Mr Toppit
Page 12
Rachel was very still beside me. When they got to us, Laurie was still laughing. She patted Claude’s shoulder. “You’ve got such a true friend here,” she said to Rachel. “He’s been so dear.” It was too dark to see the expression on Rachel’s face, but in a strangely bright voice she said, “You two need a drink. Come on. It’s nearly supper. Martha’s been slaving and you know what a bad temper that puts her into.”
Rachel had been right: now it was Martha who was grumpy. After Claude had opened a bottle of wine, we sat in the sitting room waiting for supper. Laurie was asking us questions about Arthur’s books. She had taken to carrying the five paperbacks around in her bag so they were with her wherever she went. Martha kept coming in and out, sitting down, lighting a cigarette, then stubbing it out and getting up to check something in the kitchen. It was an unusually over-emphatic display of domesticity, given that we were having cold chicken and potato salad, most of which had been prepared by Doreen, our cleaning lady who had left it covered in cling-film in the fridge that morning.
Nothing was right. “Why are you drinking wine out of toothmugs?” Martha asked.
“They’re tumblers, actually,” Rachel said.
“Well, we do have wine glasses. Laurie might prefer her wine that way.”
“No, I’m good,” Laurie said.
“And don’t drink any more of the decent wine,” she said to Rachel. “I want it for Friday.” Friday was the funeral.
“So, are there places in the Darkwood you can find in the woods here? Like, real places?” Laurie asked.
“You’ll have a headache in the morning, Rachel,” Martha said. “There’s a lot to do tomorrow.”
Rachel ignored her. “Well, of course, Luke can never quite find Mr. Toppit’s lair, that’s the point, but I’ve always thought it’s beyond the bit at the top where the big path divides into two—”
“Claude, don’t let that ash drop on the carpet. Doreen only vacuumed this morning.” Martha got up and put an ashtray on the table in front of him, next to the ashtray that was already there, then sat down again. “If we don’t eat now, we’ll never eat,” she said.
The food had hardly been served, though, when she gathered up her cigarettes, lighter, and ashtray and left the dining room, her plate untouched. “I have to phone Terry Tringham,” she said. “He’s going to give the address at the funeral.” The door slammed behind her.
“She must be hurting real bad,” Laurie said, after Martha had left. She had brought Arthur’s books into the dining room with her and now she put them in a neat pile to one side of her plate.
“Open some more wine,” Rachel said to Claude, then added nastily, “Don’t be scared, I won’t tell Martha. You go and help him, Luke—he’ll just make a mess.”
“Do you want red or white?” Claude asked, when he returned from the kitchen.
“Ssh,” Rachel said. “Laurie’s telling us a story.”
When she was at school, when she was fifteen and the least popular girl in her class, Laurie had auditioned for the end-of-term play, which was to be Oklahoma! She sang “I Cain’t Say No” at the audition and, to everyone’s amazement, was given the part of Ado Annie. Shyly she sang us a snatch of the song, and I could see why: she had a wonderful voice. The problem was that she had hated being on stage when she wasn’t singing: she felt lumpy and awkward and she couldn’t dance and everyone was horrible to her, particularly Rick, the boy playing the lead, whom all the girls, including her, were in love with. He had beautiful blond, curly hair and some of the girls he had been out with had kept locks of it. People were always trying to touch it. He took longer to have his hair and makeup done than anyone else in the cast.
When the gingham dress that had been made for her split during a dance number in the rehearsals, Laurie was demoted to the chorus and replaced by Rick’s girlfriend, Jerrilee, who seemed mysteriously to know all of Ado Annie’s lines already. Rick was now Laurie’s boss at the radio station and he was married to Jerrilee, but he had lost most of his hair. “He’s got a wig the size of a moose pelt—but he doesn’t always wear it,” Laurie said, giggling.
Rachel was almost weeping with laughter. “Moose pelt,” she kept screaming. “Moose pelt!”
Claude said, “Rach, we should tell her about us doing Guys and Dolls at school.”
