by Mary Wesley
‘Go on –’
‘True, Madam, Mr Green has it too.’
‘Wow!’
‘Of course Mr Poliport wouldn’t have –’
‘Didn’t live to have it, Mrs Green.’
‘Oh, Madam.’
‘Don’t let’s think about it.’
‘No, Madam, of course not. But I just thought I’d mention it in case Mr Leach seemed a bit funny.’
‘No funnier than usual.’
‘Oh good. Of course I took Mr Green to the doctor. He takes pills now. That settles him.’
‘Female hormones?’
‘Oh, you know about them.’ Mrs Green was disappointed.
‘I don’t really think Mr Leach needs pills, not yet anyway. But he’s got you to keep an eye on him, lucky fellow.’ She could see that Mrs Green also considered John fortunate.
‘Would Madam like the telephone? I can plug it in for you.’
‘Oh, I would. I’ve got to do something about my hair.’
‘I took a chance. I made an appointment for you at Paul’s for eleven.’
‘Mrs Green, I could kiss you.’
‘Also your friends Lalage and Anne are in London, but Mrs Lucas and Mrs Stern are away, Madam.’
‘You’ve been spying for me!’
‘Anticipating your desires, Madam.’
‘Stop the “Madam”, Mrs Green. You know you call me Matilda to your husband and everyone else.’
Mrs Green laughed. ‘I’ll get the telephone. D’you want your dress for tonight pressed?’
‘No, it’s that black thing of Anabel’s. D’you think I shall look all right in it?’
‘If Anabel does, you will. You are the same size.’
‘Have you seen Anabel lately?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Green, who had, and thought Anabel a selfish good-for-nothing tart to neglect her mother so.
‘Nor have I. She seems to like living in Germany.’
Mrs Green made a non-committal noise and went to fetch the telephone. ‘Don’t be late for your appointment. You know that Paul –’
‘All right, I won’t.’ Matilda telephoned Lalage.
‘Lalage? It’s me. Lunch tomorrow?’
‘La Green warned me,’ shrieked the telephone voice. ‘Of course, sweetie, lunch tomorrow. Come here. Anne left a message. Lunch with her the day after tomorrow. La Green rang her up. All right?’
‘Sure.’
‘See you tomorrow, must rush. I’m having my face done, late already, ’bye.’
‘She’s having her face done, Mrs Green.’
‘Wait till you see it.’ Mrs Green showed her teeth.
‘Oh, Mrs Green, up again? Really?’
‘Yes. Cost a thousand, I believe. Her husband’s made of money – diamonds – a new car too.’
‘None of that envy now. I must get up. I have to see to my hair. Just look at it.’
‘Her hair is blonde now.’
‘Thank you for warning me. What’s Anne’s?’
‘Same old red.’
‘Ah.’
‘You keep yours as it is.’
‘I shall, I shall. Can’t do anything else in the country even if I wanted to.’
Matilda put on her frock, several years old but dateless. She had bought it with Anabel’s help for Tom’s funeral. She had barely looked at the garment when Anabel had taken her to buy it, her mind had been full of the horror of meeting the plane carrying Tom’s coffin. The coffin had lain in the sitting-room for the time it had taken to arrange the cremation, buy the dress, wait for Louise, Mark and Claud to arrive. Louise had said:
‘Why here, for God’s sake, Mother? Why can’t it be in the crematorium chapel?’
‘I want it here. He would be lonely in the chapel, out of place. He had no beliefs.’ Then Claud had said, ‘Shut up,’ to Louise, and Mark, who agreed with her, had shut up too. Matilda zipped up the dress.
‘Do I look respectable?’ she asked Mrs Green.
‘Very chick.’ Mrs Green pronounced her ‘chic’ as in Chicago. She had heard Matilda say this when younger, happier.
‘It’s not new. I’m mean about clothes. I live in jeans in the country.’
‘You look fine.’ Mrs Green watched Matilda go out into the street. ‘Don’t let that Paul ruin your hair.’
‘I won’t.’
