharmonics; Miss Lucas at her other school had told her about them. Taken her to a concert once, even, so Margaret knew all she needed to know about Philharmonics and about conductors.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Creffield Road.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Acton.’
‘I live in Suffolk. Not far from Aldeburgh. So convenient for the music, you know, and Papa – we always call him Papa, isn’t that sweet? Everyone says so – he likes us to have the best of the country while we’re young. My brother’s at the Conservatoire, in Paris, you know. Daniel. He’s a genius, of course. Me, I’m just immensely gifted. Are you?’
They were sitting side by side now on the narrow bench beneath the coat hangers, and Margaret fluffed her skirt out over her ankles. It was her favourite dress, black and white and red checked organdie, with frilly petticoats under it, and she wore with it black patent shoes with a cuban heel. She wasn’t surprised Susannah liked it, having to wear uniform all the time. A yellow blouse with a green gymslip couldn’t compare with checked organdie.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re piano, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too. Better than violin, I think. More elegant. As for ’cello –’ She shuddered prettily. ‘Papa thought of ’cello for me, but Muvver said no – we always call her Muvver, people like that as well. She put her foot down with a very firm hand.’ She splayed her knees wide in mockery of the ’cello-playing stance and laughed, and Margaret, obediently, laughed too.
‘Of course this place is wickedly expensive, so we were able to bully them a bit. They wanted me to do violin like Daniel. But Papa being a conductor, of course –’ again the flicking head, the bounce of those lovely curls. ‘So we won, and piano I am.’ She looked sideways at Margaret, her eyes bright and knowing. ‘Does your father complain about the fees? Papa never stops.’
Reddening a little Margaret said, ‘I don’t have a father. He’s dead. Killed in the war.’
‘Oh, my dear Margaret, I’m so-o-o sorry.’ Susannah put one hand over Margaret’s. ‘You poor darling. A war orphan!’
‘I’ve got a mother,’ Margaret said, ungraciously, hating to admit that she wasn’t as interesting as she appeared.
‘But your father dead in the war – too awful for words –’ Susannah was clearly delighted with her new friend and Margaret blossomed, lifting her head, enjoying the warmth.
‘So who pays for you here? It can’t be easy for a mother alone.’ Bright-eyed, probing, curl-bouncing Susannah, thought Maggy, crossing Cambridge Circus. What a little bitch she was. And how I loved her.
‘I don’t know,’ Margaret said after a moment. ‘I never thought.’
‘Don’t say never. It’s bad grammar. Say I don’t know, I haven’t thought – I expect you’ve got a scholarship or something.’
‘Yes. That’s right. A scholarship.’ Margaret frowned, ashamed of her own ignorance but needing to know. ‘How much does it cost to come here without one?’
‘About seventy-five pounds a term,’ Susannah said, airily. ‘Papa complains like mad but of course he can afford it. It must be awful for – would you like to be my friend? I could look after you when the others are nasty. Some of them are awful snobs.’ Her eyes shone liquid with compassion and Margaret bobbed her head and said thank you humbly and that was that. From then on she belonged to Susannah.
Joe Allen’s was quiet when she got there, early as it was, and she tucked herself into a corner behind one of the small tables and ordered a vodka martini and a steak and sat and brooded.
Now what? For the past few weeks I’ve been in a flat spin. There I was, perfectly happy, getting on with my own life. I’d got rid of Dolly. I’d stopped caring, I was free and on my own. And then she goes and dies and ties me up in knots all over again.
Free? Were you? How can you be free when you’re eaten up with fury? How can you be free of someone when you hate them so much? It
’s as bad as loving. It keeps breaking in –
The thought came as a revelation, so sharp that she put down her glass with a little thump, splashing some of the vodka on to the gingham tablecloth. Hating someone is as bad as loving them. It’s probably the same thing really.
But I did hate her. How could I have loved her when she did such things to me? When everything I wanted she took away?
But what did she take away from you? Think about it. What did she actually take away?
Everything. People. The right sort of home. Respectability.
Susannah again, saying casually, ‘Muvver says I’m to bring you home for the next weekend. Just a toothbrush and that in a bag. Papa will pick us both up on Friday.’ And Margaret alight with excitement, telling Dolly.
‘Away for the weekend? Oh, my dear, you don’t want to do that, now, do you? Bad enough you got to be away at school for such a long day. I miss you from the time you goes in the morning till you gets home at night – and then all that practising. Oh, my ducks, you don’t want to go away all the weekend, sure-lee?’
‘I do, I do, I do,’ Margaret said passionately. ‘I’ve got to go, Susannah’s fixed it all up –’
‘Oh, Susannah!’ Dolly laughed. She was sitting up in bed, a cup of tea on her lap and her hair tied up in curlers and the room smelled of scent and sweat. It was untidy, clothes strewn around, magazines all over the floor together with empty chocolate wrappers. Margaret, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulled her skirts in fastidiously. ‘Susannah’s a funnical man, man, tiddeley dan, Susannah’s a funnical man! You don’t want to spend no weekends with a funnical man, my love. Do you, my Margaret Rose?’
‘Margaret! I hate being called Margaret Rose. It’s stupid. Margaret. And I do want to go, and I will, and so there –’
Dolly’s face, crumpled and puzzled, shaking her head, stubborn, hurt. ‘Not for the whole weekend, my love. Not to see you all day Friday or Saturday or Sunday or Monday – oh, no, lovey –’
Reprise Page 14
