Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (38 page)

‘He happens to be dead,’ said Daffy stiffly; drawing the subject ever further from the bench by the river.

‘Oh, well, yes we know that, darling; and of course it’s too frightful. And about your father and all that. My God, it’s frightful!’

‘Why on earth did you have to go and tell your father, Daph?’

‘He caught me sneaking in. I was in such a mess, I had to say something. And anyway, I was pretty steamed up. I did have an awful time. I mean, look at these bruises.’

‘I can’t see why you should struggle? Why not just let him get on with it?’

‘Well, good heavens, he was like a sex maniac! He’d been smoking all evening and heaven knows what this pusher at the bar, well I mean in the café, had sold him. He was stoned clean, he just did his nut. Of course I couldn’t tell my parents I’d let him. I had to say he’d forced me.’

‘Good lord—poor Simon!’

‘Yes, but he did knock me about. Of course it’s awful about Daddy shooting him, but still he did knock me about.’

‘All the same, Daphne, it wasn’t on that bench outside Mardon’s,’ said Maureen, coming back to cases. ‘Because we were there ourselves.’

‘I didn’t say the bench outside Mardon’s. I said it
wasn’t
the one outside Mardon’s. The one we went to was the one further down, by the warehouse. You know I always go to the warehouse one, at least I always used to with Tom.’

‘What’s Tom going to say about all this poor-little-raped-virgin stuff, when it comes out?’

‘For that matter, Daffy, what’s everyone going to say? I mean, everyone knows about
you
.’

‘Well, then everyone will just have to shut up, won’t they?’ said Daffy. She gave them that sly little sideways glance of hers, the meaningful glance that had finally blackmailed poor Simon into giving way and taking her to the Blue Bar. ‘Otherwise I might start talking in self-defence. I mean, if they knew how everyone at school was doing it, not to mention the pot and all the rest of it—if they knew the temptations I’d had and the example that had been set me by—by older girls than me: well, I wouldn’t be so much to blame, would I? So everyone had better just shut up, hadn’t they? And I didn’t say I was down by the river near Mardon’s, I said “we were on that bench, not the Mardon’s one but the other bench”. Or would you like to get up in court when they’re trying my father for murder and say that you know I wasn’t at the Mardon’s bench because you were there yourselves all night, having it off with a couple of boys?’

‘My God, that young Daphne, she’s a cool one!’ said Maureen to Linda as they hastily went away. (All the same, she
had
said she’d been outside Mardon’s.)

Daphne herself was not too pleased with the way she had handled it. She should have thought of that threat earlier. Because one day she was going to have to face Daddy and she’d definitely told Daddy that she’d been by the Mardon’s bench; and he’d commented that that wasn’t on the way home—he wouldn’t forget that, you couldn’t just slur it over with
him
. Had Mummy heard? No, she hadn’t come downstairs by then. So only Daddy would know. A thought flicked through her mind and flicked out again. If Daddy knew she’d told one lie, would he begin to wonder if, after all, Simon had been innocent?

If Daddy should give her away! If everyone got to know that she’d gone to that place, that she’d been with that sailor, that she’d lied about poor Simon and lied and lied and lied… If all the newspapers, cooing now about poor little innocent-injured Golden Daffodil—if they knew that she was just a sexy trollop who could give lessons to any of the boys at school and
had
given lessons to most of them! If they knew that she’d let Daddy go off and murder Simon—murder him!—was letting Daddy now face the rest of his life in prison, all because of her lies… And Mummy, poor Mummy, having to live on, with all the family knowing that Daddy had killed Simon, her own cousin, his own nephew, his own brother’s son—had actually shot and killed him: because of her lies…! If Daddy were ever to give her away!

But he wouldn’t. How could he ever harm her, his Golden Daffodil? He’d die to protect her. Daddy would
die
for her.

And it wasn’t only Maureen and Lindy. Now a man came forward and told the police that he’d recognised her picture in the paper as that of a girl he’d seen that night at the Blue Bar, a disreputable haunt of sailors in the bad part of town.

The police had informed the solicitor who was looking after Daddy’s defence and he came to see her. Could this man’s story possibly be true?

‘Of course not,’ said Daffy, opening the large blue eyes. ‘I never even heard of such a place.’

