Crooked Heart (23 page)

And then Hilde had opened the kitchen door.

‘What do you want?' she'd enquired, coldly. The pallid man had been looking out of the window; he swore and stepped towards her and she came to meet him, staring up at his pointed features like someone examining a large, ugly painting.

‘What do you want?' she repeated. He moved uneasily, like a horse confronting a wasp.

‘
We
ask the questions,' he said, ‘not you. We'll take him with us,' he added, over his shoulder.

‘Why? What do you get if you take him away?'

‘Shut up. Sit there.'

She sat, and Donald felt the sting of the razor guiding him upwards and towards the door.

‘Are you going to kill him?' asked Hilde. ‘Shut up.'

‘Do they pay you for this?'

‘Shut
up
.'

‘We can give you money. Donald has money, he has told me about his money. You could take his money and go away and I promise we would say nothing.'

The word ‘money' seemed to hang in the air; the two men exchanged a swift, speculative glance.

‘And then there would be no crime for the police to see,' added Hilde.

‘What police?'

‘I have just spoken out of the bedroom window to our neighbour who has a telephone, asking him to call the police. They will be here in a chiffy.'

‘You're lying, you fucking foreign bitch.' But he strode to the window again and eyed the empty street. ‘Get it then,' he said to Donald, ‘get the money, let's see it.'

It was like a cold dream from the smallest hour of the night: footsteps and a blade just behind him, Donald knelt beside his bed and pulled out the shoebox, the illustration on the side showing a pair of tasselled loafers. He lifted the lid and a hand reached past him and extracted a roll of notes.

‘How much is there?' asked the pallid man from the doorway.

There was a rustle and a muttered count. ‘Maybe half a ton each. Bit more.'

The roll of notes reappeared in front of Donald's face.

‘See this?' The roll waggled emphatically.

‘Yes.'

‘It's not enough. We leave with this, we'll be taking a few other things with us. Like your fucking
fingers
.' The last word was shouted so close to Donald's head that he jerked in shock. He started to gesture towards the Gladstone bag on top of the wardrobe, but Hilde was already speaking.

‘There is more,' she said. ‘I will show you.'

Donald stayed crouching, trying to work out what he was hearing – a door opening elsewhere in the flat, the squeak of a hinge. He dared to look round and saw the pallid man returning to the room, pushing something into the pocket of his coat as he walked, breaking step only to thrust his face into Donald's. ‘I'm going to tell him,' he said, very close, very low, his breath smelling of bacon, ‘that you'd done a flit and we couldn't find you. So from now on, you're the Invisible fucking Man, you're a cockroach under the carpet, we catch one more glimpse of you, you're finished and Eva Braun here's finished and they'll have to scoop you up in buckets before they can bury you.'

And both men were gone, hurrying down the stairs, clapping the front door shut, footsteps fading.

After a moment, Hilde appeared with a tea towel and knelt and dabbed at Donald's neck.

‘A scratch, only,' she said.

He caught her hand and kissed it, and then laid it on his forehead like a cool benediction.

‘Will you run away with me now?' he asked.

‘No.'

‘Please.'

‘No. I have already run and run and I will not run any more.'

He closed his eyes in despair.

‘I will stay, though,' she said. ‘In this small flat. The rooms are not bad and the light is from the south-west.'

Vee had glanced between the couple as the story was recounted. She'd logged the tiny scab on Donald's neck, the pragmatism on Hilde's face, the soggy adoration on her son's.

‘Whatever did you do to get in such trouble?' she asked, fretfully.

‘I had a little business,' said Donald. ‘Took me round and about.'

‘Well you can't go round and about any more, can you?'

‘I don't need to,' he said.

‘Donald has a chob,' announced Hilde.

‘What? Where?'

‘In the bookshop.'

‘The one downstairs?'

‘Mr Clare needed an assistant.'

‘What for? To clean his teeth for him?'

The insult was random, a time-filler as she tried to pull her thoughts together. ‘So you're staying and she's staying. When were you going to ask me?'

