Whatever Happened to Margo?

by Margaret Durrell

  ‘My, that’s ever so nice, Mr Roger, you’ve really got that exact like – even to the wheels being damaged – ’asn’t ’e, Mr Edward,’ she called. ‘Isn’t ’e clever!’

  And Edward saying: ‘But you should just see my wine, it’s coming on nicely now, I do believe. Try some. I must ring Mrs Durrell and tell her’ – sounding like Mr Beetle.

  Then Olwen’s, ‘Yes that’s better shorter there – it droops a little.’

  And Mr Briggs being called in from his garden to a cup of tea. Thank God the monkeys seemed less noisy.

  I felt my intrusion keenly: who was I to plead for mercy, I asked myself anxiously, searching the dejected face. Was he irrevocably lost by my easy lie, with a disloyalty that was unforgivable. I felt a moment of pain at the bare expression before me, a sense of loss; the next instant I was on my knees pleading shamelessly for forgiveness, and we were clinging together kissing for the first time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I moaned helplessly. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, not really,’ I ended lamely. ‘It’s just that …’ How could anyone explain their aunts?

  ‘It’s all right lass, don’t fret. I understand,’ the voice was husky with emotion.

  ‘How can you be so generous?’ I asked wonderingly; the soft touch of his forgiveness obliterated everything else.

  I heard Nelson’s voice telling the entire back garden that I had visitors of no real value. I rose quickly. Was I mad? With Aunt Patience so near, a breathing menace down my neck. ‘I must go,’ I said feverishly, but wishing desperately to prolong these precious moments, hastily stepping to the door.

  ‘My,’ came Mrs Williams’ voice again, ‘as green as green it looks, Mr Edward, proper strong.’

  I turned. ‘By the way, if Edward offers you some of his brew from under the kitchen table, don’t take it. Mother thinks it’s poison.’ We both laughed at my warning in wobbling relief.

  A wail of disgust from Olwen, and a sudden tirade from Edward on the deficiencies of the average woman’s appreciation made me hesitate again in my flight. Then I closed the door and hurried away happily to the top of the house, convinced that I was capsizing fast and strangely, and frighteningly satisfied to do so.

  I found Jane in an immaculate overall (her instrument of work) poring over both the renovation of a tattered net dress, embedded with the odd sequin, and a diet for Nelson who, she said, would die of a fatty heart before he was twenty if he didn’t do something about it. She had come to this conclusion after hearing him breathe while helping to carry the monkeys. On the bed, splayed out in tired slumber, a compress on his head, lay Gordon.

  ‘Rise!’ I woke him unsympathetically. ‘Rise, I need you. My rich aunts and party have arrived, and if you all don’t want me to be out of their favour and consequently you lot turned out on to the streets like refugees,’ I said, desperately exaggerating the picture, ‘you had better titivate yourself, and come and be presented as the offspring of a celebrated clergyman.’

  Gordon rose, grumbling at the disturbance, reminding me of his lucky windfall and that, in future, landladies presented no problem to him. But seeing that the situation was a delicate one, and feeling flattered that I had chosen him as one of my allies, he consented to co-operate; he treated himself to a hurried wash and followed Jane and me down to meet my visitors. Jane, as excited as a child, a picture of studied efficiency, said that she hoped I wasn’t going to be so foolish as to produce the uncouth Mr Budden. I reassured her that he was already in the category of head gardener.

  The next two hours were spent in a show of subterfuge and camouflage to a dogged pair of sightseers, who far from being too tired were determined to see everything. I murmured a series of untruths and half-truths as I steered them rapidly past the windows to the garden with a tell-tale view; past the door to the men’s room discreetly closed (‘the Guards, you know; related to the Duchess of Leeds, I believe. Just a trifle eccentric perhaps, but with such good breeding …’). And the vision of Andy smudged itself into a pose of a gentleman worthy of my aunts. Roger’s background, grossly distorted, moved into an aroma of blue blood. ‘Father’s a peer, you know,’ I murmured discreetly forgetting the Cochrane girl in a skirt of pink feathers.

