A Lesser Evil (46 page)

Dan and his in-laws were walking up Dale Street now, and the mother’s strong resemblance to Fifi was remarkable. It wasn’t just the blonde hair, the height and slender figure, they also both walked with the same graceful glide. The woman took her husband’s hand as they crossed the street, and there was something about the gesture which made Nora’s eyes prickle with tears.

‘Stop thinking about yourself and go to the police about Jack Trueman,’ she said to herself.

But another voice inside her said that was a bad idea. She couldn’t afford to risk her past getting out, and maybe he had nothing to do with this anyway.

‘Talk to me, Yvette,’ Fifi whispered in the dark. She was so cold, hungry and thirsty that she wasn’t even sure whether it was Sunday night or Monday, and Yvette hadn’t spoken or even moved for hours.

‘What is there to talk about, Fifi?’ Yvette replied, her flat voice reflecting her feelings of utter hopelessness. ‘Except perhaps deciding’ ow much longer we wait before doing it.’

Fifi had been horrified when Yvette had suggested hanging themselves. While she could see her point that a quick death was far better than a slow one from starvation, she still had some hope it wouldn’t come to that. It worried her too that Yvette had suggested she help Fifi do it first. While she understood that was meant in a kindly way, so Fifi wouldn’t have to see Yvette dying, it still sounded so ghoulish.

‘I’ll never be able to do that,’ Fifi said resolutely. ‘Someone will have reported us missing by now. For all we know our pictures may have been in the papers, and someone may have spotted the car driving up here.’

‘What is that expression you English are so fond of? “Pigs might fly!”’ Yvette said scornfully. ‘You tell me this place is hidden away and you see no one near!’

‘I know, but there’s still hope yet.’

‘I’ave no hope. Do you know what starvation is like? We will become too weak to climb those bars, and we will lie ’ere looking at them wishing we did it while we still’ad the strength.’

Fifi already felt too weak to climb the bars, and even a whole twenty-four hours since Yvette first suggested it, when she was even colder, hungrier and more distressed, she still wouldn’t entertain the idea. But then she still had some absurd faith left that Dan would find her.

It was so strange that now when she thought of Dan and her family, she could only think of the most endearing and lovely things about each of them. She could see Dan coming home with his wage packet and handing it to her trustingly. As long as he had enough for some cigarettes and the odd snack while at work, he never questioned where the rest of his wages went. She thought about how he wrapped himself around her in the night, how he smiled as soon as he opened his eyes. He didn’t sulk, complain or envy other people. He was a truly happy man.

She remembered how intuitive and sensitive her father was. He was the one who made the best nurse when one of his children was ill; he got to the kernel of a problem immediately, and knew how to solve it. He was the quiet, calm one in the family, who didn’t shout or rush about and rarely got worked up about anything. He had endless patience and he was never opinionated.

Robin was far more affectionate than Peter, but then Peter was more dependable. They were both so undemanding, happy to go along with whatever the majority of the family wanted to do.

Sweet Patty! She would give anything to be able to tell her sister just how much she loved her. All those nights of them giggling in bed, the covering up Patty’d done for Fifi right from a small child. She was a born diplomat, accepting and appreciating that not everyone was as uncomplicated or gentle-natured as she was.

But the biggest change in Fifi’s opinion about a family member was her view of her mother. The weaker and hungrier she’d become, the more she’d remembered good things about Clara. She’d also thought of all the things she’d done, often purposely, to annoy her.

When did she ever do as her mother asked? Even the rule about putting her shoes in the hall cupboard when she came in had to be disobeyed. If all six of them had left their shoes in the hall, what a mess it would have been! If her mother cooked chicken, Fifi wanted pork or lamb; she turned up late for meals, never washed the bath round, and when she was asked to put carefully ironed clothes away, she just dumped them on the bedroom chair.

She’d seen the light about some of these things once she was living with Dan, but it wasn’t until now that she realized she had in fact treated her mother like a housekeeper, never asking how she was, what she’d done during the day, or even just thanking her for ironing and mending her clothes. She never offered to help around the house, get shopping or even cook a meal for her mother.

