‘He killed our mother,’ Beatrice intoned. ‘Abandoned us and killed her.’ She was usually over-dramatic, designed for martyrdom and always, it seemed to Edward, about to burst forth in a stream of malice disguised as a hymn of moral outrage.
The portrait of them all was in Gayle’s home. For the moment, they were gathered in a small studio flat in Clerkenwell, a pied-à-terre owned by their father and frequented, in clandestine fashion, by their mother, Christina, before her disappearance. It was here that the evidence was found to unravel what was in Edward’s eyes her timely death. Receipts for prepaid tickets for a cross-channel ferry to which she was bound in pursuit of yet another lover or another kind of fortune, or maybe, cheap booze. Jumping or falling over the side was the best thing she could have done to save him from her constant rants on the subject of life’s injustices and the perfidy of his father-in-law, who had ruined her life and her potential, blah, blah, blah. Gayle smiled at her husband, in a slight warning to hold his tongue and refrain from telling Beatrice that it was no wonder her husband had left her in her own herbal soup. She smelled of patchouli, dressed in sackcloth and her two sons were each twice the size of his only one.
‘We’ll go,’ Gayle announced, forestalling her self-righteous sister. ‘To keep the peace, we’ll go.’
‘No peace for the wicked,’ Beatrice sang. ‘I suppose he’ll invite other children, to meet ours. He wants to show us something. He wants to show us up. He’s courting us.’
‘He’s courting our children,’ Gayle said.
It was almost summer when they delivered the children for the party with the chaperone. Patrick would remember it forever, but then Patrick was the eldest and knew his grandfather in a way no one else did. Patrick had been here before, like his superior cousins who scarcely remembered and never noticed anything anyway.
It was wicked, that party. There was a tent of shiny turquoise material in the centre of the big room, reaching from floor to ceiling, flickering lights on the walls and inside the tent, a tea party laid out on a low table covered with a white cloth. There were pink and yellow cakes and crisps and sweets and other things. The table was surrounded by cushions and resplendent on the biggest of these, facing the draped entrance to the tent, sat a large green frog, eating a sandwich. He had friendly eyes, this frog, and a nice voice.
‘Delicious!’ the Frog said. ‘Will you come and join me for tea once you’re dressed? Only in Fairyland, we like to dress specially for tea.’
He took off his soft frog helmet and put on a red fez, and there was Grandpa in a green coat with long white hair sticking out of his hat and over his collar and he was accompanied by a small witch with wild hair, who encouraged them towards a mountain of soft, rich clothes, including rings, beads, crowns, tiaras for the three girls, crowns and helmets for the boys. They put them on over what they wore, emerging from the spangled heap as princesses with rings on fingers and princes with hats on heads. That one’s better, said the pretty little witch, try that, and he did. Then they sat with the King Frog, who still wore his fez and his green cloak, who told them stories and sang them songs until they were singing, too. They ate and sang and sang and ate, and did races round the room where everyone managed to win and saw themselves reflected in their finery in a mirror on the wall, and yelled and laughed and laughed. Then Grandad did his magic tricks, which made them quiet for a while, and then they played another game where they had to turn away and draw each others’ faces on paper the witch gave them, fold up the paper and put it in a pot, and each of them pull one out and guess whose face it was. And then the witch got them playing again. Then the Auntie of the three girls who was called Monica came to collect them, and she laughed, too, and took them home still in their adorning garments which they were told by the witch they must keep, and yet the Auntie lingered, watching the King Frog waving goodbye from his seat and telling them, don’t ever be sad and they said, no, never.
Then it crashed: the whole thing crashed.
