Crooked Heart (16 page)

‘Mr Waring!' Valerie Gibbs, a girl with a perfectly spherical face and an air of prissy certainty, came hurrying around the carved screen. ‘There's a great big fight out the front of the church, and people have started throwing conkers, and Audrey Ferris has been hit in the eye, and I think she might have been blinded. That's why I ran in church, I wouldn't normally, of course, because I know it's wrong . . .'

Mr Waring followed her out. Noel lingered. Just beside St Alban's tomb was an iron frame, studded with candle-holders, only one of which held a candle. A notice beside it informed the public of the necessity of saving wax for the purposes of the string industry.
Please light the candle solely for the duration of your prayer, and then extinguish.
Noel lit it and stared at the wavering blue flame. Not a prayer, obviously, but a vow; there was no one within earshot and he spoke loudly.

‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth Noel Bostock.
I
will repay.'

He fished a threepenny bit from his pocket, stuck it in the poor-box, and left the candle burning.

When he got back to the flat after morning school, Vee was out at Mrs Pilcher's and Donald was sitting at the kitchen table eating cold boiled potatoes with a wedge of ham, and looking at Noel's
London Gazetteer.
Beside it was a blank pad of writing paper.

‘Do a letter for me,' said Donald, without preamble or a question mark.

‘What sort of letter?'

‘Best handwriting.' With the tip of his knife, he pushed the pad towards Noel. ‘Dear Mr JD.'

‘I don't have a pen.'

‘On the sideboard.'

Noel uncapped it and removed a hair from the nib.

‘Is it a business letter?' he asked.

‘Why?'

‘Because business letters are written in a different style to personal letters. They're more formal.'

‘Just write it. Dear Mr JD.'

‘I should put the signatory's address first, and then the recipient's and then today's date.'

Donald looked at him expressionlessly. ‘Dear Mr JD . . .'

Noel started writing.

‘. . . I will meet at the address you gave at the time you gave to discuss terms before completing the job you said. Yours faithfully Donald Sedge.'

‘That's more of a note than a letter.'

‘Got any friends at school?'

‘No.'

‘Can't think why. Do the envelope. It's er . . .' Donald consulted something in his pocket; a page crackled. ‘Flat 4, Pembroke Mansions, 195 Exhibition Road, Kensington, London.'

‘That's the same road the Natural History Museum's on,' said Noel.

‘Is it?'

‘South Kensington tube.'

‘You know it?'

‘I should say I do. I've been there hundreds of times.'

Donald hesitated, and looked again at the open page of the
Gazetteer
, the roads like a tangle of snipped threads. ‘Fancy a day out?' he asked Noel.

‘When?'

‘Thursday morning.'

‘I've got school.'

‘Skip it.'

‘All right.'

Noel lifted the tea towel that covered his own plate. A pile of cold boiled potatoes was arranged next to a smear of grease in the shape of a small slice of ham. He looked at Donald suspiciously.

‘Post this after, will you,' said the other, blandly, smoothing on the licked stamp with his thumb. ‘And gran's got some too, haven't you, Gran?'

There was no reply from the armchair, just a faint thread of music from the headphones – a dawdling violin – and the whisper of the pen as it glided across yet another page of yet another letter to Cousin Harold.

‘Why can't
you
post it?' asked Noel, emboldened by the absence of ham.

‘Got to rest after meals,' said Donald. ‘Doctor's orders.'

He lit a cigarette and opened the
Daily Express
to an illustrated fashion spread.

CIVILIAN MEASURES

If you're not in uniform, the rule today is ‘less of everything' – narrow collars and no turn-ups mean cloth saved and style gained!

When he'd got the money, and after he'd got Hilde's presents, he'd go to a tailor, get something made-to-measure.
Donald, you're so smart
.

‘Where's the best place for tailors in London, then?'

Noel shrugged. ‘I don't know. Savile Row?'

‘Savile Row.' Syllables of luxury, lolling on the tongue. ‘We'll go there after,' he said. ‘Make a day of it.'

‘Y
ou'll never guess who's died,' called Vee, joyfully, opening the front door. ‘I'd just left Mrs Pilcher's and I was in the fish queue and Ada Press in front of me was talking to that redheaded woman from the Post Office, and I heard her say . . .'

She paused with her scarf half unwound, the smell of what the fishmonger had claimed was cod (but which clearly wasn't, unless cod happened to be spelled W.H.A.L.E) oozing from her basket.

Something was missing; there was a gap in the coat-hooks where her mother's navy gaberdine should be hanging.

‘Mum?' As she spoke she was already searching the silent flat – Donald out somewhere, Noel at school.

‘Mum?'

In the bedroom she shared with her mother, the wardrobe was open, the only clothes still hanging in it Vee's own. She stood staring, open-mouthed, and then swung round to look at the dressing table. A fine dusting of talcum powder outlined the missing hair-brush, the ivory comb. Propped against the mirror was an envelope bearing Vee's name.