‘I didn't know when you were coming back.'

‘You didn't wait long.'

‘Hilde saved my life.'

‘And spent all your money.'

‘Yes, well . . .'

There was an odd pause. Hilde was sitting very upright, hands clasped in front of her.

‘What?' asked Vee.

Donald cleared his throat.

‘It wasn't just my money.'

It took a moment for the meaning to trickle through, and then Vee stood up so abruptly that her chair toppled over.

‘You didn't,' she said.

There was no reply. She headed for her bedroom; it appeared untouched, spared the general redecoration, but she saw at once that the angle of the dressing-table mirrors was wrong, her bandaged face peering back at her in tilted triplicate. She lunged toward the left-hand mirror, swung it forward and stared at the hinge. Dangling from it was a frayed black thread.

She returned unsteadily to the kitchen doorway.

‘You stole my savings.'

It was Hilde who answered. ‘I had found the money by accident.'

‘
Accident?
'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you think I'm soft in the head?'

‘I had moved the mirror and something banged behind it and when I looked I saw a small bag hanging there.'

‘And why did you move my mirror? Why did you need to do that?'

For the first time, the girl hesitated.

‘I wanted to see my face,' she said. ‘All of my face. The sides of it and the front of it.'

‘Why?'

Hilde put a hand to her own cheek and pressed it, as if checking the freshness of a loaf. ‘Because I wanted to know if I was more pretty than before. I wanted to know why
Donald was so much in love with a woman who looked like me.'

Donald made a choking noise. ‘Not a woman,' he said. ‘A lady.'

There was a brief silence.

‘Oh, for crying out
loud
,' shouted Vee, derisively. ‘This isn't a flipping stage play, I'm not going to start clapping. You swiped a hundred and seventeen pounds off me, you and this . . . this . . .' She struggled for a word to adequately describe Hilde; her son might think he'd bagged himself a member of the aristocracy but Vee knew a peasant when she saw one: all those airs and graces had been glued on, like beauty spots. She'd bet the whole bundle that Hilde had grown up on potato soup and an outdoor privy shared with half the village and any refinements had been filched from the place where she'd been employed as an under-housemaid. She opened her mouth to say as much – had the words ‘If she's a lady then I'm Rin Tin Tin' ready to roll off her tongue – and then she saw that Hilde had leaned her head on Donald's shoulder, and he had put his right arm around her – gently, tenderly – and nobody had ever done that to Vee, not Harry Pedder (too busy unbuttoning her blouse), nor Samuel Sedge, who hadn't even had an arm on that side, and her rage was swept aside by a great gush of self-pity. Her throat closed, as if with a purse-string.

‘Tea?' asked Hilde. ‘Please sit.'

Vee sat.

‘I knew,' said Hilde, pouring, ‘that a good mother would of course spend all she has to save her child's life, so that is why I took the money. So now you have saved Donald with your savings and you can be very heppy. Another Vanillekipferl?'

Vee shook her head. ‘What if those men come back?'

‘I've got a gun now,' said Donald. ‘Anyway, they think they've got all my money.'

Hilde flicked a glance at him.

‘And they have,' added Donald. ‘They have got all of it. So they won't be back.'

Vee looked from one of them to the other; she knew she was missing something but so much had been crammed into the last half hour that her head felt like a bolster.

‘How can you be sure?' she asked. ‘I won't be able to sleep at night, worrying. And there's Noel to think of, too. You can't have a child here with people waving guns around.'

‘Who is Noel?'

The enquiry came from Hilde.

‘The boy who lives here. The evacuee.'

The girl's face was a blank.

‘
Noel
,' repeated Vee. ‘Donald must have told you about him.'

‘No. There is a child here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where will he be sleeping?'

‘I can make up a bed for him in the living room.'

‘No, the living room is where Donald sleeps.'

‘Oh.'

Hilde's face dropped in shock. ‘Did you think I was sleeping in a bed with Donald?'

