V for Violet (19 page)

I grit my teeth. This is the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. ‘Joseph White,’ I say again. ‘He practically admitted it to me. Just ask him where he really was on the night Jackie Lawrence was murdered. Ask him about Arabella.’ Then I slam the phone down. My hands are shaking. The woman outside bangs on the window. ‘You finished, then?’ she shouts.

I push the door open and she shoulders past me back into the phone box. The fresh air outside hits me in the face like a slap. But it tastes sweet, and the pure shock of it clears my head, so I feel more like me than I have for days. I shiver and zip up my jacket. The only problem now, is I don’t know what to do next. I didn’t think this far.

I can’t go home, that’s obvious. I can’t be there when the police come for Joseph. I don’t want to see the suffering on Mum and Dad’s faces for starters. I wander aimlessly down the High Street, past old Miss Suttie’s sweet shop where me and Jackie had our first taste of liquorice and past Ruby’s Café where Jackie had her first taste of new friends. It’s closed now, the blinds pulled down like sleepy eyelids. I think about Pauline and Mary and Sharon and wonder if the hole that Jackie has left in their lives is anywhere near as big as the hole she’s left in mine. But I doubt it. There’s nothing that will ever, ever fill the huge Jackie space in my heart.

I walk to the very end of the High Street and around the corner to where Fine Fare is set back from the road in its pale concrete frame. It’s got that sad, deserted Sunday look to it. I read the advertisements in the window for green shield stamps and Kelloggs cornflakes. I press my nose against the glass and peer into the darkened interior and wonder which till Norma sat at when she was last working. I stare into the window for so long that I forget where I am and why I’m here.

Then spots of rain start to patter down on to my shoulders, and I know there’s only one place I can go now.

An old woman answers the door. She’s wearing a flowery housecoat and a woolly hat pulled down over her ears. Wisps of white hair are curling out from around the sides of the hat. ‘Yes?’ she says. She squints at me. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘But I just wondered if Mr Smith was at home. I’ve got a message for him, you see.’

‘A message, eh?’ She looks me up and down. ‘Well, I’ll just go and see if he’s available. Hang on a minute.’ She totters back down the hall and starts to heave herself up the stairs. I feel guilty. I know there are two flights to get up before she’ll reach Beau’s room.

‘Excuse me!’ I shout into the hall. ‘Would you like me to go up? Save you climbing all those stairs.’

She pauses and shuffles around to face me with her lips pursed. ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Kind of you to say, but I don’t allow my lodgers to have female visitors in their rooms. It’s not decent.’ She carries on up the stairs, grunting out loud with each step and I watch her until she disappears from view.

I lean back against the doorframe and look into the street to where a bunch of kids are kicking a ball against the wall of the house opposite. Thud, thud, thud, like the beat of my heart. I think about what I’ll say to Beau. He won’t mind that I’m here, will he? He said himself,
When you’ve made up your mind, I’ll help you, Violet. You know that I will.
But before I can decide anything, there’s footsteps bounding down the stairs inside, and there’s Beau walking towards me with a grin on his face and with his quiff all glossy and bouncing.

‘Hey!’ he says. ‘It’s you!’ He winks. ‘Just a minute,’ he says. ‘I’ve just got to help Mrs B back down the stairs.’

When he brings her back down into the hall, she’s hanging on to his arm and laughing softly at something he’s said.

‘You’re a good boy,’ she says, patting his arm. And then she shoots me a warning look. ‘He’s a good boy, you know.’

‘Oh, Mrs B. Don’t. You’ll make me blush,’ he says with a laugh.

‘So, are you going to introduce me?’ asks Mrs B.

‘Course,’ says Beau. ‘Mrs B, this is Violet. And Violet, this is Mrs B.’ We nod cautiously at each other. She looks me up and down, sizing me up, and obviously decides I’m no threat, because she wanders back into her front room and closes the door, leaving Beau alone with me.

Beau joins me on the front step. ‘All right, then?’ he says. He takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it. ‘Want one?’

I shake my head. ‘No, thanks.’

He nods his head back towards the hallway. ‘Can’t sneak you up to my room right now,’ he says. ‘Mrs B will have her ear glued to the door, now she’s seen you.’

‘S’all right,’ I say.

He blows two curls of smoke from his nostrils. ‘So, fancy doing something?’ he asks. ‘Take a ride out somewhere?’

I nod. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’d be great.’ I love that it’s all so simple with Beau. It’s all about the here and now. No questions asked.

