When Nights Were Cold (23 page)

‘Oh, I see.' To be polite I asked, ‘Are you sure?'

‘I am.'

‘And does Mrs Granger-Dawes share your opinion?'

Frank reddened. ‘Ah – you know her? I – I'm not sure. She—' He seemed to flail, searching for words, an appropriate expression or gesture. ‘I didn't realize that you knew her. Well, Mrs Granger-Dawes is a good friend and has been very encouraging but I made the decision myself.'

I regretted my boldness – I had only meant to tease him – and could think of no response. The clock ticked and Father watched us, now with mild interest. Mother's stick gave a series of firm raps and made the ceiling tremble. Frank glanced up, then over at me.

‘Was that some Morse code message from upstairs?'

I nodded. ‘But my mother expects all her messages to be understood as SOS. She doesn't trouble herself with anything less.'

‘Oh dear. I'll get out of your way then. Will you be all right?'

‘I'm much better already.' I called through the door, ‘Mother, just a minute.'

Frank touched my hand. ‘You've heard something about Mrs Granger-Dawes and me.'

‘I'm sure it was nothing but gossip.'

‘Well – it was only a little more than nothing, but people will talk. Perhaps we could go for a walk one afternoon, if – if you'd like to.'

‘I don't know.' I chose my words carefully. ‘Catherine and I don't go out together. It's best if one of us is always here.'

Frank seemed nonplussed for a moment, then nodded.

‘Quite. Quite. I understand. So – so we can't do that then or one of you would be left out. Well, we could play a game one afternoon, for old time's sake. Shall I be Scott and you be Oates?'

I smiled but I felt sad. ‘We don't know where they are now.'

‘We can imagine.'

‘I don't think – I can't imagine now. What if we stumbled upon the truth, and it was bad news?'

‘It's a game, isn't it? If your sister were here to provide an accompaniment—'

The piano was heaped with wool and four or five of Catherine's dolls.

‘I don't think so.'

‘Doesn't look as though it gets much love now. Poor thing. How is Catherine these days?'

‘She's – ' I regarded him closely. His concern for Catherine was born of politeness, I was sure, and he was embarrassed – as I was – by the memory of our doomed meeting in the college woods. ‘She's very well.'

Frank left before Catherine returned and I did not mention his visit. I prepared bread and cheese for my mother, and did not stay to talk to her. Instead I went to the attic and I told Hooper about Frank.

‘I wish we had been together for a long time, the way you and Teddy were. I thought it better to forget him and I tried, but he's back. It may not be too late, after all, as long as I am considerate of Catherine. I don't want to leave you behind, Hooper. I hope you don't think that I do.'

Mr Blunt is certainly in his room. He creaks about up there. His little sounds flit through the bricks in the walls and down the stairs like curls of falling leaves. If he hadn't come home, I might have gone up for a look at the room, but it would not be the same as when I used to find Hooper there. When Mr Blunt came to see the room, he had the choice of the attic or the one Miss Cankleton now has. I thought the attic was the lesser of the two. It is smaller and the fireplace is poky. I said to him that it had not been much lived in, except by servants. It was even considered to be haunted at one time. I explained this to Mr Blunt and his eyes rather seemed to feast on the picture. He liked the room all the better and was anxious to take it. I thought then that he was an odd one, but I let him have the attic as the other room would be easier to let. I don't know what he does up there or when he goes out late at night, but he's a very quiet man and this house has never tolerated much noise.

Once I wanted to be in a house full of life – the Lockes' home in Kensington was bliss to me with its lively, clever people and magical parties with champagne and lilies and charades – but I was not to have that for myself and now I think there is no greater human virtue than the tendency to be quiet. That makes Miss Cankleton a saint, of course, and I think she might be. She is about forty-five but has the extraordinary talent of being able to look seventy no matter what she wears. She works in the post office. I have seen her there, polished knob of grey hair atop her head, thick spectacles and the habit of leaning towards the customer because she is just a little deaf. I cannot be the only person in the queue who thinks that she resembles a silver teapot pouring forth. She'll be deep in sleep now, stamping envelopes, or climbing some secret Matterhorn of her own.

