Death in Summer (21 page)

‘I see.’

‘Not much to Cathay Pacific, sir. Not much to Egypt Air.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘They give me the money, sir. What you sent.’

They nod their heads. A Friday it was when she came out here the first time, a Saturday a.m. when she said Thaddeus Davenant the first time in the Soft Rock.

‘We’re extremely grateful to you,’ the woman says.

‘They said you was grateful.’

‘More than we can express.’

The man who opened the door comes in with a tray. It’s laden down with a cake and toast cut into strips, and a plate of biscuits, and jam, and plates and cups and saucers. You can tell there’s butter on the toast from the glisten.

‘Georgina Belle recovered from her adventure?’ He planned to say that first of all, but he forgot, so he says it now. Then he asks about Iveson, how it’s spelt, explaining that he takes an interest in a name.

‘I, v, e,’ the woman says, ‘s, o, n.’

The man puts the tray down. He fiddles with the cups and saucers, setting them out. Pettie didn’t go for him, either. She didn’t like the way he looked at her when he opened the front door. You wouldn’t trust a man like that, she said.

‘Iveson,’ the woman repeats, and he’s put in mind of Ivy On Her Own, who sang for Leeroy. Still not speaking, the man who brought the tray in goes away.

‘Why d’you call her that?’ the woman asks. ‘Georgina Belle?’

‘The baby that is, Mrs Iveson.’

‘Just Georgina it is.’

He mentions Leeroy. Ivy On Her Own, he explains, Bob Iron and the Metalmen. ‘I thought it was Georgina Belle,’ he says, and explains that Leeroy’s singers didn’t exist, that no one could hear them except Leeroy. Probably no one can to this day, he explains.

‘I see,’ the woman says.

‘One of those things, like.’

He likes the cup his tea’s in, flowers all over it and a gold ring on the edge, and another round the saucer. He likes the cake he’s eating, as good as anything Mr Kipling does. ‘You know Mr Kipling at all?’ he asks them and then he realizes they think he means personally so he explains that Mr Kipling is a cake-maker. Mrs Biddle is partial to Mr Kipling’s almond slices, he says, anything with jam in it and Mrs Biddies away. When she was younger she had to watch her waist.

‘All right then, Mrs Iveson?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Not that Mrs Biddle’s stout these days. Skin and bone, as a matter of fact.’

‘Would you like to see Georgina? I’m sure you would.’

She goes away and Thaddeus Davenant offers him the biscuits. The dog’s asleep, stretched out in a corner. There are more books in those bookcases than he has ever seen in a living-room before. Albert says that, keeping things going.

‘What’s his name, sir?’ he inquires, looking over at the dog.

‘Rosie.’

He remembers. And he remembers this same dog described, friendly and brown, and how he warned her that you can’t be too careful with a dog. The rain’s still coming down, sounding on the window glass.

‘They don’t like a uniform, sir. Depending on the dog, a postman said to me once.’

‘Postmen have a lot to put up with in that respect.’

He’s a man who doesn’t say much, which maybe was what she took to. She could sit in silence with a person, it didn’t matter. When they lived in the glasshouse she didn’t
speak herself for hours on end. It would come on dark and he daren’t flash on his torch, but she never minded. She’d things to think about, she said.

‘You read all them books, sir?’

‘Not all of them. But most, I think, one way or another.’

Mrs Biddle has a few behind glass in the hall. Not his business, so he never took one out. Magazines are more Mrs Biddle’s thing.
Hello!
and
Chic
he gets her, the
People’s Friend
.

‘Read a Book with Me, by the Man Who Sees. You come across that, sir? I come across it somewhere, maybe Miss Rapp it was. The
Home Encyclopaedia
we had.
Arthur Mee’s Talks for Boys
, sir? You’d have known that in your young days?’

‘No. No, I’m afraid I didn’t.’

‘You ever go on Varig, Mr Davenant? Varig Brazilian?’

‘Actually, I’ve never flown.’

‘They have the rainforest down Brazil way.’

‘Yes, they do.’

Mrs Iveson is back with the baby, and the baby’s eyes are fixed on him, not that she shows recognition. Too much to expect, in a baby.

‘Hullo, there,’ he says.

She puts the baby down on a chair, bunching it back into a corner, with a cushion in front of it in case it tumbles off, although it’s hard to see how it could.

‘Is it Albert?’ she asks. ‘I think at the time they said Albert.’