Matilda caught a bus, rocked and roared along the King’s Road, up Sloane Street, lurching round into Knightsbridge, grinding up to Piccadilly. She walked through side streets to Paul’s.
The silence as she went into the hairdresser’s was a relief after the racket in the street. Paul met her.
‘Hello, Paul.’
‘I’ve got a job ahead of me I see. Evie, shampoo Mrs Poliport then bring her to me. Just got to cut a slice off a Frog visitor then I’ll be with you.’
‘She’ll hear you, Paul.’
‘What if she does? These Frogs and Krauts only come once or twice. It doesn’t pay to bother, I haven’t the time.’
‘He doesn’t change, does he?’
Matilda submitted to a brisk shampoo, feeling relief when Evie finished and turbanned her head in a towel.
‘Now what have we got here?’ In disgust Paul flicked Matilda’s wet hair upwards. ‘Who cut it last? Been nibbled by a mouse?’
‘You cut it.’
‘Never.’
‘You did, when you came to do that demonstration at the Grand Hotel.’
‘Oh, I remember. It wasn’t my day. Robert and I had had a row.’
‘Be more careful this time. I hope you haven’t had a row lately.’
‘We split up. I’m ever so peaceful now, living with a gloomy Dane.’
‘Good news.’
‘Wouldn’t you like a rinse?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘All your friends have them. Needn’t be red, you know. Just a bit of gold in with the silver. It would suit you.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Honestly? Why not tart you up a bit?’
‘Honestly, Paul, leave it alone.’
‘How right you are. All the old Fraus look years older than you, your hair looks terribly distinguished with your skin. How do you do it?’
‘Come on, Paul. Concentrate. Snip, snip, but don’t get carried away.’
‘Very well.’ Paul’s tired eyes met Matilda’s in the glass. ‘I’ll take great care. You don’t come often but I’m glad when you do.’
‘What a nice thing to say.’ Paul snipped, concentrating, combing her hair this way and that, snipping off tiny bits, the scissors, razor sharp, flickering between his fingers.
‘Have you seen Anabel or Louise lately?’
‘No, Paul. I think they have their hair done abroad. They haven’t been over for ages.’
‘No.’ Paul, who had cut Anabel’s hair a few days before, agreed. ‘They’ve got lovely hair like you, though I don’t think either of them will go your colour.’
‘Why not?’
‘All those rinses. Girls forget the colour they were born with. Very few white heads these days. There, how’s that? Suits your head.’ He held a mirror so that she could see. ‘Janey, blow Mrs Poliport then bring her back to me.’
Janey led Matilda away and brushed and blew.
‘That’s better.’ Paul gave a final snip or two. ‘Be all right now.’
‘Thank you. I feel ready to face the world.’
‘See you soon?’
‘I don’t know when I shall be in London again, if ever.’
‘Goodbye then –’ Paul was already hurrying to another customer. Matilda was forgotten. She paid the astronomical sum asked, tipped the girls, walked downstairs into the street, strolling slowly along to Green Park Tube.
As she went down the steps the hot air blowing up from below lifted her new hair and blew it every which way. She bought a ticket to Gloucester Road and went down into the bowels of London. It was time to find Hugh’s money. She wanted the job over, behind her, so that she could forget it.
Si
tting in the train, which was bursting with young foreigners carrying parcels, shouting to one another above the noise of the train, Matilda breathed deeply to calm her nerves and repeated Hugh’s instructions to herself to be sure she had them right. She got out at Gloucester Road and walked to Hugh’s flat. Long before she rounded the corner into the Gardens she had his keys in her hand, one for the street door, the other for the flat.
The police would no longer be watching the flat but John’s fantasies of the night before made her nervous. If there were suspicious-looking people in the street she would walk past the house. But who was or was not suspicious? The few people about looked ordinary enough. When she reached the house she fitted the key in the door, opened the door and walked in.
The hall was dark and drab, the stairs steep and badly carpeted. She counted them as she made a slow ascent – eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven. Eighty-seven brought her to the small landing and the door which still had a card by the bell which said ‘Hugh Warner’.
Matilda listened.
