She's Out

by La Plante, Lynda

  Chapter 15

  Jim hugged Connie tightly. He was feeling very drunk but not yet as drunk as Connie had hoped. He’d had three pints in the pub and one and a half bottles of wine at his home, plus two of Dolly’s sleeping tablets and he was still rapping, his face flushed, his eyes unfocused, but no way was he about to pass out.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, hanging his head.

  ‘I love you too,’ she lied.

  ‘You do? Is that the truth?’

  ‘Yeah, I love you, Jim.’

  He stepped back, arms wide. ‘I don’t believe it. You love me?’ She was getting really pissed off with him. Then he got down on his knees at her feet. ‘Listen, I know we haven’t known each other very long but I own this house, I mean, on a mortgage right? But I own it and my car and … you really love me?’ He kissed her hand, getting a bit tearful. She passed him another drink and he gulped it down. ‘I need a drink to do this, I never thought I would, give me another …’ She poured the remains of the bottle into his glass and he swallowed that too, still on his knees. ‘Will you marry me?’ He looked up into her face as he slowly fell forward, his arms clasped around her legs, unable to keep himself upright.

  ‘Jim. Jim?’ She squatted down beside him but he couldn’t open his eyes. He was out for the count. She slipped his duvet around him and put a pillow under his head before searching his pockets, his wallet. Connie searched every drawer and closet but still found nothing as he snored away, now curled up on his side. She was about to give up when she saw a small diary at his bedside. She flicked through it: just the odd memo about dental appointments and mortgage payments but listed at the back was a neat row of numbers. She jotted them down, didn’t know if they meant anything or not, and then replaced the diary, turning off the lights and letting herself out. Jim remained fast asleep on his bedroom floor.

  Connie waited for the late-night bus and had a long walk home at the other end. It was raining and she got soaked, so by the time she let herself into her bedroom she was in a foul mood. She couldn’t sleep straight away because she still felt angry; she was being used, she told herself, almost as much as when she was with Lennie. Well, she wasn’t going to take much more of it. Let one of the others get pawed all over, she was well and truly sick of it. She cuddled her pillow tightly. She even felt a bit sorry for Jim, who’d obviously fallen hard. He’d even asked her to marry him, though whether or not he’d still remember doing so in the morning was another matter.

  Connie tossed and turned, and then felt terribly sad. Jim was the only man in her entire life who had asked her to marry him. She bashed her pillow to get more comfortable, before deciding to make herself a nightcap.

  Connie was surprised to see Ester sitting in the kitchen in a dressing gown, like herself, her hands cupped round a mug of hot chocolate.

  ‘Can’t sleep, huh?’

  Ester shook her head. She hated to admit it but she was jealous: she couldn’t sleep for thinking of Julia being with Norma. ‘You have a good night?’ she asked.

  ‘Depends what you mean by good,’ Connie answered, resting herself against the Aga. ‘I found some numbers listed in his diary. They may be the codes, they may not be, I dunno. He asked me to marry him.’

  Ester looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, funny, isn’t it? He’s a nice guy, and so’s the builder bloke, but all their niceness does is make me miss Lennie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about him.’ She fetched a mug and spooned in some Horlicks.

  ‘Well, you’d better stop bloody thinking of him. You’d better forget he ever existed, even more so after what we all did to get rid of his body.’

  Connie poured hot milk into the mug and stirred it, then joined Ester at the kitchen table. ‘Why is it the bastards of this world mean more than a nice bloke?’

  ‘Because, sweetheart, you’re a sucker.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Course you are. Lennie beat the living daylights out of you.’

  ‘He loved me in his way.’

  ‘What way? Who you kidding? He had you on the game and you call it love? He’s not worth even thinking about – no pimp is.’

  ‘He wasn’t my pimp.’

  ‘Pull the other one and grow up. He pimped for you, wanted you back on the game. That’s why you ran off and left him so don’t start fantasizing that it was all lovey-dovey and he’d have you in a cottage with kids and roses round the garden gate. He was a piece of shit.’

