Risking It All

by Ann Granger

  Add to that frequent spats with the neighbours, all of whom I’d managed to upset one way and another. As when I’d attempted to do a kind turn to a friendly and hungry-looking cat by opening a tin of sardines and putting it down on the floor for him. He shoved his face into it and it got stuck there, wedged on his jaws. The poor thing ran round demented, unable to see, dripping sardine oil and cannoning off the furniture. It was ages before Dad managed to catch him. Then we had to clean him up before his owner saw him. By now he distrusted our entire family and spat and scratched as we tried to remove oil from his fur and bits of sardine from his ears. All this before my disruptive progress through the private school, my eventual expulsion and the humiliation of facing Dad and Grandma which I’ve already told you about.

  ‘Face it, Fran,’ I told myself. ‘You were ghastly.’

  Mrs Mackenzie had net curtains at her bow windows. Her tiny front garden hadn’t been sacrificed for a car but was paved with chequered tiles and shielded from the pavement by a clipped privet hedge. Her front door was varnished dark brown and had twin glass panels in it, long, thin and pointed like church windows. Between them was stuck a little notice. It read:

  WE DO NOT BUY OR SELL AT THIS DOOR WE SHALL EXPECT IDENTIFICATION WE CAN VERIFY YOU MAY BE ASKED TO WAIT WHILE WE CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY YOU MAY BE ASKED TO RETURN BY APPOINTMENT

  That was a good start. I rang the bell in what I hoped sounded a confident way. From the corner of my eye I could see the net curtain, and as I expected, it was briefly twitched aside. I glimpsed a face but couldn’t distinguish any particular features. The curtain fell back into place. I waited.

  There was the sound of someone approaching behind the door, not a firm footstep, more a shuffle interspersed with a thud. Then there was a click and a rattle. Someone was sliding a security chain across the door before opening it, but at least she (I assumed it was Mrs Mackenzie) was opening it. The gap widened enough for me to glimpse a face again. Disconcertingly, it was at my chest level.

  ‘Yes?’ The person behind the door wasn’t a child. It was a woman’s voice, elderly but cool and confident. I’m not very tall. She must be unusually short, I thought.

  ‘Mrs Mackenzie?’ I found myself crouching to look her in the eye. I couldn’t see much more through the crack. ‘Your neighbour at twenty-six suggested I speak to you. I’m trying to trace a family called Wilde who lived here some years ago. Your neighbour thought you might remember them.’

  There was a silence. ‘Just give me a moment,’ she said.

  The door was pushed to again, but not completely. I heard faint sounds as of someone moving away, and then, surprising me, voices. Mrs Mackenzie wasn’t alone. Somehow I’d imagined a widow. But she was talking to a man. Not, I thought as I strained my ears, an old man. The male voice was fairly young.

  She came back. The chain rattled and fell down. The door was opened wide.

  Two people stood before me, Mrs Mackenzie directly in front, and the reason for the shuffling, thudding noise was revealed. At one time, I guessed, she must have been a beauty, a tallish, slender woman. Her hair, though grey, was still thick and swept back into a knot. But now she was doubled over, fixed in a permanent stoop, and supported herself with a special stick which allowed her to rest on the horizontal handle. Her knitted skirt and tunic top hung loose on her body like wrappings threatening to come adrift. But her face was lightly made-up and her eyes, locked with mine, didn’t waver. The body had crumpled with age or some progressive infirmity, but the mind within remained sharp.

  Perhaps the make-up had been applied because she had a visitor this afternoon, other than myself. Just behind her, in the large square hallway, stood a young man about my age, tall and solidly built, in a rugby jersey and jeans. He had a thick mop of curling fair hair and there was a slight resemblance between him and the woman. A son? I wasn’t sure.

  He met my gaze over Mrs Mackenzie’s shoulder and said, ‘Hi.’

  Mrs Mackenzie said, ‘The Wildes moved away at least ten years ago.’ Her eyes were studying me in a way which was neither unfriendly nor curious, either of which I’d have expected. If anything, she looked as if she was assessing me point by point. I felt I was getting marks out of ten for my speech, my blazer, my jeans, my hair, my general manner.

