She sits and she sweats, she eats and she drinks, and then her tummy makes threatening sounds, the pain making her clutch the sides of her chair. She’ll have to go to the loo… and she might be there for hours. Oh no God oh no God oh no!
‘Ellie? Are you okay?’
How she hates Malc for asking. ‘Yes, I’ll just have to disappear for a moment.’ She tries to giggle in a feminine manner but the sound that comes out is more of a hoarse, throaty cry. ‘I’ll just go and powder my nose.’ And she seems to lumber off, blindly through the darkness, and has to ask that snooty waiter where the lavatory is. His eyes slide off her in pain.
She sits on the loo, weeping, spraying expensive scent in the air in case other women coming in and out might be too disgusted to stay, and somehow recognise her when she goes back inside, point her out to their companions, telling them, ‘That’s the one!’ She longs for Margot or Di, Margot’s firmly determined chest and Di’s comforting floppy one. How they’d laugh if they could see her, how they’ll shriek with laughter when she tells them how her posh London meal has gone! But they are two hundred miles away and yet they feel much further than that.
On the Friday, alone again, she makes for the park. The Canonwaits meetings are going well, ‘And today we’ll clinch it,’ says Ramon, tucking into a terrifying breakfast which they have to eat because Malc says, ‘We’ve already paid for it.’ And Ellie feels the same way about that.
‘We’ll import larger quantities at half the prices we’re paying at the moment,’ says Ramon, still in his velvet jacket. The skiers have disappeared in the night and now the hotel is filled with Japanese tourists carrying raincoats, binoculars, airline bags and umbrellas.
‘Go and see something worthwhile while you’re here. Go to a gallery or a museum, or how about the Turner Collection? You always said how you’d love to see that,’ urges Malc.
‘It’s a pity we’re not here another day and then we could have gone together,’ says Ellie wistfully.
And then they are gone and so, mysteriously, is everybody else in the hotel. Alone and wandering about like this she sticks out like a sore thumb, so she picks up a handful of brochures listlessly and starts to read them upstairs in her room. When the chambermaids come in with a trolley she decides to go to the park.
London people aren’t ashamed of begging. Ellie clutches her handbag close to her and carefully skirts around them. She’s seen them on telly, begging like that and she knows that they sleep under boxes at night. She would be able to help them without even noticing the difference. Perhaps she should go to the bank and draw out a cool fifty thousand, put it in a suitcase and go round distributing it to right and to left.
She’d be liked, if she did that. People would think her important.
And she’d feel important, too, and worthwhile.
She looks directly into a young woman’s face and sees the shadows of Lil in it. Giving Lil money would not have helped her at all. Having money makes difficult things easier, but it is not satisfactory in itself. You have to earn it. You have to feel worthy of it. Giving someone an interest, or a talent, or some love they’d lost, now that would be better than handing out money. Nevertheless, when she is ‘openly’ rich she will give beggars money because you have to have it first in order to work things out. Money is what they want and who is Ellie Freeman to decide for them?
It is pleasantly warm; the sun is shining and the pavements are dappled by railings.
London roads are difficult to cross.
And she doesn’t even have bread with her, nothing to feed to the birds.
The girl who comes to sit beside her looks no older than twelve, but she must be, because she is obviously the mother of that baby. She gets it out from its cover, she dangles it on her knee.
‘How old is she?’ asks Ellie, eager for some conversation.
‘Six months.’ Obligated to speak, the girl is thin with enormous eyes and long, stringy blond hair. Her boots are scruffy and worn.
‘You look far too young to be a mother.’ It is out of her mouth before Ellie can prevent it.
‘I’m nearly eighteen.’ The girl delves into her handbag and brings out a grimy-looking rattle. The infant’s eyes light up. ‘You’re from Liverpool,’ says the girl dully. ‘I know that accent.’
