Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

  ‘He’s lost his virginity to a rich widow and married her!’

  ‘Indulged in a new car!’

  There were a series of derisive suggestions.

  ‘No, he’s been left a lot of money,’ I said joyfully, as if I were the lucky one. I left out the colourful garnishings of Nelson.

  ‘Just his luck,’ Roger grimaced without rancour. ‘It’s always those sort of weedy-looking fellows that get the money. Why the hell doesn’t someone die and leave me some?’ he moaned, counting up his relatives in this noble category, and forgetting that he was a self-confessed communist.

  ‘Don’t be so callous,’ I retorted, having already wished that Aunt Patience’s death might mean my ultimate happiness, while Andy informed us that, die who might, his chances of a legacy were remote.

  ‘No slave today?’ I asked, deliberately innocent, knowing full well the answer and unable to resist the chance to goad Roger into a feeling that he was losing his grip. Roger feigned collapse with touching male helplessness – to those who knew no better.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to get off those pyjamas and get down to a spot of housework, won’t you then?’ I was one of those who knew better!

  ‘There’s always Jane,’ Andy remarked indulgently, helping Roger out of a spot, aware of a certain amount of truthful sarcasm behind my remark.

  ‘I don’t intend to leave my pyjamas until tonight!’ Roger revived to announce emphatically. ‘I rather enjoy the cosiness created by my private Advance Laundry.’

  ‘I’m sure Jane would be flattered to be likened to a laundry – has she seen you glowing in clear colours?’

  ‘Of course! And we have her approval, haven’t we?’ and he winked at Andy, sharing a private thought in his entirely mournful way. ‘But let’s get back to Gordon. How much is it exactly – borrowable proportions?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, I haven’t liked to probe the exact amount – and I shouldn’t go on what Nelson says, it multiplies every time he mentions it! And his intentions are criminal, I’m sure.’

  ‘Without a doubt – his reactions are much the same as those of the rest of us.’

  ‘He’s a bugger that boy – why doesn’t he go to school?’

  ‘I wonder if it will make a new man of him? They say money does.’ Roger stretched, feeling his body with loving indulgence.

  ‘It’s worked miracles already. There is a new feeling of abandonment about him, and given time, who knows?’ I answered.

  ‘I need something to make a new man of me.’ Roger was suddenly gloomy.

  ‘A new woman, perhaps?’ I suggested, exchanging a quick look with Andy, my nervousness melting to a mood of comforting composure.

  Roger did not deign to discuss this question, preferring to linger on Gordon’s welfare. ‘He’s never managed to pull that blonde in room one, and I’ve left the field wide open for him too – in pure brotherly love, of course.’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Perhaps the money behind him will give him the necessary confidence,’ Andy was hopeful.

  ‘If only he’d stop worrying about his piles and get on with it,’ Roger spoke as if in the throes of acute melancholia and Gordon’s failing affected him personally.

  ‘It’s not a question of money, or …’ I stammered, bursting out laughing – though why someone else’s piles should throw us into hilarious mirth it was hard to say, for the whole house had watched Gordon’s wooing with friendly and sympathetic interest. ‘Nelson says he will now,’ I added, when the other two had stopped laughing, still grinning.

  I could see that in spite of Andy’s spontaneous laughter, he was slightly embarrassed at Roger’s reference to a subject that was not normally discussed with such abandoned hilarity, and was struggling with silent mirth, mixed with a good righteous north country disapproval.

  ‘You’re a hopeless lot,’ he growled, flushed, his eyes down and a grin breaking forth. ‘Leave the lad’s ailments to Jane and the Almighty. Is there nothing left to the imagination in this house?’

  I took my punishment lightly. ‘Almost nothing!’ I flashed him a cheeky look, now thoroughly at home. Little did he know how he was discussed!

  ‘I only mentioned the obnoxious,’ Roger complained, ‘because they are a constant stumbling block to the boy – the root of all evil so to speak – and should be remedied. And with so many nurses about us it’s difficult not to talk like a doctor, anyway.’