‘Wait a sec, then,’ he says. ‘I’ll just go and grab my stuff.’ He dashes back inside and I wander down to the pavement where his bike’s parked up on the kerb. Maybe I won’t have to say anything to him, after all. Maybe I’ll just take the day as it comes, and not worry about what comes later.

‘See you later, Mrs B,’ he calls, slamming the front door behind him. He’s zipped up into his leather jacket now, with a scarf wound tightly around his neck. He’s got another scarf clutched to his chest and there’s a couple of motorcycle helmets hanging from his arm. He tosses me one and then wraps the spare scarf around my neck. It smells of his room. It smells of him. ‘Thought we might need these today,’ he says, as he helps me fasten the helmet under my chin. ‘Got an idea where we might go. You up for an adventure?’

It’s like he’s read my mind.
I’ll go anywhere with you,
I think
. You can take me as far away as you like and never bring me back for all I care.

‘An adventure would be cool,’ I say.

He puts on a posh voice and waves his hand towards his motorcycle. ‘Well, please do climb aboard then, madam. The road is waiting for us.’

‘Thanks, Beau,’ I say. ‘You’ve saved my life.’

I haven’t got a clue where we’re going, but it doesn’t matter. Beau is my prince. He’s come to my rescue. He sweeps me up onto the back of his trusty steed and I close my eyes as we gallop off into the golden, hazy, happy ever after.

The wind whips past my ears as we speed out of London. I push my face into the scarf around my neck and warm my nose with my own hot breath. The sky is a clear, cold blue, sparkling with white winter sunshine. We’re soon on the outskirts of London and the streets and houses and bridges and factories gradually turn into fields and woods and pretty little villages. The air loses its London tang of coal fires and eggy gases and begins to smell of damp grass and cow pats. I press myself into Beau’s back and feel the heat of him beneath the leather.

After about an hour, the scenery changes again. It’s like someone’s rolled out a green velvet carpet over the land. It rolls out in gentle slopes on either side of us and there are hills made of chalk and hundreds of sheep nibbling at the ground. The road winds through the hills, then suddenly the sky opens up ahead of us and there’s a steep chalk cliff and the smell of salt in the air.

We drive around another bend in the road and I gasp out loud. I’ve seen the sea before, of course I have. I went on the bus one summer with Jackie and her nan, to Southend. We’d hoped for a sunny day, but we woke up to grey clouds and spitting rain. When we got to Southend, the sea, which in my imagination would be all greens and blues and sparkles, was black and grey and choppy. Part of the famous pier had burned down the previous autumn and the black skeleton of the pavilion looked like some great sea monster crawling towards the shore and it scared me half to death.

But we walked along the seafront and ate cups of cockles and shrimps and Brenda bought us a tin bucket each which we filled with damp sand and emptied back onto the beach, pretending to have fun as we shivered in our thin summer coats.

But this sea! This sea is just how I imagined it to be. It’s huge and blue and polished. And it might not be the middle of summer, but at least the sun’s shining today and there’s sparkles on the tops of the waves that are breaking into a foamy mess on the beach. There’s a pier here too, reaching far out to sea to touch the horizon. And there’s not a sea monster in sight. This pier has towers and pavilions, a theatre and ice-cream stalls. There’s striped deckchairs running down its length, and it’s buzzing with people. Beau drives us along the seafront. The whole place is buzzing with people. There’s couples strolling along, arm in arm or pushing prams. There’s groups of fellas and girls sitting along the sea wall and gathered under blankets on the beach. And there’s children paddling in the sea.

Beau pulls over by some railings, where a gang of bikers are already parked up. We take off our helmets and shake out our hair. ‘Welcome to Brighton,’ Beau says. The other bikers nod at us in recognition.

‘Do you know them?’ I ask Beau. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘But I will do in a minute.’

I follow him as he wanders over. He melts into the group as easily as lard in a hot frying pan. They admire his bike and check out the badges on his jacket and arrange to drive over to Chelsea Bridge one Saturday night. An old couple shuffle past as the fellas are all laughing at something.

‘Need a few years in the army, you lot,’ the old man mutters. ‘Disgusting!’

‘Mind how you go, pops!’ one of the fellas shouts back. And they all laugh good-naturedly.

‘I’m starving,’ says Beau. ‘Fancy some grub?’ He grabs my hand and we head off across the road to a café called Divalls which has the words
Fastest Service on Record
painted in big white letters above its shop window. Beau orders two chip butties and two teas, and true to their word, in less than five minutes we’re sitting on the beach biting into the most delicious butties in the world. The bread is cut in thick, soft doorsteps, and the chips are so hot and vinegary that melted butter runs down our chins with each bite. ‘Good, eh?’ says Beau, grinning at me with a mouthful of bread.

