The Hardie Inheritance (38 page)

‘Not for two hours. All this crowd'll have gone by then. But they know there are plenty more, whatever old Boxer says. Not doing too badly, is he? It's my stall really, him being still at school, but I let him have a go in the hols to see how he gets on. You living near here, Trish?'

‘Yes. Squatting. Just came down to pick up a bit of food.'

‘We've got a trolley. Tell us what you want and we'll bring it round. Save you lugging heavy stuff home.'

‘Right.' She gave him a ten-shilling note. ‘Just tins of things that don't need cooking, only heating up. You could eat some of them with me.'

‘About two o'clock then, after the market closes and we've
cleared up.' He wrote down the address and went back to his own stall to supervise Boxer's salesmanship.

When the time came they arrived together, pulling a trolley laden with tins and vegetables.

‘Should keep you going for a day or two,' said Dan. ‘Six bob change.'

‘Dan, you can't – I can't possibly – But she did not pursue the protest, realizing just in time that after accepting so much during their years at Greystones it was giving them pleasure to make a small return.

‘Know how to get the best price, don't we?' said Boxer proudly. ‘Always things going cheap after the market closes, and we do each other turns.'

‘Well, thanks a lot. It's marvellous. What shall we eat now?'

They lunched on Spam and tinned peaches, washed down by a bottle of Tizer. ‘A feast!' exclaimed Trish. ‘Tell me, how's Terry?'

‘Having the time of his life, old Terry,' Dan told her. ‘Buying and selling. He's got a nose for it, finding people with something to sell. He's big in parachutes.'

‘Parachutes? Who wants a parachute now the war's over?'

‘Anyone who wants some nice undies without coupons. They're made of nylon, see, or silk. You buy a great big triangle and cut it up and make a petticoat or something out of it. All on the level – 'cos like you said, no one needs parachutes any more. It's the factory wot's selling them off. And army surplus, that's a big thing – warm stuff and no coupons.'

‘So Terry has a stall as well as you, does he?'

Dan shook his head. ‘He's got a shop. With a warehouse at the back. He buys bulk – things that have gone wrong in the factories – and sells to market traders like me. You can't go in ordinary, like, and buy just one of anything. You have to get it by the dozen. He makes me pay like anyone else –' Trish could tell that this was a sore point –' 'cos he says it's the only way to learn about making a profit.'

‘How did he manage to get hold of a shop?'

‘He used that money Grace gave him, and his demob gratuity, to buy a bomb site with a shed still standing. He did the selling out of that to start with, while he and some mates and Boxer and me put a shop up in the front. We're going to build a flat on top of it soon's we can get some more bricks. He's on a winner, bound to be. Everyone wants to buy things but there's nothing you
can
buy except when there's something wrong with it and then the people who make it don't want anyone to know where it came from. I mean, he bought two prefabs last week because the transporter skidded off the road and they got bashed, but they're all right except for some dents. We're going to keep one of them and he reckons he can auction the other for as much as he paid for the two.'

‘He must be a good salesman.'

‘Anyone can sell, he says. It's finding something to buy that's the hard work. Well, we gotta get back. I help him out, afternoons.'

‘It's been marvellous to see you.' She hugged them both vigorously. ‘And all this food is my best Christmas present.' My only Christmas present, she might have said, but she had given no hint of her strained relations with the rest of her family. ‘Give my love to Terry. And I'll see you again in the market, I expect.'

Cheered by the meeting – and the generous stocking of her larder – she set to work to finish her wall painting. She saw that her first idea for the daffodil paint would be disproportionately bright. Instead of a full sun high in the sky, she painted just its narrow curve rising from behind a mountain, and began to speckle in the rays with tiny dots. So well did they cheer up the scene that she scattered them more widely, making each almost too small to distinguish. The wall changed character in front of her eyes. Could she have started again – and with a more reasonable choice of materials – she would have done it all differently. Nevertheless, she was pleased with the effect when at last she stood back to look at the finished result.

