Windsor Red

by Jennie Melville

  Only I’m not prejudiced, she thought, avoiding a crocodile of Japanese tourists, doing Windsor today, Oxford tomorrow and the Shakespeare Festival Theatre the day after. I like men. I’ve worked with them, respected them and had their respect back. But some women ought to keep away from men.

  Women like Anny, and even more, Anny’s daughter who seemed to have her mother’s trouble in a concentrated form. She was Charmian’s god-daughter, too, which somehow made Charmian feel worse. I haven’t done enough for that child, she thought. I ought to have passed on to her some of the things I’ve learnt, and all I seem to have handed on is the bad luck I don’t need.

  She walked on, past the row of dress shops, past the shop selling cheese, until she came to the narrow passage that led to Wellington Yard.

  Already it felt like home. She turned into the yard. She could see her cat’s face pressed against the window. Muff bitterly resented incarceration, but so well known a wanderer and fighter had to be protected against herself. It was a long way home to Deerham Hills and several alien torn cats had already been seen hopefully hanging round the yard.

  There on the right was the baker’s shop where you could buy only stoneground wholemeal flour and bread (nothing white or over-refined permitted) and where even the sponge cakes were oatmeal coloured, but tasty and lighter than you would think. Next door stood the wholesaler’s for artists’ materials like paints and brushes and canvases. You could even buy a picture there, he always had a small exhibition going in the gallery at the back. In fact Jerome was one of the reasons that a colony of artists was growing up around here, turning this area of Windsor into a little Chelsea. Across the way from Jerome’s was the dairy selling goats’ milk and free-range eggs with the occasional basket of organically grown vegetables. At the end of the yard, facing the entrance to the passage was the range of buildings that housed Anny and her activities. There was Anny’s studio and next door to Anny the Theatre Workshop of the local Actors’ Co-operative. Anny lived above the shop and, at present, Charmian lived above Anny.

  The windows were open in the studio so Anny was still at work; she liked to work in a flow of fresh air. She seemed to find a stiff breeze stimulating. Charmian could see her figure moving round. They had known each other since they were sixteen and were still friends. Sometimes highly critical friends, sometimes angry friends, but always the relationship held. Nothing could break it because underneath it all they trusted each other.

  One of the reasons for lodging in Windsor was Anny. Another was Baby: Beryl Andrea Barker whom Charmian had once arrested for armed robbery, and who she strongly believed might have helped kill a man but nothing had ever been proved against her on that score.

  Baby and Anny; to have one friend in a new town was good but to have two, the way her life was at the moment, was even better.

  Anny was the older friend and the most loved, but Baby was the one she was interested in at the moment.

  She considered. Or had been until Anny came up with this terrible problem of her daughter.

  Anny poked her head out of the window. ‘Your cat’s been stamping around and shouting. What a bully. Wants to get out.’

  ‘Yes, she always does.’ Charmian hesitated. ‘Shall I come in or are you busy?’

  ‘No, come in. Let me see you in your glad rags.’

  She’s in a good mood, Charmian thought. Perhaps she’s had some news about Kate.

  But when she saw Anny she knew the news was not good and that this was just Anny putting a brave face on things. Anny’s brave face was always heart-rending, like a baby pretending to enjoy the medicine. She was a small woman whom nature had intended to look calm and happy, which was what Anny claimed she wanted for herself but rarely achieved.

  ‘You’re working late.’

  ‘I’m preparing the furnace. People don’t realise how long it takes to make a good pot. It can take me days sometimes doing the glaze.’ She was wearing stained jeans and a long smock of butcher’s blue. Charmian knew that these clothes had been expensively designed to look old and cheap, and that their art lay in making Anny look like a thin person inside her flowing clothes, whereas Charmian knew that her Anny was plump. As students they had both been on a perpetual diet. Now Anny had given up and Charmian no longer needed to. Her metabolism had changed perhaps, or else her life saw to it that she kept thin. Anyway, she could not have afforded to dress where Anny did. Anny had always had money and now she was earning it as well.