  ‘You didn’t even know him,’ Connie retorted.

  ‘I didn’t have to. Know one, know them all. And you got so used to being his punch bag you—’

  ‘I wasn’t!’

  ‘Yes, you were!’ Ester pushed back her chair and took her dirty mug to the sink, crashing it down on the draining board. ‘You got loving all confused with being smacked, sweetheart. Wallop, I love you. Hit me and it means that you do. Beat me up and it means you love me even more – but then, when he’s got you on all fours, crawling like a dog, he’ll give you one last kick and you’re out, used, abused and your head fucked up.’

  ‘You’d know, would you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ester hissed.

  ‘That why you go with women?’

  Ester slapped Connie’s face hard. Connie sprang to her feet, ready to go back at her, but Ester was too fast, already walking out of the kitchen. ‘You got no right to do that.’

  ‘And you’ve got no right to think you know anything about me. But lemme tell you, I know men, know them better than you, anyone else in this house ever will. Right now you make me sick, moaning about that two-bit punk. We all went out on a limb for you – we fucking buried him! Instead of bleatin’ on about how much he loved you, you should thank Christ he’s out of your life.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, my life’s so much better now, is it?’

  ‘It just might be.’

  Connie followed her to the door. ‘Is it really going ahead, the robbery? I mean, for real?’

  Ester had doubts but right now she was not about to voice them. ‘Go and get back to bed. We’ll all know soon enough.’

  She went upstairs and Connie took her half-finished drink to the sink. She noticed that, as usual, Ester had not washed her mug, or even bothered to rinse it under the tap. For want of something to do, she began to clean around the sink.

  Norma washed up their supper dishes, taking her time as she felt awkward in the strange, rather old-fashioned house, and Julia had been very distant, almost aggressive. Julia’s mother was very ill; the stroke had robbed her of speech and movement, and she lay in her bed, her eyes open wide as if staring directly at the ceiling.

  Julia had been shocked to see her so immobilized and, as a doctor, she had quickly assessed her condition and known instantly she would need round-the-clock nursing. It would be impossible for her to remain alone at the house, even with a housekeeper. She had sat beside her mother for most of the afternoon. She had a lot to say to her, always had, but they had never really talked. Now they never would. Her mother would never speak again. Julia even had to change her as she was incontinent, had washed her as if she were a baby, cleaned the bed and tidied her thinning white hair. She had not said a word but her gentleness was touching. Now she sat staring at the silent figure, knowing a home was the only option left to her as the elderly housekeeper could not be asked to take care of her, and a nurse was out of the question financially.

  Julia held the frail, bony hand. ‘Oh, Mama, we should have talked. I’d have liked you to know who I am but, well, it’s too late now.’

  Norma peeked in. ‘I’ve cleared the dishes and washed around the kitchen. It was a bit grimy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Julia didn’t want to talk to Norma, almost resented her presence.

  Norma crept to the bed and looked at the old woman. She made not a sound, never moved a muscle. There was just the vacant stare at the ceiling.

  ‘You can share the bedroom with me,’ Julia said quietly.

 
Norma whispered that she would go downstairs and watch television, and crept out again. Even her creeping around annoyed Julia – maybe because she herself wanted to scream.

  She began to pack her mother’s nightwear, hairbrushes and toiletries in a small bag, ready for the move. She would arrange a private ambulance in the morning and check all the homes that would take her. She opened and shut drawer after drawer as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the invalid, carrying the garments back and forth to the open case on a low bedside chair. She thought she should perhaps put in some bed jackets or cardigans and started to search through the dressing-table drawers. She saw the newspaper clippings, hidden beneath a fine wool shawl. At first she didn’t think anything of them but then, as she removed the shawl, she couldn’t help but read the headline: ‘Local Doctor in Drug Scandal’.

