‘And after last night you expected to find me still wild?’
‘I honestly didn’t know what to expect.’ He gives one of his little-boy smiles but the mischief is absent. ‘I was ready for anything.’
‘Were you ready to find my dead body on the floor?’
‘Oh Ellie, don’t!’
‘Because that’s what I felt like doing when the jeep pulled away.’
‘I know you are not that foolish. You never were that type. You were always strong, Ellie, much, much stronger than me.’
‘This has never happened to me before.’
‘It has never happened to me, either, Elle. What I am doing is not easy.’
Poor Malc.
He wants her to help him! Just as he has always done, he wants her to help him! It is the extraordinary realisation of this that gives Ellie her new feeling of power. It is the combination of that and her reaction to the humiliation she suffered earlier this morning, sitting in the drawing room of Robert’s house, and the way he and Bella had said, in so many words, ‘You are not one of us in spite of your money, so go away.’
Funny where power and strength can come from. Funny the places where pride can be born.
Ellie paces the kitchen while she waits for Malc to select his belongings. She would be happier doing this for him… she knows what he needs far better than he does. She closes her ears to the sounds from the bedroom of wardrobes opening, drawers closing, halving a life—hers. When he comes back he sits down heavily, confronting her, ready for anything. He has left his case at the door but she can smell suitcases and empty cupboards because losing has a smell of its own.
Immediately she asks him, ‘What are we going to say to Mandy and Kev?’ She half-expects him to say that nothing is yet that certain, and it’s not worth upsetting them.
‘I thought I would write them a letter,’ says Malc.
‘Have you thought about what you are going to say?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Are you going to tell me? Are you going to let me see this letter?’ It will be the first letter Malc has ever written to his children. Ellie’s the one who writes, and she signs his name for him.
‘I would rather not, Elle.’
‘Will there be things in it that you’d rather I didn’t know?’ He doesn’t answer so Ellie goes on, ‘And you are asking me to be honest!’
‘Don’t attack me, Elle.’
‘I have a right to know, Malc, so that I can respond.’
‘The children were always yours, weren’t they, Ellie?’ Malc says dryly.
‘Is that how you felt? Why did you never feel able to say anything? Oh Malc, I think this idea has been arrived at fairly recently because I never saw any signs of it before. In all those years there was never a clue.’
‘What could I give them that you weren’t already showering on them?’
Ellie says, ‘They would have liked to have known you, for a start!’
‘I was always around.’
‘But never quite there, Malc, never quite there!’
‘You didn’t like it when I started taking Kev to watch Everton. You said it was no place for a child—remember? You said he was far too young. Football yobs—remember that? You accused me of turning him into a soccer yob.’
‘I wanted Kev to know there was more to life than football. I was terrified that he’d become obsessive like some of the other lads in the street.’
‘And did you think I wanted that?’
‘What was I to think? You were always so scornful of anything other than sport. It seemed as if anything different Kev took an interest in was a threat to you!’
‘And could he have threatened me so easily, Elle? Even then was your opinion of me so low?’
‘You refused to come up to the school!’
‘Oh, come on… The one time I went with you, whenever I began to answer the teacher’s questions you butted in and answered yourself, as if I was too slow, or as if I might say something that would disgrace you!’
‘Oh, Malc, how can you say that? And I didn’t notice you once turning off the telly so they could sit in the warm to do their homework. They had to go upstairs and spend hours shivering in freezing cold bedrooms.’
‘I brought home electric fires for their rooms!’
‘Yes, but they never worked properly, did they?’
‘I didn’t hear you make a fuss! You never said about that!’
‘No, of course I didn’t, because you were always so snappy and bad-tempered I never liked to! You had more time for that snotty-nosed brat next door than you ever had for Kevin.’
‘Johnny Malloney? If you think back you’ll notice that it was Johnny Malloney who had more time for me!’
What on earth are they talking about? What on earth have they got into?
‘Oh Malcolm, I didn’t imagine I was going to have to sit here and listen to you feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘I didn’t expect that I was going to.’
‘There was obviously so much going on inside that head of yours that I never suspected, so many resentments—and now you are bringing them out and turning them on me like secret weapons!’
‘“You don’t want to turn out like your father, Kev.” Just how many times do you think I heard you saying that, Elle?’
‘But not in any kind of seriousness. Christ, come on now Malc, you know that!’
‘You admired me, did you? Is that what you’re going to say next?’
‘For a lot of things—yes—I admired you!’
‘So that’s why you used to tell Mandy, “Get your exams, get on. Work hard, you don’t want to end up stuck in a dump like Nelson Street with a life as dead-end as mine.” Yes, you were always so full of encouragement and admiration for me, weren’t you, Elle?’
‘I wanted the children to be able to fulfil their dreams, Malc. And I used every device I could find to fire them!’
‘I was the perfect example of what they must never allow themselves to become!’
‘I never spoke to the children about you.’
‘No but you used me relentlessly for illustration!’
‘And myself!’
‘What did you have to feel ashamed of, Elle? It was you who fought the battles, you were the one who defeated the odds in spite of the trials ranged against you, you were the plucky one, I was the defeated.’
