The Newspaper of Claremont Street (9 page)

One Sunday Weekly sat longer on the verandah of the little cottage. She had made up her mind to buy the land and, as she sat there alone, she felt it was already hers. She watched the trees change to a dark embroidery of lace on the yellowing sky of the dusk. A heron flew alone searching for food, its slow flight adding to the enchantment of the evening. Reluctantly Weekly left the lonely place.

It was quite dark when she reached her room in the old house in Claremont Street. This time Weekly found her room quite changed. Nastasya had decorated the drab walls with strips of paper, festoons of it fell as Weekly opened the door. The table was spread with cups and plates and there was a packet of nuts and a little dish with
biscuits. A bottle of sweet sherry stood in the middle.

‘Veekly I invite for party tonight,' Nastasya came forward, flour dropping from her hands.

‘You are josst in time,' she said. ‘See I make cake,' she explained. ‘With yeast!' Round her head was a crazy garland of paper flowers. They were cut out from an old newspaper, folded and fringed; it must have taken Nastasya a long time to make them.

Weekly was very tired after the long drive and she needed her meal. Rage rose in her.

‘Narsty take orf those clothes this minute. Yo' can't wear them things. Yo' can see right through them! There's no party here. This is my place, you understand? Just you look at all this mess you've made!' She picked up some of the paper, and with her floor cloth, she began to wipe up the flour.

‘I invite you Veekly! And I invite my Doctor and my Lawyer and my Benk Menecher he is very nice men Veekly, you will like and I invite all of my Friends. You will see. Beeg Fun Time!' Nastasya danced a few steps of an obscure traditional dance, her hip caught the corner of the table and crockery and cutlery cascaded. The wine rolled to a corner.

‘Oh my Gawd!' Weekly rummaged in the flyscreen cupboard and brought out her food. It was very hot and airless in the room. She tried not to look at the mess.

She would clear up a bit later on.

‘Leetle glass of sherry Veekly?' Nastasya retrieved the bottle. She pulled the piece of dirty chiffon she had pinned into a kind of dress up onto her shoulder; the thin material kept slipping down so that she was almost naked. The paper flowers flopped over one eye, giving her a drunken irresponsible appearance. ‘But first I must say my Tischgebet, Grace you know Veekly.' Nastasya paused with the bottle in one hand. Weekly began to eat hungrily.

‘Vait Veekly,' Nastasya commanded. Weekly had to stop chewing, she sat still with her mouth full. ‘When I was a child Veekly,' Nastasya said, ‘I had a German governess, a Fraulein you understand, such a silly dumpling, she was afraid of earthworms, can you imagine! She taught me grace, I will bless our feast—Liebe Herr Jesu sei unser Gast und segne was Duuns bescherest hast—oi vey!' Nastasya adjusted her paper wreath and made a face at herself in the mirror over the mantlepiece. ‘Now! Leetle glass of sherry Veekly. My Fraulein was not my Nurse you know Veekly, they was separate peoples. My Nurse I love very much!'

Weekly and Nastasya sipped their sherry and every time Nastasya heard a car in Claremont Street she rushed to the window to peer out in to the darkness to see if it was a guest to her party. The evening crept by and no guests came. The old house was its usual forgotten,
secretive self, all the people who lived there quietly going about their own affairs till it was time to sleep.

Nastasya became more and more dejected as time went by and she wailed in a hoarse voice, saying things in her own language which Weekly could not understand.

‘How's about bed Narsty old Thing?' Weekly suggested at last. She was deeply sorry for Nastasya. No one had come to the party, no doctor, no lawyer, no bank manager and of course, no friends. What friend did Nastasya have other than Weekly?

Nastasya made more noise than ever, weeping; she was heartbroken, she cried aloud, she couldn't remember the name of her nurse. ‘Perhaps she didn't have no name, praps you just called her Nursie,' Weekly tried to comfort Nastasya. She tried to quieten her, ‘Hush yer noise, do!' She thought she would help Nastasya to bed. But Nastasya was a heavy woman and she slid to the floor taking Weekly down with her. Weekly found herself, much to her surprise, holding Nastasya across her lap with her arms round her, tangled in the strip of chiffon. In this moment of tenderness, which was strange and unaccustomed, Weekly cradled Nastasya's grey head against her own hard flat chest. And then Weekly sang to Nastasya to soothe her.

she sang. In an attempt to soften her voice into a lullaby she found the sounds came out cracked and out of tune but Nastasya was quite uncritical.

Weekly sang.

