Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  You know the thing is, Ludo said. They weren’t even really Jews.

  Mollie doesn’t know what it means to be a Jew. She turns her face towards his, moves her lips closer. But Ludo moves away, stands up, takes out a handkerchief, blows his nose. He begins to gather up the albums. She wants him to sit down with her again and so she stretches out her hand. He comes back to her and she settles against him but the moment when he might have kissed her has passed.

  And this is how it always is. Mollie waits endlessly for something more to happen. Now she lays her hand on his knee and moves it up and down uncertainly. This doesn’t feel right. She’s stroking Ludo as one might stroke a dog. But how is one meant to do this? Obviously she’s got the technique wrong. Donna must know how and so do some of the other theatre girls. So why doesn’t she know? And why doesn’t Ludo offer any help? Instead his hand stretches out and he takes hold of her fingers, pulls them gently away from his leg. Then he raises her fingers to his mouth and kisses them, as he has often done before.

  And, of course, she likes him to kiss her fingers. The gesture is kind, respectful. But Mollie doesn’t want kindness or respect. She doesn’t want to wait for London, or Paris or Austria. She wants what goes on in the bedroom upstairs now. She wants him to stick his thing up her, as she’s seen in well-thumbed books in the school library. She doesn’t know quite how this would happen but it certainly isn’t going to happen on this sofa. Apparently there are women that men marry and women with whom they make love. Somehow Mollie has found herself in the wrong category.

  Of course, she does want to marry Ludo sometime and she knows she will. But in the meantime – what holds him back? The phone rings and Ludo stands up to answer it. Why can’t he just let it ring? She drops her head down against the arm of the sofa, waits. Why are there always so many interruptions? Mrs Griffiths. Calls about the shop or music lessons. The girls from the theatre ringing up or coming around. Ludo’s voice is low but she hears the name Donna. Mollie imagines the bedroom upstairs, that room she’s never seen. If she went up there what would she see? Donna with her foot up on a chair, peeling a peach-coloured stocking down her leg. And Ludo like the heroes of the Folies Bergère romances, tall, dark and dangerous, standing by the window, watching.

  Ludo’s voice is low, anxious. Mollie remembers all the times Donna has come around. Have you got our money for us? Ludo opens a tin, pushes rolled-up notes into her hand. These girls never have any money, he says to Mollie. You know working in the theatre isn’t well paid. But I try to help them out when I can.

  Mollie hears the word police and enjoys the surge of fear it brings. So Ludo is in trouble. She’s always known it. He’s been trapped by Donna. She controls him, forces him to let her stay in his flat, insists on leaving her clothes in his bathroom. That’s what the money is really about. Ludo doesn’t love Donna as he loves her but Donna is powerful – a witch, a devil, an enchantress. She’s taking money from him, blackmailing him, cursing him with evil spells, controlling his mind. Men are so often entrapped. It’s the same for her stepfather and probably the same for Arthur as well. Mollie knows that she must save Ludo, take him away, marry him. The time is coming soon. They can’t stay here much longer. The floodwaters are rising and soon the whole city will be swept away.

  Ludo puts down the phone. I’m sorry, my dear, but I must make some calls from upstairs so I think you must go.

  No. No. Don’t worry. I can wait.

  Won’t your mother be worrying about you?

  He knows that this question annoys her so why does he ask? She presses her head into a sofa cushion, waits until she hears the tread of his shoes on the uncarpeted stairs. He’s done this once or twice before – gone to use a phone up in the bedroom. Mollie fetches a blanket from a nearby chair, pulls Ludo’s socks up and lies down on the sofa again, waiting. Won’t your mother be worrying? She remembers a night in January – two months ago – when she had come back so late that her mother was already home. When Mollie, stepping across the hall, realised this, she felt glad. Now there would be a showdown. She’d come up the stairs, in her mother’s shoes, waiting for that moment. Strangely, longing for it. She’d reached the landing, the door of her mother’s bedroom was open. She couldn’t see her mother so she coughed twice.

