Felicia's Journey (17 page)

‘We’re not on the needle,’ Lena says.

‘No one’s saying you are.’ The second young woman picks up her companion’s petulant tone. ‘All that’s being said to you is you might handle something by chance.’

‘Hold the finger under a hot tap for a good ten minutes. Then dip it into household bleach.’

When the Aids women have passed on, and in a tone that suggests he has been giving the matter thought during their harangue, George says:

‘We wouldn’t know about lawn-mowers.’

He nods repeatedly to emphasize this conclusion, and Lena says she agrees. Not in their line, she adds, but there you are. They finish the breakfast they’ve been provided with and Lena says:

‘Coming over to the park, Felicia?’

It isn’t far away; they sit there watching people going to work. On soil as black as coal, roses have not yet begun to sprout their new season’s leaves. The grass, cropped close months ago, still shows no sign of growth; flowerbeds are free of weeds. The wooden
seat they occupy is dedicated to Jacob and Mir Abrahams.
Died with others, 1938. Remembered here
.

‘What I’d have is one of them big brown dogs that has their mouths open,’ Lena remarks. ‘First thing if I came into money I’d get one of them dogs. Nice friendly fellow you could take on to the streets. Know what I mean, Felicia?’

A sedate couple pass by, arm in arm. Retired, Lena speculates; taking it easy now. Funny to be out so early, funny they don’t have a dog. ‘Anyone today, George?’ she inquires, and George says yes, today is the birthday of the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

‘I’m sorry we don’t know about the lawn-mower thing,’ he says.

He stands up, and so does Lena. Felicia realizes her encounter with them is over. He didn’t forget, George says: yesterday he sent the Bishop of Bath and Wells a card with a squirrel on it. He smiles, nodding again when he adds that the Bishop of Bath and Wells is probably opening it at this very moment. There was a sermon once, he says, when he was at school. In which it was stated that bishops were lonely.

‘Good luck, Felicia,’ Lena says. ‘Good luck with your fella.’

‘I put a little rhyme I know on it,’ George says, and pauses to recite with his clear enunciation:

‘Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn
.’

They go, and Felicia watches them sauntering through the flowerbeds, while George’s voice continues, before it fades away to nothing.

13

Mr Hilditch is in his big front room. ‘Blue Hawaii’ is playing. The
Daily Telegraph
is limp on his knees.

When the doorbell sounds he doesn’t move. He knows she won’t go away, she’ll ring again. When she does he rises slowly and crosses the hall at the same leisurely pace, all the nagging doubts he has experienced dissipating so swiftly that they have gone completely by the time he reaches the door. ‘Blue Hawaii’ has come to an end, but he continues the tune with his breath, passing it softly over his lower teeth. He raises a hand to the mourning tie he’s wearing, straightening it before he opens the door.

‘We meet again,’ he says, his smile agreeable.

Mr Hilditch doesn’t press his visitor to enter his house. He stands on the doorstep with her, having to peer at her because it is dark. He recalls as a child trying to entice a mouse into a trap that was made like a cage. You put the cheese down and then go away. Every day you put the cheese down a little closer to the metal wire and in the end the mouse goes in of its own accord, confident that it knows what’s what.

‘You’ve had no luck in your searchings?’

Mr Hilditch speaks coolly, not wishing to give the impression of any satisfaction on his part. He listens while he’s told that the Irish girl has been all over the place. He leaves it to her to tell her story.

‘I’ve had my money stolen.’

‘Stolen?’

‘Well, it disappeared. It was hidden away in one of my carriers and when I looked it wasn’t there.’

‘You’ve been in doubtful company, have you?’

He listens while he’s told about the religious house, and then contributes the view that any kind of fanatic isn’t to be trusted.
The Irish girl says she doesn’t know what to do. She has been in other bed-and-breakfast places, she says.

‘How long have you got?’ Mr Hilditch pats his stomach. ‘You know.’

‘I’m four months gone.’

‘It hardly shows. Just a little. Just beginning to.’

