Agnes Owens (39 page)

‘You're not supposed to,' said Madge. ‘My intonation should give the clue.'

‘I see,' said Danielle. ‘I didn't know.'

‘You have a lot to learn,' said Madge, turning her head away, and Danielle felt like crying.

‘Right, young Miss,' said one of the women, ‘Are you sure you brought nothing to read? It would be so much better for us if you had.'

‘I've just remembered I've got this,' said Danielle. She took a crumpled paper from her pocket and proceeded to read a story about a baby abandoned on a doorstep, one she had copied from a women's magazine found in her doctor's waiting room. She read in a low, monotonous voice, very fast, to get the story over and done with. When she stopped there was a long silence until Madge asked if this sort of thing happened nowadays, when women had the right to have abortions on demand.

‘I believe you get the odd case,' said Daisy, ‘But I don't think . . .'

She broke off when Madge told her to be quiet, then Mr Portly said it didn't matter if a story was true to life, what counted was ability to write.

‘Surely not,' said one of the other women.

‘I obviously have no talent for writing,' said Danielle and burst into tears. Mr Portly gave her a clean handkerchief to dry her face and blow her nose, while most of the others said they thought her story very good and she should definitely come back next week. Then Madge butted in, asking if she could read another of her poems to them before the lesson ended.

‘Oh, yes, do! We're all simply dying to hear it!' said Daisy on a note of bitter sarcasm, obviously still smarting from being told to be quiet.

‘I only wish I understood Gaelic,' said Danielle.

‘This new poem of mine is in ordinary English,' said Madge.

‘Even in English we probably won't understand it,' said Daisy, ‘We'll just have to sit and listen.'

At that Madge stormed out of the room. Gradually others followed. At last only Mr Portly and Danielle remained.

‘Aren't you leaving?' she asked him.

‘It's early yet,' he said, moving over and sitting close by her side. ‘Did you really leave your baby on a doorstep?'

‘No, but I know somebody who did.'

He seemed to ponder this, then said, ‘Were you sent here from an institution? We get these people sometimes. They swell the numbers, and our class is supposed to have at least eight.'

‘My teacher sent me,' she told him. ‘She said I had talent.'

‘I'm sure you do.' He put his hand on her knee. She struck it off, stood up and said, ‘I'm going home.'

He too stood up, fumbling with the zip of his trousers, and saying, ‘Do you want to see what you've done to me?'

But before he could show her that Danielle was running out of the room and down the corridor outside with Mr Portly close behind. Before they reached the door at the end Madge entered through it saying crossly, ‘I left my umbrella,' then she looked at them both intently and asked, ‘Is anything wrong?'

Danielle was silent. The truth sounded improbable and from experience she knew she was unlikely to be believed. Mr Portly's lips were quivering. He told Madge, ‘She tried to proposition me. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come back! It would have been her word against mine.'

‘I knew it,' said Madge. ‘We should never take on any of that lot. They do anything to get attention.' Looking scornfully at Danielle she added, ‘I hesitate to think what kind of attention
you
wanted.'

‘But the group needs more members,' said Mr Portly. ‘If we apply again the next one might be better. I still have faith in human nature.'

He spoke as if Danielle was not there.

‘Maybe so, but I'm not chancing it,' said Madge. She turned to Danielle. ‘You'd better get going before I call the police. I'm sick and tired of decent folk like us being taken advantage of.'

Danielle sighed. She had liked the idea of becoming a writer but had to admit she had no talent, and obviously the people who ran the class were not worth bothering about. She was only sorry she would not see Mr Portly's face when he missed the wallet that was now safe inside her duffle coat. She didn't think he would complain to the police because several girls where she lived knew what he was like, but she was not going to point the finger. In a way she was sorry for him. They say these kind of men can't help themselves. Maybe it's not their fault.