‘Yes, and I don’t know London very well. I came here to find some peace and quiet,’ Ellie lies, because it is not really peace and quiet she is after. The child gurgles and Ellie leans over to admire it. ‘I used to take mine to the park when they were tiny, but ours was a much smaller park, more of a bombsite, really, with old stones and ruins poking up through the grass, not all smart and green like this one.’
‘Looks aren’t anything. This one’s covered in dog turds,’ says the girl.
‘Yes,’ continues Ellie, ‘I used to stay out for as long as I could, giving the kids some fresh air in an afternoon before going back to get the tea.’
‘You were married then?’ says the girl, without interest.
‘Yes. Aren’t you?’
‘Why would I be?’
There is no need for the girl to go on the defensive, not with Ellie. There are enough girls around about Nelson Street who get themselves in the family way without a man to stand by them for Ellie to know all about that.
‘It’s easier, with a man. You have to struggle so hard if you’re on your own.’ Ellie, with nothing better to do, is eager to bestow her sympathy.
The girl sniffs her dissent. ‘I get much more help on my own, and they gave me a flat. If I’d married I’d be really stuck, and having to run round some useless sod cleaning and cooking and such like. No,’ and she licks a tissue and wipes the baby’s milky mouth with it, ‘I chose to have Apricot and I chose to stay single. I won’t have a man move in with me. For a start they piss all over the place and make the toilet seat messy.’
‘What did the father feel about that? Did he want to move in with you and get married?’
‘I didn’t stop to ask him. I had the baby, it’s my body, isn’t it? All he did was push and grunt, that’s the only part he took in it.’
Ellie is swamped with sadness. She remembers Malc, ‘I’ll take care of you, I’ll never leave you. We’re all right together, Elle, you and me, and the kid.’
And her mother again, ‘Tramp! Fool! Idiot! There’s no room here!’
‘All our plans, Malc’
‘One more mouth won’t make much difference. It’ll only be a little one.’ He had held her hand and pressed his own lightly on her stomach. ‘We’ll get married as soon as we can get the banns read.’
‘But where will we live?’
‘It’ll have to be back home just for now, but it won’t take us long to get out.’
Number nine! The scourge of the street! That awful, drunken woman and the shifty-eyed lout of a man. They had married before Mandy was born and Ellie had moved in. It was the evenings when Malc was at night-school that had been so impossible. Often he came home and found her weeping.
‘Women do get depressed when they’re pregnant,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I’ve read all about that.’
She used to whine, ‘It’s just that it’s so horrid being here without you, three whole nights a week. What with Lil sitting there glassy-eyed and Arthur shouting his mouth off about this and that and knowing that I can’t go home and we haven’t got enough money for me to go to the flicks with June.’
‘I know it’s difficult,’ said Malc, ‘but it’s worth it. We’ve got to be patient and think about the future.’
‘Perhaps you should take a break—just for a little while. Maybe you could pick up the course again after the baby’s born.’
‘That’s not so easy. The places are hard to get and I’ve only six months to go until the exams.’
Oh, she’d been so young, so weak, and so childishly needy! Not at all like this positive child, coping so easily, so sure of herself, sitting on the park seat beside her. When Malc was at home he dealt with Arthur easily, e
xchanged curse for curse, was bigger and stronger. And he had a sweet way with his mother, too. He was used to her illness, Ellie supposes. He wasn’t frightened by it as she was.
She was frightened of having a baby, too.
He brought home his wages from Watt & Wyatt but they only paid for the basics, they never actually got them anywhere! And then there were baby things to buy, and the room really ought to be decorated. Ellie didn’t want her first child to be brought up in a slum.
‘Don’t come moaning to me,’ said Freda. ‘I warned you!’
Pigeons are scratching around on the path. ‘What did your mother say when you decided to go it alone? I bet she’s worried about you, isn’t she?’ Ellie feels ridiculously old, out of touch and inadequate.
‘It was nothing to do with her. I’m my own person,’ says the girl, giving a thin little smile.
‘And won’t the child miss out, never knowing its father?’
‘I doubt that, very much.’
