Dolly (21 page)

I nodded. ‘What about Miss Lawlor?’ I asked him, longing to put her mind at rest.

‘Miss Lawlor, as I said, gets a sum of five thousand pounds, which I am empowered to pay her immediately, or to invest for her, whichever she prefers. And now, Jane, I believe Miss Lawlor has something to say to you.’

Miss Lawlor put a trembling hand on mine. ‘I can’t work here any more, Jane. I decided this afternoon, although I did ask Mr Pickering’s advice earlier, when he called on us
before the … this morning. I’m too old, dear. I’m seventy. And that little attack of breathlessness was a warning. I believe our dear one thought of all this when she decided to leave me all that money.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘She was my dear friend. Forgive me, Jane, but it wouldn’t be the same without her.’

‘How will you live?’ I asked her, my lips numb.

‘I’ll be all right, dear, at home with Fluff.’ Fluff was her cat. ‘And I’ve got the church. I won’t be alone. But I do worry about you here in this flat. It was different when she was alive. Now it seems so big.’ And so empty, was what she meant.

‘Here I have a suggestion which you might think about, Jane,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘As you know I live in Dolphin Square.’ I had not known this and did not immediately see its relevance. ‘There is a small flat going on the fourth floor of my building, that is two floors above me. It is, as I say, small: two rooms, bathroom and kitchen. But the advantage is that it gets the sun all day and is very easy to maintain. I believe you should sell this place and make a move across the river. You will be quite comfortable there.’ He gave a small constrained smile. ‘And I shall be able to keep an eye on you.’

In a day of dispossessions this seemed the most final. But I was daunted by the prospect of living in our flat entirely on my own, without Miss Lawlor for company. I had asked her how she would live, but how would I live? I would find work eventually; indeed I would work desperately hard at some humble employment in an effort to forget my swollen inheritance. But to come back from wherever that work would take
place (I was still thinking in terms of ABC Enterprises) to an empty flat, each room of which would resonate with other presences, was perhaps more than I could endure. The question was whether I could endure my loneliness any better in a small flat in a large anonymous block, whether or not it got the sun all day. How much sun was there in England, anyway? Would I sit at the window on eternal winter days and wait for it to return? Was that how I should spend my time? Or should I be meticulously well organised and turn myself into a facsimile of John Pickering?

He smiled encouragingly. ‘It is a big decision, I know, but now is the time to make it. I can arrange everything for you, sale, purchase, removal, everything. And you have only to call on me if you need anything, you know.’

‘What do you think?’ I appealed to Miss Lawlor.

‘Mr Pickering is right, Jane. Start afresh. You’re only young; you’ve got your life ahead of you. Don’t stay here, dear. You’ll be too sad. I haven’t been comfortable here myself since … It’s too big, Jane. It needs a lot of work doing. Make a fresh start, dear. I’ll come and see you. It’s only across the river.’

But we both knew that she would not come and see me, or rather that she would come once to satisfy her conscience, and then thankfully return home to her own tea-time and her own comforts. And after that I would visit her, for as long as would be necessary. Since they both seemed to want me to move I said I would, although the loss of my only home would grieve me. When John Pickering left, with assurances of his help in all eventualities, I realised that I had agreed to
go and see the flat in Dolphin Square on the following day, Saturday, when he would be at home to show it to me. I did this to please Miss Lawlor, who now looked exhausted. I saw her off, washed up, and went to bed. That night I did not sleep. I felt inhabited by ghosts, and could not wait for the following day, and the changes it would bring.

