Tigerlily's Orchids (18 page)

What was the set-up over at Springmead? If they had been
Indians or Pakistanis, he would have accepted that the two girls would have marriages arranged for them and allowed to know no other men but prospective bridegrooms. Surely Cambodians or Vietnamese were Buddhists, though? Stuart found his knowledge in these matters shaky in the extreme. But someone had said they came from Hong Kong. He thought he had read somewhere that Malaysia was a Muslim country. Could they be from there? But if the girls were Muslim and their father was strict, how did it happen that they didn't wear scarves over their heads when they went out? Then he asked himself why Tigerlily had agreed to come. The easy answer was that she was attracted by him, something that Stuart never found hard to believe. More difficult to understand was what she had meant by calling him a good man. Girls weren't usually interested in men because they were good. It was a puzzle and not one that he was likely to solve by talking to her. She seemed to have almost no English.

But this deficiency bothered him very little. He wasn't much of a talker himself and on the whole he preferred women without much to say. Talking only led to trouble. Look at his mother. Look at Claudia and her constant phone calls and Freddy's little gizmos. No, if you wanted speech you had only to turn on the TV.

His mobile began playing ‘Nessun dorma'. He put a pillow over it.

S
ophie regretted telling the others about shopping for Olwen. That had been a mistake. Noor was away a lot, anyway, staying at her boyfriend's, while Molly only wanted to talk about Stuart. What a beautiful voice he had, how handsome he was and how graceful.

‘A guy can't be graceful,' said Sophie.

‘Why not? Stuart is.'

‘If you miss any more lectures they won't take you back in October.'

Molly ignored her. ‘I'm making myself indispensable to him. He's getting to a point where he can't do without me. If you're going to the shops, would you get me some Kenya mountain blend coffee? Stuart doesn't like instant and I can't blame him.'

Sophie said she would, but she said it grudgingly. She had so far been to Mr Ali's for Olwen's gin and vodka and now had paid his shop three visits in the past ten days. It was becoming embarrassing. Young as she was, Sophie already knew that the excuse ‘I'm getting it for a friend' is believed by no one. This time she must go further afield. Walking up to Tesco was no great hardship but carrying the two heavy bottles back would be, especially with the added burden of Stuart Font's coffee. Ten pounds a time was nothing really. Olwen ought to understand that she was a student and couldn't really spare the time from all the reading she was expected to do. If she was going to make all these trips – she hadn't realised how frequent they would be – she needed to be better compensated.

Tesco had its own cash machine on the wall by its petrol station. Sophie had intended to draw out of Olwen's account enough to cover two shopping trips – the cost of four bottles of spirits and twenty pounds for herself. She could do with twice that, she thought, she could do with forty pounds if she was going to repay Noor what she owed her for lunches and the cinema and that top she had bought at Leilaland. Everyone borrowed from Noor, she was so rich, but even she was starting to get funny about it, reminding Sophie of her debts each time she came back to the flat.

Standing in front of the cash machine, whistled at by a
tanker driver, Sophie thought she might draw out forty pounds now and that would cover her next ten-pound payments. When the time came, she would just draw the cost of four bottles of gin and vodka but nothing for herself. With a haughty glance at the tanker driver, she keyed 7529 into the machine and then the sum she wanted. It would be gratifying to repay Noor without even being asked.

Y
ou entered Kenilworth Green from Kenilworth Avenue by way of a kissing gate. When Rose first heard the name, in the days when she and Marius were at ease with one another, she asked him what it meant and he showed her how when the gate was opened by someone entering it was necessarily closed to someone leaving. Trapped in the wrought-iron loop with the gate between them, the girl could be kissed by the man over the top of it. Rose thought Marius might have suited the action to the word and kissed her but he didn't.