Beatrice came back early to collect her sons, just as the little girls stumbled downstairs in assorted garments and pushed across her path on the stairs. She saw three common little girls pulling coats over petticoats, blowing bubbles and waving feathers, drunk with fatigue, being led away by a woman who smelled of heavy perfume with a fierce face and overdone hair who was lighting a cigarette as she went. The woman nodded and smiled through crimson lips. Beatrice had an abhorrence of smoke and lipstick. When Beatrice entered the room, she saw a scene of depravity and reacted with horror. Not only were there scruffy little girls who had clearly undressed, there were her boys, flopped on the floor, wearing silly clothes, filthy and exhausted. They were playing dead. She pulled at them, hissed at them, come away, come away now and shouted for Gayle, who followed her. Gayle came in behind and saw an almighty mess, a scene of carnage, loud colours, fabric trampled into the floor, and a pretty girl dressed in a tattered cloak, who was breathless from running round and who bowed towards her. There was rouge on the girl’s cheeks and black lines round her mischievous eyes. She looked like a precocious and knowing child. Mess was anathema to Gayle: she hated mess: it was tantamount to losing control and Gayle never lost control.
‘’Allo,’ Di said. ‘You aren’t taking him away yet, are you? The others are playing at being dead.’
Patrick was clutching at her tattered cloak and looking at her adoringly. He had a pencil stuck behind his ear; his spectacles looked as if someone had knocked them sideways and his mouth was smeared with chocolate.
‘I did drawing, Mummy. I did … ’ He stopped.
‘We got supper a bit later,’ the pretty Witch said. ‘Once we’ve cleaned up a bit, eh, Patrick?’
She wiped his chocolatey face with the hem of the cloak. Gayle touched her own white linen jacket and shuddered.
‘I think not,’ she said in her calm, deep voice, looking her up and down and down and up, until Patrick detached his hand from the material of the cloak and let it fall. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? They’re filthy. My child is filthy.’ And as happy as I have ever seen him.
‘I was wearing them out, I thought,’ Di said, cheerfully. ‘You can’t go yet. Come on in. We’ve had a lot of fun and your dad’s dying to see you.’
‘Dying? How sad.’ Beatrice murmured, not quite inaud -ibly, glancing across the room to the tent. ‘Look at what you’ve done, Father. You’ve got them drunk. Poisoned them. They’re behaving like drunks.’
‘Not drunk,’ Di said, stung. ‘But we did get a bit excited. I thought that was the whole idea.’
Alan, the youngest cousin, took his cue from his mother, stood up and began to sniffle. Edmund began to whine.
‘Who are you?’ Beatrice hissed at Di.
‘I’m the housekeeper.’
‘Really?’
Beatrice pulled her two towards the exit and Gayle followed. The room emptied. Patrick saw his grandfather sitting with his head in his hands; remembered trying to go back and kiss him and waving at him instead, with a brief wave back. He remembered Di calling out to them all, Oh please come back, there’s food. He was aware of his own father’s presence in the house somewhere; wanted to shout some sort of protest, but did not. He simply waved goodbye and the witch blew him a kiss.
The room fell into a terrible silence for a whole minute. The early evening sunlight shone through the window. There was a whole adult meal prepared downstairs for later. Salmon with capers, supper for a family; potatoes waiting to be cooked, wine to be drunk.
Into the stunned silence, Edward, Gayle’s husband, came into the gallery room through the second door, looking as if he had lost his way, which indeed he had. Despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing a bulky coat, with something held beneath it. He began to back out, and couldn’t quite do it, grinned foolishly, trapped.
‘Good evening, Edward,’ Thomas said. ‘How nice to see you.’
‘Nice to see you, too. I was just … er, looking around. Sorry about the fuss. I was just st
aying out of the fray, keeping in the background, that’s me. Don’t worry, they’ll calm down. It’s Beatrice, you see. Always a bit hysterical. I’ll see if I can fetch them back, shall I? Can’t promise, though. Women. Always getting the wrong end of the stick.’
Thomas smiled at him.
‘No, of course you can’t promise. I quite understand. It would be nice if you could try, though, bring them back, or come back yourself.’
‘Right, will do. See you later.’
Edward sidled out of the room, pulling his coat around him. Di watched him, her mouth opening and closing. He seemed to be able to feel her staring at him, and at the door he surreptitiously slid his hand inside the coat, extracted a silver box he had purloined from a room upstairs and placed it on the side table.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Seemed to have picked that up by mistake. Bye.’
