Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

‘No idea at all who did it?’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘I think it must have been when I was in New York. It’s annoying—all those years of successful operations and then I get caught for what I didn’t do.’

  ‘Part of the game,’ he said. ‘I still think you’d had enough.’

  ‘And the domestic problems,’ she said.

  ‘Julie said something about that,’ he admitted. ‘Actually, she started shouting. I suppose you’ll have to sort it all out when you get back.’

  ‘I shall,’ she said. The lively blue eyes met hers directly. He said, ‘I’ll be there.’ Without waiting for a reply he told her, ‘Go to sleep, now. If you stay awake any longer, they might give you an airline meal.’

  She woke up two hours later to the sound of a cork popping beside her ear. There was a fizzing sound and James Carter handed her a foaming glass of champagne. She laughed. ‘I fancied some champagne,’ he said. She drank the champagne and wondered about him. Behind the kindness—was it the kindness of the little brother, she wondered?—behind the chatty gossip, even the silliness, she felt a hard, cutting edge. And what, really, did he mean by saying he had been watching her for years? What was that all about? She heard him saying, ‘I suppose you’ll be going to the Hope Club when we arrive?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, thinking how often she had sat in planes like this, on the way home, looking forward to her return to Devon, anticipating the reunion with Adam and the children.

  ‘I’ll be able to find you, then,’ he said. ‘It’s my idea we should see more of each other in future.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course we should.’ Suddenly it seemed obvious that she did not want to lose James Carter in the crowd or the darkness as she had on other occasions. But at the same time she felt defensive. She had taken a beating. She had taken a series of beatings. She was frightened, she told herself. James Carter might be serious business. And she was very weak, she told herself sombrely. Physically weak after the long period in gaol, and psychologically weak because of the failures, the self-doubt and the batterings she had sustained. Perhaps she was in a state where anyone would do. Having reflected on all this, she leaned over to him in the seat and kissed him, the kiss intended as a pact-kiss, an assurance that some day, when she had washed her hair, got back on the tracks, bought a pair of shoes, kissed her children, she would be ready for him, perhaps. In fact the kiss went on and on. They ended uneasily entwined across the seats until he drew back and said, ‘You’ll love me soon,’ and she, a little frightened, said, as if reading out the paper after a peculiar game of consequences, ‘I’m going back to sleep now.’

  ‘You’re not,’ he told her. She shut her eyes, but not for long. They talked throughout the journey. They said they would rather be in bed together.

  At the airport in London, after a long embrace, Hannie said hopefully, ‘I don’t really need to go to the Hope Club. What about—?’ but he pecked her on the cheek and said, ‘I’ve got some things to sort out. I’ll be back.’ Then he gave her a hug and disappeared, as usual, into the crowd. One minute the tall, thin figure was there, and the next it was not.

  ‘Oh, sod,’ said Hannie, standing there holding her bag, wearing battered boots and the same floral dress in which she had left gaol. She was cold, full of misery and rage. If it’s going to be like this; Carter, forget it, she said to herself.

  She pulled herself together and went to release Kyte’s flowers from cool storage at the airport. The official was happy to see her. ‘I’ve had Sir Duncan Kyte, I’ve had a Dr Davis—I’ve had dozens of them in here. I couldn’t do anything. I had to have your authority. I’m glad to get rid of them.’

  ‘I bet you’ve had a break-in, too,’ Hannie said.

  He looked at her curiously. ‘Attempted break-in,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be another,’ she said and went off to phone a safe courier who would take the plants from her at the Hope Club and ferry them down to Duncan Kyte’s home in Suffolk straight away. Not that they would do him much good, she suspected. The plastic bags containing the roots and jar containing the flowers, now mauve-brown, lay beside her on the seat of the cab as she rode into London. They disgusted her. These few stale specimens seemed to sum up all the troubles she had left behind and to which she was returning. She thought again of her lost husband, whom she still loved, and of her children, and of her home—all barred to her. As she approached London she saw February had struck the London streets. There were little piles of dirty snow along the edges of the pavements. There was a transport strike. Pinched people hung round bus stops hoping a bus would come. It was in a gloomy mood that she returned to the Hope Club. The new façade, with the long windows outside and the fresh green and cream paint impressed her. She walked into the new hall and said to the woman in the little glass-fronted porter’s lodge, ‘Hullo, Mrs Knott.’

