The Frightened Man (31 page)

Her mother started to answer for her, but Minter said, ‘Now!’ in a warning voice; the girl, after a second or two, blushing some more, said, ‘I was just finished at the common school. I was only fourteen then.’

‘And look,’ Minter said, ‘at all she’s accomplished since! She’s won a scholarship to the Roedean School!’

‘And will go on to university - her teachers say so!’ the mother burst out.

‘That’s wonderful,’ Denton said. ‘Wonderful. You went to the local school, then? And stayed after age eleven, and went on as long as you could.’

‘I love studying.’

‘What’s your favourite?’

‘Science. I’m going to be a scientist.’

‘Or a teacher,’ her mother said; unresolved conflict hovered over the words.

‘Yours is an unusual name,’ Denton said. The girl nodded, blushed, as if to suggest that the name was not her doing. ‘I wonder,’ Denton started, looking aside at Janet Striker, the idea forming in his head as he asked the question, ‘if any other girls have ever used your name. Pretended to be you.’

‘What, as a kind of cheat? To get money or something?’

‘No, dear,’ Mrs Striker said, picking up Denton’s notion, ‘no, more from, perhaps, admiration. Or envy. “The sincerest form of flattery,” do you know that saying?’

‘Yes, but that’s imitation.’

‘Well, yes, dear, that’s I think what Mr Denton means. Imitating you. Has there ever been anybody like that?’

Mrs Minter laughed, a dismissive, contemptuous laugh. ‘They
all
envy her.’

‘Oh, Mama—’

‘Well, some are quite nasty, you’ve said so yourself! The green-eyed monster, that’s what afflicts people.’

Denton crossed his arms over his chest, his words trying to pull the talk back to his question. ‘But has there ever been anybody - some special friend, some girl who admired you, maybe talked like you, even said she wanted to be like you—?’

Stella Minter looked at her mother, made nervous movements with her shoulders, said, ‘Alice, I suppose.’

Her mother sniffed.

‘Well, she did admire me, Mama! She said so!’ She looked at Denton. ‘She was ever so unhappy, she said, and she wanted to make something of herself, to become somebody. She hadn’t my advantages, you see. We were such good friends, and she came here and she asked questions about everything, about—’

‘When they were very
little
girls; I think that when they are still in the age of innocence,
little
girls can be accepted where, later, they cannot,’ her mother said.

‘She wanted to know what a maid did, and what all the books I owned were, and how to play the piano, and - just everything! She was so sweet and she was my best friend, but—’ She glanced at her mother. ‘As Mama says, it was all right when we were little girls. She used to come here every day. I couldn’t go to her house, you see—’

‘A public house,’ Mrs Minter said. ‘We didn’t know, in the beginning. Then - it would have been most improper.’

‘Alice,’ Janet Striker said. ‘Alice what?’

‘Satterlee,’ Mrs Minter said. ‘The Satterlees, we found out too late, were low and common.’

‘Oh, Mama—’

‘You don’t understand these things yet, Stella. I couldn’t know her mother - to think of such a thing makes me ill; was it right that her child should know you? We decided not, finally. The girl was appealing when she was little, but at twelve, you can understand our position. It wasn’t proper.’

Minter smiled. ‘But it was a spectacle to see them together! Little Alice was another Stella! She
did
talk like our Stella; you could hear her using the big words, hear her trying to talk proper. She’d borrow books and try to read them, I suppose.’

‘Steal them, you mean.’

‘She didn’t!’

‘One of your books simply disappeared!’

‘She wanted to learn things, Mama.’

‘Giving herself airs,’ the mother said.

‘Mama, she was trying to better herself. She was trying to
be
proper.’

Janet Striker said, ‘Did she ever play at
being
you?’

The girl blushed again. ‘I suppose. Maybe.’ She looked at her mother. ‘We had a game. When we played me giving a tea party with my tea set. I’d be somebody - oh, it’s awfully silly, but we were children - I’d be one of the royal princesses or a maid of honour, and she’d be me. It was just a game.’

‘And she called herself Stella?’ Mrs Striker said.

‘That was the game. She was Stella.’

