by Penny Kline
‘Not as such.’ He crossed to a filing cabinet, pulling open one of the drawers and taking out a thick folder of notes.
‘Any chance of the two of you getting back together again?’ I said. ‘Not that it’s anything to do with me. I was just thinking about Stuart.’
He had his back to me. ‘I know you were,’ he said.
*
I phoned Chris. It rang for a long time and when she answered she was still talking to one of the kids. ‘It’s broken. I said — it’s broken! Yes. What?’
Was she speaking to me? ‘It’s Anna.’
‘I know that.’ In the background someone was making a noise like the mating croak of a natterjack toad. ‘If you’re ringing to find out more about that bod who does photography forget it. It was Bruce told me and I wasn’t even listening properly. Anyway he’d only heard of Walter Bury, never met him. Actually it was just a way of trying to lure you round to the house. I’m bloody bored, can’t you come now?’
‘Soon. I promise. Listen, you know that friend of yours who adopted a baby not long ago. How much do they go into the parents’ backgrounds?’
‘Why? You’re not thinking of … No, I don’t blame you. They were interviewed dozens of times — well, at least six — and the social worker talked to relatives and had a look at the house and where the baby was going to sleep and all that kind of crap. Anyway you don’t need me to tell you the procedure.’
‘But they can’t find out everything — about the adoptive parents.’
‘No, of course not.’ She broke off to yell up the stairs, threatening someone with no television and nothing to eat for a week. ‘Why should they unearth all the skeletons in the wretched people’s whatsits? The most Godawful people have kids without anyone asking for references or making them fill in questionnaires. Anyway why d’you want to know?’
*
Lynsey and Thomas were playing boules on the lawn. Thomas was complaining that she had thrown the jack into a patch of rough grass and Lynsey was laughing as she tossed a heavy metal ball in the air.
‘No good making excuses. Let’s face it, you’re hopeless at ball games, too uncoordinated.’
Presumably she had completed her duties for the morning — or perhaps one of them was keeping Thomas amused. I had no idea how many hours she worked but the house seemed to have become a second home for her and if all she had was a small badly furnished room in Southville I could understand why. The two of them seemed such unlikely companions, Lynsey so wild and uncontrolled, with her black clothes and white-blonde hair, Thomas so neat and silent, dressed in red shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of Rupert the Bear. These days most boys his age wore great baggy trousers, covered in pockets, and oversize trainers with the laces trailing on the ground — or was it just the ones who lived near me? I couldn’t see Thomas fitting into the local comprehensive but for all I knew Sandy and Geraldine had different plans altogether. A place at the cathedral choir school, or was he already too old?
The sky had cleared but thundery showers were forecast for later in the day. My shirt stuck to my back uncomfortably and a horsefly bite on my ankle had swollen up and started to itch.
‘Talking about you,’ said Lynsey. A long piece of dried grass stuck out of her mouth and her hands were smeared with earth.
‘Oh, yes?’
She grinned but said nothing. Thomas wandered away in the direction of the garden shed.
‘Funny kid,’ said Lynsey. ‘I read in a magazine that shyness is just being selfish, thinking about yourself instead of other people. Cobblers. People can’t help being shy. Anyway, how many people d’you know who don’t spend most of their time thinking about themselves?’
‘He’s not shy with you.’
‘Ah, that’s ’cos I understand him.’
‘Good. His mother asked me to give him a message. Time for his music practice.’
‘It’s the holidays. Anyway I have to go to the shops in a minute so he can do it then.’
‘You work here every day now, do you?’
‘Just do whatever’s needed. Sandy tells me what’s wanted — or Geraldine. Mostly it’s Sandy, before he leaves for that cottage of his. I’d like a place like that, out in the country, miles from anywhere with no one to tell you to turn the sound down.’
‘You’ve seen the cottage?’
‘What? Sandy says it’s up the end of a lane with the next house nearly half a mile away. He’s all right, is Sandy.’