Di looked towards Thomas, her mouth forming words.
‘Don’t,’ he said to her, softly. ‘Don’t say anything.’
After Edward’s hurried footsteps had echoed away, Di followed. There was a trail of sweets left by Alan and Edmund who had stuffed their pockets to overflowing. Beatrice had knocked over a figurine in the hall, leaving it broken in her headlong rush to leave. A small piece of crystal next to it was gone, along with the cash in the red jug, kept for emergencies and anyone who came collecting at the door. Oddly, someone had taken the flowers. Di came back, slowly. Thomas seemed to have guessed what she had found. He took off his hat, threw it in the air, let it fall, looked at her and shrugged.
‘They can’t help it,’ he said. ‘They always take or break. Like their mother.’
Di wanted to cry.
‘They’ll come back, won’t they? They’ll come back for supper?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘They’ll come back.’
The drawings of faces were scattered all over the floor. Di began to pick them up slowly. She handed them to him. He looked at them slowly, as if drawing comfort from them, and yet she knew he was inconsolable. So much had been invested in this day.
‘We made them play,’ Thomas murmured. ‘At least we made them play. I can’t bear it when children aren’t allowed to play. Christina wouldn’t let them play.’
‘They’ll come back,’ Di said.
She thought of the food she had lovingly prepared for later, the wine in the cooler, how she planned to leave daughters and father together, take the children for a walk and show them the sea perhaps, come back and find them talking, like the families of her imagination did. What stupid imaginings she had, as if she ever had any power to make things better. Why would anyone ever trust her?
Thomas put his arms round her and stroked her hair. It had grown long and thick in her year’s residence.
‘Was it me? Was it me who spoiled it?’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t you.’
They did not come back. The rest of the day fell into darkness and disappointment. Thomas tried, but could not help his own, utter despondency. The turquoise tent disappeared, the floors were cleared; the room returned to the grand room still full of the magic of the paintings, the light in them, the music they brought. She left him to write. He wrote to Saul.
You are quite right. When I die, they will descend like locusts. There will be no collection left. They will spread everything to the winds. They will kill everything I love. The collection will die.
Saul emailed back. You must make sure it doesn’t. You owe the world more than you owe your children.
After dark, she crept up behind him. His hands were quiet. She could see his face mirrored inexactly in the screen of his computer, next to her own, blurred, brown complexion. She could feel the vibrations of his sadness from a mile away, it was if it was in her own blood, and she could not bear it. His hands and feet were icy cold, and the skin on his neck was hot and she wrapped her arms around he. Soft and brittle, she was, featherdown and steel. And he, old polished leather with a layer of salt and bright, bright, blue eyes, holding on to her so hard, he almost hurt.
Thomas in his gallery room, having an attack of sheer panic, déjà vu, fear, so acute it paralysed the hands that wrote something every day. She read the words on the screen.
Tell her about the alterations made to the basement. Explain what happened.
Di leant over him and typed with one hand.
I know.
His hands began to move again. The shaking stopped. She waited, holding his shoulders with her strong hands and this time she did not let him go.
The next morning, they walked on the beach in a different way, still holding each other. An invisible jet plane flew above them, leaving a fussy white plume behind itself as far as the eye could see, scarring the sky with a line of ragged lace, making them stop and stare, shielding their eyes. They stood and stared like imbeciles, wondered out loud where that jet would go after leaving its mark, and not wanting to be anywhere else. It was the perfect, abstract picture with the blinding colour no one would believe.
I’d like to collect the clouds, Di said. And flints.
Will you marry me? Thomas said.
She laughed, and held on to his arm.
‘Some pictures are best unframed,’ she said.
Raymond Forrest, the lawyer, called in the late summer. There was a sign on the door. Gone swimming.