Over and over she sang,

rocking Nastasya to and fro, gently trying to comfort her. As she sat there Weekly thought about the five acres. More than anything she wanted to be there alone. She was used to being alone except when she was working. Whatever could she do about Nastasya.

She looked at Nastasya, she had at last gone to sleep after Weekly had managed to put her onto her bed. She was still swathed in the old chiffon though Weekly had carefully removed the pins. Whatever could she do about Nastasya. She wanted to buy the five acres and she wanted
to be there alone. She resolved to take Nastasya to the hospital as soon as she could.

Giving up Nastasya was in no way the same as the giving up of Victor all those years ago. It was for Nastasya's good; the hospital had people who could cure her and look after her in ways quite beyond Weekly's ability.

What she had done to Victor was different and she was quite unable to forgive herself, even though at the time, Victor's ways were beyond her understanding, and his needs were far beyond anything she could provide.

‘It's not your business to know where I'm going, it's nobody's business, either, to know,' Victor's well-spoken voice was always clear in her mind. If only she did not remember that afternoon so much. When she had left him with the little store of food and all the money she possessed, she had walked quickly along the pavement. She was worried because she knew she would be late back. There were trees at intervals, and as she came to every tree in turn, some sweetscented blossom refreshed her. She tried to take pleasure in the fragrance but Victor's voice and his threatening request as she was leaving worried her.

Coldly, in his well-bred accents, so different from her own way of speaking, but entirely the Victor from their childhood, he told her that she must get hold of a hundred pounds and bring it to him the next day, even if she had to steal.

Their mother had stolen for Victor. Weekly never had. She was frightened. She liked her work, they were good to her at the Big House. She liked the children, was quite fond and proud of them if she took them for a walk when their nurse was busy.

As she thought about the money Victor wanted she knew she simply could not take it from those people. Wildly, she imagined herself asking if she could borrow a hundred pounds.

‘A hundred pounds Morris? That's a great deal of money. Could I ask why you want it?' As she tried to think up answers she might give in reply to expected questions she felt helpless.

‘Miss Morris?' the smartly dressed young man, about Victor's age she guessed, stepped from behind one of the scented trees. He stood squarely in front of her on the pavement.

‘Miss Morris?' It was a shock, because no one ever called her that.

‘Yes,' she said before she was able to think of saying ‘no'.

‘Ah! I thought so,' he smiled warmly, ‘you are so like your brother! May I walk with you a little?' He held out his arm to her. Weekly, unaccustomed, did not know how to take his arm. Gently he drew her hand and arm through his, and holding her hand firmly with his other
hand clasped over the top, he walked with her drawn close up to him. As ladies walked, Weekly reflected. Gently he propelled her along the pavements. All the time he smiled smoothly and talked, ‘I'm a friend of your brother's,' he said ‘but the silly thing is—I've lost his address. Some of us, his friends, are trying to catch up with him. It's to his advantage, a business deal you know, nothing for a little lady to bother her pretty head about.' His charming smile was turned towards Weekly so that she blushed, an unusual thing for her, no one had ever said her head was pretty before. Nervously, but pleased, she smiled back at him. Not being little, but rather big, she smiled down towards his round slightly bulging eyes.

‘I was just driving by when I saw you. The image of Victor! I said to myself—there's my car, by the way, over there on the corner. Hey! What about I take you for a little spin? Have you ever been for a drive in a motor car? We'll drive round and see some more of Victor's friends. You'd like that I know.'

‘Oh Sir, I should be back. I'm to be in the Nursery by half three,' she whispered.

‘Oh it won't take a minute. I'll see you are back in time. Come on. Hop in!'

There were five young men in leather chairs around a horseshoe-shaped table. They sat Weekly in a deep spongy chair and asked her all kinds of questions. They had
something for her bother they said. It was urgent that they find him. They kept repeating that it was to do with business, nothing that she should bother about, she need not even try to understand but it was very important for him that they find him. They said it was stupid of them to have lost his address.

‘Aw! He's always movin',' Weekly said, ‘one place one minnit, gorn the next!'

Flattered by the attention of so many young men and the importance of being Victor's sister and, furthermore, being told that she looked like Victor, Weekly told them about the shabby room. She told them where it was, and she told them, ‘Yo'll 'ave to be quick as he's leavin' for South Africa in a day or two.' It occurred to her that these friends could help Victor and free her from the burden of providing for him whenever his business, whatever it was, was in trouble of some sort. Cheerfully she answered their questions.

