Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  ‘Oh God Malc, that’s disgusting!’

  Malc rubs his eyes again, tiredly. ‘The cleaners can’t cope. The whole place is beginning to smell of Dettol.’

  Ellie leans forward in great concern. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, Gabriella says we have to strengthen the residents’ association. We have to act together in order to get this sorted out and I agree with her. That is the only way.’

  ‘And what do the other residents say?’

  ‘They’re as pissed off about it all as we are. Two of them have put their flats on the market but they’re not getting anywhere because of the state of the place whenever a likely customer comes round to view. The trouble is,’ and here Malc smacks his forehead, ‘the really awful part is that none of them ever seem to go out! Apart from Dwarfy Sugden, but even he is never very far away.’

  ‘Has anyone tried speaking to the Skinners, reasoning with them, explaining?’ asks Ellie. ‘I mean, the Skinners are really not bad at heart.’

  ‘Of course we have tried—over and over again! Every tactic has been tried from anger to quiet, sensible requests, but you known Duane Skinner—he smiles in that toothless way of his and apologises profusely, promising that everything’s going to change and the very next day, there’s another incident. Last week, for instance, there was a trail of dogshit right across the hall and the Commodore’s wife slipped in it and broke her ankle.’

  ‘Surely they can sue them for that!’

  ‘Sue them? The Skinners might live in one of the most sought-after premises in Liverpool but they don’t have two halfpennies to rub together, they are still on social security. What would be the point in taking a family like that to court? And lo and behold the very next day one of their damn kids rescued a stray puppy, so now we’ve got that to contend with.’

  ‘Well, what about the police? They’re bound to take action. Prostitution, for a start—that’s not legal, is it?’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right as long as you don’t advertise and conduct your business in the privacy of your own home.’

  ‘But the nuisance, Malc! You can’t cause nuisance to your neighbours.’

  ‘Oh Ellie, the police are in and out of there all the time. Gabby woke up to the sound of a police siren at quarter to four this morning. She’s on pills now to help her sleep. She says that her nerves are shot and she’s terrified about the big open day at the gallery.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know quite what to say.’ And then she adds, ‘Except that they didn’t seem as bad as this when they lived in Nelson Street.’

  ‘It’s quite different now,’ says Malc, slightly snappily, ‘and what makes it worse is that Gabby’s got more at stake here than anyone else. That’s why she wants me to lead the residents’ action group, so that something will be done, and quickly.’

  OH YES OH YES OH YES… Ellie feels like a witch, a wicked, wily, warty old witch with the brew bubbling at her fingertips. How easy it all is—why hadn’t she realised how easy it is to manipulate and stir and make things happen? Gabriella, my darling, you are even more predictable than I ever hoped you might be. You disappoint me, my dear, you are making this all so terribly easy.

  She tries not to smile as a witch might smile. ‘And are you going to do that, Malc?’

  Of course you are! Of course you are—but let me hear you tell it!

  ‘Well, everyone sort of expects a lead from us, what with Gabriella being so involved in the place and us having the penthouse,’ Malc says dismally.

  Well, they would, wouldn’t they?

  ‘But how do you feel about doing that, Malc? I mean, you know the Skinners, you know poor old Dwarfy, it’s a bit like turning against your own people, surely.’

  ‘I don’t see it in that way at all, Ellie. Everyone has rights, and these unsavoury people are threatening ours!’

  Ellie raises her eyebrows but holds her tongue. She is not worried about her ‘tenants’, she is not worried about playing games with people who are already the pawns of society. They are quite safe, safer than they have ever been: they cannot be evicted from their homes no matter what the action group do, Ellie has made quite certain of that. And if, by some terrible chance, something were to happen to them, Ellie is quite prepared to bail them out.

  ‘And now, how about you, Elle? We’ve spent the whole time talking about me and my problems when the whole point of your coming here this morning was for us to get to grips with yours. How is the financial arrangement working? Are you finding yourself able to cope?’