Looking back, she really must have tried her mother’s patience. She argued about everything, and when she was younger, she never came home at the time she was told to. She never confided in her mother, never once suggested they went to the pictures or the theatre together. And Fifi was the one who started most of the rows because she would see a mere suggestion as an order or criticism.

It wasn’t possible to forgive her mother entirely for not accepting Dan, but Fifi could see now that she’d put all those bad ideas into her mother’s head by being so secretive about him in the first place. She was probably scared Fifi would get pregnant, and it would have been easy enough to tell her mother that she understood that fear, and reassure her she intended to wait until she was married. But she never really tried to talk to her mother at all; one sharp remark and she blew up. If she’d just enlisted her father’s help, he might have been able to smooth things over.

Yesterday she had written all these thoughts about her family and Dan in the diary she kept in her handbag. She’d explained when and how she came to be brought here, and gave a description of Martin and Del. If she was to die here, someone might find the diary one day, and she hoped that it would, if nothing else, show that she valued them all.

But she wasn’t prepared to die that easily, nor was she going to let Yvette give up.

‘Taking your own life is a sin,’ she said firmly. ‘And it’s cowardly. If you could survive all that terrible stuff during the war, you can survive this too.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Yvette whined. ‘I’ave nothing to live for. My life holds nothing but hurt and sorrow.’

‘It doesn’t have to,’ Fifi insisted. ‘You could go back to working in a couture house, any one of them would be glad to have someone as talented as you. You’d be happier with other people around you, and you could find somewhere nicer to live. You’re still young.’

‘No!’ Yvette cut her short. ‘Don’t you dare say I might meet a man and fall in love. This could never’appen.’

Fifi hadn’t intended to say that at all. Instead, she was going to suggest Yvette had a change of hairstyle, made herself some fashionable clothes and got out more.

‘Life is precious,’ she said instead. ‘When we get out of here you’ll see.’

Yvette sighed deeply, and Fifi thought she was trying to go to sleep again. But suddenly Yvette sat up, disturbing the blanket around them.

‘What is it?’ Fifi asked, thinking perhaps she’d heard something outside.

‘It is no good, I theenk I’ave to tell you,’ Yvette said.

‘Tell me what?’ Fifi pulled the blanket round her again.

‘That I killed Angela.’

Chapter Eighteen

Late on Sunday evening Dan escorted his in-laws back to their hotel in Paddington.

‘Stay and have a nightcap with us?’ Harry suggested.

Dan really wanted to go home. His nerves were frayed and he could see that the hotel bar was full of foreign tourists. He didn’t think he could stand their jollity, or the cacophony of different languages, but he was afraid he would seem churlish if he refused.

‘Just a quick one then,’ he said wearily.

It had been the worst weekend of his life. Coming face to face with Clara Brown again, with all the unpleasant things she’d said about him at their first meeting still ringing in his ears, was so hard. To be fair to her, she hadn’t said one harsh word this time, even though he was sure she must be secretly blaming him for Fifi’s disappearance, but the fear in her eyes and the tremor in her voice were somehow worse.

Harry had been easier to deal with for he was a logical man and he controlled his emotions. Every time Dan felt himself coming close to breaking down, Harry would put his hand down firmly on his shoulder, a silent message that they were in this together, bound by their love for Fifi.

They had spent most of Saturday hanging around at the police station, with Dan going through books of mug shots to see if he could pick out any faces he’d seen in Dale Street. In the evening they went into the Rifleman as Dan had the faint hope that by introducing the Browns to some of the regulars, some bit of useful information would surface.

Even if Dan had always had a close relationship with Harry and Clara, it would still have been difficult to cope with the strain of being constantly in their company. But to all intents and purposes they were strangers, and Dan had to be constantly on his guard. He felt he had to watch what he said, how he behaved, steer Harry and Clara away from alarmist and rough people. And he had to try to keep them optimistic, when he was in the depths of despair himself.