Chapter Eighteen

A letter from Locke. I sat beside Hooper in the attic and read it aloud. Locke wanted me to visit her at work so that she could show me around the theatre and catch up on old times. She was now active within the Actresses' Franchise League, like her mother, organizing public meetings and writing her sketches for performances around the country, sometimes acting in them herself. In the meantime, she did clerical work at her uncle's theatre in the West End. She also told me that Hester Morgan, our old friend from Candlin, was in prison for smashing shop windows.

‘I have missed her too, Hooper, but perhaps she is no longer angry and that's why she has written.'

Indeed, I was almost tearful with relief that I seemed to have my dear old friend back again. We would meet in the afternoon, sit on the floor, and talk long into the evening, sometimes tipping a little more coal onto the fire. We would share old jokes about college people and perhaps even sort out our future lives.

Life flowed up Charing Cross Road, pumped in and out of buildings and the smaller streets. I dodged between carriages, buses and bicycles to cross the street and inhaled a mouthful of dust. I spluttered and wiped my face but I was enjoying it. At Cambridge Circus I stood for a few minutes to catch my breath and let the thundering chaos blast my senses. A weak sun shone through the trees and it felt as though it had always been sunny here while the clouds gathered over the house in Dulwich. I walked a little further, found the theatre and followed an alley to the stage door. A boy let me in and led me to Locke's office.

The staircase was shabby, high-ceilinged and turned several corners before we reached a small door on the landing. Locke opened it and pulled me inside with a shriek. She seemed to have grown much older in the months since I had seen her last. She wore a blue dress and her dark hair was fastened at the back of her head in its usual elegant roll but she looked careworn.

‘I can't believe we've left it so long. Let me clear these papers so you can sit down.'

The room was poky with a sloping ceiling and small window. Piles of documents and letters covered the desk and part of the floor. There were two chairs, an aspidistra and several framed photographs of scenes from plays. The one nearest me, on the desk, showed a young man in a top hat strangling an older one with his bare hands. Both actors wore frenzied expressions, eyes bulging with ecstasy and pain.

‘What play is it?'

‘I've no idea. I just like their intense enjoyment of the murder, you know. When office work gets dull it cheers me up.'

‘Dull?'

I peered out of the window at the busy street and wondered at Locke's good fortune in having this place to come to every day.

‘I've missed our conversations so much, Farringdon. I wish we could see each other more.'

‘So do I.'

We had talked about wanting to talk but neither of us could think what to say next. I fiddled with my gloves.

‘It's a beautiful office. What do you do here?'

‘Cut out the reviews and make sure that we're selling enough tickets, that sort of thing. It's mundane, but it means I can do my work for the AFL when nobody else is about. We're recruiting new members all the time. It has given me a reason to get on with things after – all the bother. It's just a matter of time before we get the vote.'

‘And what about Morgan? Is she still in prison?'

‘I think so but, even if they let her out, she'll be straight back in.'

‘Do you remember having to waltz with her in the picture gallery? I can't imagine her jumping out of trees and running around to smash things. We should visit her next time.'

‘She won't see anyone, not even her father. Too proud. She has to wear some coarse, horrible garb and probably has lice.'

Locke pushed a cigarette into a scratched black holder and lit it.

‘Want one?'

‘No thanks.'

‘I keep having this idea,' said Locke. ‘It's foolish but, look, imagine this. We get the climbing ropes from Parr and then we scale some building or tower, get ourselves in the news. With a newspaper or sign,
Votes for Women.
Like Fanny Bullock Workman did in the Karakoram, but we'd do it in the city instead.'

‘And we could have Parr climbing up behind us with a sign saying:
No Votes for Women at All, Under any Circumstances
.
So Pull Yourselves Together
.'

Locke giggled. ‘Do you think she's changed her position? I feel sure that she must have by now but she'd be too haughty to admit it.'

