Footsteps in the Park

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Shut up!’ Phyllis took a menacing step forwards. ‘How dare you even mention your sister’s name after what you’ve just said? Don’t you know, or have you forgotten, that her wedding-dress is hanging there in the spare room? And even at this very minute she’s with that decent young man looking over the house they’re going to live in together?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I knew this morning, even as you knelt by my side in church, that you were up to something. Muttering your mealy-mouthed prayers, you little sod. And I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you, what’s always been wrong with you. You’re jealous of your sister. Jealous as hell. Jealous because she’s going to marry a fine man, and jealous because as far as disposition goes you’re not fit to grovel at her feet and lick her big toe. You’ve been against this wedding right from the start, and now you think you’ve found a way to bugger it all up.’ Her voice rose. ‘Aye, and bugger us all up too. Not content with mixing with the scum of the earth yourself, you want the rest of your family to be dragged down with you. And I suppose you’ve told Beryl all this cock-and-bull story? That’s what you were saying, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t. I only said I thought that Gerald . . .’

  ‘I said shut up!’ Phyllis’s face was as frightening as her voice now, all pretence at refinement gone. ‘Aye, you’d like that,’ she went on. ‘You’d like your Auntie Ethel to think we were mixed up in a bit of muckiness, wouldn’t you? You’d like them to think we’ve been taken down a peg, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, please . . .’

  ‘Don’t you try to come the little innocent with me now, Dorothy Bolton. Only somebody with a sick mind could have dreamed up the story I heard you tell your father just now. Inferring that Gerald had something to do with that sordid murder . . . and when they come back from the house I want you gone. Go where you bloody well like, but I’m not having you sitting at my dinner table with thoughts like that in your head.’

  Matthew put out his hand to touch her, but she knocked it away with a fierce slicing motion.

  He tried again. ‘Come now, lass. It were a shock hearing it like that. It’s been a shock to me, and I’m sure that Gerald’s done nothing very terrible. But it needs sorting out . . .’

  ‘Not this time, Matthew. This time you can’t sort anything out. Because the only one that needs sorting out is her.’

  And as Dorothy took a step forward Phyllis’s fist shot out and caught her full on the mouth, and as she cried aloud and tried to shield herself with her arms, Phyllis took hold of her by the shoulders and shook her so that her teeth rattled and the blood spun in her head.

  It was like a drunken street brawl, a Saturday night punch-up down in the main streets of the town, with Matthew, galvanized into action at last, pinning his wife’s arms behind her back. With Dorothy rushing headlong from the room, stumbling down the stairs, wrenching at the big front door, and running out into the bright spring sunshine, with no thought in her head but that she must get away. . . .

  Sixteen

  FOR WHAT SEEMED like an eternity, but could in reality have been only a few seconds, Matthew felt as if he was being split into two people. One half of him was running down the stairs after Dorothy, and the other half was ministering to his wife, trying to calm her into some sort of normality.

  And staying where he was in the bedroom he could still see himself, in his mind’s eye, calling Dorothy’s name, with the neighbours looking up from their hedge-trimming, and coming from their Sunday dinners, to see who was making all that commotion in the normally quiet, respectable road.

  ‘I’d never have caught up with her,’ he muttered to himself as he tried to draw Phyllis into the circle of his arms, straining at her as she stiffened against him.

  ‘I blame you for this,’ she said, quieter now, but still speaking in that rough, alien voice. ‘You’ve spoilt her since the day she was born. Giving in to her whims and making excuses for her.’ She started to whimper. ‘We were too old; we’re too old to cope, there’s too much of your father in her. There’s bad blood somewhere there.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Matthew wished he could sit down, but it didn’t seem the right time, even though his legs felt as if they were weighted with lead. ‘You’d no right to hit her,’ he said sadly. ‘She’s not a child. You’d no right to land out at her like that.’

  Phyllis turned her back on him and walked her straight-backed walk to the door. To his amazement he could see that already her normal self-control was asserting itself, and the immediate transition from a shouting virago to her customary prim refinement seemed so shocking that he felt a physical churning of disgust in his stomach.