  ‘Your excuse for vulgarity is quite flimsy,’ I said firmly, my mirth under control and naturally going over to Andy’s side.

  ‘I wonder if the lad’s as dim as you all imagine. A lot of unnecessary din floats out of his room at times that’s not all tea-making.’

  Roger guffawed loudly. ‘Bet you my last ten bob he’s bloody Tory virgin, there you are! I’ve been robbed!’ he wailed, fishing in his breast pocket and not finding his bet. ‘If that thieving Nelson …’

  ‘It’s up there, lad,’ Andy indicated patiently to a nail embedded over the mantelshelf on which hung a scruffy note.

  Roger looked relieved. ‘Ten to one, he’s a virgin. Is the bet on or isn’t it?’ he demanded roughly, all out for a bit of gambling, seeing Andy’s awkward hesitation and scarlet face.

  ‘It’s not a fair bet,’ Andy said stiffly. ‘Must we crucify the boy with our intentions?’

  Could Andy be a virgin? I thought guiltily, acutely conscious of his discomfort. Men usually boasted of their conquests, Andy never did. A new depth crept into my feelings. It somehow seemed an incredible thought and I wished we were on another subject – this one was suddenly too near and too acute.

  ‘Enough,’ I said hastily, ‘the next religious maniac that comes to the front door I shall direct straight up here to aid you to a higher level of thought.’

  ‘Oh, all right, if you two don’t want the chance to do a little betting, it’s off, I suppose.’ Roger was disappointed. ‘And I should welcome the chance of a religious discussion with an outsider,’ he said, foxing my plans. ‘It will be a change from Jane bleating of my reform. Do we get many coming to the door – you sound as if we do?’

  ‘Jehovahs are constantly knocking to be let in; last Sunday I sent a battered-looking Mrs Williams to answer the call, to say “Madam is out”. The women must have thought I ill-treated my servant as Mrs Williams looked as though the dog had played with her all night.’

  ‘Was it a she, then?’

  ‘Yes, young and beautiful.’

  ‘In that case I am prepared to accept the challenge at the first opportunity.’ Roger lay back.

  ‘Edward says the last time he was in town a woman in a complete tennis outfit, a ball bag over her head, followed him shouting religious slogans. He said he was quite embarrassed by the exaggerated behaviour and it took some minutes to lose her in the crowds.’ We all laughed again, this time at Edward’s expense.

  ‘Really, the place is getting full of cranks,’ Roger remarked.

  ‘It’s hardly safe to leave the house. There’s a slow revolution taking place in this town, you know. It’s something in the manner of the French Revolution.’

  ‘And there’s an invasion from the North …’ I looked at Andy.

  ‘The nouveau riche, ugh!’ Roger shuddered.

  ‘Well, it’s better this way,’ I stated categorically. ‘The other atmosphere of suburban refinement is slow strangulation. Can’t think why my mother ever bought a house here.’

  ‘Why did she?’

  ‘Somebody told her the sun shone here more than anywhere else in England, and as we always seem to chase the sun …’ I shrugged.

  ‘But why did you get this house?’

  ‘On the advice of my Aunt Patience – an investment or something like that.’

  ‘Well, let’s drink to our mistake, and Gordon’s millions,’ Roger suggested heartily, producing a bottle from under his bed. ‘And to what might possibly affect us all in the way of generous loans.’

  Andy willingly produced some well-thumbed glasses, and we d
rank solemnly to Gordon, to his millions, to loans galore and the fine qualities of those who gave generously on death. Warmed to a glowing unconcern, I pointedly reminded Roger that, after all, he was a communist, which forced us all to swallow a round to Stalin. A plug for Attlee was Andy’s choice and I, of course, drank to Churchill, to the scowling darkness of the opposition. Roger complained about the new baby’s bawls, of Mrs Budden’s untidy habit of littering the bathroom with nappies and of Fred Budden’s domination.