‘You were at the folk-singing café all through the evening?’

‘Yes, till we went home by the river. Of course we were.’

‘Did you see anyone who might confirm that?’

‘What, you mean at the café? No, we didn’t see anyone we knew. We were near the back and they keep the lights very low because of the singing.’

‘One man did speak to you?’

‘Yes, but he was a pusher.
He
wouldn’t come forward, would he?’

No flies on little Miss Jones, reflected the solicitor. He suggested: ‘Your cousin, however, had wanted to take you to some place like this bar? You told your father so.’

‘Oh, yes, but…’ She thought it all out rapidly. It was getting rather scarey. ‘Perhaps the man saw Simon there on some other night,’ she suggested, ‘and just mixed up the nights. He used to take other girls there—or anyway to some place.’

‘It was your picture the man recognised.’

‘He couldn’t from the papers, that was the most awful thing. He probably recognised Simon’s and remembered seeing him there on some other night with some other girl and then associated the other girl with me.’ It sounded pretty good, but it wouldn’t deceive Daddy; Daddy would think it too much of a coincidence, after all she’d told him about Simon wanting to take her to just such a place. And the thought flicked in and out again. If Daddy realised that all along Simon had been innocent of any assault on her—would he really stand by her still? Would he let Simon be blamed for the rest of his life—well, for the rest of his death, then: wouldn’t that seem even worse to Daddy?—that Simon was dead and unable to defend himself, that all Simon’s family, Daddy’s own family, his brothers and sisters and Granny and everyone—should live on, believing that dead Simon had been so vile, when all the time he’d been innocent? Of course she could admit to having been to the Blue Bar—to having allowed Simon to inveigle her to that awful place and then been ashamed to admit it; it need make no difference to the story of his subsequent attack on the river bank. But then if more people came forward, if people remembered how she’d gone off with the sailor of her own accord—indeed against Simon’s rather woozy protestations. Nothing to do but deny it; deny it all.

‘Don’t tell Daddy about it,’ she said. ‘It simply isn’t true that the man could have seen me there; it would only upset him.’

It upset the solicitor also. He thought to himself: ‘If this damn’ little bitch has been lying all this time!’ But it was necessary to take the story to her father.

The sad, grey man caged up in the prison hospital awaiting his trial said at once: ‘Of course it isn’t true.’

‘The man’s very sure. He says he remarked at the time how ill-suited they were to such a place.’

‘No, no, he
wanted
to take her—’ But that didn’t make sense. A thought, a memory, came to his mind, terrifying in its intensity. But he thrust it aside. ‘Surely this—mistake of this man’s needn’t come out in court?’

‘I don’t think so, no. They were obliged to inform us. But it’s no good to the prosecution. You’re pleading guilty, so that’s all there is to it. And for the defence—’

‘I don’t want any defence. I’ve told you. I killed the boy for what he did to my child. I don’t want any defence.’

‘It’s just a matter of mitigating circumstances. But anyway,’ said the lawyer, ‘this wouldn’t help us either, so I think we’ll just drop the whole matter.’ Hardly a mitigating circumstance if the boy turned out to have been shot for something he had never done.

The lawyer went away. But the memory came back. That cry, only half heard, all unattended to. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Uncle John. She
made
me take her there.’ Dear God! If Simon had been innocent after all!

Goodness, the photographers outside the court! It was like being a film star. And of course her hair was done now and Freesia, quite thrilled, had made a special job of it and it looked terrific. And the bruises on her face had faded. Pity she couldn’t have used her proper make-up but it would be best, they’d said, to appear very young and fresh and innocent, not to say generally gormless: so that Daddy couldn’t be blamed too much for what he’d done. And, indeed, in the witness box she looked like a flower, the light shining down from the canopy above on the careful halo of golden hair: the golden, Golden Daffodil.

Your name is Daphne Jones? Of such and such an address? And you are sixteen years of age…?

Only sixteen years of age.

Only sixteen; and had been with every boy in the top form at school, with or without drugs for extra kicks.

‘Yes, sixteen last birthday.’

‘Now, don’t upset yourself, Miss Jones—or Daphne, may I call you

Daphne? I just wanted to ask you to tell us very simply in your own words what happened that night, the night your cousin died.’