  She said, ‘The fact is, I do have an address for them but I’m not at all sure I could lay my hand on it at a moment’s notice. We exchange Christmas cards, that’s all. In any case, you’ll understand I’d hesitate to give it to you, just like that. Perhaps if you were to tell me who you were, I could get in touch with them on your behalf, once I’ve run the address to earth.’

  This was a tricky one and I hadn’t anticipated it. She was playing for time. If I let her contact the Wildes, I was done for. I had to get the address off her now and I didn’t believe she couldn’t find it. Sometimes only the truth will do. Not all the truth, in this case, but enough of it.

  ‘My name is Francesca Varady,’ I said. ‘I live in Camden so I’ve come quite a way today. My mother, Eva, is very ill. She used to know the Wildes about twelve years or so ago.’ I drew a deep breath and named the hospice at Egham. ‘That’s where she is, and if you’d like to phone them, you can check.’ I scrabbled in my pocket and pulled out the scrap of paper on which I’d written down the hospice details given me by Clarence Duke. ‘She doesn’t expect them to go and see her or anything. Basically, she’d just like to know how they are and make her goodbyes.’

  Mrs Mackenzie took the paper and studied it. She passed it to the young man, who read it and said, ‘I’ll call them if you want, Auntie Dot.’

  ‘Would you, Ben, dear?’ She looked relieved. The decision was being made for her. She turned back to me. ‘Would you like to come in and wait, Miss Varady? Ben will give the hospice a ring. I’m sure you’ll understand my checking?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. Given the warning notice glued to her door, I would have expected nothing less.

  I followed her into the house and she led the way, accompanying every step with a hollow thud of the stick, taking me past the telephone on a small half-moon table and Ben lounging by it waiting to make the call.

  You can tell a lot from a house when you first enter, just by the smell. This one smelled of polish with a hint of lavender, of old furniture, and something else. I caught a trace of that odour of illness which I’d noticed at the hospice. Nothing like so obvious, but lurking there all the same. It’s hard to define the smell of sickness. Not always, of course. When Cardinal Richelieu was dying, so I was told in a history lesson, the smell of his gangrenous limbs kept people out of the room. Visitors scuttled in and out unable to bear it. But perhaps, given Richelieu’s career, people had always scuttled in and out, fearful of remaining in that dangerous and powerful presence. It probably wouldn’t have bothered him. But the smell, which they could escape and he couldn’t, the odour of his own body rotting, a putrefaction before death, that must have been horrible.

  We’d reached a sitting room at the back of the house. As I’d expected, it was comfortably furnished and very tidy, the furniture all some years old but gleaming and dust-free. There was a fake coal fire powered by gas flickering in the grate. They had been having tea. Cups (Mrs Mackenzie was clearly not a mug person) stood on a tray, and plates with cake crumbs on them. It all looked very cosy and I wondered just how I was going to manage amid all this. I felt like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

  Rescue came unexpectedly. I’d no sooner taken in all the other things than I realised the room had one curious feature. There were a lot of photographs, all over the mantelshelf, the cupboard tops, lining the shelves, even on top of the television. And all of them were of dogs. My heart rose. It couldn’t have been better. They were all Jack Russells.

  ‘I’ve got one of those!’ I cried delightedly, pointing at the nearest JR looking perkily at camera. ‘Her name is Bonnie.’

  Mrs Mackenzie’s stiffly courteous manner thawed instantly. She became positively graciou
s. ‘Have you, dear?’ She lowered herself awkwardly into a well-used chair with a high back and wooden arms, and indicated to me I should take a seat. ‘As you can see, I’ve had a long association with Jack Russells. I used to breed them many years ago. I don’t keep a dog now, I haven’t for some while. I can’t walk long distances and it would be beyond me to exercise them. They are such lively little dogs, as you know.’ She’d propped the stick by her chair, and as she stopped speaking, she looked down at it, seeming for a moment almost puzzled that she had come to her present enfeebled state.