  ‘Marriage is death,’ Roger announced with deep feeling. ‘Men are martyred from the moment that small gold band goes into play. I should watch it, Andy; never get on that hook. And can you tell me,’ he turned to me in an attitude of perplexity, ‘just as a matter of interest, why women fall in love with you one way, and then immediately want to change you to a complete antithesis?’

  ‘Human nature,’ Andy reflected.

  ‘Edward says you should look at a woman’s mother before you marry her,’ I quoted our bearded philosopher with confidence.

  ‘He’s right, the lack of that “look” certainly cost me a lot,’ Roger threw himself easily into a gesture of despair.

  ‘Aye, how we men have to suffer for a moment’s folly,’ Andy summed up the situation easily.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to have burdened you, spiritually or otherwise,’ I retorted bluntly, attacking Roger, irritated that Andy had not risen to my defence. Loyalty to my sex surged up, as I thought of Magda, and of the others left washed-up on the beach before the saga had been played here.

  ‘I am just getting over it,’ Roger confessed heavily, and untruthfully.

  Men invariably pretended they were suffering acutely at women’s hands, I thought with scorn, looking at Roger lying there, and Edward, too, could wear a crown of thorns at a moment’s notice, though his seductive wife was the envy of most, and the slightest trace of neglect would send Fred Budden scowling for attention. It seemed in a man’s world of suffering and self-sacrifice it was a physical necessity to magnify to vast proportions a simple mental or physical ache, to consolidate sympathy, and in our house, if it wasn’t for the enduring likes of Jane, ready with a swab of sterilized lint and a cool hand, they would not survive – the poor dears! I turned the matter over sardonically. Andy’s amused eyes had never left my face, as he listened to Roger’s banter. He was healthy, considering the all-night jazz sessions and excessive drinking. The yellow and black shirt clung casually across his broad shoulders and was open to the waist and I noticed a pale shadow of hair across his chest. An invisible tide of friendship flowed between us, but I felt disappointed in him now.

  ‘The men are right,’ he murmured at last, weighing up the consequences, in his heavy Yorkshire voice that sent a flutter through me every time he spoke. He turned to me: ‘Anyway, what do you know about life, born well-to-do, public school …’ he spoke the words with a deep and bitter scorn. ‘A useless southern butterfly, a capitalist!’ he mocked seriously. I knew he meant it.

  The knowledge sent me floundering. What did I know about life indeed, wasn’t I struggling with it now? And how I hated the phrase ‘well-to-do’. But I was no ‘southern butterfly’, no social glitter-bird. I was of Irish descent, born in India, schooled in England, a traveller – I had even fulfilled myself as a woman. Who was he to try and judge me, an ignorant council school boy, brought up in a row of terraced houses in a grimy northern town, son of a struggling chemist? I attacked him, tearing my dream as if it was waste-paper. What had he done for redemption? Nothing! Trifling in several conventional careers, drawn back inevitably to his goddamn jazz, haunted by it; his background and childhood environment, dominated by Labour tendencies, threw him automatically into the bigoted political boat of Mr Budden and had been, as yet, an unseen barrier between us. Now it was seeping out like a canker. And how they hated my public school education, even in the merriest moment! It was an attitude I could do nothing about – we were born into different worlds, it was as simple, or as complicated, as that.

  I turned away to Roger with inner frustration and despair, getting back to Gordon’s fortune. ‘You should have heard Mr Budden carrying on, all his Labour ballyhoo is roused.’ I had a sudden desire to tantalize Andy into political argument and hurt him. ‘I can’t stand that class of bigoted, ignorant, uneducated, Labourising fool!’ I did not know if there was such a word as ‘Labourizing’, but I used it with confidence just the same. ‘If he was left some money it would be a different story, I bet!’ I ended a little bitterly, subsiding to prickly silence, knowing I was going too far.

  Roger looked at me blankly, astonished, sensing that something else lurked behind my uncalled-for outburst. A slow flush had deepened the contours of Andy’s rugged face. My anger melted at his vulnerable look to a surge of churning regret. ‘I didn’t really mean all that,’ I said awkwardly, speaking directly to Andy, desperately trying to recapture the warming tide of a moment earlier. There was no reply.