  ‘If I’m careful,’ says Ellie, wrapping her new canary yellow coat around her. ‘But I never was one to go overboard.’

  ‘And the car—is that still going all right?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a reliable little runner.’

  ‘And how about next door? Is she still pestering you?’

  ‘No, I am quite settled in and Maria hasn’t been a problem since I told her to mind her own business. She turns away when she sees me and sticks her nose up in the air.’

  ‘And that doesn’t upset you?’

  Ellie can’t tell him she is never in, that she is either out shopping, ordering gorgeous wallpapers and chintzes, at the Plaza or round at her new house.

  ‘I have changed, Malc,’ she tells him. ‘I am much more easygoing than I was before. Having nobody to rely on now, I have found new depths in myself.’

  ‘I have to say, Ellie, that I honestly do admire the way you have dealt with all this.’ And for the first time since he has left her she senses his vulnerability, in the way the Arcade was always so vulnerable—grand and imposing though it was—to the sharp stones of little boys.

  Ellie’s got quite a few stones in her pocket.

  ‘I am an accepting person, Malc, and I think I have adjusted, eventually, to most of the events in my life… given time.’

  ‘You were always the stronger of the two of us, Elle.’

  ‘Yes, you often used to say that, didn’t you?’

  ‘There was only one time when I felt you really needed me, and that was before Mandy was born… the time when you were so frightened, living with Mum and Dad and me away three nights a week at night-school.’

  ‘I made you give it up, though, didn’t I, and for that you have never forgiven me.’

  ‘You forced me into taking the Canonwaits job, too, remember. Without your nagging I’d never have gone for it, never have reached the heights that I have unless you had persuaded me. So you are wrong—any old resentments of that kind are behind me now.’

  Elle gets up to go. She jokes when she says, ‘So really, apart from the little problem of Gabriella, you could say that things have never been so good between us!’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’

  His sexy smile is back and she wants him. She knows that everything is going well with Canonwaits because she receives the quarterly reports and reads them avidly. She knows that this end of the operation lies entirely in Malc’s hands and that Murphy and Ramon now work from London. So, if it wasn’t for the personal problems that are building up around him at home, Malc would be a contented, fulfilled man. Ellie knows and understands why she lost him; she lost herself, too, for a while back there and she learned a painful lesson in the process. She is angry with him for not having patience, for not caring enough to wait for her, but she loves him enough to forgive him.

  She shouldn’t have asked him to be leader.

  He has always hated being leader and it is perfectly natural that in his hour of need he would lock on to someone as fiercely determined as Gabriella.

  And Ellie has always loved Malc.

  And she has always known that in spite of those little moments of hatred, those hopelessly depressing times when they had not known how to talk to each other, touch each other, or how to break free from the situation, she has always known that he loved her, too.

  Even in their desperation they had been like two little children hugging each other in a storm, crying in silence and not
knowing where to shelter.

  That’s what Ellie wants to believe and she’s damn well sticking to it.

  30

  NOW COUNCILLOR MRS RENE Cash is left-wing, and it is possible to go further than that and state, tentatively, that she could well be one of the most left-wing people in all the world and to speculate as to what she might be doing in this country in the first place.

  A sweet, timid-looking woman, frail and prone to dressing in muted colours, she is, in spite of her violent political leanings, extremely fond of animals, so much so that when one of her pets dies—so far a dachshund, two budgerigars and three feral cats have suffered this fate—she has it stuffed for posterity. She is kindness itself to her constituents; she maintains an almost constant open house and never feels prevailed upon nor taken advantage of.

  It is the steely glint in her eye and her fanatical refusal to take more than four hours sleep a night that singles her out from the other widows who live quite quietly in her small verdant cul-de-sac. Councillor Mrs Rene Cash’s lights go out at two, and they are back on at six; her neighbours say they could set their clocks by her regular habits. So when she stands up in her place in the council chamber all the men have to be quiet in order to hear her still, small voice. No one could be so rude as to bray at or bully this violet-smelling, very English, white-haired old lady.

