She's Out

by La Plante, Lynda

  A motorway had been built close to the edge of the lane leading to the manor, cutting off the house from the main road. Now the only access was down a small slip road that had been left, like the house, to rot, with deep potholes that made any journey hazardous. The rusted, wrought-iron gates were hanging off their hinges, and the chain threaded through them with the big padlock hung limply as if no one would want to enter.

  The Range Rover bumped and banged along the lane, dipping into one deep rut after another as it made its slow journey towards the house. The grass verges were spreading on to the lane, the hedges either side hiding the fields and grazing cows.

  Ester Freeman swore as the Range Rover dipped badly; it was even worse than the last time she’d been there. She was a handsome woman in her late forties, but the dark hair scraped back from her chiselled features made her look hard, and as she drove she clenched her teeth with fury. She was five feet six, slender and always looked good in clothes. A smart dresser, who wore good designer labels, there was an elegance to her that belied and covered a toughness that even her well-modulated voice sometimes couldn’t disguise. She continued to swear as the Range Rover splashed through yet another water-filled pothole. The muddy puddles splashed water over the wheels and sides of the vehicle as it lurched down the lane.

  Sitting beside Ester, Julia Lawson stared non-committally, at the lane. She was much younger than Ester and taller, almost six feet, with a strong, rangy body accentuated by her jeans and leather jacket. She wore beat-up old cowboy boots and a mannish denim shirt, and there was an arrogance to her face that was at times attractive, at other times plain. Unlike Ester, Julia had a deep, melodic, cultured voice. She, too, swore as they bounced along. ‘Jesus Christ, Ester, slow down. You’re chucking everything over the back of the car!’

  Ester paid no attention as she heaved on the handbrake. Julia watched as she slammed out and crossed to the old wrought iron gates. She didn’t even need a key to open the padlock – she just wrenched it loose and pushed back the old gates.

  As they drove up the Manor House driveway, Julia laughed. ‘My God, I think it needs a demolition crew.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Ester snapped, as they veered round a hole.

  ‘You know, I don’t think they’ll find it.’

  ‘They’ll find it, I gave them each a map. Don’t be so negative. She’s out today, Julia. Come on, move it!’

  Julia followed Ester slowly out of the car and looked around, shaking her head. She stepped back as a front doorstep crumbled beneath her boot. ‘You know, it looks unsafe.’

  ‘It’s been standing for over a hundred years so it’s not likely to fall down now. Get the bags out.’

  Julia looked back to the piles of suitcases and bulging black bin liners in the back of the Range Rover and ignored her request, following Ester into the manor.

  The hallway was dark and forbidding: the William Morris wallpaper hung in damp speckled flaps from the carved cornices and there were stacks of old newspapers and broken bottles everywhere. The old wooden reception desk was dusty, the key-rack behind it devoid of keys and hanging almost off the wall. Even the chandelier above their heads looked as if it was ready to crash down.

  Their feet echoed in the marble hall as Ester opened one door after another. The smell of must and mildew hung in the air, chilling them immediately.

  ‘You’ll never get it ready in time, Ester.’

  Ester marched into the drawing room, shouting over her shoulder, ‘Yes, I will, and there’s enough of us to help me out.’

  Julia picked up the dust-covered telephone. She looked surprised. The phone’s connected,’ she called to Ester.

  Ester stood looking around the drawing room: old-fashioned sofas and wing-backed chairs, threadbare carpet and china cabinets. The massive open stone fireplace was still filled with cinders. ‘I had it connected,’ she snapped as she began to draw back the draped velvet curtains. They hung half off their rings and she turned her face away as dust spiralled down – four years of it, maybe more. Even when Ester had occupied the place no one was ever that interested in dusting.

  The Grange Health Farm had been defunct when Ester bought the manor with all its contents, but she had no ideas about refurbishing the old house as it was a perfect cover for her real profession. All Ester had done was spread a few floral displays around the main rooms and brought in fourteen girls, a chef, a domestic and two muscle-bound blokes in the event of trouble. The Grange Health Farm reopened, and for men who wanted a massage, Ester would provide that with a sauna, but her clients mostly wanted a lot more physical contact – and Ester provided that too … at a price.