‘The best,’ I say.

We drink our tea and watch a dog chasing pebbles into the sea, its owner throwing the pebbles further and further out, so eventually the dog is swimming. ‘Did you know,’ I say, ‘that Newfoundland dogs are the best swimmers, because they’ve got webbed feet?’

‘Really?’ says Beau. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Must have read it somewhere.’

He laughs.

‘Also …’ I say. ‘Bassett hounds can’t swim at all.’

‘You’re a card, you are, Violet. A real bloody card.’ He lifts my chin with his fingers and kisses the butter from my mouth.

We spend the rest of the day wandering the streets and lanes of the town. There’s dozens of pubs and coffee bars. We wander into one and drink mugs of thick, dark coffee while Beau fills the jukebox with coins and we listen to Eddie Cochran and then Chuck Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, which Beau sings along to at the top of his voice.

He pulls me off my chair and spins me round the floor and the other customers clap and sing along too.

Breathless and giddy, we wander back down to the beach and take off our shoes and socks. The sharp pebbles dig into our feet as we walk gingerly to the water’s edge and dip our toes into the freezing shallows. I squeal like a little girl and Beau laughs and eggs me on to go deeper. We roll up our jeans and wade in, one step at a time, until a wave slaps over our knees and soaks the bottoms of our jeans. Beau pulls me towards him and our noses bang awkwardly as we find each other’s mouths.

The light’s fading now, it’s getting late. ‘Wish we didn’t have to go back,’ I whisper.

‘We don’t have to go back,’ he says. ‘We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.’

‘Wish that was true.’

He grabs my hands. ‘Course it’s true! You want to stay here? We’ll stay here.’

I bite my cheek, trying not to laugh, as the idea sinks in. Not go home? Stay here with Beau? Not have to face the mess and devastation that’ll be happening at home? To stay in this fairy tale bubble for just a while longer?

‘Really?’ I say. ‘Can we really stay?’

In answer to my question, Beau leads the way off the beach and into the town, to a quiet side road where every other house has a
Rooms to Let
notice in its window. ‘Which one?’ he asks. I pick a house with a sea-blue door that still has winter pansies growing in pots on the doorstep. We walk up the pathway and knock on the door. ‘Keep your left hand in your pocket,’ Beau suddenly whispers, just before a stern, dark-haired woman opens the door to us. ‘Good evening,’ says Beau. ‘We saw the sign in your window and we wondered if we could have a room for the night?’

A flicker of suspicion crosses the woman’s face.

I shove my hand in my pocket. ‘Me and my wife,’ says Beau. ‘Well, we’ve just had a lovely day out, and we fancy staying over. Can you fix us up?’

The woman smiles, showing off a mouthful of pearly falsies. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Do come in.’

The hallway smells of talcum powder and wet dog. The walls are covered in thick red wallpaper and the floor in worn red and black checked lino. ‘Money up front,’ says the woman, ‘if you don’t mind. And you’ll need to sign the register.’ There’s a small desk squeezed into a corner of the room. The woman pulls a book out from under it and hands a pen to Beau. ‘Name, please,’ she asks.

‘Mr and Mrs Smith,’ says Beau. He keeps a straight face, but I can feel the back of my neck getting hot and I will myself not to blush or giggle.

‘Would you sign here please?’ says the woman. Beau scribbles in the book as I stare at my feet and at the cracks in the lino.

‘Ten shillings then, please,’ she says. ‘The door will be locked at ten and if you require breakfast it will be served in the dining room at eight sharp.’ She passes a key to Beau. ‘Any luggage?’ she asks, looking us up and down.

‘Only my motorcycle,’ says Beau. ‘It’s parked up on the seafront. I’ll go and fetch it in a bit.’

‘Right you are,’ says the woman. ‘Well, it’s the room to the left at the top of the stairs. Bathroom’s right next door.’

We steal our way up the stairs. I can feel her eyes burning into my back. She knows we’re not married. She’s not stupid. But suddenly I feel stupid. What the hell am I doing? What am I thinking? This isn’t the sort of thing a girl like me does. I’ve never spent a night away from home before, apart from when I slept over at Jackie’s, but that doesn’t count. Spending the night with a fella is whole different thing. The sort of girls who do this, get pregnant at sixteen and married soon after. They’re ‘fast pieces’, as Mum calls them, and destined to end up on the scrap heap.