I
was to move into the new flat after Christmas. I decided to take nothing with me except my bed, a chest of drawers, a table, and my parents’ armchairs. The rest could be picked up as and when I needed it: I had done with bourgeois accoutrements. A considerable quantity of glass and china went round to Miss Lawlor, who also undertook to dispose of my mother’s clothes. Although most of the looming furniture was still in place the flat began to look denuded. I ate hastily from the cups, saucers and plates I had reserved for myself and took my improvised meals on a tray in the kitchen, for there were no more tablecloths. This grand expulsion of my parents’, even my grandparents’, effects was accomplished with a cold determination which was intended to be an antidote to sorrow. At the back of my mind lurked the spectre of homesickness, which would no doubt come into its own once I lay in a different bedroom watching different lights flickering over a different landscape, so removed from the dark silent mass of the park, which took
on a venerable aspect at night, and which no sound, apart from the muffled squeak of an animal, ever disturbed.

Soon there would be a busy road outside my window, and cars, and the impenetrable barrier of the dirty river, which would symbolise my separation from my old home. I had visited the flat and found it unobjectionable: it had been sunny, and the view from the window was quite distracting. The walls were solid, the rooms were functional and already carpeted and curtained by the previous tenant; it was very warm, with the dry, slightly stale warmth of a heated building when the weather outside is still mild. One thing had worried me: the noise of the lift going up and down and the unseen presence of so many people. In our old flat it was easy to avoid the neighbours because they all went out early in the morning, leaving my mother and Miss Lawlor, and myself if I were at home, undisturbed all day. The only couple who seemed to keep the same hours as we did consisted of a curious brother and sister who were never out of each other’s company, both tall, both distinguished-looking, clad in identical Burberry raincoats over identical trousers, who murmured to each other in a language we could never identify, but who nodded and smiled and bade us ‘Good-morning’ in perfect unaccented English. My father had entertained a fantasy that they were deposed aristocrats from somewhere in central Europe and had embroidered this story until it became one of the set pieces of my childhood. Each encounter with them, as they silently and conspiratorially descended the stairs, revived our speculations. ‘Latvian? Serbian?’ my mother would ask, to which my father would reply, The bone structure is too northern—those long jawbones,
you know. And that pale hair. Possibly Icelandic. Does anybody know them? What do they do all day?’

‘They go for a walk in the park, as we do.’

‘Suspicious. Are they waiting for the call?’

‘If they are Icelandic they can’t be waiting for a call. Iceland is a democracy.’

‘Have you considered Hungary? What about Bulgaria? We haven’t heard the last of Bulgaria. I think we must widen our parameters.’

‘They are always perfectly pleasant. They say “Good-morning”, and remark on the weather. I feel we should invite them to something.’

‘And reveal our ignorance?’

‘I’m sure there’s nothing political about them. We would know if they were Russians. And anyway Russian spies seem to be a thing of the past. I dare say they can’t afford them any more.’

‘They may be members of the Israeli secret service. They are masters of disguise, I believe.’

The truth, when it was casually mentioned by the porter, was an anticlimax. The name of the couple was Dix, and they were French Canadian. So extremely subtle were their appearances and disappearances that I did not think to say goodbye to them. Apart from Miss Lawlor there was no one to whom I need say goodbye, a fact which filled me with relief. Miss Lawlor knew where I should be, John Pickering knew, Marigold knew. I telephoned Dolly to give her my new address, expecting a torrent of criticism, but she sounded detached, even indifferent. This I put down to the credit of Harry Dean, who must, I thought, be keeping her
occupied, or at the very least preoccupied. I had no idea how a couple of that age would amuse themselves. If I thought of them at all it was with a vague pity for their supposed infirmity, as if pleasure were beyond them, or should be. Indeed I did not think in terms of pleasure, which I identified with a certain slimness of build, whereas Dolly and Harry were both plump, as if after a lifetime of indulgence: I could still see Harry lolling in Dolly’s armchair, his foot wagging in time to invisible music, and Dolly, important at his side, her bosom straining against a dress which was now, as it always had been, slightly too tight. I imagined them restricted to the indulgence of overeating, as if that might be how they spent their time together. I was aware of my own lack of experience, for at that stage I had no physical life of my own, but I was sure that my instincts were correct. I saw that what united them was greed. In this I was fairly prescient. Unfortunately I was not yet in a position to identify that greed. Therefore I was both right and wrong, but I did not give the matter much thought. Indeed I viewed it with some distaste, as a taboo which should be preserved intact. I was simply grateful to Harry for taking Dolly off my hands.