‘I thought you hated all men.’
She laughed. She seemed in good spirits, excited. Her black shorts looked as if they had been hacked at with a pair of blunt nail scissors. She was wearing a man’s white shirt with a fraying collar and the sleeves rolled up. Most of the buttons were missing and she had nothing on underneath.
‘Thomas isn’t what you think,’ she said. ‘Just ’cos he’s little for his age doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Ah, that’d be telling.’
I turned towards the house but she called me back. ‘Proud, aren’t you? I was going to say if you’d give me a chance.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t think you should if it’s something you were told in confidence.’ She came closer and lowered her voice. ‘Anyway I expect you know already — about him being adopted. Only like you’re s’posed to tell kids when they’re little, not just let them find out by mistake.’
I glanced towards the shed. ‘Thomas isn’t adopted, whoever told you that?’
‘He overheard them. They was having a row, thought he was tucked up in bed, only like he was listening outside the door.’
‘I expect he misunderstood. Children often fantasize about such things.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘It tends to happen round about the age they start to have mixed feelings about their parents. I expect it’s something to do with Chloe’s adoption. The idea appeals to him, makes him seem more mysterious.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘You heard about Dean?’ she asked.
‘What about him?’
‘No, I mean d’you know anything, is he going to court and that? S’pose I ought to see Deb but I should think I’m the last person … ’
‘I’m sure she’d like to see you.’
‘You reckon?’ She looked at me with her head on one side and the silly smile that seemed designed to invite people to treat her like a troublemaking adolescent. ‘I heard Bryan Sealey,’ she said, ‘on the phone, checking up on Helen.’
‘You and Thomas seem to be good at eavesdropping.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said angrily. ‘I was in the kitchen mopping those horrible stone tiles. He asked if there was any news.’
‘How d’you know who he was talking about?’ I should have walked away, told her to mind her own business. ‘How d’you know he was talking about Helen?’
‘They don’t get on, can’t stand the sight of each other. Fancy letting people adopt a baby when they’ll most likely be divorced in a year or two. Anyway, I reckon she’s a nutcase, not fit to look after a little kid. And another thing … ’ She smiled to herself, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. ‘No, I shouldn’t break a confidence, should I, although I was thinking of telling that nice Sergeant Whittle.’
‘Telling him what?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, things, just things. Anyway I might join the police one day, reckon I’d make a good policewoman, don’t you?’
*
Rona called to me as I was passing the kitchen window. When I walked through the open door she was bent double, reaching into a cupboard under the sink unit. She straightened up, holding a sponge in her hand, staring at it as though she had forgotten what she needed it for. ‘Want that cup of tea I promised or do your sort only drink coffee?’
‘Tea would be good.’
‘Right you are.’ She was dressed in a brown skirt, made of some stiff canvas-like material, and a green hand-knitted jumper with a pattern
of holes round the neck. She looked hot but more cheerful than the last time we had met. Perhaps talking about her sister had made her feel a little better.
‘You could have a sandwich,’ she said, ‘but there’s only ham and it’s dry at the edges.’
‘No thanks, just tea would be fine.’
‘That Lynsey,’ she said, opening the fridge and taking out a thick earthenware jug, ‘I’ve got used to her rough tongue but there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on, she makes me uneasy.’
‘She’s harmless enough,’ I said, wondering who I was reassuring, Rona or myself. ‘Know anything about her background?’
‘Very little. She lived in London.’
‘Yes, I know that much. Did quite well at school then dropped out like so many of them do these days, ruined her chances. If you ask me she missed out during the early years. Nothing anyone can do later makes up for it, the lack of love and affection at a time the child can’t put its misery into words.’
I nodded. ‘I’ve just been reading a book about that very subject.’
‘Oh, books.’ She turned her back on me and I cursed myself for coming out with the one remark guaranteed to cut short whatever she was going to say next.