  ‘Mrs Richards,’ said Mrs Knott. ‘You’ve caught us hopping. We thought you’d be here tomorrow. You’re too early for your celebration.’

  ‘This is enough of a celebration,’ said Hannie.

  ‘Oh, you’ll have to have your coming-out party,’ said Mrs Knott. ‘Here’s your key—suite 12—very posh now. Here’s a few letters, and there’s a courier waiting for you over there.’

  Hannie thanked her and carded quickly through the letters and phone messages as she walked over to the courier. There was nothing from Adam. There was no note from her children. She gave the plants to the courier and told him how to get to Duncan Kyte’s house. She went slowly upstairs to the grandly named suite 12. It was small, but there was no denying it was a suite. There was a big vase of flowers on the table with a card from Elizabeth. She turned on the television and fell asleep in a chair, dreaming briefly of a long, dry plain across which women of all ages carried pots of water.

  She woke up because Elizabeth was hugging her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m so relieved to see you. You look so tired. I really shouldn’t have woken you.’

  ‘Very inconsiderate,’ said Hannie. ‘First you help get me out of a Brazilian gaol, then you make it worse by waking me up. Elizabeth—I can’t thank you all enough.’

  ‘We can get some tea sent up,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘This is very posh, now it’s room service. Will it make ends meet?’

  ‘It’s a long financial story,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’ve brought you some clothes—thick tights and a skirt and jumpers. They’re mine. I’m afraid you’ll look a bit Home Counties. I was just dropping them in. I thought you were coming tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll have a shower,’ said Hannie. ‘Thanks.’

  From the shower she shouted, trying to sound normal, ‘Any word from Adam?’

  Elizabeth shouted back, ‘We told him you were safe.’

  ‘Oh, never mind the tact,’ cried Hannie. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He said, “Good”,’ Elizabeth called back. ‘He asked if you faced charges over here. I said no.’

  Hannie came out of the shower in a towel and sat down to comb her hair. ‘So that’s that,’ she said. ‘He still doesn’t care—just as long as I’m not had up at the Old Bailey in a blaze of publicity. I didn’t do it, you know. Someone planted those drugs—I don’t know who. I hope you’ll believe me, but I suppose I can’t really expect you to.’

  ‘James and Julie said you didn’t,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘I’m afraid I thought you’d lost your head and were trying to get a lot of money because—because of what happened. It would have been understandable.’

  Hannie looked through the mirror at her friend and saw she was trying to believe her. She dropped the subject. She put on the warm clothes and tights. Then a small Chinese girl brought in the tea, on a tray. She moved the flowers to the window sill and put the tray carefully on the table, but something reminded Hannie of the load-bearing women she thought about so often. ‘What do you get paid?’ she asked.

  The girl said, ‘Seventy pounds a week. I’m part-time.’

  Elizab
eth said, in a tight voice, ‘Mary’s Mr Lee’s daughter. You know Mr Lee. He owns a restaurant.’

  The girl said, ‘I’m a student at LSE. The hours fit in with the course.’

  After the door had shut Elizabeth said, ‘Really, Hannie. Do you need to sit there and imply that I’m exploiting the staff—while they’re in the room?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so snobbish,’ said Hannie. ‘Oh—I’m sorry. I’m rattled. I must have been on the verge of a breakdown in that gaol.’

  ‘My analyst used to say that sometimes that is the first stage of a reappraisal and readjustment. I never got past it myself.’

  Hannie looked at her and could not help laughing, even though James had told her not to reveal that she knew of Elizabeth’s sexual blackmail of her analyst. Elizabeth laughed too. ‘I told him not to tell anyone,’ she spluttered.

  When they’d stopped laughing, Elizabeth said, ‘You know, James Carter’s a very nice man.’

  ‘Really, Elizabeth,’ Hannie said disapprovingly, ‘you’re going from bad to worse.’