  His thoughtful condemnation pricked me to a sudden resentment. I was his landlady, however tattered, and no one was going to place me in the position of Magda. I turned away to the window, viewing the garden with an unusually critical eye. ‘Where’s Magda? Why hasn’t she come?’ I changed the subject with a casual enquiry, watching Nelson, who was explaining the finer points of the summerhouse as a zoological garden to Gordon, who held his nose and looked rather faint. The comic combination of the two figures forced me to smile and I thought callously that if Gordon fainted Nelson would probably rifle his pockets.

  ‘All that boy needs is a tail and a pair of horns,’ Roger criticized, as if reading my thoughts, leaving his bed and joining me at the window. Then he began to hum a little halfheartedly; he sensed that something had gone wrong between Andy and me but was not sure what.

  ‘I wonder why she isn’t coming?’ I kept stubbornly puzzling on the question of Magda’s absence (we all knew she never worked at weekends), feeling a comradeship with Roger now, and comforted by the fact that there was maybe another in the same boat of disapproval as myself. My eyes still followed Nelson, but thinking of Andy’s dull refusal to accept my apology, I felt suddenly frighteningly empty.

  ‘Me thinks the woman doth play with my affections,’ Roger answered, seemingly unperturbed.

  Silently I thought of Magda’s tears and I dimmed still further at the memory of the argument and tried to concentrate on gardening. The still unpruned pear tree, twisting weirdly, reminded me of one of Edward’s pirouettes, but it was the lawn, strongly resembling the shrublands of Africa, that seemed the immediate problem – perhaps Nelson could be bribed? The rubbish dump at the far end did not increase the beauty of the picture, and the children’s old pram, lying squat and frog-like on the top, gave the whole thing a derelict air.

  ‘Look at the sheer blueness of that mound,’ Roger breathed, forgetting the problem with Magda quickly. I saw no blue, except the sky, and feeling a little annoyed over the question of his callous attitude towards the Maltese girl I refused to be drawn into an artistic appreciation of anything.

  ‘I think I’ll paint it this afternoon,’ he went on, not waiting for my comment. ‘If I may?’

  I gave my consent readily, not knowing whether he was serious and not in the mood to find out.

  ‘You paint the rubbish dump, and I’ll join the lass downstairs,’ Andy was suddenly behind me. ‘I promised the girl I would mend her wireless.’

  Although I was older, I suddenly felt young and defenceless. He took my shoulder and turned me gently towards him – I was forgiven.

  ‘If you like,’ I said airily, shaking myself free, regaining confidence on my reinstatement and I marched out, quaking inwardly but outwardly five feet of feigned nonchalance – my aunt would have been proud of me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Into this inglorious battlefield of human conflicts came the crusaders, my aunts. The scene was set, not by the soft waftings of chamber music to a garden’s reply of tender rose blooms, but by a disgruntled Mr B
udden, sauntering his way to the dustbins with a bucket of garbage and empty milk bottles, while an air of bustling merriment filled the place. For Edward’s suggestions of a farewell party as a tribute to Gordon had brought cries of approval and put the womenfolk into a pantomime of preening as new dresses became the talk of the day.

  I was doing just this, posed before the only long mirror in my part of the house and examining myself for indolent bulges. Swathed in a hectic combination of candy stripes – a petticoat of patriotic colours, the skirt a mass of tucks and lace – I pirouetted as my fancy took me to see the effect it would create under a dress, while giving a running commentary on my progress to Andy. He was squatting earthily in the middle of the drawing-room floor, busy disembowelling the wireless set while listening to me with divided attention, for Nelson was also calling to be noticed. He was established, king-like, in the bay window in Mother’s usual position, even to the curtain, discreetly pulled in places to allow light and observation but not the unwanted attention of a passer-by. He was instructing the children in a game of crap. I was unprepared for the knock, the door opening and – posed in the attitude of a Giles cartoon – the visitors.