Today they had been interviewed by several reporters and that had distressed them all even more. At first the reporters had seemed so caring and sympathetic, but Dan had soon become aware that what they really wanted was juicy sensation. When Clara blurted out that Fifi had married Dan in secret, their eyes lit up, guessing at a family estrangement, and Dan had to step in to stop Clara from revealing things she’d be horrified to see in print.

The sky had been like lead all day, with a cold wind, and Dan had a constant picture in his mind of Fifi lying in a cold, dark place, terrified out of her wits. He had always thought he could cope with just about any situation life threw at him. But this waiting around, unable to do anything constructive to find his wife, was too much to bear.

They found a spare table and Harry ordered the drinks from a waiter. ‘I’ll just check if there are any messages,’ he said as the waiter went off. ‘And I’ll quickly phone home too.’

Dan observed how Clara’s eyes followed her husband as he walked back across the bar to the foyer and the phones. She had held up well, but every time Harry went out of the room her eyes became full of panic as if she were afraid he would vanish too.

Dan knew now that he had been very wrong in thinking the Browns’ marriage was more or less an arranged one, without real love. They had revealed their feelings for each other many times this weekend. Love was there, as sturdy as a rock, he’d noticed it in the way they fumbled for each other’s hands when one of them became upset or frightened, the looks they exchanged, the little caresses. He felt somewhat ashamed that he’d once thought Clara’s problems with Fifi were caused by jealousy.

He had also observed many similarities in their characters. Clara thought she knew best about everything, just as Fifi did. Clara was equally nosy, and she could act like a spoiled child too. She couldn’t communicate with others as well as her daughter, and she was more dogmatic, but Dan felt that was largely because of her upbringing and the more sheltered life she’d led.

Yet he had also found much to admire in his mother-in-law. He liked her poise and her directness. Nor was she such a terrible snob as Fifi claimed. She reacted to bad manners with horror, but her attitude was the same whatever social group the ill-mannered person came from. She turned up her nose at people eating in the street, she thought the journalist asking her age was rude. Yet she treated people with lowly jobs, like the chambermaid in the hotel, waiters or taxi drivers with appreciation. In the Rifleman she had been charming. Even when Stan told her he was a dustman she didn’t bat an eyelid and later remarked what a gentleman he was.

Clara had of course banked on her daughter marrying a professional man, and why shouldn’t she? Her husband was one. But Dan realized now that it was Fifi who had created the frightening image of him in Clara’s mind by being so secretive. If she’d only taken him home immediately, Dan felt Clara might still have been stiff and stand-offish at first, but her innate good manners would have demanded that she look for his good points.

He knew this because he could see it happening now. When the three of them went back to Dale Street early on Saturday evening, he had made tea and sandwiches for them, and he saw her watching in surprise when he laid the table. She clearly expected him to put the sandwiches and tea on the floor and tell them to ‘dig in’. He might have done that once, but Fifi had trained him well.

Later Clara admired several things he’d made. ‘
You’ve made these with a lot of love, Dan. And a great deal of skill
,’ she said approvingly. ‘
Harry is hopeless with his hands
.’

It wasn’t an apology for judging him so hastily at their first meeting, but then he neither wanted nor expected one. It just pleased him that at last she was finding things in him to like.

The waiter brought their drinks, and when Dan got some money out of his pocket Clara waved it away. ‘I’ll put it on our bill,’ she said.

They sipped their drinks in silence. Clara was looking at a group of American tourists at the next table. They had very loud voices and even louder clothes.

‘London used to be full of very elegantly dressed people,’ she said quietly. ‘Even during the war everyone made an effort. But I haven’t seen one smartly dressed person this weekend.’

‘I have,’ Dan said. ‘There’s you.’ He meant it, she looked so neat and feminine in a navy blue costume with a white frilly blouse beneath it. He’d felt proud to introduce her in the pub as his mother-in-law.

She gave a weary little smile. ‘I feel a wreck,’ she said.

‘Well, you don’t look like one,’ he said. ‘Just very tired.’

She looked at him long and hard, and Dan braced himself for a sharp retort.

‘I misjudged you, Dan,’ she said softly and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m so very sorry.’