‘And what about money? Getting a job? That must be difficult for you. They don’t pay very much…’
‘Well, I wasn’t ever going to be a model, was I, or a company director, or an advertising executive. I’d have been lucky to get work as a ticket collector on British Rail. I didn’t get any exams, I didn’t bother with school. I just larked about. That’s what me and my friends did.’
‘But surely it’s never too late.’
‘What do you know about it?’ says the girl, just a little bit angry and Ellie realises she has gone too far. After all, this is none of her business. ‘It’s all right for people like you,’ says the girl, ‘come here visiting, staying in skyscraper hotels, pottering along to the park for an airing in between the shopping.’
‘It’s not like that for me,’ says Ellie. ‘It’s never been like that for me.’
‘Well it SOUNDS as if it has,’ says the girl, getting up to go. ‘That’s just what it sounds like. It’s time people like you dragged yourselves into the present! Men aren’t the answer to everything in life, you know, and nor is money.’ WHAT IS, Ellie feels like screaming! If you know, then for Christ’s sake tell me. Instead she crosses her legs and her arms and starts scanning the distance, not wanting the girl to think her so needy, or so poor.
‘Here,’ says the girl unexpectedly, turning round and offering Ellie a paper bag. ‘I haven’t the time to be sitting around any longer. Feed this to the birds. It’s part of what people do when they come to London. Don’t you even know that?’
So Ellie sits there and does so.
And then, around about teatime, she wanders back to the hotel.
14
‘SO IT WASN’T REALLY my fault that Malc stopped going to nightschool. It was just that everything suddenly got so difficult, and we could never have known that there wouldn’t be a second opportunity, nor that he’d change so much that he just stopped wanting to improve himself.’ Ellie tells Robert Beasely this during their August meeting. Nearly a year has gone by since her big win and they are sitting outside in the sunshine, at trestle tables beside the river. Dragonflies skim the silvery surface, and old yoghurt cartons and pieces of torn clothing cling to the weeping branches of the willows where they touch the water.
Has Ellie been trying to buy her way out of guilt, an old, knotted guilt all hard and horny inside her? But it was Malc who decided to give up the classes, wasn’t it—not she.
She flaps at herself with the menu, against the flies and against the heat. A trapped wasp buzzes in an old coke bottle on the table. Someone has screwed a twist of cardboard down the neck to keep it in. She pulls out the cardboard, drops in her fag end and it sizzles in the moisture next to the wasp. Should she rescue it or shouldn’t she? ‘And I just can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able to come here and explain how things are, to let someone know how I feel and be able to talk about it!’
Robert Beasely is sympathetic. ‘I’m glad you feel that way, Ellie. That’s what I’m here for, not only to help with the money. It was obvious that there would be problems, but I must admit that my greatest concern when you first spoke to me was believing that Malcolm would make it. He didn’t sound much of a proposition, not from what you first told me. Did you ever consider what you’d do if it all went wrong? What would you have done about the pools win if the company had failed, say, or worse than that, if Malcolm had failed?’
‘I suppose I would have had to confess in the end, and he wouldn’t have been too pleased about that, I can tell you. But it isn’t like that at all, is it?’
‘No, certainly it isn’t.’
Christ, and it’s true what they say about money making money. Ellie stares at her accounts with bulging eyes. Robert says, ‘And it’ll continue to grow like that while you’re managing it wisely.’
‘It just all seems too easy!’
‘I don’t think it has been particularly easy. Not for you.’
It is a relief that Robert understands. Sitting here with him like this her burden feels lighter. She has money and she is building it up sensibly, making plans for herself and her husband’s future. Robert has never looked at her as if he’s thinking she’s worthless, or second-rate, or a failure.
‘Would you come to our house-warming if I invited you?’
‘Well, of course I would come. I would be honoured to be invited.’
‘I wonder if I’ll ever be able to invite you to anything. I wonder if I’ll ever even tell Malc what has happened. And what about Bella, would she come, too?’
‘I am certain she would,’ Robert smiles, ‘but I’d have to ask her. She has her work and I have mine.’
