A Sight for Sore Eyes (17 page)

not about her relationship with the fat, fairhaired woman who had scolded him, but solely about the way she looked and smelt and sounded. He seated her on battlements and on a white pedestal and found himself drawing, instead of designs for a cupboard, her face. He had made seven drawings before he got it right and was satisfied.

Chapter 19

Noele talked to her like a Victorian householder whose housemaid has followers. Francine had read enough novels of the period to recognise the attitude and the tone. She listened in silence, but not meekly. A young man had come into New Departures on the previous day, the Tuesday, and asked for her, spoken in a vulgar accent and insolent tone as if he had the right to go where he pleased and do as he liked, and told Noele to give her a message. Who did he think he was? Who did she, Francine, think she was? It was out of the question for her to carry on some kind of intrigue in Noele's establishment. 'What was the message?' said Francine. Noele laughed unpleasantly. 'I've passed it on to Julia. You can ask her.' Francine didn't. She asked her father. He was in London for the whole week and when he got home that evening she asked him if he had a message for her. Julia was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Richard frowned. 'Do you know this boy, Francine?' 'Of course I do.' She said it sharply for her. The abruptness was sufficiently out of character for her father to look up, concerned. 'He's a friend of Holly's boyfriend - well, someone he knows. They were at university together. Holly's boyfriend introduced us.' 'Us?' said Richard. The word hung ominously in the air. 'He introduced him to me.' 'I must say I'm surprised. He sounds a rough customer. Julia says he is very badly spoken. Do you like him?' 'What was the message?' Francine said again. 'Oh, something about you phoning him.' Richard looked unhappy. 'He said you have his number. Do you, Francine?' She didn't answer. She might have if Julia hadn't come in. Francine recognised the dress she was wearing, a pale-blue crepe Jean Muir that had hung on Noele's rack since first she went to work there. Painfully and slowly, she had sewn new buttons on it herself. Julia, in it, was a clashing of primary colours, blue, yellow, red. 'Noele won't let him into the shop again,' Julia said, 'you can be sure of that. You have to ring the bell to get in and if she sees him she just won't open the door. She has promised me that.' Two old witches was the expression which came into Francine 's mind. It was Holly's description and it shocked her because she seldom thought in such crude terms. 'I'm not enjoying working in that shop,' she said. Julia made no reply. 'Your dinner's on the table.' 'Give it a little longer, Francine,' Richard said pleadingly. 'Give it a chance. You've only been there a month.' 'Yes, this world would soon grind to a standstill if everyone gave up a job the moment conditions weren't quite perfect. Come and have your dinner. Richard recognised the feeling he had for what it was and didn't much like it or himself. He was jealous. Jealous of a cocky young man with a lower-class accent who had been to one of those colleges that these days were called universities. Possessiveness, it was also called, the fear of losing his precious daughter. But it made him look at Julia with new eyes. Julia was right, Julia knew and understood. She would keep his daughter safe for him, close to him, she would put on the full armour of guardianship and go forth against the enemy with banners flying. Once he had loved Julia and he would again. Being away from her so much refreshed him and reawakened his feeling for her. They had both recognised that whatever had gone before in Francine's life, she had now reached that most difficult of all ages. Vigilance such as had never yet been attempted was called for. Maybe they could even think of living in Oxford now, selling the house and moving by Christmas Jennifer used to have an uncanny way of reading his thoughts. He would be about to comment on something that came into his head quite unconnected with their prior conversation and before he could get the words out she had uttered the very thing he had been about to say. Julia had never done that, but now she did. Its effect was to endear her to him. 'I was wondering, darling, if I should think of going up to Oxford and doing a bit of house hunting. Of course I'd take Francine with me. On one of her days off.' 'I was having much the same thought myself,' said Richard, and from sitting some distance from her he moved to place himself beside her on the sofa. 'I think it a very good idea for her to have some say in the choice of her new home. It's all part of this gradual assumption of responsibility I'm recommending for her. After all, she will be living there just as much as we will, both during her three years at the university and afterwards. And I think as near the centre of the city as possible, don't you? We won't want to be at a distance from her and she won't want a lot of travelling.' 