Authors: Monica Dickens
‘He laughed at us,’ said Norman gloomily.
‘Sure he did,’ cried Mrs Tissot, roaring with laughter herself. ‘He thought I was mad, and maybe I am, eh, Clode, eh? Isn’t that what you always say?’ although he had not yet spoken a word and one could not imagine him saying anything, much less saying it always. He nodded. He was still standing motionless by the wall, feet parallel, knees slightly sagging, hat tipped against the sun, both arthritic hands resting on the knob of his ashplant, like an old pensioner waiting patiently for something to happen.
‘Of course my uncle laughed at you,’ said Joy. ‘He wouldn’t give me up.’
‘Oh he’ll come round to it,’ said Mrs Tissot. ‘He’s got that boy friend of his, after all.’ She winked. ‘My God, they told me the aristocracy was going down the drain, but until I saw that pair of screaming Lulus, I never knew how far. Now come on, darling, don’t get shirty with your Ma. All the best people do it, they tell me. Listen, now time’s getting on, and I need a cup of tea. My God, how I need it. Tell us now about the head pains. Don’t they come on the right? Why sure they do! Let’s get it all straight once and for all and we shan’t have any more argy-bargument.’
‘They don’t, they don’t!’ cried Joy. ‘Let
go
the bike, Norman.’ She banged his ham fist with her small grubby hand. ‘I’m going home.’ She looked round as if for help. The Sunday morning air of the street was strange to her. She had never been there except as one of a crowd pouring in or out of the factory gates, or as a straggler, swerving among the people running with flying overcoats to clock in on time. But the street was deserted now the workers had all gone. The blank wall of the factory yard rose sheer to the blue sky, and opposite, a burned-out church pointed a skeleton spire. It was cold. She would faint if she did not go soon.
‘Wait now,’ began Mrs Tissot as she put her foot on the pedal, but Joy wailed: ‘I can’t. Don’t you realize I’ve been up all night? I want to go to bed.’
‘Poor Jo,’ hazarded Norman, but Joy quelled him with a look. He had forfeited his right even to speak to her. She would never speak to him again as long as she lived.
‘I know, I know.’ The monstrous hat wagged. ‘Your Ma knows. You go away to your bed now and rockabye sound and deep. Sleep on it, darling, and we’ll meet you to-morrow on your way to work and get everything settled up. Where’s a good pub near here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joy, ‘and I wouldn’t come if I did.’
The man by the wall suddenly came to life, like the Frankenstein monster galvanized by the electric storm. ‘She doesn’t know,’ he said solemnly. ‘She’s not her mother’s daughter then.’ He chuckled silently.
Joy’s skin crept as she looked at him. ‘Is that your husband?’ she asked. ‘That’s not the father – ’
‘Sakes!’ hooted Mrs Tissot. ‘Oh dear, oh Lord no, oh you’ll be the death of me.’ She laughed until her bloodshot eyes oozed. ‘No, that’s only Mr Tissot. He doesn’t speak much, thank God – you couldn’t do with two of us in one family – but when he does, it’s sometimes quite sensible. You’ll be surprised.’
‘That’s enough, Bid,’ said the background figure. ‘Let the poor girl go.’ He spoke all on one note, guttural, slurring his words. ‘She wants to sleep. You can meet her to-night at that pub down there.’ He pointed his goatee at the Winchester Arms. ‘I noticed it.’
‘You would,’ said his wife. ‘Be there about six then, Kath, and we’ll celebrate our family reunion in a drop of the fiery poteen.’ She gave an overdone, music-hall hiccup.
‘No,’ said Joy. ‘No, I won’t.’
I won’t, I won’t, she kept saying to herself as she rode blindly through the streets and squares and crescents, toiled up the High Street and into the Park at last, her legs like lead, pushing castiron wheels. The headache was coming. It was coming, and she did not know what to do. Aspirin was no help to her now.
Rodney was not much help either. He was too bewildered
and bemused by this sudden suggestion that Joy might not be his niece after all. It was not only upsetting, because he was fond of her and she had become part of his life; but a little irritating too, after all the time and trouble and money he had spent on her.
He was not used to dealing with people like Mrs Tissot. He had laughed at the time, but after she had gone, he felt shaken, and Rollo had to put him to bed with Horlicks. He could not believe she was true. He hoped she was not, for the sake of sanity.