  Anny looked up from the furnace. ‘Good party?’

  ‘I think I could enjoy the life if I got the chance.’

  ‘But you didn’t buy a new dress, I notice. I’ve seen that one before.’ Anny appraised the white silk printed with poppies.

  ‘No, indeed. This one did me very well. You are talking to a Scotswoman, don’t forget. No point in overdoing things.’ All she could see now was Anny’s back. ‘Well, what is it? Migraine?’

  Anny shook her head. ‘Got tablets for that,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t get it so badly now, anyway. Fire’s dying down inside me. Not so much love around.’

  ‘Oh come on, Anny. What is it?’ Who is it was the real question: Jack or Kate? It had to be one or the other. Possibly both.

  ‘Oh you do sound free and uncaring.’

  ‘Not loving anyone either,’ Charmian reminded her. ‘No one to love.’

  ‘Not even Humphrey?’

  ‘No one could love Humphrey. He wouldn’t allow it. And I don’t blame him.’

  ‘Not so sure.’ Anny closed the door of the furnace, adjusted a thermostat, set a time clock and turned to face her friend. ‘ I’ve seen him look at you.’

  ‘So what’s wrong? We aren’t really talking about me.’

  ‘It’s Kate.’

  Of course it was. ‘You’ve heard from her?’

  Anny nodded. ‘Telephoned me. About half an hour ago. Wish you’d been here. You might have been able to trace the call.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me where she was. But I could hear kind of noises off, sounded like a railway station. Could have been anywhere. And I said: “Where are you? Where’s Harry?” ’

  Charmian waited while Anny drew in a shaky breath.

  ‘She said, “ Oh, you’ll see him again. Or a bit of him. The bit I let go.” And she laughed.’ Anny looked as though she might cry. ‘That’s my own child and I don’t know what to make of her any more. I feel as though I’ve lost her.’ Sadly she added: ‘I love her though.’

  Six months ago Kate, who was an architecture student at Portsmouth Polytechnic, had gone to live with another student, a man some years older than she was, already divorced, a man with one career behind him as a soldier and now starting another one as an architect.

  From the start it had been a noisy relationship with plenty of quarrels and more than a hint of violence. This did not matter so much to Anny while Kate and Harry kept it to themselves, although it worried her, but on a day trip to Windsor to show Harry the Castle they had staged a noisy scene in front of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. Kate had hit Harry’s face and screamed that she would kill him. His nose had started to bleed and blood spurted over them both. He was a good bleeder.

  Violence in the Castle produces a quick reaction and a policeman arrived at once to move them out. Unluckily there was a TV film crew in the Castle ward at the time, setting up the cameras for a programme. They shot the scene. A flash of it was shown in the local news programme that evening. In Windsor itself everyone knew about it, from the cast of the Theatre Royal performing the latest pre-London thriller to the choir-boys at St. George’s Chapel.

  Anny was told that the police were considering bringing a charge, since violence inside a royal castle counted for something more than a family quarrel. Perhaps it was only a threat, meant to chasten, but Kate and Harry had not waited. They had taken off in Kate’s car and not been seen since.

  But the interesting thing about the whole episode was that both those who had witness
ed the scene and those who had only heard about it, like Anny, were convinced that Kate meant what she said.

  She would kill Harry.

  Only Charmian remained on the sidelines, wondering what it was all about.

  ‘Has Kate always come on so strong?’

  Anny shrugged. ‘I don’t say she was an easy child. And I know she thought I gave too much time to my work, my own life. I was just beginning, I had to, and anyway,’ Anny threw her hands out in a beseeching gesture, ‘ I couldn’t help myself. I was kind of driven. But she knew Jack and I loved her. I thought that would be enough.’

  ‘She was a beautiful baby,’ said Charmian.

  ‘But she grew up.’

  ‘I wish I’d seen more of her; I haven’t been much good to her as a godmother.’

