Inside the Arcade, up the moving staircase beside the waterfall, all is suffused by that eerie green light as if it is always just on the point of raining but never quite manages to succeed. Ancient men and women crab along on their sticks, faces pinched against the cold, and small groups of youngsters are already clustering, taking up their positions on the park-like seats beside the raised brick borders. They have nothing better to do, and it’s warmer in here than it is outside. The café downstairs is on the point of opening. Her heels click on the smooth marbled walkway. She knows how easy it is to slip, she’s been over herself many times. She’s always having to leave the shop and go and pick up distraught old ladies, and she’s taken to keeping a chair beside the counter specially for the purpose.
Funorama. She takes out her key. The first thing she must do is take down those old posters and replace them with Sale signs. She hadn’t made it to the pantomime… her secret hope was that Malc might have taken her, but she had gone to the second event advertised on the giftshop window. She’d sat at the ringside quietly on Boxing Day while Margot and Di screamed beside her for Giant Haystacks, the Mighty Chang, El Bandito and Skull Murphy. She’s never liked wrestling, but her hopes are high for next year.
Yet she mustn’t grumble. Christmas was better than she ever remembered. There were no long sulks from Mandy and no sneering remarks from Kevin, as if everyone seemed to sense there was change in the air. Everyone was slightly excitable and nervous—or was that just Ellie’s imagination?
The jeep had shut everyone up. On Christmas morning they had gone for a ride with Malc driving, looking so tall and proud sitting there in the driving seat, his keys clipped to his new keyring that Ellie had found it difficult to keep her eyes off him.
‘Where shall we go?’
‘Let’s go out Bebington way.’
‘What for?’
‘No reason, except that you asked me and I had to say somewhere.’
Robert Beasely lives out Bebington way. Ellie knows his address off by heart although, of course, she has never used it, never written to him there, never visited. She still doesn’t know if they passed his house because they flashed by the road signs too quickly, but she saw cars parked outside an attractive Victorian residence which had an impressive plant in the window and linings to the shop-fitted curtains and scalloped pelmets. There was a small light on in an attic room so Ellie wondered if that was Robert’s study.
‘Wait until Dave Legget sees this,’ said Malc.
‘Oh, I know,’ said Ellie, knowing exactly. How smoothly the jeep went along, how luxuriously comfortable was the seating. Some people even stared at them and Ellie savoured their envy. Not only were they out in a jeep but they might be calling somewhere for drinks—after all, they were out, looking busy on Christmas morning. For the first time ever, Christmas dinner was late and it didn’t matter. The Freemans had better things to be doing with their time…
Now Ellie gets out the small step-ladder and carefully moves the goods from the front of the window to make space for herself. She strips down the posters, wetting the edges to loosen them, and starts sticking up the strips marked ‘Sale’, which are adhesive on the backs. It is important to get the angle right first time because they are difficult to get off once they have gripped the window. She waves to Rita in the dress shop opposite.
She has complicated feelings about Malc’s Christmas present to her. She’s thrilled, of course, because he had no need to go searching for something so special. It was a bracelet in a velvet case with tiny seed pearls dotted about in the silver. Her wrist didn’t look like her own with it on and Mandy had to help her with the safety clasp because her hands were too clumsy to manage it.
‘You shouldn’t have, Malc’ She’d given him a thank you kiss.
‘Why not? I can afford it.’
‘But there are other important bills to pay.’
‘They can wait their moment, like I have had to.’
And then of course she’d had to give him his shirts with ‘special’ on the packet, which proved that they came from the factory where Margot worked as a supervisor. That ‘special’ said there was something wrong with them. You had to look hard to find it, but there was always a flaw. And the keyring, which had looked so nice in the shop, now seemed a bit shoddy and boring.
Ellie’s musings are interrupted when the bell clinks. It’s Mrs Gogh, looking the worse for wear in spite of her dusty rose Jaeger jacket. ‘I just thought I’d pop in to make sure you were coping all right.’
