A Lesser Evil (23 page)

‘Here you are,’ Dan said, coming in with a cup of tea and a jam doughnut for her. He put them down on the coffee table and sat down on the other armchair. ‘It’s lovely to have you back home. I hated going to bed without you.’

Fifi began to cry and Dan immediately looked stricken. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, coming over and kneeling in front of her. ‘Are you feeling ill?’

‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ she sobbed out. That was true; how could she explain that everything which had once been dear to her no longer seemed to matter? She wanted to be alone, but she knew that if she was she’d hate it. She didn’t want to be fussed over, but if people didn’t fuss, that would hurt her too. Everything was contradictory, except her sorrow at losing the baby. That was the only constant thing.

‘Dr Hendry told me you would be weepy for a while,’ Dan said gently, trying to cuddle her. ‘He said there was no quick cure for it, but to make sure you got rest, good food and a bit of exercise. Why don’t you lie down for a bit? I’ll make us some soup or something for lunch, then we could go for a walk in the park.’

‘I don’t want to walk around that scabby park, my insides feel as if they’re falling out,’ she snapped. That wasn’t true. It had felt that way when she first got up in hospital, but the sensation had gone within twenty-four hours. Yet she preferred to have a medical reason for feeling so down, rather than allowing anyone to think she was going a bit crazy.

‘Okay,’ Dan shrugged, ‘we’ll stay here. Why don’t we both go and lie down? It’s a long time since we had a cuddle.’

‘I’m not in a fit state for sex,’ she roared at him. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything else?’

Dan got up and walked away. He turned at the door and looked back at her, his face a picture of hurt and sorrow. ‘Yes, I do think of other things,’ he said. ‘Like how sorry I am we lost our baby, that I couldn’t bring you home today to a nicer place, and that I can’t afford to buy a car so I could drive you somewhere beautiful. I think about how lucky we are that our neighbours have all been so kind. I also think there must be something badly wrong with you if you imagine I’d be after sex when you are so unhappy.’

Chapter Nine

Fifi carried her mug of tea into the living room and switched on the radio to hear the eight o’clock news, then sat down by the window. It was three weeks since her miscarriage, and at long last she seemed to have come out of the depressed and miserable state she’d been in. It was Saturday, another beautiful morning, and she thought she would get washed and dressed after her tea, then walk to the shops.

Eva Price, the red-headed woman who lived at number 8, the house next to the coal yard, was on her way to work at the launderette. She was a divorcee and lived alone with her ten-year-old son. She looked very fresh in a pale green dress, with white shoes and handbag, Fifi had noticed she was looking very much smarter lately and wondered if that was because she’d got a new man in her life.

Fifi smiled to herself, remembering how a few days earlier Dan had teased her that she was getting like an old busybody, taking up a grandstand seat to watch the neighbours behind the net curtains.

He was right, she was becoming a first-class busybody. Since coming home from hospital she’d done little else but monitor the comings and goings of everyone in the street. And, of course, upset Dan hundreds oftimes with her gloom, sarcasm and plain nastiness.

She was very ashamed of that now. Dan certainly didn’t deserve what she’d put him through – he washed her, dressed her, cooked and cleaned. And all the time he’d been so comforting and understanding, even when she was impossible and he wasn’t a hundred per cent himself. But thankfully now, aside from the limitations of her arm being in plaster, she felt like her old self again.

The doctor had given Dan the all-clear at the end of last week. Apart from the bald patch on the back of his head where they’d shaved it to stitch the wound, and some bruising on his chest, he seemed none the worse for his ordeal, and he’d gone back to work on Monday. Fifi missed him; the days seemed very long and empty without him around. She wished he hadn’t agreed to work all day today, but he said they needed the money and she supposed he was only being sensible.

But being alone had forced her to do things herself. She’d even mastered peeling potatoes with her left hand, and writing letters, though they looked as though a child had written them, and cleaning up. She could use the fingers on her right hand to support things, but they were stiff still and her arm ached if she used them for too long.