The path from the gate led into a little park perhaps two acres in size, a grass plot, occasionally mown, surrounded by fine tall trees, horse chestnuts now in the full flowering of their white candles, cherries whose shed blossom lay thickly around their roots, oaks coming into leaf, a copper beech or two, red-gold in leaf buds. In the centre of the plot stood the slender green cones of two swamp cypresses and half a dozen hornbeams, their inverted heart shapes natural to them but looking man-made. There was a seat under the hornbeams, one under the chestnuts, and a third in the far north-eastern corner near a see-saw and two swings. Sometimes, when those using the swings and the see-saw were girl children and the Kenilworth Primary School pupils had gone in to their lessons, Wally Scurlock took his trowel and his shears to another grave and knelt down to stare through another gap in the hedge.

One afternoon at the beginning of May he had an unpleasant shock. Two girls, aged perhaps six and seven, were on the swings while another, older but no more than twelve, sat on the seat, looking at a picture book. Wally clipped at the long grass under an ancient gravestone, looking up from time to time at the swinging children. Both were wearing T-shirts and full skirts and the little breeze blew their skirts up almost over their heads when the swing reached its highest point. He moved closer to the hedge and squatted down to peer through the gap.

Suddenly, without warning, the one on the seat slammed her book shut and strode towards the hedge. And he saw that she was no child. Small and thin though she was, pigtailed and short-skirted, she was a grown woman of thirty or more. He got quickly to his feet as she shouted at him.

‘What the hell d'you think you're doing? Pervert! Paedophile! Child molester!'

Wally was trembling but he defended himself. ‘I don't know what you mean. I'm working on the graves, that's all I'm doing.'

‘Like hell it is! I'll have you know I come here every time my daughters come and I'll be watching for you. If ever I see you again, looking at kids, I'll see to it you go to prison for a long, long time.'

‘I've done nothing,' Wally said. ‘I didn't even notice your kids.'

‘I haven't got my mobile with me. If I had I wouldn't be arguing with you, I'd be calling nine-nine-nine and the police would be here before you'd turned round.'

Wally didn't wait to hear any more. He put his tools into the bag and made his escape, not running but trying to maintain some dignity. The trouble was that he was shaking all over, his legs trembling so badly that he couldn't have run. He could only just walk. And when he was out in Kenilworth
Avenue and allowed himself to look back, the woman and her daughters were still there, but worse, much much worse, so were Rose Preston-Jones and that dog of hers. A long way away, right up by the chestnut trees, but not at all far from the little girls who were now kneeling on the grass to fondle the dog while their mother was talking to Rose. No prizes, said Wally to himself, for guessing what they were talking about. Thank God that woman didn't know his name. But had Rose seen him before the woman spoke to her?

There was nothing to be done. Yet he had done nothing. He had only looked. When did he ever do more than look? Even with those Internet images he only looked and they were only pictures. Where was the harm?

A
manda Copeland, whom Rose slightly knew through her daughters' fondness for McPhee, had told her about the paedophile watching the girls, about his lecherous expression (her words) when their skirts blew over their heads in the wind. That was upsetting enough but even worse was when Rose looked over her shoulder towards Kenilworth Avenue and saw Wally Scurlock scuttling home with his bag of garden tools. Of course she couldn't be absolutely sure that the man Amanda had seen and shouted at was Wally, not sure enough, for instance, to tell the police, though as they said in the courts she was certain beyond a reasonable doubt. But she said nothing to Amanda, only sympathised.

‘I've seen him in the cemetery before,' Amanda said. ‘He was cutting the grass round another grave. Or that's what I thought he was doing, but now I think he had his eye on the schoolchildren.'

Rose put McPhee on his lead and started for home. Connecting Wally with Amanda's allegations had disturbed
her more than she had thought possible. Like most people, like nearly all women, she was shocked and horrified by paedophilia. What was she to do? Anything or nothing? If she had actually seen Wally squatting beyond the hedge, peering at the children, she would have gone to the police. More than that, she would have phoned the police from Kenilworth Green, for, unlike Amanda, she never went out without her mobile. But she hadn't seen him until he was walking past the fence, a hundred yards away.

If only there was someone whose advice she could ask.