  Ellie rings her up. She has been waiting to make this telephone call for weeks. She knows very well the Councillor’s views on the development of the old docklands—indeed, there is nobody in the nation who is not perfectly aware of her views, and those of the little committee she chairs which meets round at her bungalow for tea and biscuits every other week. In televised debates, Councillor Cash dominates the proceedings with her well-timed silences and her glances. She has been known to quell, with one well-directed look over her thin half-lenses, men like Dennis Skinner and Arthur Scargill, both of whom, viewers must assume, she considers to be virtually National Front.

  Indeed, in his time Arthur Scargill has been reduced to pleading, ‘Oh please, Rene, give me a break.’

  The telephone is answered by a sweet treble voice which courteously asks her who she is and how she is and what is her purpose for calling.

  Ellie gives a false name and a real address… in one of the most deprived areas of the city, rented, dubiously tenanted, and therefore not traceable by any perusal of the voters’ register. Over the wires she can feel Rene Cash soften towards her.

  ‘They are clubbing together with all their might and all their power and all their clever ways of speaking in order to push these poor souls out,’ sobs Ellie convincingly. ‘They are holding the first residents’ action group meeting on Tuesday night and I know it’s all going to be done behind closed doors—the press will be excluded as usual and nobody is going to know what’s going on.’

  ‘And might I ask what your personal interest is in this, my dear?’

  My dear?

  But it’s all right coming from this ancient quarter.

  ‘I have lived in this area of Liverpool all my life. I have seen what has happened to it. I have even been homeless in my time,’ cries Ellie. ‘I know what it’s like to feel despised and persecuted, and to feel there’s no place to rest my head. These people might not be the world’s best examples of humanity, but they have fallen upon some good luck—for once in their lives something good has happened to them, but now it looks as though it is all going to be taken away.’

  She knows that a telephone recorder is going—you always know—and she also senses that notes are being assiduously taken.

  ‘Can you tell me who is going to be allowed to attend this meeting?’

  ‘All the residents of the Waterside Apartments, the residents of the new houses alongside the river, and anyone connected with the marina. I suppose that would include anyone with a permanent mooring—or their representatives.’

  ‘Have you any idea what is going to happen at this early stage?’ asks Councillor Mrs Rene Cash, encouragingly.

  ‘No, but I assume the objectives are to pick an action group and vote on some ways and means of tackling their problems. They consider that the whole nature of the complex is under threat, you see, from the very people to whom it belonged in the first place!’

  ‘Quite so. I understand. And can you furnish me with any more details of the intended victims of this grubby little back-street campaign?’

  So Ellie does the telling while Councillor Mrs Cash does the recording and the note-taking and her tiny white head whirls round with ideas and plans, just as Ellie’s whirls with well-justified high expectations.

  ‘I don’t want to become any more involved in this than I am already,’ confides Ellie. ‘I am in a dangerous enough position as it is… if anyone should find out that a warning was given… and this is all supposed to be terribly confidential.’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ says Mrs Cash. She does not ask Ellie where her information comes from. She isn’t remotely interested in motives—results are what matter. ‘Rest assured, when I give my word you can trust it absolutely.’

  ‘So someone’ll be there on the night?’ asks Ellie, in need of reassurance.

  ‘Someone’ll be there,’ and Ellie marvels that a voice so calm and controlled can sound so quietly sinister.

  Councillor Mrs Rene Cash is a woman of action—not words. She works behind the scenes, she enjoys great influence, and once she scents her prey she is like a bloodhound and will never give up.

  The press like her—she is worth cultivating. When she rings up she is put straight through to editors. They have achieved some of their biggest scoops from her mild suggestions in the past. She has a nose for news on the make, for situations that are on the simmer, coming up to the boil.