Despite her mother’s gloomy prediction, her job had been kept open for her, in fact she’d had flowers and a very sympathetic letter from her boss. She hoped that she could go back at the beginning of September when the plaster came off.

A child crying somewhere made Fifi lean forward in her seat, but she couldn’t see the child outside, or work out which house the crying might be coming from. The milk float came rattling along and drowned it out. She watched the milkman leap out, grab a handful of bottles, then run from door to door depositing them and picking up the empties.

Frank’s voice wafted up to her as he called to the milkman to ask if he had any eggs on the float. Then another male voice joined theirs, asking Frank if he had last night’s
Evening Standard
. She guessed it was Mr Helass, two doors down, but without leaning out of the window she couldn’t see her side of the street.

One good thing to come out of both her and Dan ending up in hospital was that they’d got to know so many of their neighbours far better. As Dan had pointed out to her, all of them had been incredibly kind. Miss Diamond had made several meals for them, including the beef casserole Fifi had been mean enough to mock on her first day home. Stan had got their shopping, and lots of other neighbours had brought them newspapers, magazines, fruit and chocolates. Frank and Miss Diamond had been running up and down stairs constantly for the first few days, wanting to help in any way they could.

Yet it was Yvette Fifi felt most indebted to. She came over every day for the first two weeks. She did whatever she saw needed doing, whether that was changing the sheets on the bed or a bit of washing up or ironing, in a gentle, unpushy way that didn’t make them feel awkward. But it was the comfort she gave Fifi when she was at her lowest that helped the most.

Whoever would have thought that a distinctly odd French spinster would be the only person capable of getting her to talk about how she felt? Yvette alone seemed to understand all the conflicting feelings Fifi had experienced when she found she was pregnant. She didn’t pooh-pooh Fifi’s belief that it was her fault she lost the baby. Instead she talked through these things, making Fifi see that imagining it was a punishment because she hadn’t been ecstatic with delight right from conception was ridiculous, but at the same time quite normal, and that most women who miscarried felt much the same.

She was equally wise about the rift between Fifi and her mother, and suggested that the causes were almost certainly based on something in Fifi’s childhood.

‘If she always had to worry about you and protect you as a leetle girl, she cannot just stop because you are big now,’ Yvette said. ‘She is frightened you will be hurt. It is hard for any mother to let go.’

As Fifi continued to gaze out of the window, she remembered how awful she thought this street was when they first came here, and how that feeling came back after she came out of hospital. It looked okay again now. It would be nice of course if there were a few trees, or the coal yard closed down, but if she and Dan left, and he’d been saying they should when her arm was better, she was going to miss the friends she’d made here.

Granted, the Muckles were still over the road, ‘ze worm in ze apple’, as Yvette humorously described them, but they had been quieter lately. They still had their regular Friday night card parties, but last night Fifi hadn’t heard anything much because she and Dan had gone to bed early.

She wondered if maybe Alfie had got nervous when the police questioned him about Dan’s attack. Or could it be that they’d finally grown tired of everyone loathing them?

If only the police could find out who attacked Dan! She didn’t like things left in the air. But there were no fingerprints on the iron bar he was hit with. No one living in the houses and flats along the alley where it happened had seen anyone behaving suspiciously. The police hadn’t officially closed the case as far as she knew, but it didn’t look as if they were doing anything else about it.

Dan had always been convinced that he was merely mistaken for someone else. As he pointed out, the time he left work varied from day to day.

Being realistic, Fifi doubted Alfie was really capable of planning such an elaborate revenge anyway. She was even inclined to believe she’d imagined him standing on the garden wall that night of the storm too. She was distraught, after all. Would anyone, even a weirdo like Alfie, attempt prowling around on garden walls in such weather?

‘Fifi! Are you up and about?’

At the sound of Frank calling her, Fifi got up from her chair and went out on to the landing. Frank was standing down on the stairs, her pint of milk in his hands.

‘You look smart,’ Fifi said. He was wearing a navy blue suit and a white shirt and tie. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘To visit June’s grave, then on to see my sister,’ he said, coming further up the stairs and putting the milk bottle down. ‘I’ll be gone all day and I wondered if you’d like to sit out in my garden in the sun.’