‘Lynsey’s fond of animals.’ I started to tell her about the incident with the ducklings, but she made no comment and I was not even sure if she was listening. She still had her back turned and was busy spooning tea into a teapot. Suddenly she sat down heavily and the look of desperation I had noticed before returned to her face.
‘Is something the matter?’
When she didn’t answer I crossed to the draining board and finished making the tea. She was breathing hard, sitting bolt upright with her hands resting on the table, exceptionally large hands, with shiny knuckles. I thought about how she had watched Dean Koenig opening the wrong door, desperate to escape, then given him a shove in the small of the back and locked him into the utility room.
‘You’re still grieving for your sister?’ I said, assuming that was why she looked so distraught, why she had invited me into the flat.
She shook her head. ‘No, no you’ve got it all wrong. Oh, why do we do these things? What’s the matter with us, why can’t we use the brains God gave us?’
In a room at the back of the house the baby was starting to wake from her morning rest. A series of hiccuping noises were followed by louder sounds which would soon turn into wails. Rona seemed not to have heard.
‘Shall I fetch her?’ I said, remembering how Chris’s youngest, if left to yell, turned purple in the face and had to be comforted for up to half an hour.
‘What?’ She stared at me blankly. ‘Oh, yes, if you like.’
The passage was dark, airless, but it was better in the nursery where a window, with a chicken-wire frame to keep out neighbouring cats, had been left wide open. When I lifted Chloe out of her cot I expected her to protest loudly, but she showed no surprise that a virtual stranger had appeared in her room. Perhaps she recognized me, perhaps babies took in more than I imagined.
The cot was a new one, supplied by Sandy no doubt, with a yellow sheet and a matching blanket that was folded at one end. On the wall above a picture of four rag dolls sitting on a shelf had slipped to one side. I straightened it with my free hand, taking in the general decor, the yellow light shade with its pattern of brown teddy bears, and suspended from one end of the cot another bear with its head sticking out of a shiny brown honey pot. When I pulled the string that hung from the bottom of the toy a jangling tune began to unwind. If you go down to the woods today you’d better go in disguise. If you go down to the woods … As the sound started to fade I turned and saw Rona standing in the doorway.
‘The bedding doesn’t get soaked through like it used to,’ she said flatly, ‘not these days, not with the new disposable nappies.’
‘That must save a lot of bother.’ Automatically I felt the baby’s lower half She looked up at me and smiled — she had two tiny front teeth — and I smiled back, remembering how some psychologists had tried to condition babies by smiling at them, then realized it was the other way round: the babies were conditioning the psychologists.
‘She needs a bath,’ said Rona. ‘I’ll do it this evening. Biddy used to love her bath. Hated having her hair washed, though. I had to bribe her with chocolate buttons popped in her mouth between rinsings.’
‘You must miss her,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but what did she die of?’
‘Oh, didn’t I say? She was killed — in an accident.’
‘How dreadful.’ I had assumed Biddy’s condition meant that she had not been expected to live beyond a certain age.
‘The mini-bus,’ said Rona. ‘They’d gone to Hastings for the day, an afternoon by the sea.’ She paused to make sure I was listening properly and not playing with the baby. ‘On the way back a lorry jack-knifed across their path. I suppose the bus driver didn’t react quickly enough.’
‘Perhaps he had no chance.’
She ignored this. ‘I used to read to her, you know, every evening between seven and half past, it was the only time I insisted the television was switched off. The Secret Garden. The Little Princess. I doubt she took in much but I enjoyed it.’ She stared through the window, her jaw clenching and unclenching. ‘Anger,’ she said, rubbing the side of her face, ‘love’s supposed to be the great motivating force, but it’s anger that makes you strong.’ Then the tension seemed to leave her body and she turned towards Chloe.
‘She’s a pretty baby, isn’t she? Helen’s afraid she’ll turn out to be plain. You know what she and Bryan are like, always assessing people for their physical characteristics as though they were dogs at a show. Smooth-coated hounds. Roughhaired bitches.’ She touched the baby’s cheek. ‘Seems to have taken a fancy to you.’