  ‘Yes, by Jove!’ Gordon helped me on. A clean face glistening, oil-free hands and grey worsted suit gave him the true air of ecclesiastical heritage; then we would go back again to the subject of my Aunt Patience’s perforated kidney – for it was not, as I had previously thought, a sole organ deprived of its mate and struggling to perform its duties, but something that by the time my aunt and Jane had examined it, had the appearance of a tin can heavily peppered with lead – until Great Aunt Sarah shouted: ‘Stop, stop, Patience dear; you’ll never sleep tonight,’ and Aunt Patience, now thoroughly alarmed at her condition, despatched me for a jug of warm barley water.

  Then, feeling that perhaps she had overtaxed her strength in the investigation of both my affairs and her organs, she decided to return early to the family hotel and rest; while inviting me to come later and join her for dinner, just managing to crawl to the telephone and check both dinner and price with the head waiter before she departed, followed by a disgruntled Great Aunt Sarah who was enjoying a nice little chat with Gordon about potted plants.

  ‘Good old Jane,’ I decided, waving a temporary farewell from the front gate, ‘she really knew how to handle the situation, and the white overall over Roger’s pyjamas was a very good and impressive move.’

  ‘See you had visitors,’ Mrs Briggs shouted, forgetting we were at war.

  I answered coldly and went indoors to telephone Leslie and Mother to tell them that Aunt Patience was in the vicinity, to fill the boiler, feed the monkeys, coax the children to an early bed, and wait for nightfall, satisfied that the day’s events had been no worse.

  Then, as dusk blurred the image of our road and storm clouds hung heavy in the sky to crown a brilliant day, I closed the door behind me and left the house to join my aunts in the dingy vaults of their hotel.

  I had dressed to please my great aunt in a modest garment with no frills. A full black skirt scattered with Persian figures, topped by a severe black blouse – I was trying, if possible, to eradicate the picture of a fallen woman that my previous apparel had created. But an urgent sound made me turn hastily to acknowledge the call. Nelson’s familiar bulk was in his darkened window and he was making frantic signs for me to return.

  ‘What’s cooking, Nelson?’ I called up softly, retracing my steps a trifle, working on the assumption that it was better to find out now rather than later at a possible cost.

  ‘’Ere, I want to show yer something,’ he whispered down.

  ‘I haven’t really time, Nelson, I’m going out to dinner at a posh hotel with my wealthy aunt – I’m late already,’ I said, hoping to impress him with the importance of the occasion. He was supposed to be guarding the family fortunes in my absence; I imagined he took his duties very lightly.

  ‘Ain’t yer comin’ up, this is reely important – it’s a matter of life an’ death. Yer’ll be sorry if yer don’t.’

  ‘Oh, all right, but you’ll have to be quick,’ I heeded the warning and capitulated weakly (I always did with Nelson). I turned indoors to join him. Nelson met me at his door; the room behind was unlit. He blew a low expert whistle of approval from between his teeth.

  ‘Cor, yer looking smashing,’ he praised.

  ‘Behave Nelson, do; have you forgotten your girl with the chubby legs?’

  ‘Oh, ’er,’ Nelson shrugged disparagingly. ‘I’m trying a pair of thin legs this time,’ and he guffawed.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Wallowing in the bath like one of them sea creatures – but never mind ’er, this is more drastic. Follow me,’ and tiptoeing across the room, he beckoned me to follow. ‘Shush, don’t yer make a sound,’ he murmured as I hit my shin against a hard object.

  ‘I am not!’ I replied, prepared to argue.

  ‘Keep yourself down,
’ he ordered. I followed his gaze down the shadowy road. ‘It’s just coming up to time,’ he whispered, sounding like Mother and Edward waiting for a manifestation.

  I began to feel creepy. ‘What’s going on, Nelson?’ I demanded, reduced to a frightened whisper.

  ‘Coffins coming and going after dark – I know ’cause I watch, see. ’Tain’t half exciting, like a Dracula film I saw at the Roxy.’

  I peered anxiously down the road past Miss Brady’s, past Mrs Briggs’, towards the nursing home. ‘What coffins? I’ve never seen a coffin,’ I remarked. ‘Where?’ I felt as if a spook was already sitting on my shoulder.

  ‘You never watch, do yer?’ He brought out a small torch, and checked his notebook and with a clock sitting on the mantelpiece. ‘I’d like to know what goes on here. I reckon we ought to call the cops in. Police inspection is what we want.’

  Just then the arrival of a hearse, like a dark stranger, shocked me to mute rigidity.