  Groping for the bannister he followed her down the stairs, fumbling with his feet for each step like a blind man as she talked at him over her shoulder.

  ‘Margaret and Gerald will be back at any minute, and they mustn’t suspect that anything’s been happening. Not by any sign at all must they suspect that we’ve had words.’ She turned at the bottom of the stairs, and her face was as smooth as if they’d had a slight difference of opinion about whether to open a tin of peaches or a tin of pineapple for pudding. ‘We’ll tell them that Dorothy had a telephone call from a friend, and has gone there for dinner.’

  ‘Just like that?’ Matthew followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, just like that,’ Phyllis said, taking the oven gloves down from the hook by the gas-oven and thrusting her hands inside them. Then before bending down to open the oven door she stared straight at him with a direct look that started the churning sensation in his middle once again.

  ‘What our Dorothy said was never said. It’s gone. Done with, and never to be referred to again. Not ever. And when she comes back you can tell her that yourself because it will be a long time before I can trust myself to speak to her . . .’

  Matthew took his handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his forehead, and if anything at all had been registering in his wife’s mind at that moment she would have seen the way he sank down on to a kitchen chair, and seen the greyness of his usually ruddy cheeks, and the way his mouth had fallen slack and strangely blue.

  ‘And Dorothy?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you even care where she’s gone?’

  Phyllis took a ladle and started to baste the sizzling joint of beef, spooning the hot fat over it with a hand as steady as a rock.

  ‘You know as well as I do where she’ll have gone to. Down Inkerman Street. To that boy. To where she belongs. And as far as I’m concerned she can stay there.’

  Matthew blinked hard as if to get her into focus. This was his wife, the mother of his two daughters. The mother of Dorothy as well as of Margaret. He blinked his eyes again.

  ‘And if she repeats what she said?’

  ‘She said nothing!’

  Matthew spoke slowly but clearly as if trying to make himself understood to a backward five-year-old child. ‘Dorothy is headstrong, and foolish at times, we both know that, but however terrible the consequences might be, lass, we’ve got to talk about what she said. We’ve got to talk it out between the three of us even if it’s just the means of setting it right between her and Gerald. She’ll be coming back.’ He turned his head as if already he heard his daughter’s returning footsteps. ‘She always comes back, after all she’s run down the road in a flaming temper more times than Gerald’s had hot dinners. I know, I know. This time she’s gone too far, this time that imagination of hers has really gone off the rails, and she’s been foolish and impulsive, but it’s got to be thrashed out. If Gerald . . .’ He licked his dry lips. ‘If Gerald had been seeing that poor lass – and what he did before he started courting our Margaret seriously is his own concern; he’s not a mere slip of a lad you know, and I wasn’t born yesterday either, I’ve seen the way he stares at a pretty girl.’ Matthew recoiled from his wife’s glare. ‘Nay, lass, there’s no need to look like that. The man what doesn’t look twice at a pretty lass might as well go into a corner and roll up then stiffen himself. But if Gerald did meet the Ar
mstrong lass, well, he’s got to be a man and own up. He’s got to tell the police because – don’t you see, chuck? – it could give them a lead as to who she was seeing – who she saw that night.’

  ‘Gerald is not the type of young man to associate with your weavers,’ Phyllis stressed each word. ‘And Dorothy said nothing. And if she opens her mouth outside this house then my door will never open to her again. Never.’

  Matthew sighed. He’d read somewhere once that under great stress people could blank out a part of their minds, refusing to believe, or unable to believe that which they refused to acknowledge to be truth. But this was Phyllis. His wife. A woman with predictable reactions to any given situation. Narrow-minded and bigoted maybe, but predictable.

  ‘You don’t mean that, love,’ he said, shaking his big head from side to side. Then, as the sound of the front door opening and closing cut short another spate of angry words, he saw the way Phyllis arranged her face into a smile of welcome, a smile which made him recoil and put up a hand to his mouth as if she had hit out at him also.

