Monday Girl (12 page)
The sickness had returned to her stomach, a thousand times worse than ever before, and, by the time she had walked through the living room into the scullery, she felt like going back and bursting in to confront them, to shout to her mother that it was she, Renee, who was his Monday girl, and that Fergus was in love with her. But it was as if she were chained to the spot, and she doubted if her legs would have carried her, anyway.
In a few minutes, Anne came through with the rest of the dishes, and started drying what Renee had already washed. The girl watched surreptitiously as her mother laid each item past. She was still an attractive woman, her figure perhaps a little on the plump side now, and she had given her hair a henna rinse lately, so it didn’t look so mousey, just thick and healthy. She had stopped wearing black altogether, and the blue jumper and skirt really suited her. She must want to look good for Fergus, Renee thought, because she never slopped around in old clothes when he was there, and appeared to have new clothes all of a sudden. Maybe he’d even bought them for her. And she looked very pleased with herself now, so he must have kissed her . . . or something.
The more the girl let her imagination run riot, the deeper the pain bored into her, and she was willing to clutch at anything to ease the terrible gnawing at her heart. Fergus couldn’t possibly love her mother. She was an old woman, thirty-nine on her next birthday, and he would only be twenty-two in a week or two. Maybe her mother was in love with him, but he definitely couldn’t be in love with her. He had only one love in his life, a girl only six years younger than he was, Renee herself. She had to believe that. Her life would be meaningless if she thought he loved anyone else.
She dried her hands when she finished washing up, and went into the living room, where Jack and Tim were playing cards at a small, green-baize-covered table.
‘Oh, good,’ Tim said. ‘We’re fed up playing Pelmanism, and my memory’s like a sieve. Would you and your mother sit in so we can have a few hands of rummy or whist?’
‘You’d better ask her yourself,’ Renee replied, abruptly.
‘Ask her what?’ Anne came in, pulling down her sleeves.
‘Would you like to play whist with us, Mrs Gordon?’ Tim gathered up the cards, hopefully. ‘Mike’s out with his Babs, and Fergus is going out as well, but Renee and you could make up a four.’
‘Righto.’ Anne drew in another chair, to sit opposite Jack, leaving Renee to partner Tim.
The girl couldn’t concentrate on which cards had already been played, because she’d remembered that this was Tuesday – Lily’s night, if Fergus hadn’t succeeded in brushing her off – and also because of her bitter thoughts against her mother, but Tim never once reprimanded her for the stupid mistakes she made, and Jack happily counted up the scores in a little notebook.
They played for over two hours, and neither Mike nor Fergus were home when Renee went to bed at ten past ten, her eyes heavy with the sleep she had lost the night before. Her tortured thoughts gave way quite soon to the deep slumber of youth, which caught up with her in spite of herself, and she never heard her mother coming to bed, nor the two men coming in.
On Wednesday morning, she scribbled a short note to Fergus before she went down to breakfast, asking him to meet her somewhere to talk, and managed to hand it to him, unobserved, when she cleared the table.
It was Thursday at teatime before he gave her an answer.
‘Darling Monday girl – Monday 7.30 same place.
All
my love, Fergus.’
Her first reaction was anger that he was making her wait until Monday, and that he had called her his Monday girl after what he’d said to her mother. She wouldn’t go! That would show him! Or perhaps she should leave him waiting for a long time, like she’d been made to wait the last time. But she was afraid that Fergus wouldn’t wait if she was late, and she loved him too much not to keep the appointment. Then she looked at the last four words on the note again. ‘
All
my love, Fergus’ and the ‘All’ was underlined. Her spirits soared upwards. It was just a mistake about her mother, wasn’t it? There must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for what she’d overheard, possibly misheard, and she stifled the doubt which remained in her besotted heart as quickly as she could.
That evening Fergus was out, but the other three young men were in the living room when their landlady and her daughter finished tidying up. ‘Does anybody fancy going out for a walk?’ Tim looked round them all expectantly. ‘It’s too fine a night to be sitting inside.’
Renee would have loved to get a breath of fresh air on the lovely July evening, but hesitated to go alone with Tim, after what had happened on Monday.
Jack stood up. ‘I’m on. How about you, Mike?’
‘No, I think I’ll stay where I am. My library book’s due back tomorrow.’ Mike stretched out his legs.