‘I think she'll be sailing to South America soon. She's going to be a great mountaineer and nothing will get in her way.'

Locke blew a thin wire of smoke from her mouth. It curved away behind her ear.

‘No. Nothing will stop her. It never does.'

‘I meant—'

‘Sometimes I forget that I can't just write a letter to Hooper. I kept some of her sketches, ones she did in Wales. I don't even know why I had them in the first place. I should probably return them to her family. Mosses, petals, leaves. Pretty things.'

‘Her family must have plenty. I'm sure they wouldn't begrudge you a few sketches.'

She nodded. ‘Will you climb again? I shan't but I hope you will.'

‘I don't think so.'

I heard myself say this and did not like the way it sounded. It seemed sad and hopeless and made me want to change my mind, though I was not sure that I could.

‘I'm not going to forgive her.'

‘Parr? We can't blame her for everything.'

Locke gave a short, irritated sigh and adjusted a hairpin.

‘You may think so. But I've started to write my play.'

Locke was annoyed with me, but her self-righteous manner and refusal to see any other point of view were tiresome and I wanted her to see that I was irritated too.

‘Why do you think it will help people to know that Hooper was miserable and ill before she died? And that there may have been a mistake with the rope. Isn't it better left as it is?'

‘No, because it isn't the truth. She need not have died.'

‘But the truth won't do any good now.'

‘Let's not argue again.'

Locke leaned on her elbow, rubbed her forehead and said nothing. Feet clattered up and down the stairs and we heard the boy shouting at somebody then laughing.

‘All right,' I said.

‘Let's talk about something different,' she said eventually. ‘Everything and anything except mountains.'

I knew one topic that always made Locke cheerful.

‘Have you met any nice gentlemen recently? Do you still see Horace?'

‘Ah, indeed. Guess what. Horace got married to a singing teacher so I don't see him any more, but I've been having an affair with my uncle's friend and it has been very helpful while there is so much grief about. He's separated from his wife but not divorced, so I really shouldn't, but I was lonely and he does make me feel nice.'

‘I'm glad.'

‘He doesn't want too much, so I can do my campaigning without worrying about him. It suits us both, for now. By the way, speaking of affairs, your friend, Mr Black, has been making himself rather well known, I hear.' She smiled and it was as though we were back in her college room again, judges and conspirators. ‘The chap we met in Wales, that's him, isn't it? A certain Millicent Granger-Dawes fell in love with him – and the neighbours saw him coming and going over the back wall – but her husband got the gun out and put a stop to it all.'

‘Good heavens. I'd heard some of it, but nothing quite so dramatic.'

‘It's probably been exaggerated.'

‘I've seen him and am inclined to think that it did not come to guns. He is still alive, at any rate.'

Locke's eyes roamed across my face and she drew so hard on her cigarette that I could see her struggling not to cough. I told her more of Frank's visit and she was impressed.

‘I'm sure you're much better for him than Mrs Granger-Dawes. If I were you, I'd fall properly in love with him. It's what you need.'

‘Perhaps.'

We talked a little more like this and then, soon, we had nothing to say. I wanted to get out of the theatre and back to my room in the attic with all my things. The business of Parr and the rope would always come between Locke and me. Every mouthful of air I took in that room was soured with it.

Locke saw me down to the street. It was still daylight. Cars, horses, buses and bicycles sped and trundled around us as we hugged and promised to meet again soon but did not mean it.

I could hear them from the street. Mother and Catherine were in an argument. Catherine had locked herself in her room and refused to come out when Mother called for her medicine. Mother heard Catherine dragging furniture about the room, the wardrobe doors banging. She rapped on the door but Catherine would not let her in, nor would she make tea or fetch the medicine. Mother's hair hung in grey-blonde strings down her back. Her nightgown was crumpled and coming unstitched down the sides. She pressed her cheek to the door and shouted, ‘Dr Sowerby will put you in the asylum if you carry on like this. What are you doing in there? I don't know what this family's coming to. Grace, thank goodness you're back. Help me to my room. My legs are bad today and she doesn't care.'