‘What?’

‘Did you tell us your name?’

He feels foolish, as he did when he forgot about the dog being mentioned. He should have given his name when he
entered the room. Best to call it an adventure was what he was concentrating on, best to smile, which he did, only he forgot to give his name.

‘Albert Luffe.’

‘We guessed when we saw your uniform. We were told you took Georgina to one of your hostels.’

‘You think it’s all right?’ He strokes one lapel and then the other, to indicate what he means. They say it suits him. ‘You look ridiculous, dear,’ Mrs Biddle said the first time he wore it, taking against it because it was something new. ‘You’re in that uniform again,’ she has taken to calling out, knowing he has it on when he doesn’t look in to say goodbye to her on his way out. Mrs Biddle needn’t see it if she doesn’t want to, no way he’d foist something new on her. He didn’t tell her Captain Evans is going to teach him an instrument, soon as they find out which one he’d be all right on. Best not to bring it up if it isn’t what she wants.

‘Sorry about that, Mrs Iveson.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I had it in mind to give my name first thing. Otherwise you’d be confused.’

‘It doesn’t matter in the least.’

‘I wasn’t wearing my uniform that day, as a matter of fact. I wasn’t in the Army even. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be in the Army if it wasn’t for that day.’

She smiles at him. She says they owe the baby’s life to his quick thinking, knowing what to do.

‘No sweat, Mrs Iveson.’

The rain has soaked through a place in his jacket and through his trousers at the knees. He feels the dampness, colder now than a moment ago. When he gets back he’ll
iron the uniform first thing in case there’s damage done. It was definitely Miss Rapp who was on about the Man Who Sees, some different magazine because
Hello!
and
Chic
weren’t going then.

‘She wasn’t kicking up a row, nothing like that. Only gurgling a bit. Many’s the time we had a baby left there. In the coke shed. By the doors. Many’s the time we’d hear the screeching first thing, wake you up it would. Newborn, maybe a day, maybe a week. “What’ll we call it?” Mrs Hoates would say.’

The other man comes back with water for the tea. He lifts the teapot lid and pours some in. He checks the food, making sure there’s enough. He still doesn’t speak. They take no notice of him.

Mrs Hoates would say what’ll we call it, but every time she’d pick the name herself. You’d make a suggestion and she’d say lovely, but then she’d go for something else. He explains that to them, thinking he’d better, in case of misleading.

‘What’s this?’ She smiles at him. ‘What’s this about, Albert?’

‘The Morning Star, Mrs Iveson.’

‘I think it’s where he found Georgina,’ Thaddeus Davenant says. ‘A derelict children’s home, they said.’

Albert stirs two lumps of sugar into a fresh cup of tea. The biscuits are mixed creams and chocolate-coated. He takes one that has raspberry jam in with the cream. Another thing is, it was Miss Rapp who gave the information about the shamrock, how the slave boy banished the toads and serpents, bringing in the harmless weed instead.

‘Spaxton Street,’ he says. ‘Round the Tipp Street corner is where the brown yard doors are. You know the neighbourhood, sir? Fulcrum Street?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘You were a child in the home yourself, Albert?’

He says he was. He gives some other names because they’re interested. He tells the story of Joey Ells, the Sunday when it snowed. Crippled, he says, and she asks about the tank, and he explains that Joey Ells thought there were steps where there weren’t. An iron ladder there used to be, only it gave way under rust.

‘What a terrible thing!’

You can see they both think it was terrible, and he tells how Miss Rapp walked away from the Morning Star the next day. He mentions Joe Minching and Mrs Cavey. Mrs Cavey did the cooking, he explains. The milkman sometimes stopped to play football in the yard, clattering down his crate of bottles as a goalpost.

‘Your home?’ she wants to know. ‘You still think of it as home, Albert?’

‘I have a room with Mrs Biddle these days. Appian Terrace. You know Appian Terrace, sir?’

‘No, I don’t think I do.’

He says where Appian Terrace is and how he came to get the room there. He says that Mrs Biddle is bed-bound, how he’s worried about the teapot because the stuff is unravelling off the handle, how she could have a fall. He puts down Cat Scat because a cat comes that’s a nuisance to her. But it isn’t any good.

‘Mrs Biddle has her memories,’ he says. ‘Theatrical.’

