Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

  The telephone rang again and, leaving Nelson arguing with his mother as to which divan he was going to use, I ran down to answer it: someone else was on the way. I had scarcely put the phone down when it rang again: a honeymoon couple this time, imploring me for assistance. A blissful two weeks was being spoilt by the routine of hotel life. Although I really wanted permanent people, I couldn’t refuse such pleadings. An artist, a model, a monstrous fat boy, a bedraggled specimen with an undefined background – so why not honeymooners? I told myself enthusiastically as I described a haven for two, warming merrily to my theme.

  The children returned home from school: they were enchanted with the situation. A jolly fat boy upstairs, who had already greeted them with a volley from a catapult, a dog with habits guaranteed to cause trouble, a glorious world of oozing messy paints and tasty titbits – what could be better?

  Waiting for the honeymoon couple I remembered with dismay that the room I had so gaily described housed only single divans. The spare double bed would just have to be moved, I decided, determined that no honeymoon couple should be deprived of a double bed on my account. My romantic spirits were aroused.

  ‘I will go to any lengths to make my first honeymoon couple feel at home,’ I told Edward who, drawn by the noise of a double bed on the move and unable to resist any sound that smelt of action, had poked an inquisitive face out. Equally touched by the tricky situation he agreed that something had to be done, falling into action beside me in the direction of what we now called our bridal suite.

  Meanwhile, Nelson, from his new quarters, having decided his sleeping arrangements, was relating none too quietly tales of bravery to a small respectful audience, my children, who had been invited up for inspection with the lordly air of a reigning monarch.

  ‘Rather a monster, eh – don’t you think?’ Edward summed up the fat boy. I was about to say that I was sure a heart of pure gold beat under the cavity of those enormous ribs, when a peevish call from the hall sent me scuttling downstairs to answer it. Things were certainly on the move.

  ‘I’ve been ringing and ringing, and no one answered.’ The angry complaint subdued me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, the bell doesn’t work,’ I explained apologetically – it hadn’t done since I had caught the boys examining it with a screwdriver on their first morning home.

  The crusty feline eyes under a thin brown line of eyebrow pencil carefully applied in two long strokes, glared at me. ‘I don’t like being kept waiting, you know. However, what I want is a quiet room facing south, and no noise, you understand. I can’t stand dogs barking, crying babies, or children.’

  I watched crestfallen, as Nelson, a rolling jelly astride the bannisters, fell at our feet – ‘Lummy,’ he said in greeting, ‘a witch!’ – and as if by magic Edward appeared beside me, pensively murmuring that the bed was now ready, and what next – a few flowers perhaps? He was oblivious to the rigid figure beside me, or the cascading bulk of Nelson, so busy was he with the completion of plans for the bridal suite. His next words were caught up in a frozen look of disbelief from the stranger, and seconds saw her scuttling out of our lives as fast as her rickety legs would allow.

  ‘That was a lucky miss, wasn’t it?’ I remarked, referring to what would obviously have been a difficult tenant, but Edward did not hear me. Still absorbed in the thought of picking a few flowers to add the final touch, he had disappeared behind the fleeing form towards the one and only bunch of blooms in the front garden. Here was the very best remedy for unwanted lodgers, I decided gleefully, as I watched him with a rising spirit of tenderness.

  But there was no time for sentimentality, for my honeymooners had arrived; a middle-aged couple, whose predicament would undoubtedly bring a scathing comment from Mrs Briggs on sexual indulgences, and I swept them along behind Edward, carrying the posy, without ceremony but with pride to what was now indisputably the bridal suite.

  I need not have worried, the town obviously had room for another landlady, I thought with relief that night, reviewing the day’s events with satisfaction. My rooms were filling up fast – not perhaps in a way Aunt Patience would have approved of, but nevertheless filling up. The house was already melting to a new and living atmosphere, and unfamiliar noises blended with the familiar. I was just contemplating this last point, when out of the night came the sound of running water and Mrs Briggs’ cry, laying down the law.