Ellie is shocked. ‘Is that what it felt like?’
Malc nods. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it felt like.’
This is so unfair because Malc is exaggerating. Anyone could talk like he’s talking now and it had never been quite like that. Ellie admits to herself that there might be some truth in what he says… but it hadn’t been anything like that. And now his face is colouring as he rises up on the strength of righteous resentment.
‘You have absolutely no idea what getting this job did for me. The fact that I was chosen over the heads of hundreds of others, the fact that I was expected to work well, the respectful way I was treated. Right from the beginning they made it clear that I was an important part of the company, included in all the decisions, listened to. The fact that I can drive, Elle! For me it was like a cripple suddenly finding he had a pair of legs, and walking. As long as you live you will never know, Elle, what getting that job did for me, and I will never be able to truly explain it…’
Ellie is silent, staring hard at a flower on the wallpaper just above his head. Tears are threatening to fall, and she has promised herself that she will shed no tears.
‘… and Gabriella sees me in a way you could never see me. It is in her expectations of me, Elle. She expects me to be successful, she expects me to cope. She is proud to be with me, she doesn’t look for the stain on my tie or the untied shoelace.’
This is unfair. ‘I was never aware that I did that!’
‘You never said, but I felt you looking. I always felt you looking.’
Ellie says quietly, ‘And you don’t think I could change?’
/> ‘Ellie, I don’t need you to change. Not any more. Not now.’ And he looks at her sadly, considering whether or not to go on before he says, very gently, very carefully, ‘And you could never fit into my new way of life. You are a threat to me, Elle, with your old-fashioned ideas about what is correct and what’s not, your peculiar notions of how to behave and what knife to use and all those words… supper, drawing room, napkin. It doesn’t matter, Elle, don’t you see that? I am not accepted because I know which tie to wear or what words to say. I made it because I am me, and good at my job, and because my ideas are good and because I am dependable and because I can see a good deal, act fast and clinch it. It is nothing to do with the way you hold your knife, Elle, not any more it’s not. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t.’
‘Common,’ says Ellie bleakly.
‘Yes, exactly, common. It has no meaning any more. Not for me.’
She wants him to leave immediately. She wants to make arrangements for the meeting with Gabriella bloody de Courtney—the whore is bound to bow out of that one—and then she wants him to go. She is too hurt to stay awake any longer. She has to find sleep, she whines for it as a baby whines for its bottle. And the memories she is desperate to push away, the memories of this morning’s total humiliation, are bounding towards her like snapping dogs.
But Malc is leaning across the table and he is saying, ‘I didn’t come here this morning in order to hurt you. I didn’t want us to talk this way, not yet, probably not ever.’
‘I want to have a bath and wash my hair now, Malc’
‘Well, the water will be hot if the heating has been left on.’
‘Yes.’ Ellie sweeps back her hair with her hand. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s one blessing, isn’t it?’ She smiles weakly.
Malc gets up, looking more defeated than she does. ‘I’ll ring you. I will speak to Gabriella and then I will ring you. I’ll try and arrange it for soon, if that’s what you’re sure you want.’
Ellie is not sure of anything any more, but she sticks to her guns because she has to stick to something and she doesn’t want to fall apart completely, not yet.
‘All right, Malc’ She lets him out with his case. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you then.’
As he goes he tells her, ‘I’m sorry, Elle.’
And her answer is gentle. ‘And I’m sorry, too.’ Because through all the years I have known you I have never seen you looking so small and I have never heard you sounding so bloody pathetic.
25
AFTER HER MEETING WITH Gabriella de Courtney Ellie Freeman goes to bed and sleeps for two days and two nights… forty-eight hours of oblivion… and when she wakes up she does not get out of bed. She stays in it for a week.
Dwelling on the matter.
She refuses to answer the phone and she puts the chain on the door. The milk stays on the step, thickening up and getting sour.
She has created a monster, a monstrous man desirable to women, women like Caroline Plunket-Kirby, Gabriella de Courtney and probably Miss Bacon, too. She was afraid of them, as alien to them as ice is to fire, and yet the unsophisticated, the inexperienced, the boring Ellie Freeman must have known whom they’d welcome into their beds.
With her money she has formed him and with her influence over the years she has moulded him. And, what’s more, she had picked out the material in the first place; she had decided on the best bit of clay around twenty-one years ago and picked it up quickly before anyone else could grab it.
He is strong. He is earthy. He is muscled, bronzed and lean now. He is quick-witted and glib-tongued, yet kind, charming, and he knows how to look after a woman.
And the Malcolm Freeman of Nelson Street, whom Ellie had met by the coke pile all those years ago, was never more close than when Ellie saw him crossing the colossal space of Gabriella’s carpet to fetch the ice for the drinks.
The boldness was back in his eyes and there was one loose curl over his forehead just spiralled enough to get your finger in.
Yes, Gabriella had been keen to meet her and so Ellie was deprived of even that little victory.