  Margaret came straight through the hall into the kitchen, swinging her Sunday hat in her hand, her coat unbuttoned, glowing with the special kind of happiness that Gerald seemed to be able to instil in her. Her voice held a teasing quality. ‘Here you both are, then, looking as guilty as a pair of old Nicks. What’s been going on?’

  ‘Going on, dear?’ Phyllis’s smile cracked a little at the corners. ‘What do you mean? There’s nothing been going on, has there, Father?’

  Margaret sniffed the air with appreciation. ‘Gosh, but that smells good. We were driving up Steep Brow just now when we saw our Dorothy walking down the other side, and though I swear she saw us, she turned her head away and started to run.’ She turned to Phyllis. ‘You’ve found out, I suppose?’

  ‘Found out what?’ Phyllis’s smile disappeared as if someone had stepped forward and wiped it from-her face with a damp flannel.

  ‘About that Stanley boy coming round to the house last night when you were out. Good heavens, there’s no need to look like that, the pair of you. Dorothy isn’t the first girl to have a boy in when she’s alone, and she won’t be the last. He looks harmless enough, honestly.’ She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Can’t you see that if you ignore him he’ll disappear? He isn’t Dorothy’s type, I can tell you that. Gerald and I are always saying that she’ll have to find a boy who can dominate her before she can respect him, and this boy definitely isn’t the domineering type. It was funny really, the way they scuttled out when we came in. Like two frightened rabbits.’

  Matthew found his voice at last. ‘Where’s Gerald then? Making sure the car’s all right? I didn’t hear you drive in.’

  Margaret turned to go upstairs. ‘Gone after Dorothy, of course. He’ll calm her down if anyone can. He dropped me off at the end of the road, then he reversed round the corner and went after her. Want to bet that by the time I’ve set the table she’s back, pleading to be forgiven?’ She put her head on one side and glanced at them mischievously from beneath her eyelashes. ‘You are a fuddy-duddy pair. Can’t you see that she’s a bit upset with that awful thing happening in the park? There’s nothing for you to look so worried about. Honestly.’

  And as the soft click of her bedroom door closed behind her the door-bell rang. Apologetically, as if someone had merely brushed the bell with a finger, then regretted it immediately.

  ‘He’s found her already.’ Matthew closed both eyes with the enormity of his relief.’

  ‘I tell you, Matthew. If she says as much as a word . . .’

  ‘You get on with the dinner.’ He walked heavily out of the kitchen and down the hall, his step faltering as he’ opened the door and saw the bulky form of his friend Arnold Bates, standing there on the step, as obviously a policeman as if he was wearing full uniform and not the tweed suit with the canary-yellow waistcoat and the watch-chain draped across his ample middle. Profusely apologetic, he stood there in the Sunday sunshine, twisting the brim of a brown trilby hat round and round in his hands.

  ‘Morning, Matthew.’

  Almost without volition, Matthew pulled the big door partially closed behind him. ‘Morning, Arnold.’

  ‘Looks like summer’s come at last.’

  ‘Aye. Not before time though.’

  ‘But there’s still a nip in the air if tha’ moves out of the sun.’

  ‘Aye, that’s right.’

  ‘Missus well?’

  ‘Aye. And Gertie?’

  ‘Fair to middlin’. Still has her usual rheumatism about this time of the year. Always at its worst when ’weather perks up.’

  Then Sergeant Bates looked his old friend in the eye. ‘I’ve come on a tricky errand, Matthew. Just come from your brother-in-law’s house. Tha knows. Raymond Rostron,’ he added unnecessarily.

  Matthew found he was holding his breath. ‘They’ve gone out for their dinner, but they’ll be back about three no doubt. Hope there’s nowt wrong down at the yard. Raymond’s worried enough without any trouble in that direction.’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘Aye, well.’ Then he studied a loose piece of gravel on the path with intense concentration. ‘Well, it were really their lodger I wanted to see. Mr Gerald Tomlin.’ He kicked the gravel furiously with the toe of a well-polished shoe. ‘Your lass’s intended. Tha’ knows?’