  Her mother came to the door, dressed in a long Chinese robe, with a cigarette in her hand. The brown shadows of the bedroom behind her, the light glittering dully from the mirror on the wardrobe door. Her mother had looked at her, taking in every detail. She looked as though she might speak but then didn’t. A conversation happened without actually happening. Her mother had stepped back and slowly and deliberately shut the bedroom door. And Mollie stood there wanting victory. But there was no victory. What point is there in having power unless you can hold that power over someone else?

  But Violet has refused to play the game. And Mollie has been denied the opportunity to lie, which is unfair, as she likes lying and knows herself to be good at it. Violet shuts the door. So that now Mollie’s power and freedom hang around her shoulders like the too-big fur coat. She wonders what she would have to do to make her mother care. Perhaps she should try and find out? Hidden deep is the fear that nothing will be enough.

  She longs to hear voices from behind that door, her stepfather saying – Really, Violet, I do think. Dangerous. Irresponsible. She waits for him to come, to tell her that she’s in danger, to lecture her about coming back too late, to forbid her from going out again, to promise that he will stay in every evening to check on her. But her mother has always stood in front of her stepfather, obscuring him from view. Mollie drifts towards sleep, dreams of the station, less than half a mile away. The road out, the long lines of silver stretching away across England, Europe, through the night. Dreams of the stranger who came to the house, except that man now has Ludo’s face. Mollie stands with him outside on the terrace, looking down the violet-covered lawn. And Arthur-Ludo doesn’t have a limp and he’s dancing with her mother on the terrace. And Mollie is watching them, standing on a brocade armchair which – bizarrely – has appeared on the terrace. And now she is small – tiny – hardly bigger than a doll and standing on the armchair listening to the music and watching the figures twist and turn and she knows that soon Arthur-Ludo will walk over, pick her up, swing her around.

  She wakes, the real Ludo stands beside the sofa.

  Mollie, I have to go out. You must go.

  No. No.

  Yes, I must.

  No, Ludo. No. You don’t have to.

  Yes, I do. Donna is in some difficulties.

  Mollie flings herself at him.

  Please, she says. I want you to marry me.

  He holds her back, shakes his head. Mollie, I’m already married.

  Mollie hears the words like a punch in the chest. How can Ludo be married? Where is his wife? She looks around the flat as though a woman with an apron might suddenly appear from the kitchen carrying a leg of lamb on a silver dish. Some part of her mind has been left behind on the terrace at Langley Crescent.

  My wife has gone to live in Paris with a painter friend of mine.

  Mollie is glad to find that Ludo’s wife is far away but still she doesn’t understand. Her mother and stepfather don’t allow anyone who is divorced into the house. People who are divorced live in shame and poverty. They don’t have friends and run art galleries in Paris.

  Ludo, please. I don’t mind that you’re married. Please.

  She wants him to take her up to the bedroom and take advantage of her innocence. In the Folies Bergère romances, the man is always tall and he bears down upon the woman and she raises her mouth to his and is overwhelmed. But she raises her mouth towards his and nothing happens.

  Ludo, why not? she says.

  Because. He moves away from her gently. Mollie, really, you must go.

  Mollie turns away from him, furious. Why does he want Donna and not her? He’s like her mother. He doesn’t care.

  I’m sorry, my dear. I must go. I
’ll leave the key. Put it under the stone.

  He puts on his coat and hat.

  I will see you tomorrow? he says. She doesn’t answer although she knows that she will come back tomorrow. She hears him go and feels the temperature drop. Without him the room is dirty and dislocated, meaningless. Cardboard, balsa wood and glue. Of course the money, the phone calls, the police are not to do with blackmail. Something else happens, something she doesn’t understand. Maybe it’s Ludo who is evil. She hopes he is because then she must be the victim, the innocent young girl shamelessly seduced by the wicked older man. That’s what happened the first night she came here and it’s been happening again and again. He rips her clothes, forces himself upon her, holds her cheeks so tightly between his vice-like fingers that she has no choice but to kiss him. And now he has left her, cast her aside, abandoned her.