  ‘We should have started weeks ago,’ Julia said, as she lolled in the doorway, looking around with undisguised distaste.

  ‘Well, I didn’t, so we’re gonna have to work like the clappers,’ Ester snapped again, then looked up to the chandelier, trying the light switch. Two of the eighteen bulbs flickered on.

  ‘Bravo, the electricity’s on as well,’ laughed Julia.

  Ester glared around the room. ‘We’ll clean this room, the dining room and a few bedrooms. Then that’s it, we won’t need to do any more.’

  ‘Really,’ Julia smiled.

  Ester pushed past her, wiping her dusty hands, and Julia followed her back into the hall, watching as she banged open shutters. One almost fell on top of her and she kicked out at it.

  The dining room was in the same condition but with empty bottles and glasses smashed on the floor and littered on the table. Ester was flicking on lights, dragging back curtains, cursing all the time. But she seemed to deflate when she saw the wrecked kitchen, broken crockery and more smashed bottles. ‘Shit! I’d forgotten how bad it was.’

  ‘I hadn’t. I told you this was a crazy idea from the start.’

  Ester crossed to the back door. She unlocked it, pushing it open to get the stench of old wine and rotten food out of the kitchen.

  ‘Must have been some party,’ Julia mused.

  ‘It was,’ Ester said, as she looked at the big black rubbish bags bursting at the seams.

  ‘Surprised the rats haven’t been in here.’

  ‘They have,’ Ester said, as she looked at the droppings.

  Julia pulled a disgusted face. Ester became even more irate, pushing past her into the hallway.

  ‘Don’t just bloody stand there, help me.’ Ester stood in the darkened, musty-smelling hall – even the oak panels had lost all lustre from the damp that crept from every corner. She hadn’t realized just how bad the place was. When she and Julia had visited a few weeks earlier, there had been no electricity and they had arrived at dusk. Ester sighed: it had been some party, all right. There used to be one every night but she had not been able to see the last one through to the end. She had been arrested along with her girls. She reckoned most of the damage had been done by the few who were left behind or who had even returned when they knew she had been sentenced, come back to grab whatever they could. A lot of the rooms looked as if they been stripped of anything of value.

  She had not bothered to come to see the damage before; she knew the bank held the deeds as collateral for her debts. She had dismissed the place from her mind until she got the news that Dolly Rawlins was going to be released. Then she had begun thinking – and thinking fast: just how could she use the old Grange Manor House to her benefit? Now she began to doubt she could ever get it ready in time.

  Julia strolled to the back door and looked out into the stableyard. The old doors were hanging off their hinges and even more rubbish and rubble were piled up.

  Ester began banging open one bedroom door after another. Every room stank of mildew, and some of the beds were still as when the occupants had rolled out of them. In a few rooms clothes and dirty underwear lay discarded on the floor.

  Julia walked up the old wide staircase, where there was more peeling wallpaper; her hands were black from the dust when she had rested them on the rail. On the previous visit they’d used candles
to have a quick look over the place. Now, in daylight, it was even worse than Julia remembered.

  Ester appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Go and get the cases.’

  ‘You’re not serious, are you, Ester? We’ll never get it ready in time. This is madness.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’ve already laid out cash for a bloody Roller and a chauffeur so we’ll just get down to it, and the others will be here to give us a hand. There’s caterers, florists … I’m not losing cash I’ve laid out, so we just get started.’

  Julia sat on the stairs and began to roll a cigarette. ‘So, you gonna tell me who you’ve invited for this celebration?’

  Ester looked down at her. Sometimes she wanted to slap her – she could be so laid-back.

  ‘You don’t know them all. There’s Connie Stevens, Kathleen O’Reilly, and I’ve asked that little black girl, Angela, to act as a maid.’