  ‘You might be getting your chance now.’

  Charmian accepted the reference to herself as a policewoman. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘She might accept help from you, and I certainly will.’ She added: ‘And so will Jack.’

  ‘Where is Jack?’

  It was always a mystery what Jack did with his day. With his life, really.

  ‘Walking the streets looking for her. A wonderfully wasteful way of passing the time.’ It said something about their relationship that Anny’s tone was amused rather than censorious.

  ‘You don’t really think Kate will kill Harry?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anny shortly. ‘I do think.’ Then she sat down and momentarily covered her face with her hands. ‘ No, no, of course not. She is my darling child and I cannot think she will kill anyone. But I do fear something violent and terrible happening.’ Her eyes met Charmian’s with fear. ‘I think he may kill Kate. I’m sure he is violent with her. I saw bruises on her arms.’

  ‘Did you ask about them?’

  ‘She said it was an accident, that she slipped. I didn’t believe it. The bruises were wrong.’

  ‘Any marks on him? Bruises? Scratches?’

  ‘None I’ve seen.’

  ‘She might have been telling the truth then.’

  ‘You know he made her go to a blood donor session and watch him give blood. I didn’t like that somehow.’

  ‘We ought to find them,’ said Charmian, uneasily. Perhaps Jack had the right idea after all. He often did have good ideas but never seemed to know what to do with them. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I have a couple of mates in the local outfit.’ And there was Humphrey, but he was better left out of it.

  ‘Right,’ said Anny gratefully. ‘Come and have supper with us tonight and help me calm Jack down.’

  But Charmian refused. ‘I won’t, thanks, love, I’ve got to work.’ She had things to attend to and wanted to get on with them. Work had to be pushed forward. She wasn’t here on a holiday, even if it felt like one sometimes.

  ‘I saw a bowl of yours today, Anny,’ she said. ‘Early red period, I thought. A real beauty. One of your best.’

  At last she had raised a smile. ‘I know where that was. Molly’s been a good customer. She knows what she’s buying, too.’

  ‘It’s being a success, then, this outfit in Wellington Yard?’

  Anny nodded. ‘Yes. I get a lot of people dropping in. Sometimes just tourists but sometimes serious buyers. And I’ve had good publicity locally. I took a stall at the Windsor Horse Show. Very good spot near the Harrods tent and opposite Garrards. I’m doing the same at the Fair in the Great Park. Of course you pay for it.’

  Then she added thoughtfully, ‘In fact the whole thing costs me an arm and a leg.’

  Charmian turned to go. She hated that phrase.

  There were historical reasons, to do with a bomb, why she disliked it. ‘ Don’t say it,’ she said briefly. ‘I once saw someone without an arm and a leg. It wasn’t nice.’

  Charmian walked up the two flights of stairs to her own rooms: a large sitting-room overlooking the Yard, bedroom with the bathroom leading off it, and a tiny kitchen.

  Muff leapt at her, demanding attention, food and then freedom in a loud persuasive voice. Charmian gave her the food, a dish of her favourite hard tack in the form of little fish-shaped biscuits. Muff bit into them crisply and neatly, then requested more.

  ‘No, you greedy creature. They swell up inside you if you give them time. Have a good drink of water.’

  Rebuffed, the cat took up a position against the door with a view to escaping as soon as it was opened.

  Charmian ignored her; she knew a trick worth two of that. ‘I’ll deal with you, madam, when I go out.’ She would be going out. She was always amused how accurately Muff read her intentions. She signalled it somehow. Probably something in the way she moved around the room.

  She took off her dress and hung it carefully on a padded hanger, then changed her shoes for soft, easy-to-walk-in flatties, fortunately very fashionable as well this year. The person she was going to see judged you by what you wore. Then she put on a cotton skirt and loose jacket in a cloudy coral shade. With her red hair it should not have suited her, but it did. Then she tucked her notebook in her big shoulder-bag and looked around the room, checking. She did this automatically before she went out so that she’d know if anything was disturbed when she came back. It never had been so far. Why should it? She was just an innocent student doing research.