  Poor Malc.

  Especially when you think where he comes from.

  Ellie is in her element now, not least because she can start making constructive suggestions to the builders who are at the point of restoring twenty-eight Ridley Place to its former glory. She spends whole days there with a flask and a packet of sandwiches, a fruit cake and some Nice biscuits. She discusses every pro and con with Pete Sparrow, who seems as enamoured of the house as she is, who doesn’t mind dwelling on detail and who has ‘done up one or two of these fabulous places in my time’. Ellie asks where, and goes round to check, and she is gratified by the results she sees.

  Neighbours passing by start popping in to see what’s going on. They are not like the Heswall neighbours; they are more interested in what’s being done to the house than in what sort of person might be living in it. People come and go… houses like this will last hundreds more years, especially when they’re being rejuvenated as thoroughly and as splendidly as this one. The callers have fascinating suggestions to make—like where she can obtain some proper old baths and where she might find a match for these old mouldings. Sometimes Ellie sits on a sawing block alongside one of these passers-by and chats about this and that for hours, sharing her flask with them.

  Nobody bothers to ask her where she comes from or where she is going. Nobody seems to be put off by her accent. And, to be fair, Ellie is quite an imposing individual these days with her charts and the stub of pencil behind her ear, her gaudy wraps and her cocky hats, and that way she has of tearing from room to room, whistling to Pete Sparrow with two fingers in her mouth.

  She is large.

  She gets asked to dinner by the retired Brigadier and his wife at number twenty-six. She accepts without qualms, she arrives without fear, loaded with old photographs she’s found in a backstreet photographers, and they spend a wonderful evening getting quite drunk and discussing architecture and how Liverpool used to be in its heyday.

  ‘Of course I used to like pop music,’ confides Ellie. ‘I missed out on the proper stuff somewhere along the line. Sometimes I get my old records out and I play them, revelling in the nostalgia.’

  ‘Oh, so do I!’ shouts the Brigadier’s wife, Norma. ‘It’s John who likes the classic
al stuff. You must make him take you with him next time he goes to the Phil.’

  ‘I would be hugely honoured to have you accompany me,’ her husband confirms.

  And so that’s how Ellie starts going regularly to concerts. She does not worry about being recognised, for no one would ever expect to see her here, and she wears her reading spectacles which even Malc has never seen, and low-brimmed hats which she can pull down further if she needs to.

  ‘When do you think you will finally be able to move in?’ asks the Brigadier, his eyes moist as they always are when they come out after listening to the music. He has explained to her that sometimes he feels so sad he can’t bear it—‘almost suicidal in fact’—but at other times he feels quite warlike. ‘It’ll be nice to have a neighbour again.’

  ‘They say three months, but you can’t trust builders,’ says Ellie, greedily finishing off the large box of Milk Tray in the taxi.

  She enjoys the peace and quiet of being at home in the bungalow. She actually enjoys the silence and she’s getting braver, beginning to believe that if she stops plotting and planning for a moment she might not cry. She suspects that the locals are talking about her in the butcher’s and in the newsagent’s, and wondering where she goes in the daytime, but that doesn’t worry her now. She has not touched the housework in weeks; occasionally she pulls out the washing machine, but not often and germs must be breeding somewhere but she’s too big for them to bother her. This year the garden will go wild; she will probably get complaints from Wilfred as the seeds blow over the fence.

  She is a woman in waiting.

  Malc telephones her directly after the Tuesday night meeting and Ellie is slightly surprised, but not totally.

  ‘It all seemed to go very well. They picked me as Chairman. Well, Gabby put me forward, actually—I don’t think there were too many other contenders. It’s all a little bit tricky.’

  ‘Were there lots of people there?’

  ‘Yes, of course, everyone is very concerned. They all wanted to have their say. Everyone was repeating what Gabby and I are always saying—how amazing it is the way standards can fall so fast.’