She snatched it up, and then couldn't open it; her fingers felt huge and jointless, like washing tongs. In the end, she pulled up the flap with her teeth and shook out the single page.

Dear Vera

As I've always said, you never know just what's around the corner. I didn't want this to come as a shock to you, Vera, but then I thought that it's better to be truthful than beat around the bush. Mr Chamberlain was beating around the bush for at least a year and look where that got him, if he had gone after Hitler sharpish then perhaps none of this would have happened, as I pointed out in my last letter to him. I have always felt it's my duty to offer help and advice to those in need, but it's not often taken, or sometimes it's taken and then I am given no credit. For instance I've read that iron indoor shelters like the one I suggested are going to be all the rage, but it is Mr Morrison in the government who is taking the credit and no doubt the profit.

Harold says I should have kept a copy of my letter, setting out my idea for an iron indoor shelter, but it's too late now. Anyway, Vee, I shan't beat around the bush. You know that I have been corresponding with Harold in his troubles for many years. Since his wife passed on he has been very lonely and his daughter is now married and in the family way and never visiting, just because Harold won't speak to her husband (Scottish). In his time of loneliness my friendship has been a great solace to him and last month he asked for my hand in marriage to which I have agreed

Vee sat heavily on the bed and the springs twanged bathetically.

and we will marry this morning in Harpenden Town Hall. Harold and I didn't want any fuss and the registrar said that if I could mouth the words so he could see them it would all be legal, together with my signature.

Harold says he will look after me through Thick and Thin because as you know, Vera, since that terrible day when I had my brain seizure I can scarcely lift a hand around the house and I am only being honest when I tell you that Harold thinks lately I have not been looked after as well as I should have been. I know you are busy,
Vera, and it has been a great sadness to me that I haven't been able to help you as I'd like, but meal after meal has been left cold for me instead of fresh cooked, while you've been out and about taking the evacuee to his hospital visits and so on. When I've needed a pot of tea or something picking up you have not been there to help and last week when I ran out of ink it was three days before you remembered to get me some and in the end I had to go all the way downstairs and borrow a bottle from Mr Clare in the bookshop.

Harold says I will never want for anything once I am married, and of course I hope you will visit us when you can spare the time, Vera. Harold has an electrical washing machine.

I remain your affectionate mother

Flora Brunton (note married name)

ps Did you know that Donald has been walking out with a German?

pps I have taken my ration book

Vee lay back on the double bed. The ceiling had a pattern of cracks that looked vaguely like a swastika.

‘My mother has eloped,' she said.

Harold was tall and stooping, a shopfitter with arthritic knees and the ability to take a ten-second anecdote and stretch it out for a full hour. His wife – his
first
wife – had rolled her eyes whenever he spoke. His stories had no shape to them, no climax, no way of distinguishing whether the end was nigh, or whether there was still another twenty-five minutes to sit through – it was like eating your way through slice after slice of a plain loaf, without even a dab of jam to relieve the tedium. And that was what her mother had chosen: after twenty years of loving servitude, Vee had been thrown over for a washing machine and a bore.

For a moment she thought she was going to cry, but her eyes seemed to have lost the know-how.

Twenty years. Her mother had been skimming the fat off a
pan of stock when Vee had told her she was expecting; she'd dropped the spoon in shock, reached for a cloth, slipped on the grease and fallen forward, rapping her head on the tabletop with a noise like a cleaver hitting a chop. And when she'd opened her eyes the next day in the cottage hospital, she'd not been able to say a word, and ever since then Vee had been breathing guilt, drinking it, wearing it next to her skin like a suit of long underwear. She'd tried to atone, God knows. She'd tried to fill her mother's life with little luxuries, had never asked for help, had never burdened her with her own troubles. She'd treated her mother like a spun-glass ornament that might shatter if carelessly handled, except that now it seemed that it wasn't an ornament she'd been tiptoeing round all these years, but a bloody great unexploded bomb – a couple of cold lunches, a missed cup of tea and
boom
. . .

Vee closed her eyes and actually dozed for a moment or two, and then woke with a start and forced herself to her feet. Only sluts and invalids slept during the day. She straightened the eiderdown and plumped her mother's pillows, covered with eau-de-nil sateen instead of cotton, because the texture of the latter irritated her delicate skin. The plumping went on for rather a long time, and then Vee took the pillows and threw them across the room at the framed photograph of her mother on the beach at Broadstairs, scoring a bull's-eye with the second. ‘Apologies if the service here wasn't up to scratch,' she said, out loud, her voice a coarse shout. ‘See if Harold gives you bloody sateen. See if Harold tries never to turn over in bed, in case the noise of the springs wakes you. See if Harold goes into nine different shops to try and get ink for you.
Nine!
'

Someone was ringing a handbell on the street outside and she went over to the window and saw two Boy Scouts, one fat, one thin, pulling a handcart piled with old clothes. She snatched up the pillows and the photograph and looked around for what else she could grab.