  7. The New Hope Club

  Hannie spent the following week at The Hope Club, gradually regaining her strength but waiting for James Carter to get in touch with her.

  It was not a situation she enjoyed. During her affair with Spinelli, she had spent three months pinned in her lodgings, unable to contact him at home in case his wife found out, and waiting for his secret calls from phone boxes or his unexpected arrivals at her door. She had resolved never to assent to a situation like that again, and on the whole, never had. Now she felt inhibited about even ringing Adam, too tired somehow to take the initiative. She thought despondently, Let him have it his way as long as he looks after Flo and Fran properly. She also very much wanted to see James Carter. One night she dreamed he came, suddenly, into a landscape of rocks and dust, carrying the branch of a tree covered in leaves.

  In the meantime she was waiting for two men to get in touch with her and did not know whether the fact that there were two made things better or worse. The waiting woman was a Victorian luxury: these days, while woman wait, they have to keep up with the pace set by the world. One of the matters claiming Hannie’s attention was the Hope Club. She had been alarmed when Elizabeth had told her there was a long financial story concerning the Club. She feared the worst. It was a relief when Elizabeth suggested that she, Margaret and Julie should all find a free evening and meet for dinner and a chat.

  The dinner itself was a brisk affair and business was not discussed. Afterwards they had coffee in the little writing room, served by the Chinese girl, who, as she put the tray down, looked nervously at Hannie as if she feared another sharp enquiry concerning her wages and working conditions. Elizabeth, with her feet tucked up on the sofa, pulled her blue stole around her shoulders, remarking, ‘I haven’t quite worked out the heating yet.’ Julie was cross-legged in front of the fire, rolling a joint, and she said, ‘It’s OK.’ Hannie, who was bundled up in a cream robe with fringes, said, ‘Come on, let’s get on with it.’ She felt worried. The Hope Club was, if temporarily, her only home now. She did not relish the idea of its being threatened. She suspected they might all have to work out a way of bailing it out of financial trouble. At this point Margaret came back into the room and said, ‘I’ve spoken to Tracey Burrows. She’s getting promoted to the Grosvenor branch of the bank. She’s agreed to take over the account. Might as well keep it all in the family. She understands the problem.’

  ‘Can she come and explain it to us?’ asked Hannie.

  ‘She’s just left,’ said Margaret. ‘Elizabeth, you do it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elizabeth, ‘obviously, the expansion meant I had to study the books of the Club in a way I suspect no one has done since 1945. The problem’s been that running as a co-operative means nobody takes full responsibility. As long as the bills get paid, everybody’s satisfied. And that’s what Mr and Mrs Knott had been doing all this time.’

  ‘The fact is,’ added Margaret, ‘that the Knotts have been running this place—money, administration, everything—for thirty years. But we can’t organize on that basis any more. We have to elect a management committee and try to sort it out.’

  Hannie shifted uneasily. ‘Bang goes freedom,’ she remarked.

  ‘You’re on it,’ Margaret told her.

  Hannie nodded glumly. ‘First it’s prison, then it’s a committee,’ she said. ‘Things are changing.’

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ said Margaret. ‘We all stand for the committee.’

  ‘Come on, St Theodosia’s,’ said Hannie.

  Elizabeth looked at her. ‘Decisions have to be made,’ she said.

  ‘Tell us about the bad news first,’ Julie said. Plainly she had been at meetings like this before. ‘Tell us what we owe.’

  ‘We don’t owe anything,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We’re rich.’

  ‘What?’ Hannie said. ‘I thought we were going to have to pass the hat round.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Julie. ‘What’s the problem then?’

  The percentages of income our members are likely to give to the Club over the next year,’ Elizabeth said, ‘are over £200,000—that’s a rough figure. Only a half to a third of that will go on running costs. The situation is that we either decide to scale down the percentages, so as to continue on a non-profit-making basis, or go on as we are, making a profit and getting richer and richer. I don’t need to tell you that £100,000 per annum, invested, can provide a million in seven or eight years. When I examined the accounts at the bank, I also found a stray £250,000 which had accumulated over the years of the Club’s existence. The old building was run on a shoestring by the Knotts—the surplus left over from members’ fees just sat on deposit at the bank gaining interest over nearly forty years. As I say, we’re rich. What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Say the rest,’ Margaret urged.