‘Not bad,' said a voice from the narrow hallway.

She turned, startled. Terry was sitting on the bottom stair, his hat on his knees.

Terry! How long have you been there?'

‘'Bout half an hour. Didn't like to interrupt. You were going at it just like Grace does.'

‘Yes.' Trish had had the same thought herself. It was from Grace that she had learned how to concentrate so completely on a task that she was not conscious of anything else. There was a difference, though. Grace would never have felt the urge to scrub the whole thing off as soon as she had finished.

‘The lads told me about seeing you.' Terry stood up and came into the room. His finger went up to touch the black patch which covered his left eye, checking that it was in place. ‘I can offer you something better than this, Trish. And all on the level. No wondering when someone's going to kick you out or pinch your stuff. Did they tell you about the prefabs? You could have one of them.'

Trish took her time about answering. If the offer had come from Grace or Ellis, she would have spurned it, determined not to accept a favour or be patronized. But from Terry it was in every sense on the level. Like Dan and Boxer with their overripe vegetables and dented tins, he was seizing the opportunity to show gratitude and repay a debt. It would be childish as well as churlish to refuse, and she was not a child any longer.

‘I'd want to pay my way,' she said.

‘Sure. Give me something to sell, and I'll sell it for you.'

‘Even pictures?'

‘Pictures, yes, easy, as long as they're cheap. Walls even! But we'd like to have you as a neighbour anyhow.'

Trish grinned. ‘You always were one for having good ideas.'

‘And you were always the girl who recognized a good idea when she heard it. Coming, then?'

She smiled in happiness and relief. There had been moments during the past few days when she had feared that she might in the end be forced to ask either Grace or Ellis for help in staying away from them, but now she felt safe. She had earned
Terry's help and would continue to earn it. They could build a kind of partnership in which they would both have brilliant ideas about what she could produce and he could sell.

‘I'm coming,' she nodded. ‘Thanks a lot.'

‘Oughtn't you to be at school?' asked Grace; but she did not speak the words unkindly, for her youngest nephew was in a pitiable state.

This February of 1947 was the coldest month that she remembered in the whole of her life. January's snow had frozen into bumpy ice, making it impossible to cycle and hazardous even to walk up and down the steep approach to Greystones. The chill of the air outside pierced through to the bone. Max wore no gloves and his navy-blue school mackintosh had little warmth in it. He had walked, it seemed, all the way from the railway station. His face and hands were blue with cold and his thin body shivered uncontrollably.

Even Grace, who as a rule was hardly aware of the temperature, had been forced in recent weeks to surround herself with stoves in one corner of the icy studio if her hands were not to stiffen and become useless. In the evening a log fire would provide cosiness, but at this moment, in the middle of the morning, the only reliably warm place in the house was the kitchen. She led the way there now and put a pan of soup to heat on the hotplate before repeating her question. ‘Oughtn't you to be at school?'

‘I've run away.' So violently was Max still shivering that it was hard to hear the words. ‘Not so much from school. From home. I'm never going back there again. Not ever.'

‘What's the matter?' Grace sat down on a stool close to him and began to massage his icy hands. The thirteen-year-old had spent a week of the Christmas holiday with her and he had not been happy then, because his mother had died three weeks
earlier. For Christmas itself he had been invited to stay with his married elder brother, and had seemed cheerful enough when he left Greystones. What could have happened?

‘It's the scholarship,' he said. ‘To ballet school. I went in for it a year ago and they offered me a place and a bursary. Fifty pounds a year. It's hard enough even to get a place, but to get money as well …! Father wouldn't let me take it. Because of Mummy being ill and wanting me at home, he said, but that wasn't the real reason.'

‘And has the school renewed the offer now?'