‘Renee?’ Tim was standing beside Jack.
‘OK then.’ She felt safer with Jack going along, too.
‘Mrs Gordon? I’m sure you’d like to have the cobwebs blown off you?’ Tim looked at her questioningly.
Anne shook her head. ‘No, Tim. Thanks all the same, but I’ve some mending to do, and a few other things to attend to, and the back grass needs cutting.’
‘I’ll do that for you.’ Mike smiled lazily. ‘After I’ve had a half an hour’s rest. It won’t take me long to give it a run over with the mower.’
Anne looked relieved. ‘Thanks, Mike, if you’re sure you’re not too tired?’
‘I’m not really tired, just bone idle.’ Mike laughed and pretended to yawn.
‘Right, then.’ Tim stepped forward and stood with his back to Jack and Renee. ‘Troops . . . forward . . . march!’ They ‘marched’ off, laughing, as Mike said quietly, ‘I think it won’t be long before we’ll all be marching off . . . to war.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ Anne said. ‘It’ll never come to that.’ Outside, Tim turned to Jack. ‘What about taking the bus to the Bay of Nigg and walking right round, back to Torry?’ Jack nodded eagerly. ‘That’s a good idea. We’ll get a right blow of fresh air down there.’
Renee remembered, with an ashamed lurch of her insides, what she had been doing the last time she was there with Fergus. But it was a lovely walk, and there were two young men with her. Safety in numbers, they said, and neither Tim nor Jack knew about what had gone on beside the lighthouse.
When they set off on the walk along her favourite part of Aberdeen, the sea air was bracing, and the smell of the tangle lying on the rocks was so refreshing that she stepped out briskly alongside her two escorts. They were joking and giggling as they approached Girdleness, but she felt herself tensing up, and her inner guilt made her giggle more. They walked past the gates and she glanced idly along the side of the wall, where she had lain on the damp grass with Fergus. Her involuntary gasp made her companions follow her gaze, and Tim let out a long, low whistle.
‘Wow! That’s Fergus, and he’s fairly enjoying himself.’ Jack grasped Renee’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, lass. God, I’m sorry. I wish we’d never come down here . . . I never thought . . . Oh, Renee!’ He pulled her along the road, while Tim, looking contrite, hurried after them.
‘I’m sorry, Renee. I clean forgot about you and him. The last thing I’d want to do is hurt you like that.’ Feeling that her heart had stopped altogether, she tried to keep the boys from seeing how much she’d been affected by the sight of Fergus – her Fergus – making love to another girl. And he’d been so engrossed in what he was doing, he’d been completely oblivious to any passers-by. He must have been murmuring the same words of love to that . . . person, as he’d murmured to her, she thought, and wished she was dead. Becoming aware that Jack and Tim were still regarding her with deep concern, she whispered, through frozen lips, ‘Don’t worry about me,’ but their anxious expressions didn’t alter.
‘We’re as well to keep going.’ Jack squeezed her arm.
‘We’re about halfway round.’
Tim nodded. ‘Aye, there’s no point in turning back now. Try not to think about it, Renee, that’s the best way
. . . A funny thing happened in the yard this morning . . .’ He launched into an account of a not-very-funny incident, then Jack told an equally unamusing story about something that had happened to him that day, both transparently doing their best to keep her mind off what she’d just seen. Grateful for their inconsequential chatter, Renee was also very relieved that neither of them had said, ‘I told you so.’
When he came to the end of another anecdote, Jack noticed that the girl was trembling. ‘Here, take my jacket, you’re cold.’
‘I’m not cold. It’s just . . .’
‘Aye, I know. Don’t let it get you down, though. You’re doing fine. Just keep your chin up and you’ll get over it.’ He squeezed her arm again.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Tim said, brightly. ‘How about the three of us going to the Palais tomorrow night? Will you manage, Jack, or had you something planned?’ He obviously didn’t want to make it appear that he was asking the girl on her own.
Jack looked at her. ‘It’s the best cure, Renee, and it could be great fun, the three of us.’
‘All right.’ She didn’t really care what she did, as long as it would take her thoughts away from the horrible tableau she’d inadvertently witnessed.
‘That’s my girl!’ Tim turned red the minute he said it, in case she misunderstood.
Jack came to his rescue. ‘That’s my girl, too,’ he said, and they all laughed, although Renee’s mirth verged on hysteria.