Their arrival had been heralded by a great flap of security. You had to speak into a grille before the front doors of the flat block were opened… you had to insert a card to operate the lift and then you had to pass over a bleeping device before you even reached the penthouse. During all this palaver Malc smiled at Ellie sheepishly. Ellie smiled back with a smile that was crimped on to her face. Try as she might, she could not remove it; she was lacquered into it with misgivings and terror.
She had removed the short, sharp barbecue skewer from her handbag just before Malc arrived to pick her up, thinking better of it, or chickening out more likely. She had been planning, in the secretly desperate hours of night, to place this skewer under a cushion on the de Courtney woman’s chair at the first opportune moment. She had also removed the handbag-sized Waspeze spray with the eye warnings on it, the sachet of Weedol and the loaded Stanley knife. These things were to do with dark night thoughts and she normally kept them in a multi-pocketed velvet roll called a stocking tidy but which she now referred to as her ‘comforter’. Sometimes she brought it into bed with her and stroked the velvet while she moaned to herself with her eyes closed.
No, she would fight the lion unarmed, she decided, with the laurel wreath of a headache tightening her brows.
‘You look very smart,’ said Malc when he arrived to fetch her.
‘I like to try,’ said Ellie briskly.
‘I’m in the bath, darling.’ called a voice which controlled the smoothly opening door—a remote control device with which she was also able to turn on the cooker and draw the curtains. ‘Won’t be a mo. Make yourselves at home.’
And although Malc smiled apologetically you could see he admired the bitch’s nerve. He made the excuse, ‘She probably thinks you’d be more relaxed with me on your own for a while, just until you get your bearings.’
Oh, how kind.
‘She’s spent all evening preparing something special. She really does want to be friends.’
Oh. So she’s not deliberately trying to squash me, thought ‘silly’ Ellie. She has not asked me here for that. And while she glided round the elegantly furnished sitting room, taking in the pictures, the rugs, the window blinds, the raised areas and the lowered areas, Malc watched her and said, ‘This flat is Gabby’s pride and joy. She was lucky to get it—over a hundred people had their names down for it even before it was built.’
‘It’s certainly got a lovely view,’ agreed Ellie, going to the window and peering out into the darkness, looking down on the strings of fairy-lights, the flickers of distant, slow-moving ships and the private glows of yachts tied up in the marina.
‘It cost her the earth, but she says she was paying for a dream so she didn’t mind.’
‘That’s right,’ said Ellie. ‘You wouldn’t mind paying for a dream.’ She turned towards Malc, resting her back on the window ledge. ‘And if you stay with her do you intend to live here? What about a garden? What about those green fields you so badly hankered after?’
‘That was your dream remember, Elle, never mine.’ Ellie frowned, because this was not true. He had never asked her what she wanted, and it was always Malc who was so keen on having a garden. Malc continued, ‘We’d stay here because we both love it. I think it would kill Gabby if she had to move. She’s always telling me how she feels part of it all, you see, with it being in the same block as the gallery which she had a large hand in designing.’
Ellie mused, and took her eyes round the apartment again, more slowly. So this was Gabby. This was Gabby’s dream—the dream of today’s woman, sophisticated, labour-saving, upmarket, somewhat pretentious, but it smacked of desire and freedom. For who but a dreamer of freedom would choose to position themselves beside a river, beside the sea, so they could lie in bed and watch the ships sail in and out to faraway places, exotic lands and strange mysterious traditions?
Protected from reality by chrome and la
minate and bollards painted black. Protected from freedom by a fine strong man who was old enough to be her father. This Gabby was just like a little girl, really.
Ellie said, ‘It is slightly dangerous to satisfy a dream so young.’
‘Gabby is twenty-eight.’
‘And that’s not young?’
‘She is old enough to know what she wants, and to go out and get it.’
‘Like you then, Malc?’
But he didn’t know if Ellie was mocking him or not, so he didn’t reply.
‘For someone of her age she has a prestigious job.’
‘She has never wanted any other. She had to work extremely hard, push herself forward and convince all the old fuddy-duddies that she could take on the whole enterprise and follow it through. There’s five years of her contract to go but she says she feels she hasn’t even started yet.’
‘She certainly knows exactly what she wants, doesn’t she?’ Ellie was impressed and she could see why Malc would be. Impressed and staggered by such forceful energy.
What drove her?
‘I expect she had a good start… the right schools… well-connected parents?’
‘Gabby achieved what she did without any help, although yes, she comes from what we’d call a privileged background. They didn’t want her to follow an artistic career, though. They’re all mixed up in the law and they’d hoped she’d follow them into that.’
Ah!
‘I suppose that eventually she’ll want to get married?’ Well, Ellie had to know! And she would also dearly like to know what Gabriella was going to get out of this meeting. Did she want to gloat? Was it that simple?
‘We haven’t gone into that yet, Elle. Gabby is a very independent person. Her independence is important to her, she’s never accepted any help from her family.’ And he said this with pride, as if somehow this factor in Gabriella’s personality was in his, too! And Ellie thought that the need to live up high, on the top of something, looking down on the rest of the world as it blundered by, was probably all part of the need to conquer alone.
But Gabby wasn’t alone any more. She had Malc with her. And they were both dependent, if on nothing else, on the structure that held them up here.
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