  ‘Bang on,’ Nelson remarked delightedly, checking the time. ‘It’s a good view from this window,’ he turned, satisfied that fate had not let us down. I peered uneasily through the gloom.

  ‘My God, Nelson, don’t watch; it will give you nightmares,’ I pleaded, as a long black box and two dark figures disappeared through the far gate.

  ‘I reckon they’re bumping off two a week,’ he surmised in a matter of fact voice, ‘and collecting the insurance. Must do, people don’t die like flies in this ’ere bleeding place – that’s what Pa used to say. I reckon I’d do the cops a good turn if I just tipped them the wink.’

  ‘You can’t call the police for every little suspicion you have,’ I said. ‘And I must go now. You have ruined my evening, I shall have to call a taxi.’

  ‘Ain’t yer going to watch it out?’

  ‘No I’m not, it gives me the creeps,’ I said defiantly, full of sympathy for Miss Brady’s complaints about the comings and goings at her very door.

  ‘Pity,’ he remarked, and glued himself back to the window.

  Feeling as though I had just attended my best friend’s funeral, I telephoned a taxi and managed at length to reach the hotel where my aunts, thoroughly refreshed, were waiting impatiently in the foyer.

  When, hours later, I returned home, I found that Nelson’s room was a blaze of light and for one awful moment I thought he must still be up coffin-watching; but the figure wasn’t Nelson’s and the noise was not a Nelson noise, it was a thin sound. Then I saw it was Nelson’s mother, a pathetic shapeless figure of distress.

  ‘I never should have clocked him one,’ she cried piteously, ‘it doesn’t do no good to clock our Nelson, it brings out his Pa in him.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I called, astonished. Nelson’s mother clocking him one was unbelievable.

  ‘I gave ’im one in the lug’ole; me ’and slipped.’

  ‘And about time, too,’ I couldn’t help adding.

  ‘’E’s locked me in, and buried the key; just when me bowels are on the turn,’ she confessed with innocent frankness – household candour was catching. She broke into fresh cries: ‘I think ’e might be dead, ’e threatened suicide, hanging somewhere perhaps.’

  ‘Nelson committing suicide? Never!’ I answered with complete sureness. ‘The one thing he would never do is harm himself.’ I thought of Nelson dead, it was an impossible image.

  ‘If ’e’s not dead, ’e’s run off somewhere, perhaps out of me life forever.’

  ‘He’ll soon come back when he’s hungry,’ I consoled confidently. I knew our Nelson.

  The children’s window opened, their faces white in the blackness. ‘Where’s Nelson?’ came the demand. ‘Has he committed suicide, throttled by a rope?’ There was interest in the voice at the possibility. ‘He was practising hanging himself yesterday, seeing how far he could go before it was too late.’

  ‘That fat boy will never hang,’ I declared, deciding the question. ‘Hop back to bed while I rescue his mother.’

  I trotted indoors, telling Mrs Williams that I would be back in a minute; I had already handed over my last key to Nelson, with the determination to make him pay for the other one which he couldn’t produce, adamant that no door was going to be pushed in on his account. The house seemed deserted; only a tell-tale light glowed from beneath Jane’s door. Climbing the narrow stairs to the dwelling at the top of the house, I demanded entrance. An answer pitched low and seductive from our woman of experience made me enter. Jane was reclining beneath her sloped ceiling in a low-cut black negligee. Her tiny, childlike breasts were lost amidst the softly flowing garment and an artificial rose sprouted up gaily in the valley: where there was no support a discreet safety pin did the necessary. The hair, loosened from its normal bun, rippled like Medusa’s and without her glasses she peered at me as a baby owl would in strong sunlight.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ her voice went flat, disappointed that I was no one better, letting her voice go back to her normal matter-of-fact squeak and replacing her glasses.

  I noticed she was browsing through the Nursing Mirror: an intricate diagram of a gaping wound with all accessories made me close my eyes. ‘Look at this,’ she indicated the magazine, her nursing voice taking over. ‘A kidney operation, most interestingly displayed. I thought your aunt might be interested too.’

  ‘Please,’ I begged, ‘not now. Not after my six-course dinner! Can you help me? Nelson’s locked his mother in and disappeared, and the poor woman is having hysterics. I thought perhaps we could borrow a ladder from down the road, from that house that is being decorated.’ I had noticed yesterday, among the assortment of equipment, a long ladder.

