The most fascinating distraction was Charlie Hardcastle, the plumber. A sly old rogue, reeking of stagnant beer, withering happily and surveying the world about him with tolerant twinkling eyes. A decrepit cloth cap, set at a crazy angle, usually covered his egg-shaped cranium where a few spare white hairs sprouted like fresh cress. From his top lip, reminiscent of a tattered paint brush, hung a grey moustache, heavily stained with cheap tobacco. A wide grin showed two remaining discoloured teeth in barren gums.
In the morning Charlie invariably arrived late. In the afternoon he always arrived late, slightly intoxicated, his gait a little unsteady as he smacked his thigh, whistling a saucy ditty – an aging Don Juan showing off hugely. His rich Dorset twang rolled amidst his own and the children’s appreciative laughter. I couldn’t control him at all, in fact after the first attempt I didn’t try. He enjoyed this little farce, swaggering dangerously, a little more crazy, a true extrovert. Realizing his thirst, I would some days secrete a bottle of beer for him in the airing cupboard where he would go like a child to claim it, and like a child would delight in his find. Later I had cause to doubt my action in aiding and abetting Charlie along the primrose path – but that was later.
One morning, just as Charlie (mercifully sober) and I were coping with a blocked main drain, our heads inquisitively deep into the dark smelly waste where, just maddeningly out of reach what looked like a toy car glimmered faintly in the distance, we were distracted by the purr of an expensive engine, and a lush-looking car rolled to a standstill at the gate. Charlie and I straightened up together to see who the visitor might be, my thoughts immediately rushing to my aunt.
‘Money,’ Charlie muttered contemptuously, noting the shining chromium plate, and he spat generously with great ceremony into the gaping sewer. I dropped the plunger which Charlie had presented to me as a very necessary part of my future equipment. After a morning spent examining the intricacies of a draining system, I was hardly ready for a visitor, especially a smooth creature with the proportions of a young panther, dangling a grey Homburg nonchalantly from dainty fingers, where a heavy signet ring flashed.
‘Major-General Durrell about?’ he drawled effectively, leaving his car and measuring me with a too-experienced eye. I hastily manoeuvred Charlie back to the sewer and went forward to join the visitor.
‘As far as I know, he has been dead for years,’ I answered, keeping my voice cool and a little unfriendly, detesting his manner. He laughed long and loud, as if I had made an uproarious joke. It was no joke however. The only army celebrity I knew of in our family was long dead – my father’s brother: a fair, thickset man of medium height, with kindly blue eyes and a crisp moustache. In fact, only the other day, when sorting out an old tea chest of long forgotten memories, I had resurrected a large photograph of him in uniform, with a Sam Browne belt and a chest full of medals – and hadn’t we got his heirloom resplendent on the mantelpiece, a monstrous black clock with marble pillars, which chimed the wrong hours at the right intervals, and a little below the ugly face a small silver notice stated the solemn fact. Mother had refused to allow it to go out of the family for sentimental reasons.
‘I am afraid you have got the wrong address,’ I suggested, eager to get back to my drain as a subterranean rumbling noise and long drawn-out ‘Aargh’ from Charlie told me that victory was in sight.
‘I’ve come about yachts and boats, you know – things that sail on the jolly old sea,’ he explained. ‘Luxury class, what?’ he ended playfully.
The whole situation suddenly became clear – it was Leslie he wanted. Leslie, with his catalogue mania and nom-de-plume of Major-General, who had obviously given my address. Well, he’d gone too far this time: he would end up in prison for fraudulent impersonation if he didn’t look out, and serve him right too, I thought uncharitably. Still, poor Mother would be upset if Leslie went in the dock, though Lawrence and Gerald would probably relish the spectacle ‘as a new experience’. Better act quickly, I decided, before Leslie reaped the seeds he had sown and we were all forced to find money for bail. I saw my letting profits visibly vanishing.
‘Gout,’ I said hastily, and without much thought. ‘I’m afraid he’s suffering – in great pain – bedridden and can’t be disturbed.’
‘Bad show,’ the visitor was suitably awed. ‘No chance of seeing him, then?’