  ‘I was given Bonnie by someone who couldn’t keep her any longer,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how old she is, not very, I don’t think. She’s very clever and a terrific house-dog.’ (Even if the ‘house’ was a garage.)

  In the background, as I spoke, I could hear Ben’s voice on the phone, speaking to the hospice. Mrs Mackenzie seemed to think she had to explain his presence.

  ‘Ben is my nephew, Ben Cornish. He’s studying to be a landscape gardener.’ Her voice echoed with pride. ‘He wanted practice and I told him, well, he could practise all he liked on my back garden!’

  She gestured towards the French windows. They opened out on to a fairly large piece of ground. It certainly looked as if someone had been working there with a vengeance. Shrubs were uprooted. Trees had been shorn of their lower branches. Debris of all kinds was stacked in a pile. It looked more like an archaeological excavation than a spot of gardening. Near the house was a raised brick construction, about knee-high, filled with earth.

  ‘My husband,’ said Mrs Mackenzie, ‘was a great fishfancier when he was alive. That was his fish-tank. After he died, I kept on with the fish for a while, but eventually they died and I didn’t replace them. The pond became choked with weed. I had it emptied and cleaned then just left it. Gradually I had to leave the garden to its own devices, though once I was a very keen gardener. It got in such a state. Then Ben caught the gardening bug, as he calls it, and straightened it up. But I could see he was itching to make more of it and it is a nice position. So beautifully sunny in the afternoons.’

  She smiled broadly. ‘So I let him loose! He began while I was away. I went to visit my sister. Poor soul, she’s not in good health. But then, neither—’ She broke off and frowned, reproving herself. She was of that generation which believes it bad form to whinge. ‘When I got back, Ben had swept the garden just about bare! He’s got so many bright ideas and one of them was to fill the old fish-tank with earth and turn it into a raised flower bed. He’s going to plant it out with spring bulbs. I’ll be able to look after it just by sitting in a chair alongside it. Isn’t that nice? I’m looking forward to it. He’s such a clever boy.’

  I guessed she had no children of her own. She’d had her Jack Russell dogs and her husband had had his fish. Now she had Ben. As she stopped speaking, the receiver out in the hall clattered back into its rest. The door opened and Ben came in.

  ‘I spoke to someone at the hospice,’ he said to his aunt. ‘Mrs Eva Varady is there and she has a daughter called Francesca.’ He returned my scrap of paper to me.

  ‘You were talking to Sister Helen, I expect,’ I said, as I took it. Inwardly I had misgivings about this. Sister Helen might yet prove a spanner in the works.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Sister Helen it was.’

  ‘Oh well, then,’ said his aunt cheerfully, ‘there will be no harm in my giving you Flora and Jerry’s address.’ Consternation crossed her face. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said. ‘Your mother is dying and I’m so sorry to have made you wait—’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said sturdily.

  She pressed a concealed button on the armchair, and as I watched, fascinated, the seat began to tilt forward and rise at the same time so that she slid out, grasping her stick, and was on her feet. Now that was a nifty gadget. Still wielding the stick, she set off towards a nearby writing-desk. Ben was ahead of her and had opened it up before she got there. He took her elbow as she subsided on to a chair.

  She began copying out something on to a sheet of paper. Ben left her to come and sit near me. He smiled. Either I’d passed whatever test he’d set for me in his own head, or he was softening me up for a gentle interrogation.

  ‘You’re a gardener,’ I said, getting in first. ‘I mean, a garden designer.’

  ‘Hope to be,’ he said. ‘I’m at college at the moment. What do you do, Fran?’

  ‘Me?’ I felt embarrassed. They wouldn’t understand my situation, not one bit. ‘I studied drama,’ I said. ‘I want to be an actor. So far, I haven’t had much luck.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be actress?’ he asked.

  ‘In the profession, we don’t use that term now,’ I informed him. ‘Though other people still do. We’re all actors.’

  ‘Tough business to be in, anyway,’ he sympathised. ‘So, you’re resting, isn’t that the expression?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Too right. The most rested actor in the country.