‘You said could you – you said could you help me that day…’ She begins to stutter, then steadies herself. ‘I was wondering…’ Again she breaks off, and he nods to encourage her. ‘I was wondering if you could lend me the fare to go home.’ The stutter sets in again when she tries to say it’s a cheek asking a stranger. She says she doesn’t know where to turn.

‘You want to go back?’

‘It was a mistake coming over here, I shouldn’t ever have come over.’

‘What about your friend though?’

‘I’ll never find him.’

When the girl says that Mr Hilditch realizes she has lost heart. In spite of his reservations, he should have approached her again when he saw her on the street. It may now be too late: from his experience he knows that once they get a notion into their heads it isn’t easy to disabuse them of it. If she feels she has turned up every stone, that may simply be that. Mr Hilditch is aware of a coldness in his stomach, the feeling that something he considered to be his may be clawed away from him. Alert to the danger, he speaks deliberately and slowly, simulating a calmness that does not reflect this inner tumult.

‘The irony is, if your friend knew all this he’d be doing his nut with worry. I’ve had experience of that. If he knew what you’ve been through, all the hoo-ha at home and then looking for him in a country that’s strange to you, the poor fellow’d be beside himself.’

There are tears then, as he suspected there might be. It’s all down to the boyfriend’s mother, he hears again, and experiences a measure of relief, he’s not sure why. He listens while it is repeated that the mother wrote lies in a letter; that she said don’t come at Christmas, inventing some reason or other.

‘Do you know that for a fact, Felicia? Have you heard from someone it was the mother?’

‘It was her. I’d swear to it now.’

‘So you’ve heard from no one back home since you got here?’

‘No one knows where I am.’

‘But they know you came after Johnny?’

‘Only she knows the town he’s in.’

‘And of course she wouldn’t tell him you’d taken off. Naturally.’

‘No, she wouldn’t.’

She mentions a loan again, embarrassed, as she was before. She mentions the sum that is necessary, which she has calculated. He doesn’t respond directly, but says:

‘It doesn’t seem a pity to you to give up so easily? Since you’ve come so far with so much at stake? For starters, will they welcome you back?’

She has her carrier bags with her and hasn’t put them down. ‘I’d rather find Johnny,’ she whispers, sobs catching on the words. ‘Only I never will now.’

‘What I’m thinking is, after all you’ve been through maybe we should make one last effort. D’you understand me, Felicia? I could ask the girl in the office to ring round like I suggested to you. D’you remember I suggested that, Felicia? If Johnny said a lawnmower works, it must be there somewhere.’

She shakes her head, wiping her nose with a tissue. ‘I must have got it wrong.’

Slowly he shakes his head also. ‘Just an hour or two it would take, nothing great. That girl’s smart, she knows a thing or two. Another thing is, there’s places I’ve heard of where the Irish boys meet up of an evening. For instance, the Blue Light. Have you checked out the Blue Light at all?’

She says she hasn’t and he puts it to her that it could be worth looking at, it and a couple of other places. Just to make sure before she throws in the sponge.

‘It was understandable, you scuttling off like that the other week, dear. I passed that incident on to Ada when she had a bright moment and she said it was understandable. I only mention it because I wouldn’t want you to think there was offence taken.’

‘Is your wife getting better?’

‘Ada died, dear.’

Her hand goes to her mouth, a swift, uneasy motion. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The words come out in a rush, with a hint of the stutter again. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

‘Three nights ago.’ He lets a silence develop, since one is called for. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he continues eventually, ‘we have to say a blessed release. We have to use that expression, Felicia.’

He can sense her trying to make a response, but she cannot find the words. He senses what she’s thinking. She’s thinking that you get caring and kindness from a person who has worries of his own and you turn your back on him in his moment of need. All he asked for that day was a couple of hours’ company, the only request he made.

‘Well, I’ll say good-night.’ He hesitates, experiencing an impulse to recall ‘Blue Hawaii’, to breathe it soundlessly over his lower teeth. ‘Unless you’d care for a beverage of some sort?’ he offers, resisting this urge to honour the melody. ‘You’d be welcome of course. I’m making tea.’