It was only when she was out in the summer-scented street again, clear of the immense room and the cigarette smoke and the smartly dressed, smooth-voiced young men, that she realised what she had done. She was out in the street alone, the first young man had disappeared and no one else had taken any more notice of her. The light had changed; it was much later than she thought. The street was lined on both sides by old houses. Some of
them, used as consulting rooms and business offices, had neglected overgrown gardens. A lost dog in a garden, which was no longer regarded as a garden, looked at her with mournful eyes. All at once she understood the questions. These men were not Victor's friends at all. She had given her cherished brother to people who had given nothing either to her or to Victor.

In spite of being burdened and hurt by Victor, he was all she had, she loved him. In her thoughts on that afternoon and in all the years afterwards she knew that whatever Victor had taken from her, however unkind or rude he had been, he would never have given her away to anyone, and especially not to anyone like the false-faced man who had called her Miss Morris and had folded her arm into his so meaninglessly.

Frequently during the years, she relived in her imagination the horror of the moment when these men would have come upon Victor in his weak state in that sad, dirty room. Possibly while she was hurrying back to her work they had found the place where he was hiding. In her imagination she repeatedly heard his hoarse painful breathing and she would, in her mind, see his terrible shock at having five or six of them come to him, not for a good business deal but for some kind of revenge which she could not begin to understand or know about. All she could know and think about was that Victor was being hunted and,
because of her, he would be trapped and caught.

As the first grey light filled the narrow space of her tall window, Weekly stared with disbelief at the waiting sky of the new day.

‘Make my coffee Veekly! Make my coffee very strong and black and I wish my coffee packed with lemons,' Nastasya's complaining voice stopped Weekly from dwelling on the thoughts which had been like an uncomfortable pillow for most of the night. She was so stiff and her body ached so much she thought she would never get to work let alone take Nastasya to the hospital.

‘Make my coffee Veekly!'

‘You ever heard of sayin' “please” Narsty?'

For a moment she hoisted herself to the top of the shining mountain of coins. The mountain had grown again after the shock of its sudden smallness when compared to the cost of the valley. Mr Rusk had helped to rebuild it with the new land. ‘It's well within your price range,' the cone of coins stretched up higher at once and its sides glittered.

‘Leaves you something for extras, everything's included in the price.'

Slowly Weekly pushed her feet into her slippers and she hobbled across the room to put on the kettle; she would see Mr Rusk today and buy the land and, in her lunch time, she would take Nastasya to the hospital.

‘Here's the Newspaper of Claremont Street,' Valerie called out. ‘Anyone been burned to death or drowned lately?' she asked. A few people were shopping as Weekly, tired out from an exceptional day, sank onto the broken chair.

‘Ask old Muttonhead,' she said. ‘He's followed me down to the shop. He'll be wanting toilet rolls and bran.' The girls laughed and nudged each other.

‘What about some news,' they said, ‘anyone found naked in the park?'

‘Well forty people was pulled from the surf Saturday, one drownded dead,' Weekly sucked in her cheeks. ‘And Sunday night there was a pile-up of seven cars on the west
highway,' she paused and waited for attention from the other people who were shopping. ‘Five people killed all from one family except for the little baby.' She seemed to sink into thought as a general sigh of dismay spread round the shop. ‘Aw! The poor little baby!'

‘How's Leila Chatham?' But Weekly had told her news for the day. Leila Chatham and the cure of daisy poultices, recommended by Weekly, could wait for another time. Mrs Chatham was covering Leila with hot stewed-up daisies, it was something remembered from the Black Country childhood.

‘Well I suppose it can't do any harm,' Mrs Chatham stood undecided in the hall.

‘Buying land takes time,' Mr Rusk had said gently, and so Weekly was containing herself in patience. ‘Leave everything to me,' Mr Rusk advised. ‘I'll get the deed stamped and signed and there's a key to the building. I'll get that.'

Building seemed too vague a word for the delightfulness of the little house that would be Weekly's. She had patience and she could wait and she trusted Mr Rusk. She had squeezed in the appointment with him and had left the Laceys' a little early at lunchtime in order to take Nastasya to the hospital.

‘Tell me about Sophie Whiteman,' Diana Lacey tried to detain Weekly. Mrs Lacey had as usual gone to town
and Diana was off school again, this time with a sore throat.

‘Wash the curtains please.' Mrs Lacey felt this was a precaution against more illness. ‘We must get rid of all the nasty germs,' she said, ‘and Weekly I think the dining room curtains need a bit a sewing—if you have time—thank you,' and she rushed off as she was late for the hairdresser.