‘No,’ I answered firmly, with a certain smug satisfaction, ‘no chance at all,’ for at that moment Leslie was in fact doing a part-time job delivering beer in crates for the tall and robust, good-natured Doris, with a booming laugh: she ran the off-licence at the bottom of the hill. He had passed by only half an hour ago with his small Morris belching black smoke as a signal of protest against the weight. It was hardly the sort of position to be caught in unaware. For a short tubby figure in rough sea-going clothes, struggling with wooden crates marked ‘Strongs’ from a shabby wreck of a car, was very far removed from a sleek yachtsman with the esteemed title of Major-General.
The visitor, exclaiming deep sympathy as though Leslie was already on his deathbed, took a card out of his wallet. ‘Perhaps you can give him this?’ he asked respectfully, no longer playful, ‘and he can contact us when he is fit again, when we may have the pleasure of meeting …’ I took the card, promising to deliver it safely.
‘The General will ring you,’ I said calmly after the retreating slinky figure. ‘If he lives,’ I added grimly.
Then I hurried back to join Charlie in his triumphant hour, for he was holding aloft a toy car and grinning from ear to ear. Leslie could be dealt with later.
CHAPTER THREE
May found the house ready, with only the lodgers to install. Our house over the road was closed, a reminder that my family had decided, on impulse, to disperse in all directions – though some not far. I had spoken sternly to Leslie over his criminal tendencies in written impersonations but he pooh-poohed my warning and assured me that I should be thankful that the situation had been no worse, for it was Gerald I wanted to worry about – he was the one who usually caused the most trouble and I had to admit he was right. And anyway he was moving in with Doris and taking Mother on holiday.
Charlie Hardcastle, the plumber, had been the last workman to go, and as the small, now rather crestfallen figure had gathered up the tools for his final departure, croaking ‘parting be such sweet sorrow’ on a breath laden with beer fumes, I had decided to speak to him sternly about the doubtful effects of liquor whilst at work and the trail of cold taps pouring hot water and hot taps pouring cold water. But Charlie was philosophical. Regarding me with a pained look he had answered gravely, ‘what will be will be, and what be life without liquor?’ There was a chorus of agreement from the children – what could I say? I left the taps in memory of the craziest, but most lovable plumber of all time.
Leaving my children happily busy over the funeral arrangements of a dead sparrow, I sallied forth to put the finishing touches to my plans and advertise my rooms. Miss Brady, I noticed, was as usual waging the everlasting battle against germs of one sort or the other. In fact Miss Brady spent most of her days in abandoned anticipation, alternating between cleaning for guests that never arrived and galloping between the boundaries of her land, sprinkling pepper to prevent the desecration of her property by animal excreta. Today the blue guest room, already hygienically clean, was disintegrating under the onslaught as the contents of the room appeared to be steadily mounting at the window; the window where for much of the day she surveyed the passing world, for the high fence and laurel hedges that surrounded her house made vision from any other place impossible. She passed the open aperture, a mobcap encasing her head like a sagging pancake, and although she appeared completely absorbed in her work, I knew her sharp beady eyes watched the road from all angles, missing nothing. Then there she was, a perilous leaning structure. ‘Shoo, you damned old thing – you’ll get a barrel of buckshot up your posterior!’ she cried out in a husky warning, her voice dropping easily into a lusty Irish brogue. ‘Whe
re it’ll hurt most,’ she added with certain satisfaction. I lowered my eyes hastily, Miss Brady had a gun.
The cat, the usual product of suburbia, spent his days leisurely, when not panicking the birds to a medley of reproachful twitters, cushioned comfortably on any fresh shoots he could find, bruising the buds that were about to flower so that they withered and died, snoozing for hours with one eye open or painstakingly attending to his toilet with equal leisure, deciding to dig and squat just where a prize bulb had been carefully bedded. Mother had lost quite a few bulbs that way, as had Lord Booth. Wailing ceaselessly through odd hours of the night with a sound that made one’s heart leap uncertainly, the cat was also shamelessly polygamous and courted every female in the district. Now he leapt over the gate behind me, as he tore to safer quarters. I followed less swiftly, avoiding the blue eyes of Miss Brady in the window, and crossed the road to miss the tall figure outlined in fur, dragging a shopping basket on wheels and a four-legged powder-puff with a blue bow, meandering on towards the town.