‘Work?’ A shadow moves over the water, and the dull pewter rushes more urgently over the stones. The wasp makes one more frantic bid for freedom before falling on its back in the purple dregs at the base of the bottle. Ellie picks at the label while she waits for his answer.
‘Yes, I’d never have known you, never have become a part of all this if it hadn’t been for my work.’
‘I feel the same way about you, you know, as I feel about my friends,’ she confides.
‘Well, that’s nice. That’s just how it ought to be—and I’m glad.’
‘Malc uses Barclays. He asked Murphy which bank was the best and Murphy recommended you.’
‘I know nothing about Malcolm’s account.’
Ellie picks at her ploughman’s platter. Already, in this hot sunshine, the cheese has gone dry. ‘What if he called in and asked for your advice? What if we had to come and see the bank manager together, that would be interesting.’
‘Malc’s account is not a joint one, and neither is yours so the chances of that happening are negligible. And if Malcolm wanted my advice, well then, I’d arrange a meeting, have him in and give it.’
‘So you wouldn’t feel uneasy with that, knowing what you know? Knowing so much about him and working for me, as it were?’
‘I work for many people, Ellie, and in my job you get to know many secrets.’
‘Yes, yes, I suppose you must do.’
Ellie likes to feel she’s special to Robert. She’s always felt important and interesting in Robert’s eyes.
‘You’d better tell me about your new house, if I’m not going to be able to see it.’
So she tells him quite truthfully how she hadn’t been able to prevent herself from feeling just slightly disappointed. Malc didn’t want to overdo it, stretch himself too far. ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes and then have them dashed,’ he told her when he brought home the brochures.
‘We don’t want anything too large and unmanageable. You’ve got to be able to put your feet up, that’s an important factor,’ said Malc. He seemed to have set his heart on a bungalow, but Ellie still dreamed about those Georgian houses in the library square. How long would it take them to reach her dream going at this pace? But how could she ask him that?
So they’d gone to view. There’d been many times when she’d made appointments with agents and then had to cance
l because Malc rang and said he was sorry but he couldn’t get home. While Ellie waited she started gathering stuff together ready for the removal, ancient stuff packed away in the outhouse and the attic; the Freemans had never been a family for throwing things away. Most of the items were broken and useless, anything good and unnecessary would have quickly been sold.
But she had found her old gramophone. She had come across it one Wednesday morning when she’d decided to devote the whole day to the enterprise—yes, she still worked for Mrs Gogh at Funorama… but not for much longer now. Just seeing it there under a roll of old carpet like that had made her heart ache. It was more real, more like seeing herself as a girl, than any of those cracked black and white photographs. She couldn’t even remember putting it up there. Carefully cradling it she’d brought it downstairs, along with the old 45 record case. It had the same, slightly tacky smell. Would it still work? Had a battery been carelessly left inside, might it be ruined and mouldy?
She’d prised off the back with trembling fingers. Empty. Clean as a whistle. And then she’d hurried up to the corner shop for the batteries, almost running in her haste, in her urgency to settle down on her own and play some of those old songs again.
She sat on the floor beside it, slid the first record down the stem, heard the primitive clack that she’d thought so sophisticated at the time, and prepared herself to listen. Carolina Moon. Crackly and tinny and breaking her heart.
Baby Love; Crying in the Chapel; King of the Road; The Carnival is Over; A Whiter Shade of Pale. They stopped around about 1968… the year she and Malc got married, the year Mandy was born—music and all that kind of thing seemed to have stopped for her then. Well, they hadn’t the money to go buying records, they hadn’t the time and, she supposes, they hadn’t those wild, yearning feelings any more.
All day she swam in a wonderland of forgotten emotion. Nothing else mattered but the music and trying to find something, trying to get back. She wondered whether to leave the gramophone out for when Malc got home; he might be interested in spending an evening sitting listening to old songs and reminiscing. They could open a bottle of wine, perhaps, and pore over the photographs.
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