  Julia laughed. ‘She’s gonna be wearing a pinny and hat, is she?’

  Ester pursed her lips. ‘Don’t start with the sarcasm. We need them, and they all knew Dolly.’

  Julia looked up at her. ‘They all inside with her like us?’

  ‘Not Angela, but the others. And I don’t want you to start yelling but Gloria Radford’s coming.’

  Julia stood up. ‘You joking?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Well, count me out. I can’t stand that demented cow. I spent two years in a cell with her and I’m not going to spend time outside with her. What the hell did you rope her into it for?

  ‘Because we might need her, and she knows Dolly.’

  Julia began to walk down the stairs in a fury. ‘She reads aloud from the newspapers, she drove me crazy, I nearly killed her. I’m out of here.’

  ‘Fine, you go. I don’t give a shit if you do, but it’s a long walk to the station.’

  Julia looked up. ‘Gloria Radford on board and this is a fiasco before we even start. She’s cheap, she’s coarse, she’s got the mental age of a ten-year-old.’

  ‘So, are you so special, Doctor? We needed as many of us as I could get, Julia, and I needed ones that were as desperate as us. Now, are you staying or are you going?’

  Julia lit her roll-up and shrugged. ‘I’m leaving.’

  Ester moved down the stairs. ‘Fine, you fuck off, then, and don’t think you’ll get a cut of anything I get. You walk out now, I’ll never see you again. I mean it, we’re through.’

  Julia hesitated, looked back to Ester, standing at the top of the stairs. Her wonderful face, her dark eyes, now blazing with anger, made her heart jump. She knew she’d be staying. She couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing or touching Ester. She was in love with her.

  ‘I’ll get the cases but don’t ask me to be nice to that midget.’

  Ester smiled, and headed back to the bedroom. The only person you’ve got to be nice to is Dolly Rawlins.’

  Julia got to the front door. ‘What if she doesn’t come, Ester? Ester?’

  Ester reappeared, leaning on the banister rail. ‘Oh, she’ll come, Julia, I know it. She’ll be here. She’s got nobody else.’

  Julia gave a small nod and walked out to the car. She began to collect all the cases and boxes, then paused a moment as she looked over the grounds. There was a sweet peacefulness to the place. She was suddenly reminded of her childhood, of the garden at her old family home. She had been given her own pony and suddenly she remembered cantering across the fields. She had been happy then … it seemed a lifetime ago.

  The bedroom Ester chose for Dolly was spacious, with a double bed and white dressing table. Even though the carpet was stained, the curtains didn’t look too bad, and with a good polish and hoover, a few bowls of flowers, it would be good enough. After all, she had spent the last eight years in a cell. This would be like a palace in comparison.

  Julia appeared at the door. ‘You know, we could call the local job centre if they’ve got one here, get a bunch of kids to start helping us. What do you think?’

  Ester was dragging off the dirty bed linen. ‘Go and call them. We’ll have to pay them, though. How are you off for cash?’

  ‘I’ve got a few quid.’

  Ester suddenly gave a wondrous smile. ‘We’ll be rich soon, Julia. We’ll never have to scrabble around for another cent.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘Why are you always such a downer? I know she’s got those diamonds, I know it …’

  ‘Maybe she has, maybe she hasn’t. And maybe, just maybe, she won’t want us to have a cut of them.’

  Ester gathered the dirty sheets in her arms. ‘There’ll be no maybes. I’ve worked over more people than you’ve had hot dinners, and I’ll work her over. I promise you, we’ll get to those diamonds, two million quid’s worth, Julia. Just thinking about it gives me an orgasm.’

  Julia laughed. ‘I’ll go call a job centre. This our bedroom, is it?’

  ‘No, this one’s for Dolly.’

  Ester patted the bed, then sat down and smiled. Just thinking of how rich she was going to be made her feel good, safer.