Rachel wiped her eyes with a paper napkin and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, she doesn’t want to hear about that. Anyway, you spent your entire time mooning over that boy who played whatever-he’s-called—Nathan.” She got up, moved to the place next to Laurie and put an arm round her. “Tell you what,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll take you into the woods and give you a proper tour. I’ll show you some of the places in the books.”
Laurie’s face lit up. “Oh, I’d love it. But I need to go into town in the morning. There’s something special I want to do for Martha.”
“We could go at lunchtime! We could have a picnic!” Claude said excitedly.
“Girls only,” Rachel said with a little smirk.
The “something special” that Laurie wanted to do for Martha was to cook the food for the funeral. When I got up the next morning, Martha and she were in the kitchen discussing it. “I thought chimichangas,” Laurie was saying. “Tortillas, nachos, maybe, lots of dips, definitely guacamole, salted almonds—my mother’s recipe—maybe some refried beans.”
“Ugh,” I said.
“No, you’ll like them. They’re really tasty.”
“But, Laurie,” Martha said, “even if they don’t all come back after the service there’ll still be fifty or sixty people. You really don’t have to do this. Doreen will help. We can give them lots of drink and something simple, like sandwiches.”
Laurie went over and hugged Martha. “You’ve all been so kind. It would be my pleasure.”
“Do you think Arthur liked Mexican food?” I said doubtfully, to Martha, after Laurie had gone out. She waved away my objection. “The best kind of food is the kind somebody else cooks.”
In the event, there would be one fewer at the funeral: Claude had left. His car was gone from the front of the house. Rachel was nowhere to be seen. I found her eventually in the garden, sitting on the swing Arthur had made for us as children.
She had been crying. “Where’s Claude?” I asked.
“We had a fight. He said I made him feel surplus to requirements. How ridiculous! Anyway he’s gone. Back to Damian, of course.”
The trip to the woods was off. Rachel had retired to her room: she had a headache.
Laurie took her some lunch on a tray, but when she went to collect it afterwards, nothing had been eaten. “Poor munchkin,” she said, as she washed the dishes. “I guess it’s her time of the month.”
Rachel had been wrong when she said Lila would turn up soon enough. It was amazing that it was four days since Arthur had died and there had been no sign of her. When we heard the crunch of gravel that afternoon, and I looked out of the window to see a taxi drawing up, I knew our run of luck had ended.
Martha closed her eyes. “Someone did call her, didn’t they?” Her voice was doom-laden. “Baby?”
“Don’t look at me,” I said.
“Maybe Rachel did.”
The doorbell rang. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“Do you want me to get that?” Laurie called from the kitchen.
“No, we’ll do it,” Martha shouted. “Please don’t let her speak German. I can take anything but that.”
Although Lila was an art teacher, she gave private German tuition and that was how Martha had first met her. Martha had wanted to read her favorite book, Buddenbrooks, in the original. Lila had a special technique for teaching German: she called it “living conversation.” Her method made conversation more natural, she said, and it had the added advantage of illuminating particular aspects of German life. For each pupil, she would invent a set of German characters tailored specifically to their interests who could be discussed during lessons, as if casual conversation was b
eing had about mutual friends. For a girl doing A levels who was keen on horses, she had invented a kind of German National Velvet who spent a lot of time show-jumping in Potsdam. For Martha, she had conjured up a bourgeois family in the 1900s, the Untermeyers of Lübeck, and they would sit and talk about Uncle Heinrich, who ran a shipping business, and his infinitely expandable set of relations, who spent their lives visiting each other for tea and organizing evenings of chamber music. Although the lessons had stopped long ago, when Martha grew bored with them, Lila went through an elaborate pretense that they still continued.
She was standing on the doorstep, leaning on her stick. In one hand she carried a large bag and in the other a bunch of flowers. She was wearing a hat. As we approached, she arranged a tragic smile on her face and put out her hands towards Martha.