  Sneaking a look, I picked out her wide solid proportions, a ghost-like reflection, in her best hat, a large flat motherly affair that sprouted an array of faded red roses; she was surrounded by her all-male family. She wore her black silk coat and I remembered that it was her birthday and that she had been going out to celebrate the occasion. The noise had suggested they were rather merry but apparently they were not. From above my head on our side of the fence a continuous stream of water beat against Mrs Briggs’ back door.

  ‘Blooming cheek, I call it, all over our door. Whatever next will be happening?’ I heard. ‘Been abroad too long, that’s the trouble,’ she grumbled indignantly. ‘Hope she’s not going to turn out barmy like the last one.’

  A mutter of agreement followed her words. ‘That’s right Mother, you’re quite right. Bohemian is the word you want.’ Mr Briggs was airing his view now. He was short, robust, always wore a fireman’s cap and he hardly ever voiced an opinion.

  It was a change anyway, I thought cynically, as I sped up the stairs to see who was the cause of the current of water offending Mrs Briggs, with Nelson prominent in my mind. The bathroom door was closed; voices and a laugh came from within.

  ‘Where’s the flannel, dear?’ a man’s voice asked. I recognized it as that of my male honeymooner.

  ‘Disappeared,’ came the playful answer. ‘Here catch this.’ The sound of a scuffle ended in a resounding smack. Not exactly romantic, but very matey.

  Edward, in peacock blue pyjamas, appeared at my side noiselessly; his feet, slim and long and white, repeated the delicacy of his hands. We were already conspirators.

  ‘What’s up? I thought I heard a rumpus?’ he whispered, bending with his eye to the keyhole, reducing the scene to a comic replica of what the butler saw. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ he murmured in disappointment, to my agitation that we would both be caught red-handed. ‘Unfortunately, that airing cupboard is in the way.’

  I realized now that Edward and I would irrevocably be together in every crisis, as I briefly mouthed the indignation of Mrs Briggs going on below. Lustful voices now filled the bathroom against the sound of running water, blissfully unaware of an audience. Feeling awkward, hearing the intimate noises of two people sharing the same bath, I drew Edward away to the top of the stairs. Olwen, his wife, was now also standing at her door, looking like a plump white angel in her lace nightdress, an enquiring look on her face.

  ‘Trouble?’ she called up.

  I grimaced a non-committal answer. Edward ignored her.

  ‘No good can come of this bath-taking,’ he murmured to me seriously. ‘I really should warn them of the risks they are running.’

  ‘Not now,’ I interrupted hastily, holding his arm tightly.

  ‘I had a most unfortunate occurrence once – this brings it to mind,’ he said, enjoying the feel of my hold and allowing himself to linger in it.

  ‘Did you?’ I whispered back, wondering if every unusual occurrence would mean a full gathering of the lodgers, as a shadow fell across us and Nelson loomed up like a balloon to join us; a splendid robust figure in red and green stripes, haunted by his ghost-like mother, a frightened huddle of pink flannel and iron curlers. He swung his catapult with intent.

  ‘Summat goin’ on?’ he asked, his small eyes shining at the prospect.

  ‘Shh! Keep your voice down,’ I ordered.

  ‘It happened like this,’ Edward went on, giving Nelson a filthy look at his intrusion, and holding up his hand for complete silence, determined to tell his tale. ‘I hadn’t had a bath for months and decided eventually to do so – only, I might add,
after constant and irritating nagging from my wife.’ I looked to see if Olwen was still in the doorway. She was.

  ‘Go to bed woman,’ he commanded in a dictatorial, husbandly way, following my gaze. ‘You’ve heard this story before and I don’t want your interruptions!’

  Olwen disappeared. Edward was certainly master in his own domain, I thought, with some surprise, a little embarrassed for Olwen, though she had seemed unperturbed by the bossy command.

  ‘You know how it is,’ he excused himself.

  Nelson nodded vigorously as if he already knew the difficulties of dealing with a wife. ‘Bah women,’ he said. We both ignored him: for different reasons.

  ‘So I filled the bathtub right to the top and climbed in, preparing to compromise and soak for a couple of hours while I contemplated my next painting. The nagging had mercifully stopped, and the silence of the bathroom was sheer heaven.’