‘But you said,’ Minter interrupted, ‘that a girl using the name had passed away.’ Mrs Minter said ‘Oh’ in a tiny voice and turned her daughter aside as if to protect her, but the girl shrugged her off. ‘Do I hear now that you think this other girl might have known our Stella?’

Denton and Janet Striker exchanged a look; she said, ‘It seems possible.’

‘You mean Alice Satterlee?’ Stella said. ‘She’s - passed away?’

‘We don’t know,’ Denton said. ‘We’re trying to find out.’

Tears stood in the girl’s eyes, and Denton realized what a nice girl she probably was - truly touched, probably lonely, sentimental, treasuring the memory of somebody who had worshipped her. Her mother saw the tears, however, as danger and, after a glare at Denton, pushed the girl from the room.

‘Mrs Minter is very protective of our Stella,’ Minter said. ‘She doesn’t allow emotional scenes.’

‘How well did you know the Satterlees?’ Denton said.

‘As Mrs Minter said, they weren’t our sort of people. We never crossed paths, as the saying is.’

‘They lived in a pub?’

‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I believe they lived
next
to the public house.’

‘Satterlee was a publican?’

‘Satterlee was something for the building estate - over there on the other side of Crimea Way. He did something while the site was prepared, before the houses were put up - I remember walking Stella over there once and seeing the great expanse of it, levelled and nothing on it but the pub. Stella makes it sound as if they were friends for years, but it can’t have been awfully long; I think at most a year. Then they were gone.’

‘What’s the name of the pub?’

‘Oh—! I’ve never been in it.’ He frowned to indicate disapproval of the public house. ‘I think something about a rose. I really wouldn’t know.’

A silence fell; Denton knew it was over. Janet Striker stood, and then they were out in the front garden again, and the cab was waiting at the kerb.

‘You know a pub beyond Crimea Way called the rose, or some such?’ Denton said to the driver.

‘Just been there, many thanks.’

‘Take us there.’ He winked. ‘You can have another and then take us to the station.’

In the cab he leaned back against the stiff cushions, aware of how tired he was and how disappointed. That morning, he had despaired; now, they had come close, he thought, perhaps very close - yet not close enough.

‘I liked that girl,’ he said.

‘She has a hard row to hoe. As your grandmother might say.’

The Rose and Rooster was less than half a dozen years old but looked as if it came from the seventies or eighties, a public house purpose-built to the designs of a man who specialized in pubs for a large syndicate. Its dark wood, stained glass and gleaming brass were meant to evoke those earlier houses in which such details had been innovative, were now ‘pub style’, to be expected by the patrons. The tiled front, the name in gold letters, were stand-ins for a national nostalgia - the roast beef of old England.

Denton steered Janet Striker around to the saloon bar, now comfortably full, the usual fug of pipe smoke hanging at chest level, women mostly sitting quietly while men in bowlers laughed or wrangled.

‘What’ll it be, then, love?’ the barmaid said to him as soon as they sat down at a small table. She was thirtyish, cheerful, professionally flirtatious.

Janet Striker said, ‘A half of your best bitter.’

‘Two,’ Denton said, ‘and I’ll have a word with the publican, if I can.’

‘He’s that busy, I wouldn’t put money on it, dearie. What’s it about, then?’

‘Tell him it’s personal-historical.’

She laughed, showing big, cream-coloured teeth. ‘You’re not a debt collector, I hope.’ When she was gone, Denton said, ‘Well?’

Janet Striker shook her head. After several seconds, she said, ‘I was thinking of that poor girl - Satterlee. Wanting so much to get out of what she was and not knowing how to do it.’

‘And ending up dead. If it was her.’

‘The mother was a piece of work.’ She meant the real Stella Minter’s mother, he knew.

He said, ‘Defending her chick.’

Janet Striker snorted. ‘Defending the proper and the prudish, you mean. Ambitious for the girl, probably driving her husband as hard as she drives her daughter, wanting she doesn’t quite know what - more of something: more propriety, more money, more
things
, more signs around her of how proper and accomplished she is - through her husband and her daughter. You can build empires with women like that pushing people.’

‘You think the motor car is his idea or hers?’

‘His, of course. He handles the money and makes the decisions; she pushes and mostly sets the terms. I’m sure she wants a better house - wouldn’t surprise me if she has one picked out for the moment when Stella is launched from university and a success. Suburban, detached,
stylish
. What a weight that child has to carry!’

