‘I am not interested in talking to you any more, Robert.’
‘A decision like this should not be taken on the strength of personal feelings!’
‘Tell me a decision that is ever taken for any other reason?’
‘Ellie, listen to me for goodness sake! How about lunch?’
There is a serious sense of loss because she must stick to her decision, but now look… everyone is wanting to have lunch with her. Ellie is suddenly in demand!
And then she goes to the Plaza Lifestyle Centre and spends the rest of the day there. With her eyes on the weights of the weighing machine and her pencil poised on Ellie’s chart, Janey, her white-coated trainer, tells Ellie, ‘Frankly, for your height, you are enormous.’
She knows she has gained a stone already. ‘That’s all right,’ she replies with confidence. ‘I don’t mind being enormous. I haven’t come here to lose weight, but to tone up and be pampered.’
‘Being fat isn’t going to make you feel better.’
‘I want to feel I have weight behind me.’
‘Well you certainly have got that.’
She is stripped of most of her body hair—she enjoys the pain because it is all external. She allows her pores to be steamed and opened. She drifts, whale-like, in shallow lukewarm water, being pummelled by spurting, surging jets; she spends an hour sandwiched between infra-red rays; she stands and smiles while a rubber belt tones up her bottom and she submits to the expert hands of the concentration-camp-faced masseuse, feeling greasy and malleable and groaning. Then she swims for an hour.
And when she strides out between the swing doors she gasps the fresh air and she feels alive. Vibrant.
She returns to the bungalow as dusk is falling; she stares at it hard from the road, before pulling her car up the drive. She nods and gives a little smile. ‘You’ll do for now,’ she tells it.
Maria Williams pops her head out of her kitchen window; the curtains billow like long, pink and white checked hair around her inquisitive face. ‘Everything all right?’ she calls, and Ellie thinks of Di’s cuckoo clock, so terribly predictable, so obscenely insistent.
‘Oh go away, Maria, and mind your own business for once in your life.’ And then Ellie lets herself into the silence which is her house.
Never mind that—what on earth is wrong with silence? It allows you to imprint yourself upon it and the larger you are the better! You can only get lost in silence if you are small and frightened, just like the dark.
Ellie knows that outside this body of pain there is life, if she can only find it.
Mandy phones and Ellie has a pleasant conversation during which she assures her worried daughter, ‘Really, Mandy, I am all right. I wasn’t—I’ve been to hell and back, but I think I am going to pull through.’
‘What on earth’s the matter with Dad? What d’you think has come over him?’
‘He’s found his wings and he’s trying them out. He’ll soon discover that he’s being a cuckoo and the little bird he has chosen will find him out.’
‘You sound very positive, Mum.’
‘Well I’m trying to be, Mandy.’
‘Kev has taken it very badly. I spoke to him yesterday and he says he’s not ringing because he doesn’t know what to say. He’s not ready to talk about it yet.’
‘I can understand that. Tell him from me that that’s fine.’
‘I’d come down and see you if I could, only this Christmas I’m going to have to be on duty and Kev’s been invited to go to this castle in Spain.’
‘I will be perfectly all right, Mandy. You are not to worry about me.’
‘I am worried, because you sound too good to be true. Why don’t you come up here? You’d enjoy it—there are lots of merry people about and loads of organised things to do. I’ll pay your fare if money’s a problem. It would help to take you out of yourself.’
‘I have been out of myself. For a whole week I have been out of myself, and now what I’m attempting to do is to get back in. Money is no problem, either, as your father is being very generous, but it’s nice that you asked me, Mandy, because now I know I am choosing to be alone.’
‘Well… if you’re sure?’
‘I am sure.’
‘I’ve had a right go at Dad.’
‘Don’t fight on my behalf, Mandy. There is no need for you to do that.’
‘I am not fighting on your behalf, Mum. I am fighting on mine. I am absolutely disgusted with him—he is making himself ridiculous and I wanted him to know that!’
Di rings. She says, ‘Oh Elle, I heard what happened, love. Come over here and stay with us for a while. Dave says you’d be very welcome, just until Christmas is over.’
And Ellie has just finished reassuring Di when Margot rings in a terrible state. ‘The fucking evil bastard! Milk him for every penny he’s got! That bitch only wants him for his money, she’s that type, you can tell that! Get round there and scratch her eyes out—I’ll come with you. I wouldn’t mind coming with you if you wanted some support. Or I could send Dick along with some of the boys… put the frighteners on.’
‘Do you know her, Margot?’
‘I’ve read about her in the paper and I know her type.’
‘Let’s just wait and see.’ Ellie tries to placate her.
‘But you don’t intend to take this lying down! Men can’t be allowed to get away with this sort of thing…’
‘I am not lying down. I have done all the lying down I intend to do.’
‘What’s happening, then? What are you doing about it?’ Margot is frantic on the phone.
‘I am letting time pass. I am allowing the world to go by.’
‘Well, I am going to ring you every day and I want you to come over here whenever you feel like it… even in the middle of the night. I am leaving my back door unlocked. My house is yours now, Elle, just for as long as you need it. And the spare bed is aired and made up.’