The Scouts had almost reached the High Street before she caught up with them. ‘Salvage,' she said, between gasps, off loading the pillows, the chalk, the galoshes, the umbrella, the half-eaten packet of Parma Violets.

The boys exchanged glances. ‘We're just collecting rags today, missus,' said the fat one.

‘Won't kill you, taking a bit extra.'

‘But—'

‘Put them in the bin if you don't want them.' She threw in the photograph with such force that the glass cracked, and then she went back to the flat, closed the curtains, kicked off her shoes and climbed under the eiderdown. She was asleep in seconds.

This time, waking up was like climbing out of a pit; she kept slipping back down, her eyes gummed with clay. In the end, it was the smell of fish that pulled her into the afternoon light. The whole flat smelled like Whitstable quayside.

She retrieved the basket and slid the stinking grey overpriced slab into a pan of water. Then she leaned against the kitchen table and tried to clear her head. ‘My mother has eloped,' she said again, and it sounded no saner than the first time. She'd have to tell Donald, of course, and she tried to imagine how he might respond to the news, but she couldn't; he was as sealed as a nut, a riddle inside a mystery, and instead she thought about what Noel would say. He'd be home soon and then she'd have an evening of it (‘Strictly speaking, an elopement is a marriage without parental consent, which in this case would be impossible, so you really ought to find another term for it . . .'). She looked at the clock and felt the room jolt. It was half past six; Noel should have been back hours ago. Any other child you'd say that they were out playing with friends, but Noel didn't have any friends and in any case she'd never seen him do anything as childish as
play
.

In detention, she thought, for correcting the teacher too many times.

She made tea and listened to the wireless, but couldn't settle. It was years since she'd been in a house on her own; she didn't know what to do with herself. The announcer's voice reminded her of Noel, scrolling out the long words.

At seven o'clock, she jammed on a hat and went to find him.

‘Bostock?' said Mr Waring, standing at the door of his lodgings with a book in his hand, a finger marking his place. ‘He wasn't at school today.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I take a register. Had he been present I would certainly have noticed.' His voice was mild but precise, every sentence perfectly formed, ten out of ten for grammar.

‘Well, where was he then if he wasn't at school?'

‘Mrs—'

‘Sedge.'

‘Mrs Sedge, could I ask your connection to my pupil?' He looked, as well as sounded, like a teacher – rumpled flannels and a tweed jacket, an air of looking down at her, even though he was the same height. His grey moustache had a sepia fringe from pipe-smoke.

‘He's my evacuee,' said Vee.

‘And did you see him actually leave for school?'

‘No, I went to work early.'

‘Well, perhaps he decided to . . .' There was a pause. Mr Waring glanced at the page number and took his finger out of the book. ‘I was going to say “play truant”, but that doesn't seem very likely, does it?'

‘No.'

‘Have you tried the library?'

‘It closed at six.'

She realized she was fingering the large bone button at
the neck of her coat, as if it were a St Christopher medal.

‘The trouble is that I don't know where to look for him,' she said. ‘There isn't anywhere else. Unless he's friends with some child I don't know anything about. Is he?'

‘No.'

‘No, I didn't think so.'

She looked up and down the twilit street, gnawing her lip. ‘There isn't anywhere else,' she repeated.

‘I'm sure that no harm will have come to him. We are, after all, in a safe zone.'

It took a moment for her to register the waggish tone of voice; teachers and unfunny jokes, she thought – they were inextricably linked, like damp and bronchitis. ‘I'll try home again,' she said, turning away. ‘Maybe he's back by now.'

She'd only gone a yard or two when he called her name.

‘I've just remembered something,' he said. ‘I had rather an odd conversation with the boy last week. He was preoccupied with the idea of vengeance.'

‘Vengeance? For what?'

‘An unspecified theft. He was concerned that no one was seeking justice for the victim. He implied that the only other witness was also engaged in crime.'

Vee flinched, as if flicked with a whip. ‘He makes up stories,' she said, mechanically. ‘Reads too many books.'

‘So you'd suggest this was merely childish fantasy?'

‘Yes.'

She was twisting the coat button again and it was suddenly in her hand, the thread broken. She looked at it, stupidly.

‘He's an unusual child,' said Mr Waring. ‘Do you know very much about his family?'

‘He doesn't have one.'

‘So you truly are in loco parentis.'

More Latin. She guessed the meaning and nodded.

‘Then your obvious concern does you credit.'

‘Cast thy bread upon the waters,' said Vee. ‘He's been a help to me.'

Mr Waring smiled, sweetly and unexpectedly, with the look of someone who'd just spotted an old friend. ‘Give,' he said, ‘and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over.'

‘Luke 6,' supplied Vee. ‘I'd better go,' she added. ‘It's getting dark.'

‘Should you, perhaps, call in at the police station? If you're worried.'

Briefly she met his gaze, but it was too clever; she was worried he'd pick the truth out of her like a splinter, and she hurried away, nodding as she went.