Joy found him
distrait,
wandering about the kitchen looking for the coffee in all the jars but the right one. He would not listen properly or discuss her dilemma until he had had his breakfast. Even when he had lit his first Turkish cigarette of the day, she still could not pin him down to giving advice. He was too preoccupied with his own plans, for he had heard last night from Ned that the invasion scare had decided him to pack his children off to Canada after all, if Rodney would take them. Frances’ brother could get him a Government job out there. So Rodney was going, and probably Rollo, and Joy would have to go with them too, for the flat was to be let.
‘I won’t go,’ Jo protested. ‘I won’t run away.’
‘Not even from the woman in the Hat? Of course, if you really believe she is your mother, I can’t abscond with you. I’d have to let you go to her I suppose, if you wanted to.’
‘If I wanted to! Are you trying to make a joke of this business or what? Of course she’s not my mother. She can’t be. You don’t think she is, do you, or are you on her side, like Norman?’
‘My dear,’ Rodney held a hand to his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, for he had heard that this relaxed the frontal nerves. ‘I don’t know what to think. She wore me out last night. I was incapable. Still am. And with all this on my mind now about the tickets and permits and packing up the flat and deciding what to store and what to take – oh, it’s a nightmare. God
knows
how I’ll ever cope. Especially,’ he grew pathetic, ‘if you’re going to desert me now when I need you most. I’ll not remind you, though,’ he took his hand away from his face and looked noble, ‘that I didn’t let
you
down when you needed
me.’
‘Don’t put it like that, Uncle Roddy. That’s what
she
said.
She
needs me. Just suppose for a minute she is my mother. She can’t be, of course, but if she was, do I owe her anything after her deserting me in the first place?’
‘You’ll have to work this thing out for yourself, poppet.’ Rodney got up. ‘You’ve been swayed and influenced all your life. God knows I’ve helped you, and God knows I love you, but you’ve got to help yourself now. You’re the only one who can decide.’
Joy caught hold of his dressing-gown cord to stop him going away. ‘But just tell me what you think! ’
‘I don’t want to influence you,’ hedged Rodney, who did not know what to think, and did not want to have to think. ‘You make up your mind, poppet, but do it soon, because I have to get the tickets. Either you come to Canada with me and the spawn, or you stay here and be haggled over by this prostrating female.’
‘It’s not as simple as that. You see – ’ began Joy slowly, but he twitched the dressing-gown cord out of her hand.
‘Let me go now, there’s a good child. I’ve a million tedious things to do, and I don’t believe you’ve given Lady her breakfast, have you? Oh, my God!’
‘What’s the matter? Where are you going?’
‘To ring up a chap I know in the Immigration Office and ask him about taking dogs aboard.’
‘Don’t go for a sec. Listen, I just want to tell you. The awful thing is, you see, that I really think – ’ She followed him out of the room, but he had gone hurrying down the passage and she could hear him dialling frantically in his bedroom.
There was nothing to do but to take her headache to bed. She tossed and turned, dozed and woke with a haunted start, and her thoughts circled on round the same frenzied track. All through the day, she listened to the ordinary noises of people going about ordinary lives. She heard cars below, the ping of a taxi, stray shouts, and the hum of the lift, punctuated click-clicketty-clang as it passed each floor. She heard Rodney come in after lunch and start pulling things about in the trunk cupboard. He put the Trumpet Voluntary on the gramophone quite loud, which
was unlike him when he thought Joy was asleep. It showed how preoccupied he was. There was no use getting up to try to talk to him again.
When the pencil of sunlight between her curtains had travelled across the room and gone out, Joy got up and ran a bath.
If one could stay in a deep hot bath for ever, life would have no problems. It was the perfect refuge. All this, she thought, all this, as she lay in scented foam, too tired to wash, and looked at the green tiles and the bathrobes big as blankets and the chromium and the wall that was just one huge engraved mirror. I argued that it was wrong to live like this, when there was no chance of having to give it up. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t suppose
she
has a bathroom at all. They don’t look as if they even washed much. I’ll never bear it. I might have to. Need I? Oh God, what shall I do? I can’t cope with this alone.
If only Alexander were here, he would know what she ought to do. He always knew what to do. But Alexander was hundreds of miles away, levelling an airfield in Scotland.
And then suddenly, just when she needed him, there he was, just as he always had been.
She was riding despondently along in the last of the twilight, still undecided whether to go to the Winchester Arms. Another mile to go before she need decide, another half, a quarter. She slowed down as she got into Chiswick. She need not decide until she actually got there, but if she did go in, what was she going to say? Perhaps they would have gone. She had purposely left late, hoping to salve her conscience by going in, and making the fault theirs for not waiting.