‘She’s sweet.’
Rona snorted. ‘Better have one of your own, then. Better not leave it too late.’ She thought for a moment, running her finger up and down the baby’s leg. ‘When I criticize Helen I don’t mean it, you know, it’s just … if you love someone you don’t have to pretend they’re perfect. D’you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bryan’s very attractive, isn’t he? Oh not his looks, his personality, and that’s much more important in a man. People used to wonder why Helen married him but I knew. He made her feel safe, secure. At the time I was convinced he was the answer to her prayers.’
Chapter Thirteen
Pam was poking a stick into the drain at the front of the house. Ernest watched from the window, calling instructions. ‘You’ll need something longer than that. If you can’t get it clear you’ll have to buy some caustic soda.’
Pam looked at me and winked. ‘No problem, just full of leaves and muck, happens regularly. I try to do it without him seeing or he gets in a fuss.’
‘Let’s have a go.’ I took the rod from her hand and started jabbing through the metal grid. ‘Pam, I was meaning to ask, you don’t know someone called Colin Elliot, do you?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Should I? An actor, is he?’
‘No, nothing like that. He lives near here, somewhere off Clifton Vale. Only a friend mentioned him and I just wondered if — ’
‘What does he look like?’
‘I don’t know. Middle aged, maybe a little older.’
‘There’s no one of that name comes to the Centre.’ She was talking about the community hall where coffee mornings and various other events were held each week. ‘Isn’t he in the telephone book?’
I turned round and shook my head, and whatever was blocking the drain suddenly gave way, allowing the filthy water to rush through the hole with a satisfying gurgle.
‘Janos might know him,’ said Pam, ‘the trouble is round here people move house such a lot it’s difficult to get to know your neighbours.’
I crossed the road and knocked on Janos’s door but there was no reply. If the newsagent in Hotwell Road had never heard
of a Colin Elliot I would give up and leave well alone. In any case, what did I expect to find out that Howard Fry wouldn’t have discovered already? Even if someone told me where Elliot lived I could hardly knock on his door and ask him to tell me everything he knew about Walter Bury.
Outside the newsagent’s Aaron stood wagging his tail as he sniffed round the bottom of a rubbish bin. His lead had been attached to a hook in the wall. Inside the shop I could see Janos talking animatedly to the old woman behind the counter and a moment later he came out, carrying his copy of the Daily Express and a large Danish pastry sticking out of a paper bag.
‘Janos, I was looking for you.’
‘Good, I do not see you for days.’ He started to cross the road and I followed, dodging dangerously between two cars coming in opposite directions.
‘What’s the hurry? You’re cross with me. I’ve been meaning to call round but — ‘
‘Not you, Anna, one of my tenants. I had such hopes for him but now he lets me down. So stupid, breaking into a parked car and taking a doctor’s bag.’
‘The doctor shouldn’t have left it there.’
‘You want to blame the doctor? Ah well, you lose some, you win some. How is your holiday? How is the lady you try to help?’
Janos had Aaron to pull him up the steep hill. I was having trouble keeping up. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you don’t happen to know someone called Colin Elliot?’
‘Colin? You heard then. Terrible thing. Terrible shock.’
‘What? What happened?’
‘Knocked down yesterday evening crossing the bottom of Hope Chapel Hill. One of those joyrider people. Ought to be put inside for life.’
‘Was he … ’ I could hardly bear to ask. ‘No, but his leg, I doubt it’ll be the same ever again. Perhaps he must walk with a stick.’
Walking through the shopping galleries, searching for get-well cards for Rosie and Jack, I caught a glimpse of Bryan Sealey coming up the escalator with a girl dressed in a long brown skirt, a brilliant orange shirt, and enormous dark glasses. She was very small, not much over five feet, so that although she was in front of Bryan on the escalator their heads were level. She turned to face him and I couldn’t see the expression on her face but Bryan looked strained, worried.