Ellie eats sardines straight from the tin as she talks, licking every finger clean as she goes along, separating flesh from bone. She keeps a six-pack of crisps in the hall now, where once she kept her cigarettes.
She spends that evening perusing the local papers, which get scattered with pieces of Cadbury’s fruit and nut. She doesn’t let any of the chocolate escape, she rescues the wayward splinters on the end of a wet finger.
It is a week before Christmas now, and the following day Ellie puts on her hat and coat and drives out to Huyton. Ellie views Christmas with disfavour this year, she really hasn’t the time for it. The exhausted Christmas shoppers are out with their anger and their dull eyes, dragging their children along by the arms and manoeuvring uncomfortable bags and bundles. Carols trill from hot store doorways where men stand dismally and wait for their wives, looking resigned; sexless Rudolphs perform mechanically on platforms of plastic snow. Ellie’s mission is so urgent that her coat is unfastened despite the weather but the bank is easy to find. And this time she will see the manager at the new bank for exactly what he is, as unreal as the welcome smile on the cashier’s face, as false as the rubber plants, as pretentious as the circular column in the centre of the room—just one more prop in the money game, just one more smooth invitation, as tight and as sly as those chains they use to secure their pens to the counters.
And that’s fine—just so long as she knows and understands. So long as she’s a player, not a silver boot to be moved at will from the Waterworks to the Old Kent Road. She will pass Go on her own, thank you very much, and collect the rewards herself.
Charming? Yes.
Interested? Yes.
Helpful? Yes.
The new manager is also inquisitive to know her reason for moving such a vast investment portfolio, but it’s perfectly all right to be restrained in her replies. You don’t have to sell your soul to get help, not when you’re paying for it like Ellie is. And yes, he will write a letter to the Avery Road branch of Barclays, and yes he will organise everything, but Ellie must write one herself, telling the
bank that that’s what she wants to do.
Ellie deals with him cursorily; she doesn’t even bother to remember his name. She’s got his card in her handbag and that’s as close as she needs to get. ‘And just as soon as the transfer’s been made I shall be needing to make several extremely hefty withdrawals, so I want you to free this sum of money and put it on deposit in a separate account by the end of January at the latest.’
Whatever his name is doesn’t argue; it has something to do with Ellie’s forthright attitude. He thinks she knows about money—he thinks that she understands!
And here, down this side street, is the agent she’s circled in the newspaper. It is a small branch in a large string and there, in the window, are the empty flats… The insides are now finished to specification—they had to be re-done because the original contractor tried to cut corners and the prestigious developers couldn’t have that. There are three apartments left—only three available—and it is first come, first served. Ellie had noticed the three vacant flats… you couldn’t help but notice, on her fateful meeting with Gabriella, on her first visit to the Waterside. And Ellie is first come, and her money is virtually here in her purse—cash—no problems with mortgages or selling her own house first.
She hovers at the window, staring in, feeling the blackness well up again and fearing that, this time, she might not be able to push it back. No, she can’t get this far and retire defeated. Her heart takes a tumble when she sees the Georgian house up for sale in Ridley Place, right opposite the library—it is like being mocked by a dream and she nearly cries out in pain. It wants doing up, it is quite badly distressed like Ellie herself; it has been used as offices for the past twenty years and will need complete renovation.
The desecration of the house began the year that Ellie was married. That’s when it lost its beauty and got stuffed with files and folders, when its fireplaces were ripped out and filing cabinets were thrust into place. That’s when the myriad dusty inconsequentials of life got to its pelmets and cornices, reached its noble attics and its dark, dank basements. And there it was, darkened by Ellie’s reflection, rising in sad magnificence between the jaunty, strutting apartments in the estate agent’s window.
Well, why shouldn’t she buy that, too?
‘And move into it?’ asks the voice.
‘Well, no—I couldn’t move in immediately. I’d have to do it up.’
‘And risk having a house like that and ending up living in it alone?’
‘Why not? And anyway, I am certain my plan is going to work. If I wasn’t certain I wouldn’t be doing it.’
‘How could you do up a house like that? You’ve got no idea about materials or styles or good taste.’
‘I could get help, couldn’t I? I could pay for expert advice. And I’ve plenty of money to pay for the upkeep.’
‘Somebody would find out.’
‘How would they find out? Nobody knows me in that area. And I could always sell it again if I wanted to. I might never get another chance.’
Ellie goes inside on rubber legs and the door chinks closed behind her. The girl is no good, she cannot be bothered to talk to the girl; she wants to speak to the manager. His eyes open wide when she tells him.
‘Are you representing a company, madam?’ he asks with disbelief.
‘No, this is a private venture and it is important that my business here remains absolutely confidential.’
‘Naturally you will want to view.’
‘No, I do not need to view. I want those three flats. I am prepared to put deposits down this morning and no, I am not interested in bargaining or obtaining surveyors’ reports.’
‘If I may say so, I think that in the case of number twenty-eight Ridley Place, that might be slightly foolish. The house needs a great deal of work done to it before it can be used as a private residence.’