  ‘Bye, Muff. Look after yourself. I’m off to work.’

  She worked in various places and at different hours of the day, no set routine, round the clock if she felt the need, certainly odd hours. Sometimes she was to be found in the library of the university, and she had a ticket to read in the British Library, but today her work was taking her in a different direction. A lot of her research involved talking to people and asking questions. She was going to meet someone now.

  Gently removing Muff’s fat body and placing it on a chair, she was out of the door with speed, just beating Muff to the exit by a whisker.

  Then she ran down the stairs.

  Anny and Jack were sitting at supper, but Anny could see through the window. She paused in a mouthful of chicken casserole.

  ‘There she goes. She thinks I don’t know she’s up to something but I do. I know her.’

  Charmian had caught a glimpse of Anny and Jack as she sped down the stairs and across the yard. Something in their closeness and the way Jack had his arm on Anny’s shoulder made her envy them. Jack was a bastard in many ways, idle even if not exactly lazy, living on Anny’s money. Passing his days writing music that no one ever performed for films that never got made, he was a loving if ineffectual husband and parent. But their relationship held together, the strands sometimes worn thin, sometimes thorny, full of the prick of past quarrels, but they never broke.

  Clever Anny.

  She’s still a human being, thought Charmian, and I am not. I have succeeded at my job, but the price that I have to pay is that I am a little separated from my kind.

  It made for a kind of loneliness.

  The Yard was not a place to be lonely in, however, so it might provide her with a starting point to rejoin the human race. Although evening was coming on, there was plenty of activity.

  Charmian could see Jerome and his assistant Elspeth at work on a display of Anny’s pots in his window. Jerome admired Anny’s work, and had two huge pots of hers, full of green things growing, at his shop door. After only two weeks and one day in Wellington Yard as a resident she knew how it depended on Jerome. He was so practical. If a fuse went, Jerome fixed it; if a drain blocked, Jerome unblocked it. If you had to get somewhere in a hurry unexpectedly, then Jerome acted as taxi. All this as well as running his own business and looking after his small son. Whether he was a widower or divorced, Charmian did not know and Anny had not said. Be a rash wife who got rid of Jerome, Charmian felt, he was so useful. Dear little Elspeth was his perfect assistant who never seemed to mind odd hours, who looked after the baby when he was busy and was always cheerful. Elspeth had a slim body with a tiny waist and more of a bosom than you would have expected given her other
measurements. She seemed mildly proud of this attribute. From Anny who had it from Jerome, she knew that Elspeth’s husband was a sailor on the North Sea oil-rig run, ferrying supplies, and that she worked because she was lonely. He was looking for a land-based job and then she would give up work.

  She gave a wave to Jerome and Elspeth and got a wave back. The baker’s shop and the dairy looked quiet and dark but she knew from experience that there was probably work going on behind the shutters. In the early morning she would smell new bread.

  A quick turn right into Peascod Street, then another quick turn and she was passing the Robertsons’ shop where she bought her newspapers. They also sold chocolates and cigarettes and she remembered that the person she was visiting liked a present.

  Mr and Mrs Robertson were both in the shop. So was Infant Robertson, some few months, sex unknown to Charmian, asleep in a pram. Also, in the back shop, sitting round a table eating high tea were Lindy, Alec, Peter and Essie, the four other little Robertsons. She had heard tell that there were other Robertsons, older and little seen.

  Charmian explained what she wanted. ‘Do you know those cigarettes packed in coloured papers, blue, mauve, pink and red?’

  These had been Baby’s favourites. ‘My smokes,’ she had called them.

  ‘Are they a bit scented?’ Bessie Robertson was plump, and pretty in spite of her family responsibilities which seemed to weigh lightly upon her shoulders. Her husband always looked more worried, no doubt with reason.

  ‘I remember them. Haven’t seen them around for a long time. Oh, four years or so.’