Alice Hartley‘s Happiness

by Gregory, Philippa

  ‘Hold on a minute, Doctor Simmonds,’ the Inspector said steadily. ‘One at a time. Now, Mrs Hartley – you say you healed the old lady?’

  Alice nodded, her colour high.

  ‘And do you have a licence to practise medicine, Missus?’ the Inspector asked, turning over a fresh page and licking the stub of his pencil again.

  ‘I am a herbalist, not a quack,’ Alice said with dignity. ‘I do not need a licence. I have done evening classes. And at least I can tell whether a patient is alive or dead.’

  Doctor Simmonds was a dangerous purple. ‘You are half-way to being a witch, madam!’ he said. ‘You’d better mind your p’s and q’s! I can’t tell you the amount of trouble you’re in! There’s practising medicine without a licence. There’s fraud. There’s trafficking in forbidden substances! There’s running a bawdy house! There is offending against the planning regulations by change of use without prior planning consent, and there is kidnap!’

  ‘Kidnap!’ exclaimed Alice, stung. ‘Michael is twenty! He chooses to live with me!’

  ‘Not Michael,’ the Inspector said slowly. ‘The old lady, if the old lady is alive. Where is she now, Mrs Hartley?’

  ‘She is resting,’ Alice said defiantly. ‘I’ll go up and wake her. But I think you are being very unreasonable.’

  She turned and went quietly up the stairs. Her heart was pounding at the list which Doctor Simmonds had reeled off. Half or more was nonsense. But even half of it sounded serious. Alice had never spoken to a policeman before except to be considerately and gently moved on during a bottle-bank demonstration, and she did not like the way the CID officer was looking at her.

  At the spare bedroom door she paused. The two of them had come up with her uninvited, and were at her shoulder.

  ‘I think you are very selfish to upset an old lady’s rest,’ Alice said with dignity.

  She raised her hand and knocked on the door.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me, Alice. Can I come in please?’

  There was no reply.

  Alice knocked again, a little louder.

  Gently she turned the handle of the door. The door swung open.

  The bed had been dragged over to the window so that the leg of the bed formed a handy anchor for the rope of knotted sheets which had been tied to it and flung out of the window.

  Alice, Doctor Simmonds and the CID officer raced across the room to peer out of the window.

  The rope of sheets reached to the ground; there was no sign of anyone outside.

  ‘Aunty Sarah!’ Alice yelled in sudden panic from the window out to the empty garden.

  The wind blew through the newly pruned apple trees. The scent of the stocks and lavender wafted into the room from the newly weeded beds.

  ‘Aunty Sarah!’ Alice cried again, despairingly.

  The CID officer leaned over and gently swung the window shut.

  ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Just you come downstairs, Hartley, while I phone for the lads and the dogs and we get to the bottom of this.’

  Alice preceded them downstairs, her red gown billowing behind her, and back into the dining-room with her head held high and her heart pounding. She looked magnificent. She felt wretched.

  ‘Officer, you are making a mistake,’ she said.

  ‘All in good time,’ he replied evenly. ‘May I use your telephone?’

  Alice waved him towards the hall. Through the open door she could hear him conferring with headquarters and requesting assistance on the case. She repressed a shiver of dread.

  Doctor Simmonds prowled around the dining-room, his glance avid, his aura electric with excitement. ‘I think you are going to find yourself in a lot of trouble, Mrs Whatever-your-name-is!’ he said smugly under his breath. ‘A lot of trouble.’

  Alice looked at him with disdain. ‘And I think you are going to stay the same for the rest of your life,’ she said firmly. ‘I know which of us I’d rather be.’

  The doctor took some time to understand that curse – the worst Alice could imagine. By the time it sank in, the CID officer was back in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve asked for assistance,’ he said magisterially. ‘It seems to me that there is a case to answer.’

  Alice went back to her seat behind the table. Her hands were trembling. She put them in her lap so the policeman could not see them.

  ‘About what?’ she asked. Her voice was firm, without a tremor.