Her parents were still alive, up in Manchester, but they were very old, cared for by her sister, and though she visited as often as she could, she knew that their reaction would be the kind of shock that put up a barrier to any reasonable discussion. The same went for her sister. Mary? Wendy? Other friends and acquaintances she sometimes saw such as Anther and Zither, now respectable and with normal names? Unless they were much changed they might even sympathise with paedophilia in a detached kind of way. She shuddered. There was only one person to consult. A few weeks ago she wouldn't have hesitated but have called Marius even before she got home. Things were different now.

At home, with McPhee snuggled up on her lap, Rose sat by the window. She saw Wally Scurlock come in. He had taken his time about it, dawdling on his way back. Her eyes followed him as he came up the path, hoping somehow to gather from his demeanour and the expression on his face, when he turned once to look back, evidence of dreadful proclivities.

Molly Flint came in with two heavy bags, then Noor with a tall dark young man who looked as if he might be an Eastern prince, the son perhaps of a raja or nawab. Rose wasn't consciously watching for Marius, but when he appeared,
returning perhaps from a tutoring session, she put McPhee gently on the floor and went slowly to her front door. From there she heard his footsteps cross the hallway on his way to the stairs. No lift for him, ever.

She gave him five minutes to climb the stairs and five minutes more to get inside his flat. Then she went out into the lobby and up in the lift.

‘O
h, Rose,' Marius said in what sounded to her like a cold tone. ‘Come in' followed reluctantly.

‘Am I disturbing you?'

He intended to say that he was rather busy, but the sight of her, so pretty and fragile, so apparently troubled, went to his heart. He thought that if he wasn't so old and skinny and grey, a tiresome old pedant, how much he would love to take her in his arms and comfort her. ‘What is it? Is something wrong?'

‘I suppose so. Well, yes.'

‘Would you like some tea? I could make white tea. Or Earl Grey?'

She nodded. ‘I'd like that. One or the other, it doesn't matter.'

Although he had only gone into the kitchen, she was absurdly afraid that if she let him out of her sight he might disappear. She followed him. He put the kettle on, the tea bags into two mugs, and then he turned round, his face set and his eyes narrowed as if he had come to some momentous decision. He
had
come to a decision – he was going to tell her. In those few moments he had decided and he would never change again, as cravenly he had last time. Now, for some reason, was the moment. If she failed to believe him or denied it or was shocked, if she was affronted, so be it. The point was that he couldn't go on the way he had been.

‘Rose,' he said. ‘Rose, I've got something to tell you.'

His gravity had frightened her. ‘What do you mean? What is it?'

‘Rose, we've met before – long ago – in a commune – in Hackney. I've known for ages. You won't remember. I am very changed. It sounds ridiculous. But I was young then and it wasn't ridiculous then. Oh, Rose …'

There are different kinds of laughter. The laughter of sheer mirth, the laughter of incredulity, the laughter of cynicism – and the laughter of pure joy. This last was Rose's laughter and when it had subsided into a smile, she said, ‘Of course I know, Marius. I recognised you the first time we met, the day you moved in.' The kettle began to boil, shaking and juddering and exuding steam. ‘You haven't changed – or not much. I have, I know. That's why I thought you didn't recognise me.'

‘Why didn't you say?'

‘Because I'm an old woman now and then I was young.'

‘But you haven't changed at all,' he said, and as he said it he thought, that's love, time is the test of love. It alters not in his brief hours and weeks but bears it out even to the edge of doom … He took her in his arms and when she made no resistance, held her close, his lips against her hair.

They forgot about the tea. Rose, for a while, forgot about Wally Scurlock. She sat next to Marius on his aunt's old grey sofa. ‘You see,' she said, ‘you were so handsome – still are – and when I woke up in the morning and saw you asleep, your face on the pillow, I thought what a lovely face it was and how sweet you'd been to me. And I began to think what you must think of me – well, you didn't know me, we'd never really met, and still I went to bed with you …' she turned her face away ‘… and when you woke up I thought, he'll despise me, he'll think me so cheap and never want to see
me again and I got dressed and left, not saying goodbye to anyone. I just left.'