  She stands up unsteadily now, the damaged and bewildered victim. She peels off his socks, straightens her clothes, stifles a sob. She finds her scarf, coat and shoes. Reaching the stairs she takes hold of the stair rail, supports herself as she staggers down. He’s injured her so badly that she can barely walk. Another wail rises in her throat. The distance from stairs to front door seems infinitely long. Will she get out alive? Finally she emerges into the starless night, looks around her at the black faces of the houses, all curtains closed, all light extinguished. She stops for a moment to button her coat, tie her scarf.

  And Mrs Griffiths is there, watching from the window next door. Hair net, white hair, white face, hollow eyes. It’s gone eleven so why isn’t Mrs Griffiths in bed? She must have been waiting up to see Mollie leave. Mollie feels a moment of tenderness towards this ghostly old woman who perhaps does care. And so she turns back and faces the window, stretches out her hand beseechingly, looks the old lady in her non-existent eyes, puts her head in her hands, gives a pantomime sob. The black holes where Mrs Griffiths’ eyes should be watch. She cares for me, Mollie thinks. She cares.

  39

  NOW

  Lara – Brighton, April 2003

  Lara puts her suitcase down on the green nylon carpet in the sitting room of the Roma Street flat. She’s been in London for the last eight days. Keeping her side of the bargain. The flat is stale and overheated, smells of new paint. Dead flies are spread on a windowsill, a house plant wilts on a brown wood coffee table. Lara kicks off her shoes, puts on the kettle. This flat requires less walking at least, nothing is more than ten feet from anything else. She considers putting the radio on to listen to the news but thinks of Sharifa’s words yesterday. A young lawyer, half Iraqi and half English, Sharifa is working to defend the Voices of Truth website and Lara has spent the week helping her.

  News? Sharifa had said. There is no news in Iraq any more. News requires a story – an ordering of events, a sequence of cause and effect. But Iraq has no story now, only a vacuum, drift, random events. Mobs roaming the streets, anti-American demonstrations in Fardous Square. People shouting – Islam, Islam, no America, no Saddam. But the point is that Saddam was a tyrant and even he had problems with the different sects and ethnicities in Iraq. So what chance do the Americans have with no plan, only vague talk of liberty and human rights?

  Those words frightened Lara but still she likes and respects Sharifa and her legal colleagues. They occupy a corporate world which Lara can understand and yet still they organise Wilf, Spike, all the motley and prickly peace protesters, with kindness and humour. They manage not to offend Ahmed, not to reveal their selfishness, if indeed they have any. Lara wishes she had their skills. Perhaps if she’d trained to be a lawyer herself, as she had once planned, then she would be more able to move between different worlds gracefully. She makes herself tea, sits down on the upright foam sofa with its fake tweed cover. Two extra power points have now been installed in the peace protest office. Small victories.

  On the kitchen noticeboard she’s pinned up a copy of Jay’s most recent email. Written down in blood or carved in stone. On the news that evening she’d seen images of a hospital being looted but she never knew if it was the same one. Above her, Jay’s globe, still draped in its bicycle chain, hangs from the ceiling, dangles over the coffee table with its wilting pot plant. When she was moving, she worried that if she put the globe away in a box it would smash and so she’d hung it up. Temporarily, she’d thought. Something of its cheap drama brings Jay into the room. It symbolises the world in chains, doesn’t it?

  Briefly she remembers one of the few occasions when he’d talked about the war. It must have been a week or two before he left. And she’d agreed with him then that there was no case for war – hadn’t she? She tries to remember. This is another thing she’s learnt from the younger lawyers, the peace protesters. The details matter, you must remember things exactly as they are, you must not slip into convenient confusion or exaggeration, you mustn’t be coerced into telling someone else’s story instead of your own. Yes, yes. She’s sure. She did listen to him.