CHAPTER FOUR
Well, Monica said. ‘Well, well, well. I must say, they give a fine party. And it was nice of him to ask my nieces, even if he did it through you. They liked it. Been telling each other stories ever since, which was more than they did before. And Di’s good with kids, I’ll say that for her, but then she is one, isn’t she?’
Jones sat in Monica’s barber’s chair, heavy-hearted. He thought of watching from the pier with his binoculars fixed on the front door, seeing the daughters of Thomas Porteous stuffing their wailing children into two cars and driving away as if the hounds of hell were after them and that shifty fucker, Edward, running down the front steps last. That was a month ago.
‘Something went wrong, though,’ he said.
‘Something was always wrong,’ Monica said, ‘with those girls of his. Maybe their mother.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Because I know a woman who worked for old Douglas,that lawyer Thomas used for the divorce. Retired now, but she was the typist and she comes in here. Remembers every bloody thing she ever typed.’
‘Go on,’ Jones said.
‘Thomas really wanted custody of his girls, and because Christina was the deserting one, and not very stable, he might have got it, and that’s when she started saying he wasn’t natural towards them, touched them wrong, he was a pervert. Like his father was. Faintest hint of that and Thomas couldn’t win, and he didn’t.’
‘That simple?’
‘Look, think about it. If a man is put down as a monster by his own wife, you gotta believe it. Only later, when Thomas gets rich, she needs to change her tune. She wants to take it all back and parade her kids and then their kids to get back in favour and have at the money, ’cos by this time she’s alone and they’re all broke. Simple? Not quite.’
There was the snip, snip, snip of her sharp scissors, a sound Jones liked, although it reminded him of something sinister.
‘How come they’re broke?’
Monica did not like being asked a question she couldn’t answer, but she was happy to guess.
‘’Cos they ain’t bought up to work, like their mother wasn’t? Posh schools and no training? ’Cos they got through life maintained by Daddy and think it’s going to last for ever? ’Cos someone’s told them they’re going to be rich some day? ’Cos they were brought up lazy? Maybe ’cos they were brought up thinking of themselves as victims. I don’t know. Someone owes them. I haven’t got the end of the story, only the beginning. Porteous got another lawyer.’
So much Jones already knew.
Snip, snip, snip.
‘You’re all done,’ Monica said.
Sh
e brushed the stray hair from his neck with a soft brush and took off the black nylon gown that made him look almost judicial. He looked sad enough to kiss. No doubt about it, he missed the job.
‘So you reckon no one ever believed Thomas tried to touch up his own kids?’
‘I never said that,’ Monica said. ‘No smoke without fire, old Douglas said.’
‘No wonder Thomas fucking went to someone else, then,’ Jones said. ‘Hope it’s a good one he’s got now, because he’s going to need it. He’s only wanting to get married.’
Monica gasped. ‘Di?’
‘Who else? The fucking Queen of Sheba?’
‘She wouldn’t,’ Monica said. ‘She wouldn’t. Oh my word.’
She paused, scissors in the air, half smiling. Jones turned away, not liking that smile, not liking it at all, because he thought he knew what Monica might be thinking. It might just be crossing her mind that if Thomas P married Di Q, it might just bring her father back.
‘She wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t have the nerve. She wouldn’t do that to him. Look at the size of her. Makes everything they said about him look true.’
‘She isn’t a child,’ Jones said.
She wouldn’t. Di wouldn’t. She told Thomas, again and again, some things are best left unframed. You can’t marry the burglar. And don’t you see what it would do? It could bring in all the demons.
No it won’t; it’ll keep them at bay. Come on, Di; make an honest man of me.
You are an honest man.
No, not entirely.
And then, she did. It took another year.
Painting: The woman at her toilette, with an old man in the background, coming through an open door.
English, late 19th Century. A woman in a white night gown, sitting before her dressing table, surveying herself in preparation for an event. She looks at herself. Her figure is upright and youthful: the copious hair is young and yet the reflection of her face in the mirror she holds is old.
Attributed to … Walter Sickert.
Gold Digger Page 5