‘I’d love to,’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘You are sweet, Frank!’

Frank had made this offer before, saying he didn’t like the thought of her and Dan being cooped up in the flat. But they’d never taken him up on it as while Dan was home they could go to the park together. Fifi wasn’t that keen on going alone to the park, and besides, it wasn’t very comfortable sitting on the grass reading. Frank had a nice padded chair, and in the privacy of his garden she could wear shorts or even a swimsuit.

‘Well, you just go on out there when you’re ready,’ he said, turning to go back downstairs. ‘It’s going to be a scorcher today. Make yourself drinks in the kitchen, you don’t want to be running up and down the stairs. But when you come back in, remember to lock the kitchen door.’

‘I’ll do some weeding for you,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing I can do with my left hand.’

‘Pull up any flowers and I’ll clip you round the ear when I get home,’ he laughed.

Fifi washed herself and put on a pair of white shorts and a sun top, then made herself a boiled egg and some toast. It was infuriating how long it took to do the simplest tasks one-handed. Doing up her bra had been impossible at first, as was spreading butter on toast, and striking matches to light the gas. Dan had got round this by buying a battery-operated gadget, and as time went on she found ways round the other problem areas, especially when her broken wrist became stronger and she found she could use the fingers enough to support things.

She had just got her breakfast on to the table when she heard Alfie Muckle’s voice out in the road. It was only nine o’clock, extraordinarily early for him to surface, especially after a card party, so Fifi went to the window to see what he was up to.

Alfie was dressed amazingly smartly for him in a shirt and grey trousers instead of his usual grubby vest with braces over it. With him were the three older children, Alan, the sulky-looking teenager, equally tidy, Mary and Joan in clean dresses and white socks. All of them were carrying bags full of what looked like towels and picnic things.

‘Come on,’ Alfie shouted back to Molly who was dithering in the doorway. ‘You wanted the bloody day out. If we don’t get out now it won’t be worth going.’

Molly seemed to be arguing with him about something. She kept looking back in to the hall, but her voice was too indistinct to make out what she was saying.

‘Serves ’er bloody well right,’ Alfie bawled out. ‘Now, come on or I’ll change me mind about it.’

Molly looked the way she did when she went out alone in the evenings, wearing a pink dress with a full skirt and no curlers. As Fifi watched, Dora and Mike appeared too. Only Angela was missing.

The front door was slammed behind them, and Fifi watched in fascination as the family made their way up the road.

They were a hilarious sight en masse. Alfie tried to swagger, but it looked more like a waddle; Molly teetered unsteadily on her high heels, and the children were slinking along in the gutter, heads down. Dora was wearing a garish bright yellow dress with a full skirt and a kind of sailor collar trimmed with red. Fifi wondered where on earth she managed to get such a frightful outfit, and had some sympathy with Mike who was trying to distance himself from her as she tried possessively to hold his arm.

They had turned the corner when Fifi remembered about the crying child earlier, and she wondered if it could have been Angela. Had they left her alone in the house as a punishment when they were having a day out somewhere?

As she ate her breakfast Fifi watched the Muckles’ house. Angela spent a great deal of time looking out of the top bedroom window, but she wasn’t there now. The usual blanket was covering it, and Fifi couldn’t hear any crying. It was of course possible she’d been sent to a friend or relative for the day, but Fifi couldn’t imagine Alfie and Molly being that well organized.

It was lovely out in Frank’s garden, a tiny oasis of beauty and peace. Although Fifi could hear traffic in the distance and the sounds of children playing in the streets and other back gardens, it was possible to forget she was in a big city.

As she lay back on the comfortable chair, the sun burning down reminding her of days she’d spent like this back home in Bristol, her thoughts turned naturally to her parents. Her mother had written a very cold and distant letter a few days after Fifi got home from hospital. It was clear from the stilted tone that she hadn’t had any real change of heart. While she agreed a miscarriage was upsetting, she felt they always happened ‘for the best’. She said she thought it was churlish of Fifi to refuse the offer of a period of convalescence at home, and she didn’t know what more she could do.