(
It wasn’t my fault
,
Uncle John
.
She made me take her there
.)

Best to cover all tracks. They weren’t going to use it in court, she knew that now. But best to cover all tracks: the man might talk to the paper afterwards, one never knew.

‘He wanted to take me to a dance place he knew about. He used to go there, he used to take other girls. But it sounded like a horrible place so I wouldn’t go.’

‘You went instead to—?’

‘We went to the Singing Café and then we came home by the path along the river bank—’

‘Would that be your direct way home?’

‘No, he just wanted to come that way. He made me come that way.’ But she saw from beneath her eye-lashes the suddenly tightened grip of the two thin hands clasped on the edge of the dock and she knew that that had been a mistake. Daddy would know better; Simon had never in all his life made her do anything against her will—it had been all the other way.

‘He wasn’t like his usual self,’ she said quietly. ‘He’d been smoking this pot.’

‘And then I think you came to a certain bench—?’

‘Yes,’ she said, quickly again, running it on into the next sentence, ‘and then we sat down and we were looking at the river—’

It made no difference whatever to the case against John Jones, which bench it had been. But something had to be said in the wretched man’s defence and if one could spin it out a little more, Counsel felt, it would look a bit more like earning one’s fee. He humped himself over, leaning on both fisted hands, looking earnestly down at a map laid out before him.

‘That would be the bench outside Dent’s warehouse—here?’

‘Yes,’ she said, slurring it over quickly again, into the following words, ‘and we sat there—’

She saw the quick upwards jerk of the bowed head. He called out sharply from the dock, called out sharply in that high, harsh too-well-remembered voice he had spoken in that night, just before Simon died. ‘You told me it was Mardon’s bench.’

Shushing from the Clerk of the Court and ushers; a glance of compassionate severity from the Bench. But now she knew that Daddy knew. There was nothing to be done about that—nothing. She must concentrate on convincing the court that she spoke the truth. She explained it all away in her frank little, rather charmingly garrulous way.

‘I keep just saying that it wasn’t the bench by Mardon’s but then people seem to remember that I said the word “Mardon’s” and they think I said it
was
. But it wasn’t. It was the warehouse bench. He took me to the warehouse bench.’

‘Very well. In fact, which bench it was doesn’t really matter. But something happened there which you later told your father? Now—what did you tell him? Tell us, please, just as you told it to him.’

So she told it all again: lived yet again through that horrible half hour with the sailor, Butch—lived through the last half of the time anyway: the less said about the first ten minutes the better, but the rest she lived through as she had lived through it many times already—each time ascribing her injuries, as now, to her cousin. Lived through it: poured it all out, the filth, the bestiality, the brutality, the dress half torn away, the terrible bruising… They listened breathlessly and, as her voice fell silent in the hushed court, she knew that she had won—had won for herself but had won for Daddy also—if only he would accept it. A father—hearing that story poured out through bruised and bleeding lips, seeing the white young face ugly with bruising, the bitten and broken skin, the torn, dishevelled hair—whatever the father had subsequently done, must be condoned to the fullest limit of the law’s discretion. Poor little injured blossom, poor smirched and broken golden Daffodil! Not a man in court but knew—but hoped with all his heart—that he would have done the same. Not a man in court who did not feel sick to the pit of his stomach at the wrongs that had been done to this lovely child. Not one man.

Or only one.

He had to be helped to the witness box; and now the light shone down, not upon yellow halo and pale, uplifted face but on a bowed head whose face and hair seemed almost of a uniform grey. He fumbled his way through the oath. He said: ‘I have to tell. I have to say…’

From the body of the court where now she sat with her mother, she shot up to her feet.

She cried out, sick, faltering, terrified, hardly knowing what she was doing: ‘Daddy!’ And on a note of pleading, again, ‘Daddy!’

Hushing and shushing. Throughout it he stood there looking back at her terrified face: a long, long, searching look. If that boy had all along been innocent…! He looked into her sick white face and knew that she had lied to him. He had killed—murdered—an innocent child.

Her mother saw the first signal: the terrible purple red flush rising up over the ashy grey; and into the silence she, also, cried out, ‘John! Your pills!’ and besought the stern face a thousand miles away up there on the Bench: ‘He’s going to have a heart attack. He must take his pills.’