  ‘The disappearance of the old lady,’ the Inspector said. ‘If she is dead, as Doctor Simmonds here attests, then where is the body? If she is alive and happy as you claim, then where is she? And why has someone escaped from out of the window? You can understand that knotted sheets and an open window look a little suspicious in a house with adequate stairs, and a front door as well as a rear or tradespersons’ entrance.’

  Alice threw her head back and laughed in relief. ‘That is nonsensical, officer!’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever else you may believe about me, I simply would never kidnap anyone, or keep them against their will. My whole life, my whole philosophy, is that people should be free.’

  Just at that moment there was the throaty roar of a motorbike and a small avalanche of shingle as a large Harley Davidson zoomed up the drive and stopped in a shower of stones. Jon-Jo, the husband of Louise and father (though he did not yet know it) of Daniel, kicked down the stand, heaved his bike on to it, removed his helmet and strode purposefully up the steps. Doctor Simmonds, speeding on his own adrenalin, scurried to the door and flung it open. Jon-Jo marched in.

  ‘I’ve come for my wife,’ he said in a stentorian shout which would be invaluable should the revolutionary army need a sergeant-major. His fiery gaze swept the room and lighted on Alice. ‘You,’ he said with loathing. ‘Bourgeois false-conscious jackal. You have kidnapped my wife! She didn’t come home last night and she left me a note to say that your disciples – poor blind brain-washed idiots – were bringing her here. I’ve come for her and I want her back. And I want an explanation.’

  Doctor Simmonds’s face was a picture of delighted malice. The policeman looked frankly overwhelmed. ‘Another kidnap?’ he asked, opening his notebook and looking doubtfully at Alice. His tone seemed to imply that one kidnap was criminal; two was just greedy.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Alice said briskly. ‘Louise came here last night in a fatigued and depleted state thanks to your appalling treatment of her. She has given birth to a healthy baby boy, and the two of them will be staying with me.’

  Jon-Jo staggered backwards. ‘A boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Which hospital did you take her to?’ Doctor Simmonds asked nastily. ‘And which practitioner cared for her during her confinement? I was not called.’ He nodded at the policeman as if to remind him to take notes.

  ‘She did not need a hospital,’ Alice said fiercely. ‘She was not ill. She did not need a doctor – least of all one who cannot tell if a patient is alive or dead! She needed love and support. She needed to be in touch with the elements. She gave birth assisted by her new friends – people and dolphins. It was a beautiful and moving moment, and she and the baby are perfectly well.’

  ‘Dolphins?’ Jon-Jo asked blankly. ‘Dolphins?’

  The Inspector flipped his notebook backwards to another marked page. He was sweating now, his fingers stuck to the paper of his notebook as he turned from one page to another. His fingers trembled, his heart sang. At this rate his department would have the highest clear-up rate of crimes in the whole country, possibly in the whole history of crime-fighting. The Home Secretary would mention them in speeches. Neighbourhood Watch committees would call them in! All of the crimes which had occurred in Brighton in the last four days could be blamed on Alice in one enormous and time-saving trial.

  ‘Would this have anything to do with the theft of four dolphins named Peety, Tutu, Bibby and Bilbo from Sargent’s Oceanside Marine Park last night? The watchman claimed that he saw a grey Jaguar driven by a naked woman.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘We did not believe him at th
e time,’ he said frankly. ‘But now, Mrs Hartley, you are making me wonder. Was that your Jaguar car? Were you the naked woman? And where are the dolphins?’

  ‘Bugger the dolphins!’ the doctor burst in, enraged. ‘Where is Miss Coulter?’

  ‘Where is my wife?’ Jon-Jo yelled.

  Alice had felt tired when she awoke that morning. And now all this stress and negative energy was draining her resistance. She put her head on her arms on the table and burst into tears.

  ‘I think I had better telephone for more assistance,’ the CID man said again.

  Doctor Simmonds snorted. ‘You’d do better to arrest her and take her down to the station,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought you’d have had enough against her by now! Two charges of kidnap, practising medicine without a licence, practising midwifery without a licence, stealing dolphins! Trespass on my hay meadow. Libel! What more d’you want?’

  The CID man shook his head. ‘We’ll do this my way, if you don’t mind, Sir,’ he said reprovingly and left the room with his heavy tread.

  ‘Where’s my wife?’ Jon-Jo asked insistently.