‘But carries it pretty well,’ he murmured as the barmaid came back, placed the two wet glasses neatly in front of them and said, ‘Landlord’s drawing pints for a party of nine and then he’ll pop in, but he says to tell you - his words, not mine, don’t take it out on me, love - “If it isn’t important, I’ll be back drawing pints faster’n Jack Sprat.”’ She bent down so that her hair brushed Denton’s face. ‘His bark’s worse’n his bite.’ She giggled again, straightened, winked at Janet Striker and whirled away.

They toyed with the glasses, sipped - neither wanted the ale - tried to make the time pass. Janet Striker said, ‘Don’t jump at its being the Satterlees.’

‘I know, I know. We have to be dead certain. I
want
to be certain, that’s the trouble - it’s tempting to jump ahead.’

‘Don’t jump.’

He studied her face, saw its intelligence, its hardness, wondered if he could ever get past that. She looked at him, looked away, then back; their eyes joined and held. It was disturbing: long, shared looks were supposed to be examples of intimacy, thus with her were embarrassing. He knew he was getting red, face warm; she looked cool and detached. He wanted to say something, to do something like touch her hand, but he didn’t dare.

‘Now then,’ a big voice bellowed next to him, ‘who wants to see me?’ He was a wide, solid man, shorter than Denton, confident and even brassy. Ex-military, Denton thought; he put on more assurance than he felt and said, ‘My name’s Denton.’ Taking the chance, he added, ‘Exsergeant, infantry. Sit down, will you?’

He was holding out his hand; the other man took it, gripped it hard. ‘Penrose, gunner. Like calls to like, eh?’ He let go. ‘Can’t sit down, no time.’ Then, to Mrs Striker, ‘Evening to you, ma’am.’

‘Janet Striker,’ she said, holding her own hand out. He touched it but turned back to Denton; men were for business, he seemed to say. ‘What’s up, then?’

‘We’re trying to locate a family named Satterlee.’

Penrose tipped his head back as if to have a better look at Denton. ‘This the personal or the historical?’

‘Little of both, I expect. We were told they used to live here.’

‘In aid of what?’

‘An enquiry.’

‘You got do better than that, ex-sergeant. American, are you? What army?’

‘Union. Our Civil War.’

‘Oh, that one. Saw a lot of it, did you? Yes, I think you did. I was lucky - thirteen years in South Africa, I never got so much as a stone thrown at me. All right, ex-sergeant, tell it to me straight what you want - I’ve a lot of thirsty people waiting.’

Denton looked at Janet Striker, saw her nod, said, ‘A girl is dead. We think she might be a Satterlee.’

‘The little one or the big one?’

Janet Striker jumped in. ‘There were two? Only two, or more?’

Penrose drew a chair from another table and sat, opening his attention to include her. ‘You’re not the police,’ he said. ‘Not that it’d matter if you were; we’re clean here. There were two girls, Alice, the bigger one, and a younger one named - now let me think - Eadie - that’s what they called her, but it wasn’t Edith - Edna. Edna! Alice and Edna.’ He leaned a forearm on the table. ‘They didn’t live in the pub itself; I and the missus live upstairs and always have. The Satterlees lived in the extension next door - other people in there now. When they put these buildings up, they build on the extension for the company’s business - works manager, engineer, whatever it is - and then it becomes the sales office when the houses are ready to sell. When all the houses are sold, they rent it out.’

‘Satterlee was the works manager?’

‘Nothing quite so fancy. More like the work gangs’ foreman. ’

There was a silence. Denton, fearing the man would run off, said quickly, ‘What were they like?’

‘Weren’t like nothing, because you never saw them. I saw the girls now and then in the back, playing out there, but him only when he wanted me to. And her, never. See, they kept to themselves and shut the rest of us out - curtains always closed, never going about or chatting like normal folk, wouldn’t hardly open the door to the postman’s knock. My missus said we ought to extend the hand of neighbourliness; I said they could go to the hot place, pardon me, miss. I mean, here we was, two families marooned in the only building in the middle of a bleeding metropolitan desert, and they wouldn’t offer to share a cup of cold tea!’