As far as I was concerned I was under an obligation to Dolly. It never occurred to me that she might be under an obligation to me. I am quite sure it never occurred to Dolly either. Despite the gulf in our respective ages it was natural to me to think of Dolly as the younger of the two of us, for she laid claim to so many pleasures which as yet made no appeal to me, and which I, in my wisdom, considered illusory. Even her injunction to sing and dance I took as an indication of juvenility, not recognising it for the desperate
stratagem it was in reality. In this way I managed not to take her seriously, although I found her disturbing, and for this reason never enjoyed her company, although Dolly did not doubt that she was bestowing pleasure wherever she went. Her visits to my mother were conceived with this purpose in mind, as if compensating her for the negligeable advantage she enjoyed by virtue of the mere fact of her private income, an advantage which did not render her interesting but which Dolly sought to alleviate by accepting her benefices from time to time. When pocketing my mother’s cheques Dolly never doubted that she was doing my mother a favour. ‘Poor Etty,’ one could imagine her saying to herself in all good faith. ‘Such a dull girl. Sitting at home all day in that mausoleum. And all those wasted assets! What wouldn’t I do with her money! But she means no harm, poor dear, she just wants a bit of gumption. I’ll cheer her up. I always do.’

She might reflect, without any sense of incongruity, that it was time to send some money to Nice, to the mother whom she now rarely visited, or to Lucette, who looked after her mother’s affairs. She saw no harm in mentioning this new outlay. Her great strength was that she felt no shame in talking about money, whereas to my mother the whole subject was fraught with guilt. To Dolly money was a commodity like any other: she needed it, others had it. She could have it simply by pointing out the discrepancy. A more spirited woman than my mother might have said, ‘But if I hand it over to you I won’t have it any more, and then what will you do? For there is no doubt that you will go on wanting it.’ But my mother was ashamed of her money; hence the furtive cheques, for which she seemed to want to be forgiven. If
anything she was reassured by the magnificent equanimity with which Dolly stowed the cheque in her bag. ‘I hope she didn’t feel insulted,’ my mother would worry, but even I, even as a child, could see that her worries were unnecessary.

Now that I was between homes, in a sort of no-man’s-land, I found that I had a great deal of unoccupied and unattributed time. This frightened me, and I was hard put to fill the day. In desperation I went back to ABC Enterprises, to find Margaret and Wendy gone, and the builders dismantling the inner office, but Mrs Hemmings still on the telephone and not much incommoded by the open doors and the sound of Radio One.

‘Ah, Jane,’ she said, when she at last replaced the receiver. ‘You’re lucky to catch me, I shall be gone by tomorrow. My husband has booked us both on a Caribbean cruise, did so without telling me. Of course it’s massively inconvenient. On the other hand I’ve no staff, as you may have noticed. So I’m leaving it all behind me. You weren’t expecting to do any work, were you?’

‘I was, actually.’

‘As you can see, there’s nothing to do. This is the official end of ABC Enterprises. I thought of keeping the name, but then I thought, why not make a clean break? So I’ve given the business to my son, and it’ll be James Hemmings Enterprises in future. Or JH Enterprises, I suppose. He’ll want to make changes, of course. But I’ll take your number and let you know. There’s not much going on before Christmas anyway. Where are you living now? Still in the same place?’

‘Dolphin Square.’

‘In that case Warwick Way would be quite convenient for
you. I’ll let you know. It depends on my son, of course. At the moment all I want to do is get on that ship and into the sun. Well, goodbye, Jane. Nice of you to come and see me. Perhaps we’ll meet in the New Year. Oh, and Merry Christmas!’