  ‘Where are the men of the house?’ Jane enquired, rising and stretching in her transparent coverage.

  ‘You know what it’s like on Saturday nights, they are either boozing, wenching, jazzing …’ I shrugged.

  Jane gave a ‘Bah!’ of disapproval.

  ‘You’d better put something more practical on,’ I said, watching the flat body floating ghost-like inside the voluminous folds. ‘Remember it’s a ladder we’ve got to carry.’

  Jane reluctantly threw aside her finery and, taking her nurse’s blue mackintosh from behind the door, she slid into it, remarking it was high time somebody did something to Nelson.

  ‘But that’s just it, somebody did, and this is the result,’ I told her, as we sallied forth to the rescue through the first drops of rain, calling out consolingly to the desolate wilting figure. We located the house and the ladder. The ladder was much heavier than we had expected and we had difficulty in clearing the house and the gate. We had just managed to reach the pavement, our muscles tingling to breaking point, when a man sauntered towards us out of the night. He was indistinguishable in the dark but it was obvious he had been drinking.

  ‘Heave ho, me hearties!’ he bawled, sensing our predicament with the inner vision of a drunk; giving Jane a playful little dig, his hands wandering happily, which made Jane, with a loud piercing exclamation, drop her end of the ladder. This was the cue for our drunken Don Quixote to take over. Seizing the fallen end, he barked encouragement: ‘Come on, me hearties, I’ll give you a hand. The Navy to the rescue.’

  His legs wobbled as the effects of liquor were struggling with his strength, and hiccups took charge. I wondered in which house in the avenue he resided; he was obviously one of the disreputable newcomers but we couldn’t dispute the fact that we needed help. Jane was by this time incapable, struggling with nervous laughter, terrified that he might pinch her again and terrified that he might not, thereby depriving her of a fresh experience. I, too, was seized with an irrepressible urge to laugh and only the pathetic face of Mrs Williams made me hang on firmly with some sort of composure to my end of the ladder.

  ‘Which way, me hearties?’

  ‘This way, my hearty, this way,’ I retaliated, getting into the spirit of the thing, and with Jane close beside me we marched forward to the rescue, giggling openly now as the situation threatened to incapacitate us, as ev
ery third step brought a hiccup and a ‘pardon’, and we wafted along behind a trail of liquor fumes. Our rescuer, his perception still keen, estimated the situation at a glance as we stood huddled in the patch of light. Somewhere in the darkness I heard the exclamation of a watchful neighbour.

  ‘Up she goes,’ he yelled, as the ladder hit the right spot, more by luck than good judgment, where Nelson’s mother still waited, now promising death by strangulation to Nelson if he was still alive and leaving no doubt as to who needed rescuing. The threat was out of character.

  ‘Ladies first!’

  Our hands met in a secret squeeze. ‘Don’t turn your back on him,’ Jane implored from between tight lips, and she went off into a fit of delighted laughter.

  ‘She’s got to come down,’ I explained, pointing to the victim, who was now noiselessly and pensively disturbed. Could this be a fate worse than death? Yes, undoubtedly! Mrs Williams burst into fresh cries.

  ‘Do not fear, madam, I will bring you down to safety,’ our friend told her, agitated by her renewed distress. I put out my hand and stopped him.

  ‘I shouldn’t go up the ladder if I were you,’ I said hesitatingly. ‘I’ll go. You’re a little merry you know, not quite capable, perhaps … It was only a suggestion …’ I realized immediately that I had said the wrong thing. The man threw back his head with a proud gesture, and straightened his body carefully.

  ‘Never let it be said that James Smart isn’t a perfect gentleman, in charge of his faculties at all times,’ he said and, seizing the ladder with both hands, he jumped on the first rung. Steadying himself briefly, he disappeared rapidly towards the light.

  We watched breathlessly – would he make it? He did, and surfaced up face to face with Mrs Williams. There was a faint scream as Mrs Williams no doubt smelt the tainted breath and decided that this was worse than being starved to death in a blocked room with a thwarted bowel movement. There was a feeble cry, soothing reassurances, and slowly and timorously Mrs Williams climbed on to the top of the ladder, under the personal direction of Mr Smart and was rescued. We heard his refrain long after his footsteps had died into the night.