Only the road now along the railway wall, then the traffic lights and round the corner to the Winchester Arms, and still she had not decided. The lights changed to red, and she put a foot to the ground and leaned her arms on the handlebar. A few pedestrians were crossing. The last was a man holding a child’s hand at arm’s length, because she was very little and he was very tall, rather like – ’
‘Alexander!’ she shouted at him as he reached the other side. The lights changed and someone hooted behind her. ‘Alexander!’
She pulled her bicycle to the kerb and waited for him to come back to her.
He was not in uniform. ‘On leave?’ she said. ‘Well no. To tell the truth, Miss Joy, I’ve been discharged unfit.’
‘Oh,
not
your poor legs again?’
He nodded ruefully, and kicking one leg out before him, stared at it disgustedly.
‘How long have you been out? Why didn’t you come and see us?’
‘Well, I didn’t really like to, you know, Miss Joy. It seems so
infra dig
to be rejected, even from the Pioneer Corps – the dregs of the Army, the sweepings of the sty, we used to call our patchy lot. German Jews, conchies, Jap students, old crocks like me. One old gent had snow-white hair. Too sad it was to think of him with pick and shovel, but he turned out to be the best of the lot having just served five years’ hard labour. Now what about you, Miss Joy? Still at the factory? You don’t look as if it was agreeing with you, if I may remark on it.’
‘No wonder,’ said Joy. ‘I’m on night work.’
Alexander clicked his teeth. ‘That’s trying. I did it for five years once in Pittsburg. That was when I was a riveter. And Sir Rodney? He keeps up to form? Did he ever find any more Bath Olivers?’ He asked it so solemnly, that you might have thought he really cared.
‘Oh
he’s
all right,’ said Joy. ‘He’s going to Canada soon with his brother’s children, and that Rollo Reamer. D’you remember him, or is he since your day?’
‘I saw him once,’ said Alexander. ‘An unlikeable type, I remember. He smoked throughout my salmon
chaud-froid.
Canada eh? That’s wise. All these little beggars should be got out of it.’ He glanced down at the solemn little girl far below, who had circular blue eyes and a black Dutch bob, and waited holding his hand patiently, as if she were strap-hanging.
‘Are you going, too?’ Alexander asked.
‘No, I – ’ She could not keep up the chit-chat any longer. ‘Oh, Alexander, I’m in such trouble!’ she cried. ‘You must help me.’
‘But of course,’ he said, as he had always said when she wanted him to unravel string, or fob off a boring young man,
or do up a dress at the back, or break it gently to Rodney that she had dropped one of his water-lily finger bowls.
‘We can’t talk here. Where can we go? I haven’t got long.’ She looked round nervously, as if she half expected to see the Tissots and Norman closing in on her. They went into a café, where two workmen were tearing at sausages like starving wolves, and a little old man tied together with string crouched in the corner over a cup of tea, into which he dipped pieces of bread from a newspaper.
Alexander asked for two teas and a lemonade. It came in a bottle with a straw sticking Up, and the sedate child wriggled a little forward on her seat and got down to it at once in a business-like way.
They smiled over the top of her head. ‘A relation of yours, or just a friend?’ Joy asked.
‘One of the family,’ he said. ‘She lives with my mother, where I’m staying at the moment.’
The child sucked on, making the bottle last, while Joy told her story. ‘And I don’t know what to do,’ she finished dismally. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Do you
want
to go to this person?’
‘Of course not, but I feel I ought to, if she is my mother.’
‘Well, who’s to say she is? Granted, I never really credited you were a Cope. You see, I knew Sir Rodney’s sister; she could never have achieved a child like you. She hadn’t the. guts of a louse.’ He produced the Pioneer Corps expression fastidiously, as if he were holding a dead mouse up by the tail. ‘But if everyone else has believed it until now,’ he went on, ‘what’s to stop them?’
‘But
I
don’t believe it! Don’t you see, Alexander, that’s the awful thing. I do have my headaches on the right side, like she said. It often used to worry me, because I thought the damage must have spread from the left. I haven’t told her this, or Uncle Rodney or anyone. I’ve had an awful day, trying to decide whether to tell about it, or keep quiet. I prayed for you,’ she said with a half laugh. She had prayed, but had been brought up not to speak of such things.