A
s a child of five Carol loved to read magazines, progressing to novels when she was ten, first the foreign legion tales by P. C. Wren, then Thackery and Dickens. She even attempted Tolstoy's
War and Peace
, but could not grasp the Russian names. Her favourite book was
Oliver Twist
. Soon she had read every book in the local library and accumulated a pile of reminder notices to return them that she tried to forget. In the end her infuriated mother was forced to pay dozens of fines.

‘Carrie!' she shouted one day, ‘Come and help hang out the washing.'

Her daughter, lounging book in hand on a sofa, said, ‘Just let me read to the end of this. I'll only be an hour or two.'

Her mother marched into the living room, seized the book from Carol's hand, returned to the kitchen and threw it into the washing tub where it disintegrated into a soggy mass. Carol did not complain, said nothing, but never forgave that, deciding to wait until revenge was possible.

Soon after that a legacy made them rich and Carol was sent to an expensive private school from which she was expelled for completely ignoring her teachers and reading
Frankenstein
when she should have been writing an essay about the countryside in spring.

‘That child has perverse tendencies,' the headmistress told her mother who agreed wholeheartedly. When seventeen she pushed her mother off a cliff top as they walked by the seaside. This was not premeditated but done on impulse because the opportunity had arisen. Luckily this was regarded as an accident. Carol regretted it when forced to make her own meals but shed no tears. It was
her mother's fault for destroying a good book. From now on Carol vowed she would only wash and clean up when it suited her, but she never put cleaning before reading so the house became a terrible mess. It was only put in order when a maiden aunt visited and forced Carol to pay cleaners who came every day for a fortnight. Even then the result was far from perfect.

‘Now promise me you will never let the place get into that state again,' said the aunt.

Carol promised then let the house become much, much worse. When her aunt next came visiting Carol, rather than face her terrible wrath, waited for her behind the front door, hatchet in hand, later disposing of the body in the earth beneath the kitchen windows where in summertime one or two roses flourished. The police made no headway with the mysterious disappearance, finally deciding the aunt had fled the country because she had been charged with shoplifting.

Everything went well with Carol after that. She read Émile Zola from end to end and was going to start on Jane Austen when a young gardener appeared on her back doorstep, asking for work. He was handsome but not too handsome, lean and brown with the right size of bare muscular arms. She decided she would marry him if he asked her.

‘How did you know I needed a gardener?' she asked in a winsome tone while boldly making eye contact.

‘Aha,' he replied, wagging his finger, ‘A little bird told me.'

‘As you see,' she said, ‘I have a big garden that I cannot possibly manage on my own. I would like new plants growing all over it, but the plot under the kitchen window must not be disturbed. I have a special reason for insisting on that.'

‘What might that be?' he asked, mildly curious.

‘I'll let you know when I decide to.'

He shrugged. ‘Well, it's your garden, but I have a suggestion.'

In glowing terms he described a lovely bed of roses he would like to plant, roses whose scent would waft into her nostrils
whenever she entered the kitchen. Harshly she interrupted him.

‘Don't talk about what you want. A dead dog is buried in that plot whom I loved dearly. His remains must not be tampered with. Is that clear?'

He gave a slight bow, said her wishes would be respected, and they agreed on his weekly wage.

After that she often watched him from the kitchen window, digging, planting or trimming the hedge. She liked to see his muscles ripple under his shirt or better still, if the weather was warm, his body when he wore no shirt. Sometimes he asked for a drink of water and when invited entered the kitchen. He appeared to know his place in society, seeming ill at ease indoors but flirtatious when they met outside, as if he was two different people. She did not think she trusted either, yet panicked one morning when he did not come.

He arrived as usual next day saying, ‘I had a sore throat,' but with no sign of a cold or cough so she knew he was lying. On warm days after that she sometimes went outside, lifted a rake or hoe or spade and helped him a little.

‘What happened to your mother?' he once asked as they stood outside looking at the plot beneath the window.

‘She fell off a cliff and died.'