He can see the photograph Pettie was on about, the
plain dress with the collar up a bit, the woman who’s in the grave they haven’t erected a stone for. There was an accident once on the April outing, a red car squeezed shapeless, hub-caps and metal on the road, the radio still playing, no chance. That comes into Albert’s mind, but he doesn’t mention it. Too much speed, Joe Minching said, and they got out of the minibus at a Services and watched the speed, everything going by below them on the motorway, reds and greens and blues. ‘More blues,’ Ram said, and Leeroy argued.

He’s offered the biscuits again and takes another, the chocolate heart. He tells them about the Underground because she asks if he has work. He remembers Pettie saying you could hardly see the make-up on her face and he can hardly see it today either. Mrs Biddle puts lipstick on first thing, then her powder.

‘Little Mister’s with the rent boys,’ he says, and he watches a sadness coming into her face. He likes her clothes and the way she stands so straight when she’s on her feet, and the softness in her eyes. He liked her the minute she held her hand out to him, smiling then too, giving her name. He tells about Little Mister left on the step and how he got to be called that. He tells them he heard from Merle one time that Mr and Mrs Hoates were down Portsmouth way now.

‘Running an old folks’ residential.’

She asks about Merle, and he says she’s not around these days, not since she went up Wharfdale. Nor Bev, he says.

*

Darkened by the rainfall, the drawing-room is invaded by other people and another place, by the faces of children,
black and white and Indian; by dank downstairs passages, Cardinal polish on concrete floors, a mangle forgotten in a corner; by window-panes painted white, bare stairway treads, rust marks on mattresses. A handbell rings, there is the rush of footsteps.

They listen because there is a debt they can never repay, neither by the money that has been given already nor by their attention, yet their attention continues. From time to time they do not easily follow what they’re being told, bewildered by new names when they occur, the order of events a muddle. Easing ten minutes ago, the rain comes heavily again.

‘Her party dress she always wore on a Sunday. The others wouldn’t bother.’

His friend would put on Mrs Hoates’s perfume. As soon as she saw Mrs Hoates setting off on a Sunday afternoon to visit her relation who wasn’t well she would try out a different perfume. Nail-varnish she tried out once, and another time a pair of earrings. She’d do her hair in Mrs Hoates’s mirror and then she’d go downstairs. There’d be the uncles’ coats hanging on the hallstand pegs, the uncle with the birthmark waiting, never impatient, reading any leaflets that were lying about the hall.

‘Uncles?’

‘ “Don’t take no presents,” I’d always say, but they’d take them and then they’d try to get away. You get the picture, sir?’

‘Yes, we do.’

Removing a roller-blind in the hall in order to adjust the tension, Maidment gets the picture also. A hell is the picture Mrs Iveson gets, doors closed and silence, the hiding
after they tried to get away. In her party dress, only one of them never minded. Pertly, she smiled at her Sunday uncle, scented and made-up for him.

‘So you went back to that place all this time later and found Georgina?’

‘Nothing doing in the yard, like, so I go in by the bottom window. Not a sound, Mrs Iveson. Nothing there, is what I says at first.’

Thaddeus wishes he didn’t have to hear. He tries not to, apprehensive about what may be said next. He tries not to see the bleak, empty house to which his child was taken, to be abandoned for a reason that is unknown.

‘I come to the bathroom, not that you’d know it with the bath gone and the basin taken down. Mrs Hoates’s bathroom that was, Hoates’s too. First thing I notice is the baby in a corner. I had the torch. With the windows boarded it’s dark enough in there. Not that there hasn’t been squatters, not that they hasn’t taken a board or two down. Only you need the torch in case.’

‘Of course.’ Uneasy too, Mrs Iveson nods.

‘No place for a baby, and I give it in at Tipp Street. I just give in Georgina Belle. I didn’t tell a he, sir.’

Thaddeus watches the shaking of the tidy head, slowly, emphatically, back and forth, back and forth, as rhythmic as a pendulum. It’s not a he when you don’t say. It’s not a he when you just give something in.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ Mrs Iveson reassures, not understanding.

Five minutes later Zenobia learns that this boy knew what he was looking for when he went to that bathroom. Well known to him and given to crime, the bespectacled girl
had come to the house where he lived and had knocked on the kitchen window. She was a girl who’d vandalized a man’s possessions once, who walked out on employers whenever she felt like it. Calm as you please, she told the boy she’d stolen a baby, and told him where she’d put it.