I felt the road with fresh awareness, since I was to become so much a part of it. It was a quiet road with large houses: red brick, grey stone, white- and pink-washed walls mingling tastefully amidst tidy gardens. Once the indomitable stronghold exclusive to retired gentry, the road was changing face, definitely and unrelentingly, as money dwindled. Big houses fell under the hammer and were converted into flats, while homes of various sorts sprang up almost undetected. Amidst these changes the dwindling diehards still strove to maintain their gentle moneyed atmosphere. It was a losing battle I feared, examining the pleasant grey and white building with shady garden which had once been the home of a sprightly, buxom, bridge-playing widow, graciously befurred, and was now a nursing home. The constant comings and goings created an alarming atmosphere of urgency, and starched white cotton and sterility took the place of bridge soirées and fashionable hats.
A home for unmarried mothers, still mentioned only in whispers, had slipped in unnoticed, guarded by high railings and scarcely seen behind the opaque barrage of green foliage. Very occasionally a faint wail gave substance to the rumours, while the know-alls exchanged significant glances. On the brow of the hill, softly framed in thick shrubs and flowering trees, a solid yellow-washed house stood quietly, missing the strong-armed colonel and his nasal peroxide-haired wife, catering now for a feeble throng of senile women awaiting the inevitable handshake with death. How terrible to be old, but to be unwanted – that was unthinkable. One became very conscious of the old in this southern paradise, especially of old ladies – a living graveyard, Lawrence had called it. Of course, there were the lucky ones: Mr Beetle for instance, aging but as chirpy as a cricket; Miss Brady, with the energy of a firefly, glowing with argument and independence (old age would have to reckon with her) and Mrs O’Grady too, that egotistical old hypocrite, still a queen and fighting every inch of her way to the grave.
I hurried down the hill past the ugly rusty railings of the unmarried mothers’ home and the tall wire litter basket, past the bench, a resting place for those struggling up the hill usually occupied by one or two middle-aged ladies with over-loaded shopping baskets who paused from their nattering to scrutinize carefully any casual passer-by. Today it was empty, however the wire basket was full, I noticed, with sweet papers, newspapers, a cardboard box or two and an abundance of empty gin bottles. Who was the secret gin drinker in our midst who hid his guilt from the dustmen? I was still trying to fit a body to the abandoned bottles, when a hissing noise warned me that the trolley bus approached and I ran to catch it.
For the first time despondence had inexplicably touched me. The idea of being a landlady, up to now such an amusing one, suddenly appalled me. The family were right; I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing, such as demanding rent from strangers. At home on the mantelshelf a pile of rent books, sent to me by my aunt, stood as a reminder of the fact. Fright and a sudden dryness made me long for a cool beer – one of Charlie’s refreshing draughts. I reached my destination, the office of the local paper, the Echo, in a dilemma of mixed feelings. Sitting down listlessly at one of the large and imposing desks, I grabbed the pen provided and, plunging it into the thick congealed ink, I brooded without hope. With what words should I entice my lodgers? ‘Delightful residence for cultured persons’ – that sounded like Aunt Patience; ‘Sunny home for well-bred persons’ – that sounded like Auntie too. At length in desperation I scribbled out a form headed ‘cosy rooms for comfort’, which sounded like Mother. The deed was done.
This was now the inevitable invasion of my privacy, but it was too late for regrets. The whole venture was running along as if on wheels. It was with these sombre misgivings in my mind that I found myself, with great surprise, standing in the quiet, dimly-lit nave of the church nearby. A Catholic church; a trespasser I told myself. Puzzled at my action I turned to go then hesitated; something made me stay, a lone self-conscious figure in the gloom. I slipped quietly into a pew; the polished wood felt hard and secure against my hands, the strange calm steadied me. Relaxing a little I sat back and peered about me in the dappled light. There were three of us, I noticed with a start; another figure, a shabby hunched creature who did not stir at my intrusion. She was not a stranger. I had seen her before, aimlessly wandering through the town, gathering cigarette butts from the gutter and pitifully examining litter baskets for spoil. Was she praying, or like me drawn there for reasons remote, I wondered, sniffing the musty atmosphere and feeling the intense stillness.