  Matthew glanced over his shoulder. There was no need for him to be holding his breath now. It was holding itself, or so it seemed. ‘He’s not here,’ he whispered. His voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way. ‘But he’ll be here soon. Aye, that’s right. He’ll be coming soon. He’s coming here for his dinner.’

  ‘Good.’ Sergeant Bates avoided his eyes, staring now with interest at the tip of a thumb-nail. ‘Then I’ll come inside and wait if tha’ doesn’t mind. There’s just one or two questions I’d like to ask him. Routine tha’ knows, purely routine.’

  ‘In connection with Ruby Armstrong’s murder?’

  The words were out before Matthew could stop them, before he even knew his mind had formed them, and completely oblivious to the sudden narrowing of the sergeant’s eyes, he stepped round him and strode quickly to the gate. Straining his eyes against the sun, he stared down the road, anticipating the roar of the engine in Gerald’s red car, praying that it might turn the corner, willing it to appear.

  And seeing and hearing nothing . . .

  Seventeen

  ALTHOUGH DOROTHY WAS walking in the direction of Inkerman Street, she was doing so without intent. Walking aimlessly as the despairing do, putting one foot in front of the other, her mind at times a blank and at times seething with resentment.

  In the last hour, since coming out of church, the wind had dropped, and the midday sun, high in the sky, was warm on her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t like it when it comes too soon,’ a woman was telling her next-door neighbour as she stood, arms folded, squinting at the clear blue sky.

  ‘Aye, we’re bound to suffer for it later,’ her neighbour said, going inside and closing the door on the sunshine.

  Dorothy, hands deep in her blazer pocket, turned into Balaclava Street, walking with head bent so that she almost stumbled over a chair placed in front of a bay window. A woman, shelling peas into a white basin, grinned at her. ‘If this is going to be summer, then I’m making sure I’m on ’front row for it.’

  Dorothy smiled back at her automatically . . . Mother would have been horrified. In Phyllis’s code, to sit out at the back of the house was in order if one was decently screened from one’s neighbours. But to sit out at the front of the house put one entirely beyond the pale.

  ‘Oh, Mother . . .’ she muttered, walking straight into the chalked-in squares of a hopscotch game, causing a tiny girl, balancing on one foot in a numbered flagstone, to shout out in indignant protest: ‘Left yer glasses at home, then?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Dorothy walked on. ‘Sorry . . . sorry.’

  Sorry she’d made such a mess of t
hings, sorry she’d upset her mother so much, sorry for herself, sorry for Stanley. Sorry for the whole terrible, terrible mess.

  ‘But she shouldn’t have hit me . . .’ Her mouth hurt and she could feel the swelling where her top teeth had caught her lip at the unexpected violence of the blow. People didn’t hit people. Not Phyllis’s kind. A woman like Phyllis was always in control; even a flash of temper showing merely as a tightening of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes.

  It wasn’t dignified . . . she had known exactly where she stood with her mother, knew exactly how far she could go. Now she felt as if she had never really known her mother, and as if she would never really know her again.

  And she’d have to go back. She had known she would have to go back, even before she’d reached the end of her road. The white-hot flame of her own anger was dying down, the grand dramatic gesture of flinging herself out of the house was being superseded by a feeling of embarrassment. Embarrassment and a slow acknowledgement of her own sound common sense.

  If she didn’t go back, then where could she go?

  Certainly not to Stanley’s house, even though her footsteps had instinctively led her in that direction. They had enough to worry them with the funeral tomorrow. Not to Cousin Beryl’s house because they had gone out to dinner. To Mrs Wilkinson’s?

  ‘Please, Mrs Wilkinson, may I come in? My mother’s hit me across the mouth and told me to bugger off.’

  No, Phyllis ought not to have hit her. It wasn’t right. They weren’t supposed to do things like that in the red-brick houses up by the park. Without realizing it, Dorothy began to whimper.

  ‘Anything wrong, chuck?’ A man with a narrow grey face, with a flat cap pulled low down over his eyes, leaned back against a window-bottom, smoking a Woodbine tucked neatly into the curved palm of his hand.