  Mrs Mackenzie had twisted on her chair and was holding out a folded piece of paper. Ben got up and went to take it.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Flora and Jerry will be sorry to hear about your mother.’

  They would be sorry, but perhaps not in the way she meant it. I felt guilty because Mrs Mackenzie and Ben were such nice people, and in a way, I was conning them.

  Ben brought the address to me and I took a quick look at it. The Wildes lived in Kew. Nice for the Gardens. At least they hadn’t moved out of the Greater London area. It had occurred to me on my journey there that they could have gone anywhere, up to the tip of Scotland or halfway up a Welsh mountainside. Out of the country, even. (I can’t pretend I hadn’t secretly wished they had.) But no, they were within reach and it was too late now for me to have second thoughts. I mumbled my thanks, stuffed the paper in my pocket and got up to go.

  Ben glanced at his aunt. ‘I must be off as well, Auntie Dot. Can I give you a lift, Fran?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve got to go up north. I’ll take the Tube.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you a lift to the Tube station.’

  Fair enough. I guessed he wanted to check on me a little more. He looked pretty sharp. He probably knew there was something I wasn’t telling.

  He carried the tray into the kitchen and came back to bid farewell to his aunt. I withdrew discreetly to the hall. I could hear the murmur of their voices. I wondered if he was saying anything about me, but before I could put an ear to the door, he came out of the room.

  ‘Right!’ he said briskly.

  He had one of those small four-wheel-drive vehicles. I clambered up into it and he said, ‘I’m quite happy to drive you home if you want. I’ve got nothing else to do today.’

  But that was too transparent. If he wanted to know where I lived, he wouldn’t find out as easily as that. In fact, I was determined he wouldn’t find out at all.

  ‘Just the Tube station will do,’ I said firmly.

  He gave a sort of grin. He knew I’d rumbled him. Yes, he was smart.

  As he pulled out into the road, a greenish-blue car drew out ahead of us, perhaps a hundred yards away. It dawdled along but Ben showed no urge to overtake it.

  ‘Your aunt’s very proud of you,’ I said, deciding that if we were going to continue our conversation about me, I’d let him know it wasn’t going to be all one-sided. People are often more keen to ask questions than answer them. They think twice if they realise they’re going to have to respond in kind.

  But Ben just grinned. ‘I’m proud of her. She’s been getting progressively more infirm for years and she’s never given up. She’s got wonderful spirit.’

  ‘The sister she’s just been to visit,’ I said, ‘would that be your mother?’

  The grin was turned off, just like pressing a wall-switch. ‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘Aunt Dot is technically my great-aunt. She’s my mother’s aunt.’

  I should have been able to work out something like that for myself. It wouldn’t add up for Mrs
Mackenzie to have a nephew of Ben’s youth any other way.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he said now.

  I said, ‘Yes,’ which was weak but there wasn’t much else I could say. I couldn’t tell him how she’d walked out when I was seven.

  He said, ‘Varady, that’s an unusual name.’

  ‘They were Hungarians, my family,’ I said. ‘That is, my dad’s parents brought him here in the nineteen fifties as a toddler.’

  ‘How’s your dad taking the situation with your mother?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to,’ I said bleakly. ‘He died quite a while ago.’

  ‘That’s tough,’ he said sympathetically.

  I could have told him life is tough. We don’t all have doting great-aunts who let you play at your favourite hobby in their back gardens. That was unfair. But I’d been on my own since I was sixteen. I miss Dad and Grandma Varady and I’ve got them on my conscience, because they brought me up and I wish I’d repaid them better than I did. To this day I don’t know how they managed to scrape together the money to send me to that private school from which I got slung out. I moved on to the dramatic arts course at a local college after that. My father and grandmother were convinced, of course, that a brilliant stage career lay before me. I thought it myself. But Dad died, then Grandma, and I was slung out again, this time by our landlord. Since then I’ve mostly lived in squats and my acting ambitions have been on hold. The flat I briefly rented from Daphne, on highly advantageous terms to me, was the only decent home I’d had in years. But you can see why I’d always felt it couldn’t last. Nothing good ever does.