Ellie knows that the popping in has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the fact that Mrs Gogh thought Ellie would be late, and that she might be propped by the counter, pampering herself with the electric fire on, sipping coffee. They had talked about prices before Christmas and all the bargains are down on the list: Ellie’s only got to cross off the old prices with a red pen and replace them with the sale ones.
She continues to lean, quite dangerously, across the display; her arms ache from reaching out for the window and her legs tremble a little. She is out of condition. ‘Did you have a good Christmas, Mrs Gogh?’
‘Quiet, Ellie, but pleasantly relaxing as always. How about you?’
‘Lovely, thank you,’ says Ellie, biting her lips with intense concentration. Mrs Gogh doesn’t bother her, there are plenty of Mrs Goghs round about here and Ellie has known them all her life. They are rich, they are successful, they are invariably smart in a chain-store-cosmetic-department sort of a way, and yet they are nothing like the Caroline Plunket-Kirbys. They are predictable, and there is only one way of dealing with them—subservience. Ellie learned how to do that long ago, and she’s quite happy with it. She neither likes nor dislikes Mrs Gogh, she doesn’t have an opinion on the matter. She certainly doesn’t want to be like her, for she doesn’t envy her or her lifestyle. Mrs Gogh has an unhappy mouth and unhappy, spoilt eyes, and her children have let her down. She’s always going on about it.
‘Too much too early. We made it too easy for them,’ she often complains. And Ellie dunks a Rich Tea biscuit at those confidential times, and sympathises.
Caroline Plunket-Kirby eats people like Mrs Gogh for breakfast.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Mrs Gogh? It’s freezing out there this morning.’ And in here, especially with that door open. Come in or out, one of the two, woman, do!
Mrs Gogh hesitates. She would like a cup of coffee but she’s reluctant to interrupt Ellie’s efforts.
Eventually she says, ‘That would be nice, but you carry on, Ellie, I’ll get it. And would you like one?’
‘If it’s no trouble,’ says Ellie. ‘This is thirsty work. I think it’s something they put in the glue.’
‘Probably,’ says Mrs Gogh, closing the door with a chink and passing, scentily, through to the back room.
Ellie gets back to work. The club is only a ten-minute walk from Nelson Street, but on Christmas Day night they had chosen to go there by jeep. This meant that Malc could not drink and even he admitted that he didn’t know if he’d be able to handle it.
‘But I’m torn,’ he confessed, ‘and I think I’d prefer showing off the jeep and sticking to alcohol-free.’
Ellie was pleased by his decision. She sensed a wall about to collapse and this was the first brick. Kevin was pleased, too, and so was Mandy. It was strange how the not-drinking excluded him from other things, too. At the club and without a beer in his hand, Malc seemed vulnerable and naked. Di and Margot recognised this and straightaway jumped on it.
‘Good evening, vicar. Where’s your dog collar, then?’
‘Drop one vice and pick up another, that’s what they say.’
‘What’s going to happen to your beer gut, Malc? You want to watch that it doesn’t slip down and crush you where it hurts.’
But they were all impressed by the jeep, and Ellie’s bracelet. It was a most wonderful feeling, but even more wonderful than all of this was the way he stayed himself all evening, and didn’t go off to the bar and rema
in for ages, talking. She noticed how he kept picking the car keys up off the table, and weighing them in his hand before replacing them. He danced the spot dance with a giggling Mandy and he had a game of darts with Kevin. Ellie went steady on the rum herself in order to keep him company.
‘What’s come over your old man then, all of a sudden?’ Di asked her, with the perspiration of booze shining her makeup.
‘He’s got something to show off about, hasn’t he, and he’s determined to make the most of it,’ said Ellie.
‘You can’t blame him for that,’ approved Di. ‘That jeep is something else. And fancy him getting you that bracelet! I can’t imagine Malc choosing anything so dainty.’
Ellie raised her wrist for the fiftieth time, hardly able to believe it herself.