No sound. Nobody coming up or going down. Hugh had said that nearly everyone in the house went out to work all day every day. She ran her finger under the left hand edge of the landing carpet and found the string. He didn’t lie about this, she thought. She pulled. From under the carpet came the envelope. She put it in her bag. Two steps down in the fold of carpet over the step another string brought a second envelope. Two steps more, another tweak and she had the rest of the money. She was breathing hard. Should she or should she not go into the flat? It was not really necessary; he could manage without shoes. Curiosity won. She let herself in quickly, closing the door behind her. The flat looked undisturbed though there had been a search by the police. She did not believe in John’s Beclean filthy people.
She looked curiously round Hugh’s home. Books. He was considerably more erudite than he appeared. Some good pictures. A stack of records, a very nice record player. A bathroom she envied. She looked wistfully at a Greek sponge, decided to leave it. Clothes she must leave too. The bedroom was comfortable. She felt the big bed gingerly. The flat was friendly. A snapshot of a woman smiling at the camera from a garden chair, a black cat in her arms – unmistakably his mother, the nose feminine but large. ‘Well, Mother.’ Matilda looked at this version of Hugh. ‘You were not afraid that day.’ In the street a car door slammed. She heard voices, the insertion of a key in the front door. She looked around for a hiding place, moving out of sight of the door. Footsteps pounding up the stairs, a man and a girl talking.
‘My God, what stairs! How much further? My legs ache.’
‘Top floor, I’m afraid.’
‘Ooh!’ in a squeak. ‘You didn’t say the Matricide lived here.’
‘I did, stupid, you were too pissed to hear. Come on.’
‘It’s scary.’
‘Don’t be stupid. He isn’t in there.’
The footsteps went on up the stairs. Matilda let out her breath. She snatched up a pair of shoes from the rack, let herself out of the flat and ran down to the street. In Gloucester road she bought a carrier bag and put the shoes in it. The shop girl looked at her briefly, then away to the next customer while she held out her hand with the change.
She asked in a fruit shop where the nearest post office would be and walked steadily along the pavement towards it. She was sweating with retrospective fear. Her feet hurt in their thin soles on the London pavements. She hoped she looked unobtrusive among the throng of foreigners pushing and barging towards the tube.
‘Qu’est-ce qu’elle fait ces jours-ci, Madeleine?’
‘Il parait qu’elle fait le trottoir.’
‘C’est pas vrai. Elle ne s’est donc pas mise avec un Suisse?’
‘Comme elle doit se barber!’
Perhaps Madeleine’s feet had hurt on the trottoir? Matilda pushed into the post office, joined a queue edging slowly towards the counter. Her feet swelling unbearably, she waited, holding Hugh’s keys in her hand. As she moved slowly up the queue she took the keys off her nightdress ribbon, putting the ribbon back in her bag. When at last she reached the counter she found herself face to face with an Indian, whose sad eyes looked through her.
‘A registered envelope please, medium size.’
Delicate fingers pushed the envelope towards her. She paid. He would not know her again, this man imprisoned behind the counter, so infinitely more dignified than nose-picking Mr Hicks. Mr Hicks feeling superior with his itchy nose and putty-coloured skin would call him a nig-nog or coon.
‘Next please.’ The Indian waved three fingers just a trifle. She was holding up the queue staring.
‘Sorry.’ Matilda blushed, hurried to a counter and addressed the envelope to herself, put in the keys, first wrapping them in a telegraph form, licked up the envelope, closed it firmly, pressing hard, then posted it. Overwhelmed with relief she went out to the street and waited to take a taxi which was disgorging some Arab ladies outside an hotel. After giving John’s address she sat back, easing her feet from their tight shoes.
That evening at Wheelers she greedily ate a dozen oysters and a sole and listened with pleasure to John’s description of a day’s fishing on the Test, conscious that with her hair properly cut she looked more than presentable in Anabel’s dress and glad that Louise took shoes a size larger than she did.
‘London pavements are death to my feet, John dear, does it show in my face – Piers, I mean.’
‘You look younger than I’ve seen you look since Tom died, if I may say so. You look splendid, Matty. What are you doing these days?’