  ‘I went mad and had a flutter in the futures market. I just got £25,000 on a cotton harvest,’ said Elizabeth.

  Julie said, ‘Babylon.’

  ‘What?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Babylon’s the City, the white man’s cash, the power,’ Julie told her. ‘That’s where we are. I’m not complaining. Just I never thought to be there.’

  ‘Babylon’s what it’s all about,’ said Margaret.

  ‘It’s Duncan Kyte,’ said Hannie. ‘Why can’t we leave the money where it is?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You don’t mind fighting guerillas or pushing on through the steaming jungle and so on and so forth. But when it comes to the stink of money, your courage fails, you draw back in ladylike disdain—that it, Hannie?’

  ‘Elizabeth!’ protested Hannie. ‘I’m not used to all this stuff. All right—I don’t like it. But why can’t we leave the money there and cut the membership rates? Anything over can just stay in the bank in case we want to open a new building or something.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Elizabeth, ‘money you leave in the bank isn’t just kept there in a locked box with your name painted on the front, you know. They don’t just brush the cobwebs off the box, unlock it and give it to you when you want it. What banks do is lend your money to people like Duncan Kyte—that’s what they do. They buy shares in profitable firms with very little regard to the form of business engaged in. And a lot of the bank profits are coming from investment in the Third World. It’s their duty to make money. You don’t even know what that money’s going into. The only way you can evade the responsibility for money is by turning it into gold or burying it under the hearthstones.’

  Hannie said nothing. The she looked at Elizabeth. ‘I’ve had a revelation,’ she said. ‘Or rather, it’s something I’ve been thinking of for a while. Listen to me, here it comes, begun in a Rio gaol and ending in London. Tell me what you think. Because I think that you and I and the other members, between us, can make it work.’

  She began by relating her imaginings about the women she had met on her journeys in India, in Africa, in Latin America. She said, ‘W
e know that for every poor woman, there’s a poor man and poor children. But the aid almost always goes to the men. It doesn’t work for the women, often not for the men in the long run. Half the time the men go for cash. They say they want a sawmill so they can cut down the lumber—that means the women have to walk five miles farther to get the wood to cook the family food. No one notices the women with bundles of wood—until suddenly the trees are gone and the land’s eroded. Or the men get a big irrigation system and start growing cash crops. The landlord comes past, gets jealous and takes back the land. All the time the women are still carrying water to grow their own small crops—the crops that feed the family. The water supply is too far from the houses so the children are still dying of dysentery. Half the people in hospital in the world are there because of water-related diseases. While the money goes to the men, the answer to women’s problems always seems to be contraception and sterilization. Everybody knows that people have too many children when they’re afraid their children will die. Every time a child dies somewhere with a high death rate, the parents respond by having two or three more children—just in case. Sometimes I think all this carrying on about contraception stems from misunderstanding. We all know, because we’re women, that no woman, however simple and uneducated, wants to be pregnant all the time, wants to have children she can’t feed or wants to watch them die. Men talk about traditions of child-bearing as if they were fixed and unalterable. We all know that if you give a woman a way of not having so many children—and some reason to think she’ll rear the children she does have—then she’ll cut the number in the family. We know that because our grandmothers did it.

  ‘The women should have small industries, maybe, so they can use their own skills, and a way of growing their crops and a way of making their lives and their children’s easier and safer.

  ‘Do you see what I mean?’ she appealed. ‘If men are handing out money to other men, let’s give ours to the women. It would take so little. Small industries. Standpipes so that crops could be grown more easily, children surviving because they had water that wasn’t polluted, women living longer because they weren’t so overburdened. Wouldn’t that be enough for a start? I could go there and find out what they wanted. You could handle the money. I could take it there if I had to—that’s the kind of thing I know how to do. We’d get contributions, I’m sure, if we asked. We’ve all lived off rotten money, in our different ways, at some stage in our lives. Speaking for myself, my moral character is certainly not all it should be. But at least, this way, we’d be handing something back.’