  Julia’s heart pounded. She sat down on the dressing-table stool and got out the neat stack of clippings. They detailed her arrest for possession of heroin, her charges for selling prescriptions and her trial and sentence. The secret she had so painstakingly kept from her mother, all the years of lying and frantic subterfuge had been a waste of time because all the time she had known.

  She screwed up the clippings into a tight ball and hurled them into the waste bin but it was a while before the anger rose, humiliation uppermost at first, before she raged at what her mother had forced her to do, and she turned to the silent figure in the bed.

  ‘You knew! You knew, all those years, and you never told me, you never talked to me!’

  In the drawing room below, Norma heard the banging and scraping from above and she ran up the narrow staircase. When she got to the bedroom, she stood at the doorway, frightened, as Julia shook her mother’s bed until it rattled, until the old woman seemed about to roll out of it.

  ‘No, Julia! No, stop it! For God’s sake, stop this!’

  Julia then turned her fury on Norma, ready to lash out at her, at anyone who came near her, but Norma was quite able to take care of herself and gripped Julia tightly. ‘Julia, it’s me, it’s Norma, stop this …’

  ‘She knew, Norma. All the years I’ve broken my fucking back keeping it away from her, and she knew.’

  Julia slammed out of the room. Norma didn’t understand what she was talking about but she quickly settled Mrs Lawson back on her pillows and tucked in the bedclothes. She leaned over the bed, touching the frail, wrinkled hand. ‘It’s all right, she’ll be fine.’

  Norma felt such sadness as the mute figure’s helpless fingers tried to hold on to her and tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be taken care of, Mrs Lawson, and I will look after Julia.’

  Only the tears indicated that the old lady understood.

  When Norma went into Julia’s room, she found her lying on her bed, the bed she had used as a girl, and with fists clenched cursing her own stupidity.

  She said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that, upset her like that.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Julia spat out angrily.

  ‘Well, maybe she can’t talk but she can hear, Julia.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit.’

  Norma began to massage Julia’s back. ‘I understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Julia said, her face buried in the pillow.

  ‘Try me,’ Norma said softly.

  Julia rolled over and looked up into her face. ‘This was my bedroom, and you know something? I knew I was gay when I was about twelve or thirteen. She was a stable girl at the local riding school and we came back and we did it in here, then Mother served us tea. We laughed about that.’ Julia sat up and leaned against Norma. ‘I have wanted to make her understand, to know who I was since then, Norma, but she wouldn’t even let me discuss my life. All she wanted was for me to be married and have kids. She still asks …’ Julia mimicked her mother asking if she had a boyfriend and then she bowed her head. ‘You know, maybe she even knows about me being lesbian but she just could never talk about it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  Julia sounded resigned as she said, ‘Get her into a home tomorrow, sell this place and that’s it. There’s nothing for me here. Maybe there never was.’

  Later that night Norma washed Mrs Lawson. She kissed her and switched off the light before going up to bed with Julia. They made love and then Norma fell asleep. Later, Julia crept out from under the covers and slipped from the room. She removed Norma’s police riding cape and hat from the truck, closing the back as quietly as she could. She packed them into a case and left it in the hallway before returning upstairs. But she did not go back to bed immediately. Instead she inched open the door to her mother’s room: she had not moved from the centre of the bed, seeming somehow trapped inside the tight sheet across her chest. She appeared to be asleep.

  Julia stood, staring at her, for about five minutes, and then silently left the room. She no longer felt anger, just a total lack of energy, as if she had been drained, and it was then she remembered. Her pace quickened as she went into the bathroom. She had to lie flat on the tiled bathroom floor as she unscrewed the cheap formica surrounds of the bath, pulling them away and reaching in, searching until she found the tin medical box. Not until she had re-screwed the panel into place did she open the old battered white box with the scratched red cross in the centre. Slowly she opened the lid and sighed: there were the rubber tube, the hypodermic needles, the tiny packets of white cocaine and one small, screwed-up, tin-foil square of heroin.