“Gnädige Frau,” she began, “ich muss Ihnen sagen, wie erschütternt ich bin.” She let out a wail as she launched herself aggressively into Martha’s arms. “Oh, darling, you should have told me, you should have called. I’ve been waiting.”
Martha and I led her into the sitting room. She took off her hat. As always, she was wearing a hairnet decorated with colored beads. When we were small we thought someone had sprinkled hundreds-and-thousands over her head. Martha sat her down on the sofa. A glass of brandy had to be procured. Lila produced a handkerchief out of her large bag—large, because whenever she visited friends she always carried a nightdress and change of clothing in case she was asked to stay the night, and a selection of handmade gifts to thank them for having her if they did—and sniffled tearfully into it. She looked angrily at Martha. “My dear, I’m only a taxi ride away. You know that.”
“Oh, Lila,” Martha murmured.
“What you have gone through …”
“Well …”
“I cannot bear it. When I heard, when I saw it in the paper, I told the school to cancel my Tuesday life-drawing class. Then, naturally, people called to ask if I had heard. I said, yes, of course, but only from the paper, not from you. I was so embarrassed.”
Martha confronted the issue head on. “I’m so sorry, Lila. We presumed you’d ring us. There’s been so much happening.”
“My dear, I did not want to intrude. I called Graham Carter to see if they were doing a reprint because of all the mentions of the books in the obituaries. He has not had the courtesy to return my call. Actually, my calls. With an s.”
Whenever Graham came down to stay, Lila had to be kept away from the house: she had many suggestions as to how the books could be published better. She felt that the paper they were printed on was too thin, that her illustrations would reproduce better on thicker stock; she felt September or January or June were not good months for publication; she felt there should be more publicity; she felt it was a scandal that the books had not found an American publisher. Once she had inveigled Graham into having lunch with her when she went up to London for the January sales. After that, he had avoided taking her calls.
“He’ll be at the funeral tomorrow, I’m sure,” Martha said soothingly.
“Thank God—thank God!—we finished the last book when we did. Oh, if it had been only half finished …” I never really knew whether Arthur had wanted her to illustrate his books or whether she had simply made any other option impossible, but once she had started it was clear that, in her eyes at least, she was inextricably linked to their creation. “But now, what happens now? Mr. Toppit has only just come out of the Darkwood. Oh, poor Arthur. What you have all been through, it’s unthinkable. I could have been so useful. Look!”
She dived into her bag and came up with a set of plastic folders. “I’ve done them in triplicate,” she said, thrusting them at me and Martha. Inside, Xeroxes of the various newspaper pieces about Arthur’s death were mounted on card. The three sets each had a different-colored sticker. “Green is for you, Martha, your favorite color. Blue is to go into The Big Book of Hayseed and red is for spare. Do we need more?” Rachel and I called it the BBH. In those days, it was not big at all: a leatherbound album, only half full, with the reviews and the various bits of publicity that the publishers had done. It was only later that it overflowed into many thick volumes, and clipping became a full-time job for Lila.
“You should have called me,” she said. It wasn’t quite a shout, but rising towards one.
“Rachel’s not been at all well,” Martha said.
“Of course she hasn’t. She’s an adolescent. I spend my life with adolescent girls at the school,” Lila snapped. “And poor Luke—now the little man of the family.” She looked at me pityingly. “I could have helped, Martha, I could have helped you. All you had to do was ask.”
Martha looked desperate. “We wanted to be alone, didn’t we, baby? We thought it was best if it was just us.”
Just then there was a bang from the kitchen and a little cry of pain. Laurie clattered through the hall and appeared in the doorway, sucking the side of her hand. “Your ovens are so hot here, I fried my hand,” she said. “Don’t hold out too much hope for my salted almonds.”
Lila turned slowly to see who it was, then back to Martha questioningly.
“This is Laurie Clow,” Martha said.
Laurie came in front of the sofa and shook Lila’s hand.
There was a pause. Lila said, “And you are …?”
“I’m Laurie.”
“Laurie’s from America,” I said helpfully.
“You are staying here?”