'You might go while I'm in Stockholm.' He took her hand and held it. If Noele hadn't made that fuss and Julia been so dictatorial and her father asked all those questions, and Holly on the phone tried to promote James's interest while claiming to have forgotten who the mirror maker was, Francine might not have given much more thought to Teddy Brex. He might have quietly slid from her mind, perhaps to be relegated to her memory merely as the first boy who ever admired her. But the opposition of all these people made her think about him. Their dislike aroused her sympathy. It was outrageous to condemn someone because he didn't speak like you did; awful to ostracise someone for walking into a shop and asking a question. She remembered the odd things he said, like how he would give the mirror to his woman to see her face in. And how he had waited in the bus shelter for her, waited for hours just to see her. He began to fill her thoughts. That mutilated little finger on his left hand, how had that happened? And how could he do such a daring thing as push up her sleeve and write on her wrist? She remembered the feel of his skin on hers and it made her shiver, but not unpleasantly. In the shop one afternoon it occurred to her out of nothing, out of the blue, that he was very good-looking. Up until that moment it had hardly struck her. She was in the workroom, ironing that most difficult of all things to iron, a white cotton shirt, when the shop bell rang. The bell was always replied to by Noele's buzzer that operated the door, but this time there was no answering buzz. No one had been let in. Of course she couldn't be sure and she wasn't going to ask, but she thought it was Teddy who had come to the door. He had come and been sent away. It was then that she felt the first flutter of fear: that they would keep repulsing him until he got tired of trying and gave up. He would think they acted on her behalf and that she wanted to be rid of him as they did. Maybe he would be in the bus shelter, waiting for her, like that first time. He wasn't and she felt a pang, as if she had lost something she valued. Holly phoned - the first time for a long while - to say she and Christopher were going clubbing and James was coming and would Francine like to join them. Her father would have let her go, provided he had known who she was going with and where, and he did know these people and approved of them, but her father had gone away that afternoon. If she made all kinds of promises to Julia permission would probably be given, but as she thought of those promises - to take taxis, to phone home, to stay with the others whatever happened, to be in by midnight, poor Cinderella that she was - she couldn't be bothered. Besides, she didn't really know James and wasn't sure whether she liked him or not. Did she like Teddy? Some knowledge beyond her age and her experience whispered to her that if she had plenty to occupy her mind, lots of friends and interests and work, she would forget Teddy overnight. But she hadn't got those things, she had only an emptiness which he could fill. Already, without seeing him again or hearing his voice, she had dropped his surname in her thoughts and was calling him Teddy. Already, she was having silent one-sided conversations with him, telling him how she felt, how unfair things were for him and her - for 'us' - and forming an alliance with him against the world. Although she knew Julia very well by now, Francine hadn't really believed that this idea of buying a house in Oxford would carry weight with her father. But it had. It did. Estate agents' specifications and brochures had begun to arrive and she was expected to give her opinion on this house and that. In one way it seemed a good thing, for it meant that she would get to Oxford. They were serious about her going up to Oxford, they weren't humouring her or preparing the ground to tell her it was unwise or impractical or anything like that. She would get there. But in another way it was alarming. Julia would be an even nearer presence than she had been when she was at school, far nearer, on her doorstep if she had her way. If she prevailed and could obtain it - Francine knew this from the situations of these houses - she would buy a house opposite the college gates. The porter's lodge, thought Francine bitterly, if only it were for sale. They had their day out in Oxford, viewing houses. Francine was repeatedly asked for her views and her preferences. 'It is just as important that you should like the place as that we should, Francine. You must say. This is one of those serious decisions in life people aren't usually called on to make at your sort of age. That's why we think it would be so good for you to confront it. Francine confronted it, but Julia's reply always was that the houses she liked were too far outside( the city, too inaccessible. 'I for one am not going to live in Woodstock,' said Julia. 