  The following morning Julia had made some lists of what items she wanted from the house. She had arranged for a local estate agent to come in and also for a home to take her mother. It was expensive and Norma suggested they ring round a few others. ‘Nope. With the money from the house I can pay for it.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just got a lot to get sorted.’

  Norma couldn’t quite understand Julia’s attitude. She had been talkative at breakfast and had been on the go since then. She simply put it down to her way of dealing with the situation and never thought for a moment Julia was high.

  She didn’t see her mother again. Norma got her ready for the ambulance. Julia refused to help when the ambulance arrived, remaining in the drawing room when they took her away. She was still making phone calls, cancelling milk, papers, and the housekeeper.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Norma said sadly.

  ‘Okay, we can leave in about half an hour.’ Julia continued writing, calculating how much the house would be worth. As it had been remortgaged three times, there would be little or nothing left from the sale. She was going to need money more than ever before, and if it wasn’t from the robbery, she would have to find some other means to finance her mother’s stay at the home.

  Norma did not notice her hat and cloak were missing until they left. She didn’t seem unduly worried, blaming herself for forgetting to lock the truck. ‘Probably be some kids. It’s a wretched nuisance because I’ll have to fork out for the replacements but at least they didn’t nick the truck.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s good,’ Julia said, and indicated the small case she was carrying out to the car. ‘Just a couple of things I thought I’d take back with me.’

  Norma started the engine. ‘Well, if you need storage space, I’ve got a huge barn, and your mother has some nice pieces of furniture, antiques.’

  As they drove off, Julia didn’t look back. The house and her mother were in the past now. She was as good as dead and at least there would be no more lies. She stared out of the window. ‘Stupid woman, why? Why did she never tell me she knew?’

  Norma said nothing, knowing that Julia wasn’t expecting an answer. They headed back to the manor and Norma wondered if Julia would thank her for being with her, for caring, for loving her. ‘I love you, Julia,’ she said softly.

  Julia continued to gaze out of the window, wondering if Ester was missing her. Then she began to think about the train hijack and started to smile: maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was just the tho
ught of doing something so audacious, so, crazy that lifted her spirits.

  ‘Feeling a bit better?’ Norma asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m feeling good, really good!’

  Dolly was in a ratty mood. She had slept badly and the riding lesson had not been successful. The women bickered and argued, and without Julia they had been subjected to the scorn of the stable girl as they attempted to canter. By the time they returned to the manor, Dolly had to face the added frustration of finding John waiting to talk to her. She was running low on cash and he stood in her office, refusing to budge.

  ‘I just want to know what’s going on. If I lay the men off, I won’t get them back. You got half a roof, scaffolding up, I got cement and sand out there. I’ve laid out for the equipment, Mrs Rawlins. I’ve kept my end of the bargain.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about this but there have been a few problems. If you give me another day or so—’

  ‘But you say that every time I come here.’

  ‘I know, but I can’t help it if people don’t pay me. It’s not that I like doing this to you.’

  ‘The place is unsafe, Mrs Rawlins, and you got kids running around.’

  Dolly opened a drawer and took out the last of the cash from the sale of the guns. Five thousand pounds. Now she was almost cleaned out. ‘Look, do what you can. If you have to lay a few of the men off then you have to do it but this is all I’ve got right now.’

  John gritted his teeth as he counted out the money, then stashed it in his pocket. ‘Okay. At least I’ll finish the roof.’ He walked out and she could hear him banging down the hallway. She scratched her chin. The idea of the robbery was fading fast. There was no way they could do it, not for a few months, anyway. They couldn’t manage the horses, never mind hold up the train.

  Gloria yelled from the yard for someone to get Dolly as the truck had arrived with the bags of lime. More money had to be paid over to the driver before he would even lift one of the twenty-kilo bags down from the back of the truck. Dolly then had to pay out for the skip that she had ordered. Money was always going out and nothing was coming in.