  Alice lifted her tear-stained face. ‘Do you love her?’ she asked curiously.

  Jon-Jo shuffled and looked at his feet. ‘The revolution does not recognize the bourgeois mystification around the so-called emotions which operate merely to entrap the cadres, and to demoralize and mislead the workers,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Then why do you want her back?’ Alice asked simply.

  Jon-Jo looked straight into Alice’s eyes. ‘Her father’s going to do me over if I can’t tell him where she is and show him his grandchild.’

  ‘He sounds like a good man,’ Alice said.

  ‘So where is she?’ Jon-Jo demanded.

  The CID man reappeared in the doorway and awaited Alice’s answer.

  ‘She’s upstairs, resting,’ Alice said.

  Doctor Simmonds gave one disbelieving snort. ‘Again!’ he said nastily. ‘Another one of your patients upstairs resting. No doubt she will have flown up the chimney by the time we get there!’

  ‘Can we see her?’ the CID man interrupted.

  ‘Of course,’ Alice replied.

  Once more she led the way upstairs. Once more she paused at a bedroom door, tapped on it, asked if she might come in, and pushed the door open.

  The CID man mentally braced himself for another empty room and curtains blowing from an open window.

  Louise was sitting up in bed, her white nightgown open at her large blue-veined milk-filled breasts. Her dark hair fell in soft ringlets around her face and tumbled over her shoulders. Her face was down-turned, to watch her baby while he fed. There was a little half-smile on her lips.

  Daniel the dolphins’ godson was sucking contentedly, his blue eyes half closed in contentment, his rosebud mouth a perfect ‘oo’ of delight. One clenched fist beat gently at the air, the fine brown hair on his head stirred with his mother’s breath. The tiny concave hollow at the centre of his head pulsed gently with his steady heartbeat. As they watched, Louise touched the tender crown of his head with her hand, like a blessing.

  She looked up as the door opened and saw Alice and Doctor Simmonds and Inspector Bromley, and her husband, but she wasted no more than a glance on them all.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, her voice soft; she hardly took her eyes from her baby.

  The CID man was temporarily lost for words. Louise was as simple and as lovely as an angel in a painting, her unwavering gaze fixed lovingly on her little son’s face, the tenderness of her smile, her baby’s milk-drenched contentment.

  ‘I shall need to ask you some questions, Missus,’ the CID man said, his voice hushed, almost awed. ‘Could you come downstairs when you have finished with your baby?’

  Louise raised her eyes and smiled at him, a Madonna-like smile of perfect radiance.

  ‘Fuck off, pig,’ she said.

  There was a wailing noise of sirens from the lane which grew steadily louder and louder. Alice imagined the curtains twitching all the way down the lane and Patricia Simmonds’s bright face behind the lace, like a demented over-dressed bride.

  Three police cars drew up outside the house, followed by a white police van which bounced with excitement as the two Alsatian dogs inside coupled frantically.

  ‘They’ll have brought a warrant to search the house and grounds,’ said Inspector Bromley. ‘I take it you have no objection, Mrs Hartley?’

  Alice shook her head. There was nothing she could say.

  Jon-Jo glanced at Louise and encountered a look of such scorching disdain that he suddenly remembered that there was no tax on his motorcycle and that he would prefer to move it out of the way of the police cars. He led the way downstairs. Alice, Inspector Bromley and Doctor Simmonds followed.

  The hall was very full of uniformed policemen and one small shabby man in overalls.

  ‘That’s her!’ he said, as soon as he saw Alice. ‘That’s her. I saw her clearly, she smiled at me as she drove past. Stark naked she was!’ His piggy eyes roved over Alice reminiscently. ‘Stark naked,’ he said again. ‘Absolutely starkers. In her birthday suit, you might say. A fine figure of a woman if you like them substantial.’

  ‘Is this a positive identification then?’ the young constable asked. He flicked open his notebook and licked a stub of pencil.

  The CID man nodded. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked the watchman.

  The man hesitated. ‘It would help if I could see her with no clothes on again,’ he volunteered.

  ‘No,’ Inspector Bromley said bluntly. ‘Is this the woman? Yes or No?’