‘Well,' said Weekly putting away the ironing board, ‘she got a pair of scissors and she went into the garding and she looked all about her to see no one was watching and she cut up a earthworm into a whole lot of little pieces.'

‘What did her mother do?' asked Diana joyfully, knowing from a previous telling.

‘Well,' said Weekly, ‘she came in from town and she took orf her hat and her lovely fur coat, very beautiful lady, Mrs Whiteman, she took orf her good clothes and she took Sophie Whiteman and laid her acrorss her lap and give her a good hidin'.'

‘Oh!' Diana was pleased. ‘Was that before she died of the chocolate lining in her stomach or after?'

‘Diana Lacey, what have I told you before, remember? Sophie Whiteman had her good hidin' afore she died. How could she cut up a worm after she was dead. Use yor brains!'

Weekly found a scrap of paper and scrawled a note for Mrs Lacey.

It had been a trying day as Weekly had hurried home in the lunchtime. Mr Rusk had said she might have possession of the land in a week or a fortnight; he hoped it wouldn't be too long to wait. For Weekly, who had waited all her life for something, it was not long, but the burden of Nastasya lay heavily over the pleasure of the excitement of acquisition.

The mental hospital was within walking distance of Claremont Street. Some time earlier Weekly had gone there and described Nastasya to a doctor.

‘Bring her along to be examined,' he said to her, ‘and we'll see what we can do for her.'

At the time she meant to take Nastasya but somehow could not. Now she knew she must make up her mind.

‘Come on Narsty,' Weekly said, hurrying into the room in the middle of the day, a time when she usually did not go home, ‘get dressed! We'll go for a little drive.' Weekly stood grim with intention in the dishevelled room. It annoyed her to have her room in the kind of mess Nastasya made. Nastasya began to put her clothes on quite
quickly which was surprising as she had been in her woodblock mood for several weeks and her depression during the last few days had seemed to get worse.

‘Vere ve go Veekly?' she asked with sudden pleasure. It would have been easier if she had stayed difficult and disagreeable. Weekly would have preferred to have to push her into her clothes and drag her out of the car. But Nastasya was pleased and happy.

‘Oh how happy I am to go out!' she exclaimed, and her face was wrinkled with smiles. She waved to the people going by in Claremont Street and Weekly groaned inside herself as she drove round and round the park. Nastasya talked all the way and waved to people. ‘You know Veekly, a wise men called Plato, I don't think you will know of him, well he said this, while you are waitink to be born, because you know Veekly, people hang in a kind of space waitink for to be born, well, while you are waitink to be born, if you could see the future course of your life and were given the chance to take it or not would you take it? Do you understand Veekly?'

‘Yes o' course I do!' Weekly concentrated on a bend in the road; it was about the sixth time around the park.

‘Well,' Nastasya continued. ‘It is like ziss, if I had the choice and if I saw this park as it is today in spite of all the dreadful suffering in my life Veekly, because of this afternoon only, and you taking me out in the car, I would
choose to have my awful, awful life just because of this afternoon!'

Weekly took the car once more around the park. She knew what Nastasya meant. She drove her back to the room in the house in Claremont Street to go on as before.

‘I see soap powder's gorn up, and bread, whatever next!' Weekly was late to the Kingstons' and was late all afternoon and slammed about in the kitchen for she never liked to be all behind herself. She was so fierce with the stove that Mrs Kingston had to go and lie down somewhere quiet and as far away from the kitchen as possible.

No one knew about Weekly's troubles for, though she talked all the time about all sorts of things, she never spoke about her land, and she never told about Nastasya.

All the week she wondered how she would get Nastasya to the hospital. She wanted to get Nastasya settled before she received the key to the cottage. She found she could think of nothing else. She had stopped reading advertisements.

‘I must be going out of me mind,' she muttered to herself while she ate her bread and vegetables. She forced herself to take up the paper. She wanted to read the advertisements to see the prices to compare with what she would be paying for hers, to see if Mr Rusk had cheated
her in any way. But she couldn't concentrate on the reading, and she scarcely heard what Nastasya was saying, though, every evening, her voice went on and on.

Tables set with embroidered cloths and heavy silver and with glasses and decanters, so elegant and finely made that a kind of delicate music came from them when they were handled, and expensively dressed ladies with beautiful voices, and well-mannered husbands filled Weekly's room as Nastasya talked on of her life which had been lost forever. But Weekly, so full of worry of how to get Nastasya away before she herself wanted to move, paid no attention, though Nastasya was sometimes very persistent and required Weekly to say, ‘Did you now!' and ‘Well I never!' at intervals. So again, one evening Weekly persuaded Nastasya.