  ‘It’s a woman’s birthright, nagging,’ said Nelson. ‘Me Dad told me so.’ I was quick to notice the mention of a father.

  ‘Shut up!’ Edward said rudely. Nelson shut his mouth with difficulty, having been obviously prepared to give us a little more of what his Dad had said. I looked round for Mrs Williams: she had scuttled away like a frightened mouse at Edward’s displeasure. I felt disappointed that the mysteries of Nelson’s father had not been revealed to us.

  ‘I must have been worn out,’ Edward paused, still puzzled at the memory, and shuddered. ‘I fell asleep, for hours it must have been. I chill visibly even now at the memory. When I woke the water was icy and up to my nose, the police were banging at the door because that idiotic woman downstairs had thought I’d committed suicide. Believe me, I thought I was a corpse. I tried to yell for help but my voice had gone. I struggled to rise but my body was so numb I sunk lower, paralysed. This is death, I thought, then the door fell in – the police had arrived. I never took another bath …’

  ‘Why didn’t yer pull the plug out, mate?’ Nelson suggested sensibly. ‘That’s what I’d ’ave done, pulled bleeding plug out with me big toe.’

  ‘Yes, why didn’t you?’ I smiled.

  Edward turned to Nelson a face of sheer pain, but the sound of the bathroom bolt being drawn stopped any further discussion and sent us fleeing guiltily in all directions. I raced downstairs, leapt the last four, and prepared to meet the belligerent Mrs Briggs. Sheepishly, I joined the party in the dark, the fence happily between us. I was glad that we were now in total blackness for the bathroom light was out.

  ‘So sorry,’ I apologized, ‘something stuck. One of the new tenants. I think, honeymooners!’

  ‘What! Your lodgers giving trouble already? You be careful or they’ll get out of hand before you can say Jack Robinson.’

  ‘Keep calm Mother,’ Mr Briggs chipped in, trying to avoid a midnight female brawl in true male fashion. Mrs Briggs took no notice of her husband. ‘It’s not good to be too easy with your lodgers, let them know who’s boss right from the start.’

  ‘I know,’ I hissed back. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look like it to me. You’d better get things under control before it’s too late.’

  ‘Sorry, anyway,’ I said contritely, in a desire to bury the hatchet. ‘Au revoir.’ I smiled into the night at the black shadow, looking like a strange species of mushroom. There was a moment of complete ominous silence when our friendship hung in the balance then ‘Awreevor,’ she relented, and peace descended.

  The first day was finally over.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Any doubts that I had previously felt dissolved, as my advertisement and the consequent ringing of the telephone brought new people to my threshold, a collection of people who in no way corresponded to my aunt’s previous suggestions. There were hectic moments when the enquiry for a room with a double bed when a single was all I had immediately called for a frantic manoeuvre of rearrangement, which involved everybody in the house and at one point left me without a bed at all.

  Edward, though frail in stature, was a pillar of laden gallantry tottering, on the verge of physical collapse, from room to room whenever necessary, advising me with touching sweetness after the third shift that I would really have to say double or single and then stick to it, adopting a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.

  ‘But why do people always seem to want something different from what one has?’ I moaned, panic-stricken that the new people’s arrival would coincide with our manoeuvres. But this was minor, compared to the subsequent necessity for a discussion on rent, a problem from which I never failed to shrink and one which had to be faced with great strength of will.

  Mrs Briggs’ wrath had subsided to occasional squalls of remembrance when she would relive for a moment or two the indignity of our waste water polluting her premises. The culprits of her disdain, my honeymooners, their happy episode over, had left us satisfied and still very much in love, their bathroom episode remaining a secret – from them that is: to the rest of us in the house it was common gossip.

  The Bridal Suite now harboured a very different pair of lovers, the Buddens, a sluttish woman and her mate, a coarse, squat bricklayer, not past his prime, who stormed the house as if he owned it, brawling for a double bed even before he had reached the first step of ascension to his quarters and from whom the more sensitive of us recoiled. I knew for a certainty that this was going to be my first mistake.