  ‘Or don’t know?’ Alice suggested quickly.

  The watchman leered at her. ‘I know all right,’ he said. ‘Yes, it was her. In a great grey Jaguar.’

  ‘My Jaguar to be precise,’ said a voice and Charles Hartley walked into the hall through the open door, a picture of elegance in a new pale grey suit, a replacement for the clothes which had disappeared with Alice when she stole the wardrobes. ‘Officer, I can identify the car in the garage as my car which my wife stole from its parking place in the university, and assaulted me at the same time.’

  Alice stared at him. ‘Charles, you traitor,’ she said.

  He looked at her for the first time. ‘Is it fancy dress?’ he asked nastily. ‘I had no idea!’

  Alice looked from him to the watchman’s beady eyes. The red gown, diaphanous and sweeping, had been just right this morning when she had been Alice Hartley of the Growth Centre, a woman of mystery and power. Now she felt chilled and half undressed, and she wanted something warmer.

  ‘I should like to change my clothes,’ she said to Inspector Bromley, ignoring the rest of them.

  ‘All right,’ he said. He nodded to one of the policemen who fell into step behind Alice as she went upstairs. ‘Constable Jones here will wait outside your bedroom door and bring you back down again.’ He paused. ‘And there are police officers in the garden,’ he said stiffly. ‘We’ll have no more knotted sheets out of the window today.’

  Alice nodded.

  ‘In the meantime we’ll take a little look around,’ he said. He moved towards the dining-room and opened the door.

  ‘My table!’ Charles exclaimed. ‘My rosewood Queen Anne dining-table and matching chairs!’

  ‘I think we’d better have a note of all of this,’ Inspector Bromley said wearily. The young policeman nodded and licked his pencil again. As Alice went slowly up the stairs she could hear from down below Charles’s constant falsetto squeak of shock and anger. ‘My Habitat Sofa! My Special Executive Rocker-Recliner Chair! My Leather Chesterfield Suite! My Wilton Carpet! My Television! My Bang and Olufsen Hi-Fi System! My Freezer! My Percolator! My Microwave!’ And then, more horrified, ‘She’s scratched my Le Creuset Non-Stick Pans. She’s dented them! Look at that!’

  Monday Afternoon

  Michael and his parents stood on the doorstep of Aunty Sarah’s house. The drive was crowded with police cars and a police van, but the front doo
r, usually hospitably open, was now tight shut. The place was oddly silent and from the windows idle policemen watched the Coulter family incuriously.

  ‘Don’t you have a key?’ his father said impatiently.

  Michael turned around, his young face defeated. ‘It never used to be locked,’ he said.

  ‘There, there,’ his mother said. Michael’s mother was full of useful sayings like: ‘Never mind then,’ and ‘It’ll all come out in the wash.’ And, ‘It’s a long road which has no turning.’

  ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she said.

  They could hear footsteps approaching down the hall. The door swung open.

  Michael jumped. It was not Alice opening the door, it was not even Aunty Sarah. It was a large uniformed policeman. Behind him was a man in a suit, which Michael thought rather well cut. (It should be remembered that Michael was very young.)

  ‘Bring ’em in,’ the man said. ‘You’re Michael Coulter, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ Michael said. He offered no explanation to his parents as to why he should be admitted to his Aunt’s house by a uniformed policeman and a CID officer. This was because he had none. As they went into the house an Alsatian dog especially trained to sniff for drugs leered malevolently at Michael’s ankles, making him jump.

  ‘What is this all about, officer?’ Michael’s father demanded.

  Inspector Bromley nodded at the uniformed police officer who drew Michael’s parents into the parlour on their right while he took Michael into the sitting-room on their left. Michael dully watched the door shutting on his parents. He had a prescient awareness that the best moments of his life were probably over. He wondered sadly what his mother and father had done, and what greed or what folly had tempted them to crime so serious that they were being arrested today in Sussex. He sighed.

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to help you, officer,’ he said nobly. ‘You’ll understand that I am very shocked. I really had no idea.’ He paused for a moment’s thought. ‘I can’t really believe my mother would have been mixed up in it,’ he said. ‘Whatever they have done, it would mainly be my father.’