  But that isn’t what matters now. Instead she remembers that she hadn’t let him finish that conversation before asking him about university. He was meant to be taking time off, thinking things over. Had he contacted the university, had he made any decisions? And then – in one of his sudden gusts of temper – he’d thrown down the papers he was reading, scattering them, shouting at her. But his temper had blown out as suddenly as it had flared and they’d got on fine again and she’d said, It’s just that you do need some qualifications. And he’d said I don’t and she’d said you do. I don’t, you do, I don’t, you do. Before he went out, he’d come to her in the kitchen, where she was sitting on a chair, and he’d knelt down in front of her, and kissed her stocking-clad knees. I’m just Troubled Youf, Mum, don’t worry about it.

  The email, the globe, these fragments of memory. Lara is trying to recreate him, to piece him together, to assemble him into a pattern which she can understand. But he remains fragile, slippery, fading. When he’d knelt down and kissed her knees had she run her hands through his hair, kissed his cheek? Probably not but she had laughed with him. One of his books lies on the windowsill. Published by the Peace Pledge Union, it’s about conscientious objectors in the Second World War. Lara doesn’t know why she kept that book out when she packed everything else away. One sleepless night she’d started reading it. She’d never really known that so many people had campaigned against that earlier war and paid the price.

  Her mobile phone rings and every bone in Lara’s body leaps. She grabs it, draws air into her lungs, presses the green phone icon. She hears Wilf’s voice. Oh, she says. Yes. Oh. Well, why didn’t she ring me?

  Keep calm, she tells herself. Remember to breathe. Typical Mollie. Of course she would break her wrist at a time like this. A tape starts to play in her mind, unspooling a litany of ancient grudges, but she halts it, tries to be positive. I’ll go straight around there, she says.

  She feels almost grateful for the news. She’s known for some time that she needs to tackle Mollie and it’s better to do it without thinking too much, without making mental preparations, rehearsing speeches. She takes her bag, sets out, walks without noticing anything.

  At the door of the Guest House she gathers her resolve around her like a cloak. Think positive. And the truth? That’s doubtless too much to expect but she must at least ensure that she doesn’t collude in any more lies.

  She calls out, steps down the narrow stairs to the kitchen. Mollie is standing at the sink, unaware. Lara realises that the reason why she hasn’t been to see Mollie is that, as long as she and Mollie don’t meet, they don’t have to know what is happening. Meetings and vigils, letters and tea making. But now – seeing Mollie’s dark hair wrapped onto her head in a loose bun, seeing her unbent spine, the white collar of her blouse – there’s no avoiding the reality of their situation.

  Mollie turns, offers a greeting, and Lara sees that she too knows that a moment of reckoning has arrived – although it remains unclear what exactly is to be weighed and measured here. Mollie’s a
rm is in a sling but she’s gripping a dishcloth in her other hand. The television is on with the sound turned down. A chat-show host introduces a glittering guest, the roar of applause is imagined in the silence. Lara sees Mollie manoeuvring a saucer with one hand. She has to admire Mollie’s ability to carry on as though all is well. Mollie can do anything – except finish with Rufus.

  Mum, are you OK? Sorry I didn’t come sooner. I was up in London. You know, the lawyers. Sorry. I only just found out.

  That’s OK, dear. Wilf took me to the hospital. So kind. It’s a clean break. Shouldn’t take long to heal. Lovely young doctor. Cup of tea?

  No. No, thanks. I came to help. What can I do? Some shopping?

  No, no.

  At least let me wash up.

  No, no. I’m fine.

  I insist. Come on. Please, sit down.

  Lara pulls a chair out from the table and manages to steer Mollie into it. Standing at the sink, Lara understands herself anew. She’s no longer the feckless, materialistic daughter, who is always busy with a job which everyone else considers pointless. Instead she’s in charge, purposeful, on the side of right. Kindness has always been Mollie’s most lethal weapon. But now Lara can make some small claim to kindness – to goodness – as well.

  After all, it is inevitable in all families that the baton is passed on, that the power shifts, the new generation takes the wheel. Lara puts down her bag, fills the kettle, continues with the washing up. The water is lukewarm and globules of congealed grease float on the surface. She feels Mollie beside her, restless, perched like a pecking bird on the kitchen chair.

  No news? Mollie says.