'But never mind. We'll call it a day. Maybe we should come back tomorrow.' With the morning post came Francine's A-Level results. Three passes to A. It was impossible to have done better. Holly had two As and a B and, jubilant herself, was gracious and lavish with her congratulations. Francine wanted to phone her father in Frankfurt and fetched him out of a meeting to speak to him, a move which made Julia click her tongue and call her hysterical. 'You really are the centre of your own little universe,' she said, but she said it abstractedly. Also with the post had come a letter for her from a family member with the news that David Stanark was dead. He had hanged himself. If there had been anything in the papers about it Julia hadn't seen it. The letter said David's wife Susan had left him two months ago, he had been deeply depressed and threatened suicide, but no one had believed him. Julia felt very upset. She felt guilty, too, because she hadn't been in touch with Susan for a long while and, being Julia, she had this conviction that if only she had and could have talked to her and talked to David, appointed herself, in fact, their marriage-guidance counsellor, the entire tragedy could have been avoided. Hanging oneself was such a dreadful way to do it. Why not pills and drink or even a car exhaust? It must have been, thought Julia in her psychological way, that he had so much self-hatred that he wanted to punish himself right up to the moment of death. But that final moment, that point at which the rope broke the hyoid or whatever it did - Julia didn't quite know what it did but the whole thing was hideous. She longed to tell Richard, to discuss it with him, but Richard was in Stockholm. Francine went off to New Departures. She had just two more weeks to work there before the crisis came. She could never be sure whether the trouble was, her appearance or her moral character. To please Noele and not cause trouble with Julia she had steadily played down her looks and dressed more and more like someone middle-aged. She put up her hair in a knot, wore loose Dockers instead of jeans and although she had lately enjoyed enhancing her eyes with a little shadow and mascara, left it off Noele still wasn't satisfied, but seemed unable to find further ways in which Francine might uglify herself. A customer, angry when the waistband of an Armani trouser-suit she was trying on refused to meet round her middle, turned on Francine and accused her of anorexia. 'You obviously starve yourself,' she shouted, struggling with the tight trousers. 'I'm only eighteen and I'm naturally thin,' Francine said. She spoke coolly but gently, there was no indignation in her voice, but the customer, and then Noele, accused her of outrageous rudeness. 'How dare you imply that you're more attractive than one of my clients?' Francine could think of a lot of answers to that, but she uttered none of them aloud. In silence she went to the workroom and fetched her jacket which hung on a hook behind the door. 'Where do you think you're going?' 'It was nice of you to take me on, Noele, but I obviously don't suit. And...' Francine drew a deep breath'... I'm afraid this place doesn't suit me. I won't take any money for this week. Goodbye.' Noele flung open the door and called after her down the street, 'Julia will have your guts for garters, you little bitch!' Strange that a woman like that could call Teddy vulgar. Francine ran all the way home, enjoying something she supposed must be freedom. Freedom! She had never had much of it. Julia opened the front door just before she got there. Noele must have been on the phone seconds after she uttered her abuse. A fresh torrent began. Francine was ungrateful, lazy, egocentric, rebellious and immature. It was a blessing she was taking a year off as she was obviously unfitted to take part in the life of a great university, no matter how brilliant her A Levels. Her father would be so bitterly disappointed that she, Julia, dreaded having to tell him what had happened. And now she thought the best thing would be for Francine to go up to her room and spend the rest of the day there. Francine sat down in an armchair. She said very calmly, 'Don't be silly, Julia.' Julia stared. She put both hands up to her face, as if making a protective armour for it against a rain of projectiles. 'I am eighteen years old, I'm not a child. Of course I'm not going to my room till I'm ready.' Julia's answer, a vain one, was to attempt a phone call to Stockholm. Richard was out and all she got was the hotel's answering machine. She moaned something about Francine breaking her heart and her father's, and destroying her life. As if she wasn't upset enough with one of her best friends hanging himself, she said, and went out of the room and banged the door. For form's sake Francine remained in her chair for ten minutes. Then, having listened for a moment to Julia's smothered weeping behind the kitchen door, she went upstairs to her room and found the mobile phone Julia had given her. It took a little while and a little studying of the instructions to learn how to use it, but after a moment or two she mastered its intricacies. Then she punched out Teddy Brex's number and waited. But there was no reply.