‘Just living, John – Piers.’
‘It’s been very hard for you, you two were so close.’
‘Dreadfully. I wished for a long time to be dead, in fact I wish it still.’
‘The children should be considered.’
‘Louise, Mark, Anabel and Claud have their own lives.’
‘They come and see you.’
‘No. One visit each after the funeral, then away they went.’
‘I should have thought –’
‘None of them lives in England. They are all busy people.’
‘Do you go to see them?’
‘I haven’t so far.’
‘Really? It’s three years since Tom died. I should have thought –’
‘I don’t particularly want to go. The States are so far. I hate Paris. I don’t like Frankfurt either.’
‘Tom liked Paris.’
‘I never went with him.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘How?’ Matilda asked sharply. ‘How did you know? We were pretty well inseparable.’
‘I suppose he told me. Yes, yes that must have been it.’ John looked slyly at Matilda. ‘There’s no harm in telling you now. I knew you never went with him. He told me so, naturally.’
‘What do you mean, naturally?’
‘Tom used to do little jobs for my department. They paid for his trips.’
Matilda flushed. ‘John, you go too far with your fantasies. Don’t start telling me Tom was a spy. It’s too bad of you.’
‘My dear girl –’
‘I’m not a girl, yours or anybody else’s. I’m too old to play silly spy games with you. It used to be funny, but bringing Tom in like this isn’t: It’s indecent, it’s worse than rotten taste.’
‘I’m sorry if I –’
‘I should hope so. We laughed at you over Burgess and Maclean, and Philby and you made me laugh last night over your date in Prague with the man who murdered his mother.’ Matilda prevented herself from saying ‘Hugh’. ‘But I tell you, John, it’s not funny when you insinuate Tom was a sort of agent; it’s revolting.’
‘Sorry, my dear. It’s a foible. Forgive me.’ John signalled to the waiter to bring his bill, looking away from Matilda, pleased to find she knew nothing, suspected nothing. He had not been sure these three years that Matilda believed in Tom’s heart attack. It had been unfortunate. Nice to make sure of Matilda’s ignorance. They had be
en close, those two.
Matilda watched John pay the bill and thought, the cost of this meal would keep ten third world families going for months. She was still angry.
‘It’s a dangerous foible, John, and hurtful.’
‘I apologize, Matty, I am truly sorry. How can I make amends? Tell you I am not going to Prague to meet this mother-murderer, that I’m only going for the fishing?’
Matilda looked at him doubtfully. She had enjoyed the Prague fantasy; it had made her feel safe.
‘I don’t think you know truth from fiction and it doesn’t matter but you should be more careful. You hurt me.’
‘Matty, I am sorry. Shall we go? Finish the apologies.’
‘Let’s walk a little. I’ll tell you a secret. I’m wearing a pair of Louise’s shoes. My feet swell on these pavements.’
John took her arm and said cheerfully, ‘And I will tell you one too. I sleep with a revolver under my pillow – always have.’
Matilda burst out laughing. John laughed too, though he was still a little annoyed with what he considered her prissy reaction over Tom. ‘I showed it to Tom on one occasion and he said, “Never tell Matty, it would scare the pants off her.”’
‘He never called me Matty.’
‘No, of course he didn’t.’
‘And I don’t believe in the revolver.’
‘There is no need for you to.’
Matilda thought this answer ambiguous and decided to cut short her visit. London suddenly seemed too large, too noisy, too much for her altogether. Too much for her feet.
‘I shall have to go home very soon.’
‘You’ve only just arrived.’
‘There’s nothing for me in London, John, not any more. Piers, if you like.’
‘It’s lovely to see you. Don’t hurry away now you’re here.’
‘It’s such a pity there’s no fishing near me. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were?’
She’s taken offence, thought John. No matter, she’s saved herself a heart attack which would be boring for me to arrange. I don’t want to stay with her anyway.
‘When must you go?’
‘In a couple of days, if I may stay that long.’
‘You know you may. I’m not going to Prague until Saturday. Today is Tuesday.’
‘I shall go on Thursday then.’
‘Why don’t you ring up?’