The youngsters, none of them really wanting to be there but forced into it by responsible feelings of Christmas, formed a small group of their own at another table and made the most of the disco. There were Ellie’s two, and Margot’s three and Saul, who belonged to Di, and several others who always came. Mandy was flirting with Saul and they danced the waltzes together. Half-past ten came and normally, by now, Malc would be acting the fool on the dance floor, making it quite impossible for his children to dance or be seen in his vicinity, but not this year. This year he’d seemed quite pensive and muted, sitting watching, and much tidier with his hair still in place and no sweat-stained armpits or streamers hanging from his head.
Once, during the evening, Malc caught her eye and held it. But was he enjoying himself, she worried.
When the last waltz came along she felt him standing beside her; he said nothing, but held out his hand. He was just about the only man in the room with his jacket still on, and she realised how nice it was, how safe it was, and how much she’d missed cradling her face against a suit jacket. There is something very sensual about a man’s lapel, thinks Ellie…
‘This is just what the doctor ordered,’ she says to Mrs Gogh, after coming down from the step-ladder and resting against the counter to admire her work, a cup in her hand. The steam from the coffee must prove to her employer how chilly the air is in here, stale and damp, but Mrs Gogh does not suggest turning on the fire. If she’s cold, then Ellie must find ways to keep herself warm. There are always the shelves to be dusted or goods to be packed away. Mrs Gogh keeps her Jaeger coat on and sits, huddled up, on the only chair. Her hard golden hairstyle is held with a bow at the back of her head, and her rings look heavy on her fingers.
I have probably got more money than you, thinks Ellie. What would you say if you knew that, Mrs Gogh, and how would your attitude change towards me? Ellie knows that Mrs Gogh would think it wrong for people like Ellie to win money. ‘Poor things, how can they possibly know how to deal with it?’ she’d ask her coffee-morning friends, and her Chamber of Trade husband. ‘They’d squander it on frivolities,’ that’s what she’d say. ‘For people like that, winning money is a sure road to ruin.’
There wasn’t much point in opening this morning, the both of them know that. The goods they sell in here are the type of thing customers want before Christmas, not afterwards. Useless things, really—fluffy toys and extraordinary teapots, rude car stickers and pink-framed pictures of teddy bears, posters and cards. Still there are always the sprinkling of meanies who come looking for bargains ready for next year, and the odd child who’s been given some money and is desperate to spend it.
The main reason for Ellie being here this morning, apart from Mrs Gogh’s own satisfaction, is to prepare for the sale, the response to which will be more of a trickle than a roar.
‘We had Mandy and Kev home. We had a full house,’ says Ellie, to pass the time.
‘Yes, Christmas is hard work, isn’t it,’ says Mrs Gogh, who has an au pair and goes to an hotel for her Christmas dinner so knows nothing about it. ‘It’s always nice to get back to normal.’
Is she, Ellie, going to turn into a Mrs Gogh? Bored and bad-tempered with nothing better to do the day after Boxing Day than come to the Arcade? Robert has constantly warned her about being left high and dry with nothing to do, and Ellie supposes that he is afraid she’ll turn into someone like this. But no, it won’t be the same at all, because she’s going to share Malc’s success with him. She’s going to take an interest in his work and, if Robert’s wildest prophecies come true, she’ll be busy moving house and getting everything perfect. She’ll have to buy herself a car and learn to drive, and she’ll go to night-classes to improve herself, to make herself more worthy of Malc.
If Malc’s going to be successful then Ellie intends to help him.
She’ll learn to cook the sort of meals he’s going to need her to cook if he has colleagues home to dinner… like Bella Beasely does. They’ll learn about opera and ballet together, they’ll go for country weekends. They could learn to sail, or take up walking. The possibilities are endless.
Ellie dreams. She might even get friendly with Bella Beasely.
The difference between Ellie and Mrs Gogh, as Ellie sees it, is that she will have novelty on her side, and that she and Malc will enjoy their new riches together. She’ll have a new man by her side while poor Mrs Gogh is stuck with her old one.
‘Well, time and tide…’ says Mrs Gogh.
‘Yes.’ Ellie nudges herself forward off the counter. ‘There’s plenty to be getting on with this morning.’ And then, suddenly, startlingly, she feels such a surge of pity for this woman, this fellow sufferer, sitting so rigidly there on the chair, that Ellie can hardly bear it. She can’t think of anything else to say but, ‘Would you like to stay and help me out? I could do with a hand this morning.’