‘Yes,' said Vee, recklessly.

‘You think I'm a slud? I am not a slud. Until we are married I will not be in the bedroom with him.'

‘
Married?
'

‘We'll be getting married,' said Donald, ‘as soon as Hilde's papers have been sorted out.'

Vee groped for the cup of tea, and took a gulp.

‘Anything else you've forgotten to tell me?' she asked, weakly. ‘Churchill hiding in the WC? New branch of Lyons opening in the parlour?'

‘No, I think that is all,' said Hilde.

She was like a little iron bar, thought Vee.

‘And now I must go to sleep,' added the girl, ‘or I will not be
able to help the war effort, which of course is what we all have to do. Goodnight.' She rose abruptly and left the kitchen, and Donald rose too and began to wash the cups, which in its way was as shocking as anything else that had happened that morning, and Vee drank her tea without tasting it and found herself remembering the previous time that she'd met Hilde.

‘Did she get the other letter?' she asked.

‘What other letter?'

‘When I gave her your note she was expecting another letter. From abroad.'

‘Oh.' Donald turned, a tea towel in his hand. ‘She's looking out for a letter from her family.'

‘They've not been in touch?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because they got taken away and they're all dead, most likely. She doesn't talk about it.'

He hung the tea towel on a hook that certainly hadn't been there a week ago. ‘I've got to get off to work now,' he said.

‘All right,' said Vee. ‘I won't stop you.'

She watched him tiptoe into Hilde's room, and return with a tie and a jacket. Was he taller than before? Or maybe he was just standing straighter, as if braced by something. By a little iron bar, possibly, tempered in some unimaginable fire.

She must have dozed for a while, sitting at the kitchen table, because when she next sipped her tea it was stone cold. I have twenty-eight pounds in the world, she thought. She stood, and her body felt strangely light, all ballast lost, as if a nudge from a sharp elbow might send her floating out of the window. And once out there, off she'd go again on the same old journey, bumping along with the breeze, blown from one temporary perch to another, nothing to show for the last twenty years, life slipping through her fingers like sand. VERA SEDGE, it would
read on her headstone, NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS.

She took a mouthful of cold tea. Noel would be back soon: she had to pull herself together and come up with a plan for tonight and another for tomorrow; dear God, she had to come up with a plan for the next few
years
because what on earth would happen to an evacuee with no family and nowhere permanent to live? He could end up in a children's home: football matches and community singing and a future in the forces – round holes for the squarest possible peg. Her hands were clammy at the thought.

She went to the bathroom and splashed her eyes, and then studied her face in the mirror. The bruise was spreading; the whole area from her half-closed eyelid to her chin was a puffy palette of sunset hues.

You wouldn't, she thought, look at someone with an injury like that and think ‘door'; you'd think of something huge. You'd think a house had fallen on her. You'd think she'd been dug out of the ruins, lucky to survive.

You'd think she'd come back from the dead.

Halfway through English dictation, Harvey Madeley passed Noel a note.

Were have you been did you run of to give your spy riport to the Germans.

Noel corrected the grammar and spelling, wrote
None of your business, you utter ignoramus
at the bottom and handed it back. At playtime, Madeley came over, gave him a Chinese burn and then punched him in the stomach.

Noel's wrist was still hurting when school ended, and he lingered in the playground until Harvey's fat arse disappeared round the corner. It wasn't until he crossed the road that he saw Vee, waiting outside the Co-op. She still had his suitcase and it
had been joined by a large, shabby holdall with a broken zip.

‘Good morning at school?' she asked. ‘No. What's the matter?' She looked somehow dazed, her eyes flicking like a punch-drunk boxer's.

‘I've had some surprises.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The flat's a bit full now. My son's moved his fa—' She hesitated; never had the phrase ‘fancy woman' seemed less applicable. ‘My son's moved his fiancée in.'

‘Oh. Can't you tell him to move her out again?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘She's a piece of work. What's wrong with your wrist?'