I gathered up my bag which had slipped to my feet noiselessly and tiptoed up the flagged aisle. One solitary candle flickered. Dropping a coin into the box, noisily in the stillness, I took a slim candle, lit it carefully, and placed it firmly alongside the other. This small act of faith revived my spirits and I left the church quickly, without a backward glance, for such is human nature.
The boys were astride the front wall watching for my return with eager curiosity; their interest was inexhaustible as they pestered me with questions.
‘How did the burial go?’ I enquired fondly, kissing them, not willing to be drawn.
‘It was very sad but interesting,’ Gerry answered reverently. ‘Nicholas was the mourner and I was the priest. It was a moving performance.’
‘But we are more interested in your business,’ Gerry said noisily. I silenced him quickly.
‘Keep your voice down, we don’t want everybody in the road to know what we are doing.’
‘Why not?’ Nicholas piped up. ‘We like to talk about our business with everybody, don’t we Gerry? And, in fact, we’ve had quite an interesting morning, haven’t we?’ he remarked with deep satisfaction to his brother. ‘Miss Brady says,’ he went on, reminiscing, ‘the roads’s getting into a sorry state – what with animals’ you-know-whats all over the place, and the ambulance coming and going at the nursing home, within sight of her very door, it’s all enough to give her an acute heart attack she said.’ He gave a good imitation of our aged and eccentric neighbour. ‘Yep, she was out with the old pepper pot and muttering as usual about the fallen carrying their sins for all the world to see.’
‘That’s what she said – sins for all the world to see.’ Gerry rolled the words round his tongue with relish. ‘I suppose that’s the unmarried mothers’ home. It’s a bad word, sin, isn’t it Mum?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Oh, she’s talking rubbish,’ I answered impatiently. ‘I do wish she would mind her own ruddy business,’ I grumbled, more to myself than to the children. Now they would get involved with the unmarried mothers’ home – with relish no doubt.
‘There you are, Gerry,’ Nicholas sang delightedly, ‘I knew we should have told her to mind her own business.’
‘You never tell grown-ups to mind their own business,’ said I quickly, torn between the wish that they had and the knowledge that they shouldn’t. It was more than apparent that my children were succumbing very readily to suburban life.
‘And what else did the old – the good woman have to
say?’ I enquired cynically, changing ‘old hag’ to ‘good woman’ in the certain knowledge that the statement would most likely be repeated at a later date.
‘Well …’ Nicholas paused, making sure that I was listening, ‘she said “and what with people starting to let rooms, things were going from bad to worse.” It let the tone of the road down, or something, and Lady Booth blooming well agreed with her.’ He enjoyed delivering news that he knew instinctively would cause bad feeling.
I was silent. Any bonhomie I might have felt towards my neighbours was definitely dead, and I suddenly regarded the animal excreta in a new light. ‘May the cats, dogs and birds have a long and busy life and may Miss Brady’s gatepost rot away!’ and I laughed aloud at the thought.
‘What are you laughing at?’ the enquiry was both puzzled and disappointed that this news had not caused the sufficient amount of havoc intended.
‘Just a thought,’ I said happily, changing the subject. ‘Anything happened while I’ve been away?’
‘There’s a man to see you inside.’
‘And a funny one, with a straggly beard and long hair – a sort of medicine man, but he’s white.’ Nicholas always put the finishing pictorial touches to Gerry’s unadorned statements.
How much of our business had fallen into the hands of this stranger, I thought dismayed, as I hurried indoors. It was no wonder they had taken to idle gossip; they were going through a period of acute loneliness with the exodus of all the workmen. The house had subsided into calm, there were no interesting, breathtaking cavities to explore with the removal of floorboards, and the disintegration of the family over the road left them in a state of limbo.
Whatever Happened to Margo? Page 3