He shook his head, his teeth still chattering. ‘They don't hold anything over. You've got to take it when it's offered. But I went in for it again this year. Father wasn't going to let me, but I told him the wrong date purposely and I got Miss Berry to take me. I didn't think I'd got a hope, because I haven't been able to practise properly. But they have this thing that after you've done your audition piece one of the teachers gives you a kind of lesson in something new and they look to see whether you can do it. I was all right on that.'

‘So you got another offer? Here, drink this.' She poured some of the hot soup into a mug and pressed his hands round it.

‘The scholarship,' he said. ‘The top scholarship! I never dreamed … It means that all the teaching would be free. I'd only have to pay the eating and sleeping part of the fees. It's a boarding school, you see. It, has to be, because you spend hours every day at dancing class, but you have to do ordinary school work as well. I thought Father would be pleased at least that I'd done so well.'

‘No, you didn't,' said Grace. ‘You knew he'd be furious. You and your mother have been deceiving him for years, trying not to let him find out that you were still having lessons.'

There was an odd moment in which Max, who had been on the point of tears, gave a gulp as if to control an urge to laugh.

‘But it's not fair!' he exclaimed. ‘John and Peter both went
to boarding school when they were thirteen and Lily only didn't go because she's a girl. He paid all the fees for them, and I only need half of them. And he says my school work's terrible and I know it is, but it would be better there because we'd all be the same and the teachers would understand.'

‘So what did your father actually say?'

‘The letter from the school came this morning.' Now Max did break down and cry. ‘I thought it was the best thing that was ever likely to happen to me in the whole of my life. I mean, the top one! It's what everyone in the whole country wanted, and I got it.' He stopped, gulping back his sobs before he could continue. ‘He always thinks that I'm no use at anything, so I really did hope that he could feel – well, proud, you know.'

‘But what did he say? Stop blubbing. That soup's got quite enough salt in it already.' She refilled the mug, keeping her back turned for a moment longer than was necessary so that he could dab his eyes dry.

‘He said that I was to understand once and for all that no son of his was going to earn a living as a ballet dancer. There was a family business waiting for me to go into and it was about time that I buckled down to my school work and passed exams in something useful. I thought he hadn't understood properly so I told him again that I'd got the top scholarship and he just said “I forbid you to go” and tore the letter up. But I grabbed it, so I've still got it. And then I said that the scholarship was offered to me, not to him, and I was going to take it, and he said that if I thought he was going to pay the rest of the fees for that kind of school I could think again.'

‘May I see the letter?' She fitted the torn pieces together on the kitchen table. ‘Well, congratulations, Max! It's a wonderful achievement. You must have worked very hard and it's marvellous for you to know that someone outside your own teacher recognizes that you've got talent.' Grace was not accustomed to gush, but it seemed to her that a little praise for her single-minded nephew was overdue.

‘I'll go to Russia,' said Max sulkily. ‘In Russia you don't pay anything at all at ballet school. Anyway, I'm never going home again. And if he makes me give up the scholarship, I'll kill myself.'

‘No, you won't,' said Grace. ‘And no one can make you give up the scholarship. Go and find some writing paper now and bring it back here into the warm. Thank the school for its offer of the scholarship and say you have great pleasure in accepting it. You'd like to take up the place at the earliest possible opportunity; when would that be? And ask them to address any future correspondence to you at this address.'

‘But the other fees?'

‘One thing at a time. It may be that your father will change his mind when he realizes that he can't change yours. After all, it's going to be lonely for him without anyone else at home.'

‘He doesn't see me even when I'm there. He comes home late, and if I'm in the sitting room he sends me upstairs to do homework. If it's going to depend on him –'

‘There are other possibilities. We may find that the school has some kind of fund to help people in your position. If not, you'll just have to ask your aunt to help you, won't you?'

‘Would you really, Aunt Grace? And let me live here in the holidays?'

‘Don't pretend that you've only just thought of the idea,' said Grace, laughing. ‘That's why you've come here, isn't it? You realize, of course, that if I offer you a way of disobeying your father he'll probably never speak to me again.'