  Mike Withey looked over the newspaper cuttings. They were yellow with age, some torn from constantly being unfolded, and one had a picture of Shirley Miller, Mike’s sister. It was a photograph from some job she had done as a model, posed and airbrushed. The same photograph was in a big silver frame on the sideboard, this time in colour. Blonde hair, wide blue eyes that always appeared to follow you around the room, as if she was trying to tell you something. She had been twenty-one years of age when she had been shot, and even to this day Mike was still unable to believe that his little blue-eyed sweetheart sister had been involved in a robbery. He had been stationed in Germany when he received the hysterical call from his mother, Audrey. It had been hard to make out what she was saying, as she alternated between sobs and rantings, but there was one name he would never forget, one sentence. ‘It was Dolly Rawlins, it was her, it was all her fault.’

  The following year Mike married Susan, the daughter of a sergeant major. His mother was not invited to the wedding. Their first son was born before he left Germany and his second child was on the way when he was given a posting to Ireland. By this stage he was a sergeant; Audrey wasn’t even told about his promotion. He had sent her a few postcards, wedding pictures and baby photographs. Susan was worried about him being stationed in Ireland and, being heavily pregnant with a toddler to look after and hardly knowing a soul because all her friends were in Germany, she persuaded Mike to quit the army. He was reluctant at first, having signed up at seventeen: it was the only life he knew. It had been his salvation, it had educated him and, most importantly, given him a direction and discipline lacking in his own home.

  Mike’s second son was born on the day he found out that he had been accepted by the Metropolitan Police. He never felt he had traded one uniform for another; he had ambitions and with the excellent recommendations from his CO, it was felt that Mike Withey was a recruit worth keeping an eye on. He proved them right: he was intelligent, hard-working, intuitive and well liked. Mike became a ‘high-flyer’, an officer a lot of the guys joked about because he never missed an opportunity of furthering his career prospects. No sooner was a new course pinned up on the board than he would be the first to apply. It was the many courses, the weekends away at special training colleges, that made Susan, now coping with two toddlers, suggest that Mike should contact his mother again, not just for company but because she hoped Audrey could give her a hand or even babysit. Mike’s refusal resulted in a big argument. Susie felt his boys had a right to know their grandmother as her own parents were still in Germany.

  Mike took a few more weeks to mull it over. He might have been honest with Susan about his younger brother Gregg, who had been in trouble with the law, but he had not disclosed to her that his sister was Shirley Ann Miller, killed in an abortive robbery. It had been easy for him to cover it because they all had different fathers, different surnames. He was unsure if his mother had ever divorced or married e
ach one, they had never discussed it, and his father had left when he was as young as his eldest boy was now.

  Audrey was working on the fruit and veg stall when Mike turned up as a customer, asking for a pound of Granny Smith apples. She was just as he remembered her, all wrapped up, fur-lined boots, headscarf, woollen mittens with their fingers cut off.

  ‘Well, hello, stranger. You want three or four? If it’s four it’ll be over the pound.’ She took each apple, dropping it into the open brown-paper bag, trying not to cry, not to show Mike how pleased she was to see him. She wanted to shout out to the other stallholders, ‘This is my son. I told yer he’d come back, didn’t I?’ She had always been a tough one, never showed her feelings. It had taken years of practice – get kicked hard enough and in the end it comes naturally. She didn’t even touch his hand, just twisted the paper bag at the corners. ‘There you go, love. Fancy a cuppa, do you?’

  He had not expected to feel so much, not expected to hurt inside so much as she pushed him into the same council flat in which he had been brought up. No recriminations, no questions, talking nineteen to the dozen about people she thought he might remember, who had died on the market stalls, who had got married, who had been banged up. She never stopped talking as she chucked off her coat, kicked off the boots and busied herself making tea.

  She still chattered on, shouting to him from the kitchen, as he saw all his postcards, the photo of his wedding, his boys, laid out on top of the mantelshelf, pinned into the sides of the fake gilt mirror. There had been a few changes: new furniture, curtains, wallpaper and some awful pictures from one of the stalls.