“Yes. Everyone’s been so kind,” Laurie said.
“You are helping in the house? In the kitchen?”
“I’m doing Mexican for after the funeral.”
“Mexican?”
“Well, kind of Tex-Mex.”
Lila turned to Martha. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Martha cleared her throat. “Laurie was with Arthur when he had the accident.”
Lila put her hand over her mouth in shock. “You are a friend of Arthur’s?”
Martha laid a hand on Lila’s arm and said, “Laurie had just arrived in London. She was walking down the street when the accident happened.”
Lila seemed relieved. “So you’re not a friend of the family?”
“They’ve all been so kind,” Laurie said again.
“But you are staying here?” Lila turned to Martha. “I thought you wanted to be alone.”
Martha had had enough. “Lila, Laurie’s been good enough to help us for the last few days. We’re very grateful to her.”
Laurie’s face broke into a smile. “Oh, so you’re Lila,” she said. “I love your little drawings. They really add some fizz to Mr. Hayman’s books.” Lila’s mouth fell open, but before she could say anything, Laurie sat down next to her on the sofa. “Oh, and I love how you do your hair, too,” she said. She touched the hairnet. “Those beads are so pretty.”
Lila’s reaction was so extreme it was as if a bat had got tangled in her hair. She gave a little scream and shook her head wildly. Laurie’s hand flew back. Lila put hers up as if to erect an invisible barrier between her and Laurie. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m very sensitive.”
There was silence. The three women, Martha, Lila, and Laurie, sat staring out from the sofa as if posing for a rather formal photograph. Then Lila straightened her back and elaborately patted her hair. She turned her head away from Laurie, put her lips to Martha’s ear and said in a conspiratorial but audible whisper, “Amerikaner sind doch so bizarr. What would Uncle Heinrich say?” Then she gave a tinkling laugh, which might have been girlish except that something seemed to have been lost in the translation.
After Laurie had left the room it took some time to negotiate Lila’s departure.
“Oh, Lila, it’s chaos here. You must get back,” Martha said.
Lila gave a throaty chuckle. “Chaos is what I do best, Martha, you know that. Remember what I did with your bank statements? You must rest.” She patted her bag. “I have brought my things,” she said. “I will be most happy in
my usual room. Not to worry if the sheets aren’t fresh. There’s so much to do for tomorrow.”
“It’s all organized. Laurie’s doing the food,” Martha said.
“Martha,” she said, in an attempt at lightness, “I’m not sure that Mexican food is entirely appropriate at a funeral. Arthur was not a caballero—is that the word?” She gave a little laugh.
“I think it sounds fun,” I said.
“Fun?” Lila said doubtfully. “Well, you know me, Luke. I’m not very up-to-the-minute.” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “And how long is Miss Clow staying, Martha? It is Miss Clow, isn’t it? I can’t imagine there could be a Mr. Clow.”
“Laurie’s been wonderful, Lila,” Martha said sharply. “She came to England for a week and all she’s done is be stuck with us.”
“A week? How do people think they can see this country in a week? Americans—so restless, always moving on.”
“You’re right. I should have a sleep,” Martha said. “You were so kind to come, Lila.”
“Let me help,” she implored.
“No, Lila, you always do so much. You should keep off your feet.” Lila had trouble with her hip. “Anyway, we’ll need your help tomorrow.”
“I have a little surprise for tomorrow.”
Martha looked anxious. “What?”
Lila gave a shy smile. “I think you will be pleased. I know Arthur would be. My dear, let me stay. I will do supper for everyone tonight. Something simple like scrambled eggs. Unless your Miss Clow has prepared some exotic dish from one of the countries she has visited in such depth.”
Martha got up. “Lila, you must go. Baby, will you call a taxi?”
“A taxi? I could not possibly afford a taxi. I shall take the bus. There’s a seat at the stop. I have my hat.”
Martha was by the door. She made a last preemptive strike : “Baby, call a taxi now. On our account. This minute.” She blew Lila a kiss, and fled. I could hear her feet rattling up the stairs.