‘I am fully aware of that, and that is my business,’ says Ellie. ‘All I want to do is make sure I clinch this deal before Christmas.’
‘If you would care to give me your solicitor’s name and address.’
That’s easy. That’s in her bag, in the secret little pocket that Malc never knew was there—not that he would have bothered to search her bag anyway, not since he gave up smoking. She’s only used the solicitors once, and that was to make her will. They are a firm in London. They do not know her and they never wished to, and nor does she need to know them. Theirs is a sensible, business-like arrangement and Ellie is grateful for their discretion.
She clinches the deal with a handshake and heads back to her car with the brochures in a carrier bag.
‘You don’t need to put them in a carrier bag,’ she tells the flustered manager who is a lean and predatory young man and overcome by the affluence of his dowdy customer. He will go back home tonight and tell his mother, ‘It’s true what they say, people who have real money don’t go round advertising it.’
‘It’s not as secretive as that!’ says Ellie.
But he insists. It is a bakery bag with pictures of cottage loaves on the front, and when she gets to her car she finds crumbs in the bottom of it.
Crumbs in the bottom of the bag, and she has just promised to spend one and a quarter of her two million pounds with nobody to advise her.
No wonder she drives jerkily.
She cannot go straight back home, not until she’s seen it. She drives back into the city, against the traffic, and she manages to park beside a meter right outside number twenty-eight.
She calls to the house from the cosy, dry-mouthed heat of her car. Tears start in her eyes. She calls to the house with hope and it answers. She can feel it… it leans towards her massively in all its proud dereliction. It has unwashed windows and no proper curtains to call its own. Its door is faded with peeling paint and all the little scrolly bits on the walls are chipping away. Spiders and woodlice have no doubt made hay on the windowsills, there is no aerial on its many chimneys, and no smoke comes out of them, nothing to say that anyone is home. It has been unloved and neglected.
It is gently solid. It is waiting. It promises her everything she craves for.
She feels nothing at all about the flats except a satisfactory sense of achievement. They are merely a means to an end, while the house…
Among her Christmas cards comes one from Bella and Robert Beasely, and a note scratched quickly on the bottom informs her that in February he is moving on—a job at head office—an important promotion. He is able to communicate with her now that Malc has gone. She smiles. The pain of humiliation is still there but she’s pleased to hear he’s leaving. The fewer people around here who know what she is about the better!
Ellie is going to have a very happy Christmas alone in her bungalow with lots of books to read and lots of food to eat, her speculations and her brochures. Over the whole of the Christmas period Ellie will gain another stone, her hair will take on some of its old gloss again and her investments will multiply—just because they exist and are being managed astutely. Ellie must not worry about money any more. She has more important matters on her mind.
Because, after twenty-one years, Ellie has fallen in love again.
With a house and a sense of purpose.
27
ALTHOUGH IT DOESN’T APPEAR so from the inside, the Royal Albert Waterside apartments development is shaped like a lantern. Designed by an architect obviously disdainful of superstition, there are thirteen apartments in all, four on each of the first three floors with the penthouse alone on the top.
The apartment on the ground floor, thinks Ellie, will do very well for the Skinners, because although it has only four bedrooms and there are nine in the family (on and off), it is far more spacious than their back-to-back in Nelson Street and Ellie knows they will make do in their own particular style.
What should she write to these London solicitors, Barker, Base, Trial-Cody, what do they need to know about the Skinners? That this bright and breezy family, so plagued by colds and catarrh, are needy and deserving is p
erfectly clear, and that she, Ellie, feels a need to help those still in the place from whence she has come is also quite understandable.
‘Some sort of agreement for life,’ she writes, needing expert clarification although she is certain that some such legal procedure must exist for her purpose, ‘and naturally I do not want anyone ever to know who their benefactor might be.’
Well, naturally.
Everyone down Nelson Street, while liking the Skinners and sympathising, despaired of them at the same time. You could not pass number forty-two without smelling something akin to unchanged bedding, something that smacked of smoked haddock wrapped up badly and left in a dustbin, and something else… much more elusive… the smell of jumble sales in village halls run by women with blue hair. Hair… that was the underlying smell that was so hard to find and define. Hair and heads.
They were a much-visited family—by social workers, debt collectors and people bearing hampers and second-hand bicycles from various civic charities. They were also blessed with a vast and endless extended family network… and these relatives used to arrive in a glorious selection of unusual conveyances. The Skinners themselves owned an ancient tip-up truck, which remained parked most of the time, resting on its heavily punctured tyres like a geriatric gasping for breath.
As, one by one, the Skinner children slipped into their teens in their chained and leather-jacketed way, they began to acquire an individuality and they began to be known by names.
‘That bloody Marvin’s bike nearly knocked Mrs Davis down again. She went spare, poor old girl, but he says it’s the brakes, he can’t get the parts for the brakes. He shouldn’t be on the road… he’s got no licence, no insurance…’
‘Did you hear the girl Dorry coming home again last night? It must have been after four because Fred thought it was his alarm and reached to turn the bloody thing off. After four, and what is she, thirteen? She can’t be any older than thirteen because…’
Rich Deceiver Page 24