The two men kept up a steady flow of jokes, so there wasn’t one minute of awkward silence during the rest of their walk, and when they arrived home, Mike glanced up from his book.
‘Did you enjoy your outing? Where have you been all this time?’
‘We walked round the Bay of Nigg, it’s a beautiful walk on a night like this.’ Renee never knew where she found the courage to sound so normal, and noticed that Jack and Tim were relieved by her response. She sat down on the pouffe at the side of Mike’s chair.
‘You’ll have worked up an appetite with all that sea air,’ Anne remarked. ‘Do you fancy a sandwich, or something?’
‘Thanks, Mrs Gordon, but we’re not really hungry.’ Jack sat down on the settee beside Tim. ‘A cup of tea and a biscuit would go down a treat, though.’
When Anne went to put on the kettle, Tim turned to his brother. ‘Did you get the grass cut, Mike?’
‘Oh, aye, no bother. It’s just a wee bit of a back green.’ Nothing more was said for a few minutes, but when Anne came through with the tray, Jack jumped up and handed round the cups. ‘We got on so well on our walk, we’re all going to the Palais tomorrow night.’
‘A threesome?’ Anne laughed. ‘Remember what they say – two’s company, three’s a crowd.’
‘This three won’t be a crowd.’ Tim winked to Renee.
‘We’re not going to be tied to each other, so we can dance with whoever we like, isn’t that right?’
‘You’re going to be left on your own, then, Renee.’ Mike nudged her playfully. ‘If these two take a fancy to somebody, they’ll leave you sitting like a wallflower.’
‘I’ll maybe take a fancy to somebody myself.’ She forced herself to sound jocular, knowing quite well that Jack and Tim would make sure she was never left on her own.
At last, she felt free to go to bed, but lay all night trying to banish the picture of the two figures merged into one, making love in the lee of the lighthouse wall, but it kept manifesting itself graphically in her brain. At times, she felt angry, even murderous, but more often she was engulfed by self-pity, and she had to bite her lip to stop her from crying, in case her mother heard her.
Of one thing she was certain. She would definitely keep that appointment with Fergus Cooper on Monday night, to have it out with him. He’d a lot to account for: first, her mother, now this other girl. He was a rotter, like they said, a philanderer, a sex-mad beast, but . . . she still loved him, God help her. She couldn’t help herself.
Next morning, she felt tired and dispirited. She was quite confident that neither Jack nor Tim would let Fergus know that he’d been seen, but was afraid that Mike, or her mother, might let it slip about the walk last night. She didn’t want Fergus to be warned, and so have an excuse ready. What excuse could he make for what she’d seen with her own eyes, anyway?
When he appeared for breakfast, Fergus was his usual charming self, and she thought, savagely. He doesn’t know what’s in store for him on Monday night. Then a chance remark of her mother’s made her hold her breath for a moment. ‘Jack and Tim took Renee out for a walk last night, and they enjoyed each other’s company so much they’re all going to the Palais together tonight.’
The relieved girl noticed, with sadistic pleasure, the surprised flicker of resentment which Fergus quickly veiled.
‘A love triangle?’ he asked, sarcastically.
‘Could be,’ Tim said flippantly.
Raising his eyebrows, Fergus pulled a face, then Mike, sensing the undercurrents, adroitly changed the subject, and the precarious moment passed.
At the office, Sheila Daun saw that something was upsetting Renee. ‘Had a row with your two boyfriends?’ she asked, with sympathetic intent. ‘Or maybe just one of them?’
‘I don’t want to speak about it. I’m sorry, Sheila, and I hope you understand. It’s too . . .’
‘Sure. My lips are sealed. I’ll ask no questions, though I’m just dying to know.’
Renee mustered a faint smile, and the day dragged on until it was time to prepare for the Palais. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but knew it would be better than sitting moping at home. She took no pleasure in dressing, and applied her make-up rather haphazardly, but, when she went downstairs, she tried to summon up a little enthusiasm, in order not to spoil the evening for her two escorts, and they set off in seeming high spirits. Jack and Tim were determined that she was going to enjoy herself, come what may, and she found herself entering into their teasing banter and going up to nearly every dance with one or other of them, and even with several unknown boys who asked her. On the way home, they sang and danced and joked, and entered the house shaking with subdued laughter, to find Fergus sitting on his own with a face like thunder.