After a moment’s hesitation on her part also, she mounts the steps to the hall door.

The kitchen is enormous, the biggest Felicia has ever been in. Its wooden ceiling is stained with the vapours of generations, a single ham hook all that remains of the row there must once have been. Two dressers are crowded with china; a long deal table occupies the central area; pairs of tights hang from drying-rails on a pulley. There are four upright chairs, a step-ladder against one wall, an old sewing-machine in a corner, a mangle. The refrigerator and an electric stove seem out of place.

‘They’re near by,’ the man who hasn’t yet told her his name says, running water into an electric kettle. ‘The places where the Irish boys meet up. I could run you over.’

‘You mean now?’

‘It’s early yet. The Blue Light’s a fish bar. I have high hopes of the Blue Light, a feeling in my bones. To tell you the truth, it would lift me to go out. If you wouldn’t mind a drive.’

Half-heartedly, Felicia shakes her head. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t mind.’ Her tone is bleak. It won’t be any good. All that’s left is the chance of borrowing money.

‘We’ll have a bite to eat first.’

She wonders if his wife’s body has been brought back to the house, and as though something of this thought has crept into her expression he says the funeral was this morning. She sees him noticing the tights on the drying-rack. He turns away from her while in silence he lowers the rack and clears it. When he has folded them and placed them in a drawer, he deposits liver and vegetables on the table and sets about preparing them. He opens a tin containing different varieties of biscuits and invites her to help herself while she is waiting, inviting her also to sit down.

‘That’s very bad about your money,’ he says.

‘I know.’

‘Have you nothing left at all?’

She tells him: how much she has now, how because the Salvation Army hostel was full she spent last night in a house that was being rebuilt.

‘You’ll try the Sally hostel again tonight?’

‘I don’t know.’

She doesn’t want to say it will be too late if they go out to the places he has heard about, but from the way he nods ruminatively, while cutting the green off carrots, she can tell that this has dawned on him. And he says:

‘Perhaps we should leave it for tonight. I’ve delayed you enough with my talk. I’m sorry about that.’

‘I’d like to go tonight.’

He nods again, in that same way, as if he has guessed this would be her response.

‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ she says.

With his back to her, he washes the carrots under a running tap. Ada was devout, he says; she came of a devout family. All that was a help to her towards the end.

‘She would be happy to see you back with us, dear. She’d be happy to see us going out to look for Johnny.’ Slicing liver, he tells
her about the funeral: the Reverend Arthur Chase, and a large turn-out, a great spread of wreaths.

‘I apologized on account I couldn’t invite them back to the house, not being up to anything social. But the Reverend Chase said come in for a bite and a few of us did. A few of my regimental cronies were there, always had a soft spot for her. And of course her friends from the voluntary service, out in force. I have to say it was touching, what they commented about her.’

They eat in the dining-room. Felicia’s deadened gaze passes over the mahogany expanse of dining-table and sideboard, the tallboy in the bow window, the portraits in pride of place on three walls, the set of brown Rexine-covered chairs. On the mantelpiece there’s a framed photograph of a plump-cheeked woman with a black ribbon trailed around it. ‘A crematorium service,’ he says, and she imagines a church, not knowing what a crematorium is. When he has poured tea and offered the tin of biscuits again, they collect up the dishes they have eaten from. Pausing by the photograph before they leave the dining-room, his massive shoulders heave, and the bulge of his neck heaves also. When he turns to address her, to remark that his wife was a wonderful woman, his pinprick eyes are lost behind his misted spectacles. She feels ashamed all over again that she took fright after he’d been so good to her, having time for her when there was the worry of his wife’s operation. No one has been as concerned: she remembers the hostile faces in the Gathering House, and the suspicion in Mrs Lysaght’s face, and her father calling her a hooer. Lena and George walked off, wanting to be on their own. She remembers Miss Furey warning her to be careful about what she said.