‘How tragic,' he said. ‘You must be very lonely.'

‘I have my books,' she said.

‘Books?' he said, as if baffled. ‘I can't even read.'

‘How awful,' she murmured.

‘I don't mind,' he said. ‘Reading is not for the likes of me.'

‘You don't know what you're missing.' She began to tell him about one of her favourite novels, but she sensed he was bored. ‘I like doing things,' he said, ‘not reading or hearing about them.'

Carol, greatly angered, said, ‘In that case I am paying you off. At the end of the week you can collect any more due to you and go.'

He laughed as if highly amused and asked if he could first dig
up the earth beneath the kitchen window; he was curious to know why the roses bloomed so well in such poor soil, for there must be more than a dead dog enriching it. Carol, panic-stricken, hit him on the head with a spade she had been leaning on. He lay in a coma for a week before recovering, but was never the same again. He smiled at her like an angel and made snuffling noises like a farm animal.

‘Why don't you speak properly?' she would say, shaking him by the shoulders. He would open his mouth wide but only piggish grunts came out. She began to detest him, especially when she had to wash him like a baby and change his clothes. He joined her aunt in the plot under the window and after that the roses grew better than ever, though she longed for winter when no flowers grew and she could forget them and relax with a book.

Then a man came to fix her roof that had been leaking in the heavy October rain. He seemed honest until he tiptoed into her kitchen and asked for a drink of water. As she filled a tumbler from the tap he grabbed her from behind, threw her down on a chair and gagged her with a dishcloth after tying her hands with a rope from his pocket. She had visions of being raped but he merely ransacked drawers looking for money, finally leaving with pearls she had concealed in a tea caddy. They were fake. Carol never reported the incident in case it brought police to search the house and garden, where the plot under the window was overgrown with roses that now even bloomed in winter. People passing by would stop and remark on them, and if she was in the garden ask what she fed them on. ‘Tea leaves,' she would say, and they would walk on happily.

Time passed until one day she realised she was old and had done nothing much with her life but read books, most of them stolen from shops or the library, and many lying unread and covered with cobwebs. Her eyesight was now so bad she could hardly read a page. She made a bonfire of books in the garden and when they had well and truly burned she danced around the ashes with a
feeling of freedom. Next day she bought herself new clothes, a suitcase and umbrella. She was going abroad to see the world and would undoubtedly meet with rain. She booked a cabin on a newly built ocean liner called the Titanic because she liked the name. It sounded lucky and she was excited and happy to be leaving home. No one heard of her after that but the roses bloomed, and people passing sniffed the air and said whoever had planted them must have had green fingers and a great love of roses, for such a colour of red had never before been seen.

I
'd scarcely sat down on her shabby sofa when she brought out a bottle of vodka from an equally shabby wall unit.

‘I think we drink more of this than the Russians,' she said with a twisted smile.

‘But theirs is much cheaper,' I said, noticing the glass she had given me had many finger marks, but why should that spoil the pleasure of drinking with a famous author? I might once have thought that, but not now.

‘How's the book going?' I asked, trying to remember if she'd written more than one.

‘Not very well, but I'm not the kind of author who tries to write best sellers. If I bring some pleasure to a handful of readers my work will not have been in vain. And I can only write about failures, so with most readers that doesn't go down very well.'

She gave a self-conscious laugh. I wasn't surprised she wrote about failures. She looked like one and rubbed it in by adding, ‘I know what if feels like to be shunned.'

I lifted one of her paperbacks from the coffee table, suspecting she had put it there when she knew I was coming. The title was
The Wages of Fear
. The picture on the cover showed a doleful woman holding a baby.

‘I don't know if you've read it,' she said, ‘but you can have that copy if you like.'

‘No thanks, I have one,' I said hurriedly. I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but there's a limit to being obliging.

‘How is it selling?' I asked. ‘You should be well off by now with money from your royalties.'