‘How's about a little walk Narsty?'

Nastasya immediately dressed herself and, with the white beret slapped on the side of her weatherbeaten face, she walked happily beside Weekly.

At the end of Claremont Street a brown dog came out from a garden, wagging his tail; he came up to them friendly and loving and lovable.

Nastasya laughed out loud.

‘Oh Veekly, see his tail is like a question mark!' And then she said, ‘Oh Veekly, only look what beautiful eyes he has,' Nastasya fondled the dog. ‘See Veekly, his remarkable
eyes, if you live a hundred years you could never see a human being with such eyes!'

Weekly looked at the dog and at Nastasya. No one was about in Claremont Street; it was as if the two elderly women and the dog were alone on a special spot, a corner of the earth set aside for moments of real understanding and discovery, one of those rare meeting places in the world where, quite unexpectedly, unfathomable depths of human feeling are exposed for just a few seconds, and it seems possible to come face to face with reality, and stand on the edge of the truth which can reveal forever the meaning of living.

When you knew the truth you died. Weekly was afraid to find out too much for this might bring about her own death. She was getting on, she knew this, but she wanted to live long enough to have her five acres.

‘See Veekly,' Nastasya was laughing over the dog. ‘See Veekly, if you ever see a man or woman with eyes like this dog you would see a really remarkable person!'

How could Weekly tell Nastasya anything. They walked on in silence. When they were almost at the hospital Weekly wanted to explain to Nastasya where they were going. She tried to think of what to say.

Some children in the little park called out to the two old women, jeering at their strange old-fashioned clothes as they went slowly by, but Nastasya did not notice the
children at all and she seemed quite unaware of Weekly's uneasiness.

‘Hi Newspaper of Claremont Street!' the little boys called out, but Nastasya was laughing and, in her broken English, was saying, ‘The air is so fresh today Veekly. I can forget now all my sadness, I can forget that I am sad. It will rain tonight. I can smell the rain is comink. Is good!'

Nastasya took in great gulps of air. When she spoke her voice was hoarse. ‘I love this leetle park and the beeg trees!' Weekly thought about the life Nastasya would have in the hospital. She thought about Nastasya imprisoned with plastic sweet peas and roses and faded blankets and old pillows covered with waterproof material. She thought of the room which would be her confined world and the forlorn chair which would be her place forever and she tried to think of how she could explain to Nastasya it would be for her own good.

‘Ich grenz an Gott!' Nastasya lifted her arms and seemed to be calling to the treetops. ‘My pronunciation of Cherman is very bad,' she explained to Weekly. ‘My Fraulein was such a dumpling I never paid any attention to her. Really, I suppose we despise the Chermans. In our literature, our small characters, you know Veekly, the tutors and the poor ones are the Chermans, also they are unpleasant!'

They were almost through the park, just a short way
from the hospital. Weekly tried to speak but Nastasya went on talking.

‘Veekly, here I am on the edge on God!' She talked on, ‘I forget everything, it is terrible for me, but a learned chentlemen, his name I cannot remember, but he was very clever, he say,

I don't suppose you could understand me Veekly.' Nastasya paused on the path and looked at Weekly seriously. ‘I tell you this Veekly,' she said, ‘not for you to understand the clever man, but because once I was like the poet he described and, because you bring me out to take air in the park, I begin to feel alive once more. I see the grass and the trees and I can smell the rain comink as I used to do.'

Nastasya stood in the middle of the path and looked at Weekly and Weekly looked at Nastasya. Weekly knew she could not take her to the hospital. She was trapped. She was overcome by the unfairness of the world. She had once thought that Nastasya had no one and that she, Weekly, had a street full of people but, at this moment, she realised she, herself, had no one. She would be forgotten within a few days of leaving and no one would miss her. All she had was her land and her solitude and this was to be taken over by Nastasya. If only Nastasya
could be quietly and kindly put out of the way; her useless existence, which only survived by living on Weekly, ended quickly and without fuss like the kittens whose wailing was so easily and promptly extinguished. But how could this be done? In the hospital Nastasya would have to be visited. Weekly saw herself imprisoned there too on a small wooden chair much too close to Nastasya's chair, endlessly listening to one complaint after another.

‘Narsty, it's getting dark, we better turn back.' Weekly took Nastasya's flabby arm. She had to force herself to make the physical contact.

‘You want me to stay with you?' Nastasya asked as if she had sensed Weekly's intention.

‘Why yes o' course I do,' Weekly lied.