  Meeting the bridegroom for the first time, I trembled for my precious room, but having agreed foolishly over the telephone, and at the time quite happily, to the persuasive and not unpleasant voice of the bride, I found it difficult to extricate myself from the delicate situation when I examined the pair before me with mounting alarm. The sight of the dog, the children, Nelson and the flamboyant Edward perturbed them not at all which, weighing up my losses, I decided was one thing in their favour.

  Next door to the Buddens, another couple set up house. Aggressive-chinned and Welsh, Barry had done well for himself in the RAF, but now he was out of a job, desperately frustrated with no outlet for all his energies. His wife, Paula, on the other hand, had found her niche. Never inactive for long, she now absorbed herself in daily employment as a beauty consultant: clothes, make-up and impeccable grooming were an inseparable part of her life. Her hair was tinted from brown to a red fox colour, while the unusual slanting green eyes shone like a watching cat. Barry, whose only real trouble was that he was too healthy, was driven to a state of hypochondria by his frustrations. Though all he needed was a good sedative, he carried an inexhaustible supply of pills for every ailment. A previous short employment behind a chemist’s counter had allowed him to acquire a certain amount of medical jargon which he now used with leisurely pleasure. He was always ready, if needed, to help a fellow man in times of physical stress to a healthier way of life and, in consequence, he was a popular figure with any member of the household who was suffering.

  In another room, competing with Barry for idiosyncrasies, was a thin, pleasant-looking, but mournful bachelor. Pale-faced and penniless, Gordon clung with the tenacity of a cat with a mouse to a large moustache and a yellow self-built sports car, which he tended like a mother with her first child, and he nursed his own bodily ailments with a well-stocked medicine chest from the National Health. Unlike Barry’s, his worries were merely surface agitations. Each week brought him some fresh complaint: a boil in the nose, a painful pile, or just the slightest telltale doubt of a bald patch. He watched the opposite sex with dog-like brown eyes, raised with surreptitious care as he tinkered with his car and lovingly polished the battered paintwork. After pottering with his casual chores to a certain scruffy standard of living, he would scrape together his paltry earnings as a radio mechanic. Barry, in close sympathy with his new neighbour, supplemented any defects in his National Health supplies.

  The arrival of Blanche and Judy, two very glamorous nurses, one as dark as the other was fair, threw the entire male section into excited disorder. Temperatures ran high and all the b
arriers of reserve were down. Alone Nelson’s mother, non-committal and still a supreme introvert, went silently about her secret business, only stopping to reprimand Nelson in her timid ineffectual voice, as he wallowed in sentimental literature and craned dangerously from all angles to catch a better view of swirling femininity. Edward broke his pledge, and took a bath: alerting us to stand by to assist in case, as he put it, ‘anything unforeseen happens – you never know, dear soul.’

  Meanwhile an army of competitive male callers began to stamp past his door, much to his annoyance, and up the stairs to compete for both youth and beauty. There were young men with dashing new sports cars, which brought Gordon out in a fresh crop of boils as he struggled to keep both prestige and his aging baby on the road; middle-aged men of experience, smooth, with a keen eye to seduction. A roué paved his way with luxury for what he lacked in sex appeal he made up for in hard cash, fluttering like a tattered moth to a lighted inviting window, while the girls, unashamedly confident, played man against man and enjoying life, endeared themselves to me with good humour and explained that after exploring numerous lodging houses they felt that they had now come home!

  Then, as if fate had intended to keep things evenly balanced, my next advert produced another amateur nurse, retired by way of a nervous disposition. A skinny, parsimonious plain Jane, flat-chested and efficient, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, she spent her forced retirement in dreamy hospital reminiscences, relating in a sterile clinical voice the more harrowing details of gory operations she had witnessed, taking charge of any situation that presented itself – ‘keeping my hand in,’ she called it. Dressing Gordon’s boils, in cap and apron, adding cotton wool, lint and surgical spirit to his already bulging medicine chest, the smells brought back to me memories of my brother Gerald’s activities as he pored over an entomological corpse he hoped to save for posterity. In both their eyes gleamed the identical light of a calling.