‘I think not, dear,’ says Mrs Gogh, a cross smile tightening her face.
And Ellie stands and listens to the quick clicking of those receding footsteps, worrying in case Mrs Gogh might fall over in her haste to get away.
Ellie shrugs as she picks up her overall. Perhaps she’s got it all wrong.
They have not got around to changing the piped music, and suddenly the Arcade is ringing, singing, the whole of the vast green space is full of a sugary, crystallised version of Jingle Bells.
12
THERE ARE ONLY A certain number of physical types in the western world, thinks Ellie now, sitting at a window table of the Hung Toa in China Town with Malc opposite, talking quietly. No more than twenty really, but it’s difficult to categorise those you know well and even harder to place yourself. But if she’s forced to do it she would class Malc as a burly Albert Finney with hairy Dennis Healey tendencies, veering dangerously close to Stan Ogden. And herself? Well, leaving Connie Francis aside because that was a long while ago, maybe she’s an older, North of England version of Mary Beth in Cagney and Lacey—that’s just in looks, of course, not temperament. And Ellie approves of the clothes that Mary Beth Lacey wears.
Is Ellie a snob? Is that why she wants to get out and get on and is discontented with her lot? She has thought quite a bit about that just lately but has not been able to come to a conclusion.
What is she going to do about Di and Margot when the Freemans come up in the world? Abandon them? Certainly not, she could not survive without them. She’ll just take care who she invites them to dinner with, and where she chooses to take them, that’s all. And that’s not being nasty, that’s being sensible, because certain types of people just don’t mix and there’s no good pretending they do. They ought to, but they just don’t.
Will Di and Margot still want to know her?
She knows, now, that she doesn’t like Sake. She pushes her glass to one side and says to Malc, ‘I just thought it would be nice, on the occasional Wednesday, to come with you on your rounds so that I can see what you do, and learn what it’s all about.’
This is the first time they have been out for a meal together. The first time ever. ‘Put your hat and coat on, woman,’ Malc had said when he arrived home, late again. ‘I’m taking you out to dinner.’
Ellie smiled. He had never called ‘tea’ d
inner before. And then she’d panicked because of the state of her hair.
Last night he and Murphy and Ramon had dined at the Adelphi, entertaining prospective clients.
‘It wouldn’t do anything for my image to have a wife riding along beside me,’ says Malc now, very definitely. ‘And I’m a different person when I’m out and about—I’ve got to be. Having you there would just make me feel bloody silly.’
Ellie is hurt but she doesn’t show it. Fair enough, she supposes, but how can she be any help to him, how can she even talk about his work with him if she knows nothing about it? Apparently Murphy and Ramon have often asked him to bring her along to their evening sessions in the Bunch of Grapes, but Malc says he’s not keen.
‘I know that I’m part of your old world,’ she tells him now, ‘but I don’t want to be excluded from the new.’
‘You can’t help seeing me in a certain way, and that’s difficult for me when I’m having to put on this act and be different,’ Malc tries to explain.
‘Well, d’you think I’m going to laugh at you or something? I’m proud of you, Malc, I’m really, really proud of you.’
‘Didn’t you think I’d be able to do it?’
‘I knew you’d be able to do it. That’s why I encouraged you to apply, remember?’
They’re not sure what to order so they decide on a set meal for two. The burnished dishes arrive and are set on a heated tray.
‘Shall we try chopsticks?’ asks Malc, and Ellie laughs and shakes her head.
‘We don’t know what we’re doing anyway,’ she tells him, ‘so don’t let’s make it worse.’ She is amazed that he chose a Chinese restaurant, he who has always scorned foreign food and sworn there were rats and alley cats in it.
But when she’s got the food on her plate it is Ellie, not Malc, who eyes that strange bit of bone.
Malc stays silent for a moment, staring across the top of his food, before he says, ‘And I won’t be doing this job for long so it’s not worth you coming anyway, Ellie.’
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