Joy and Josephine (16 page)

She wanted her mother to send for one of the Moores, but Mrs Abinger did not think Mrs Moore would like her children to come up to the flat. Jo wanted to ask Sidney to go up to Chepstow Villas and bring Billy down, but Sidney would not come up to see her. She got up and dressed one day, but there was no way out except through the shop. Her mother caught her, and when Jo fought, and cried that she must go out, Mrs Abinger thought she was delirious, and prolonged her stay in bed.

After tea on Sunday, before he went to bowls, Mr Abinger was favouring Jo with a sonorous chapter, when his wife put a smiling face round the door.

‘Who do you think is here asking to see Jo?’ she said.

George jerked his head up irritably. He did not like to be interrupted. ‘Can’t you see I’m reading, Ellie? They can’t see her now. Some school friend, is it?’

‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Abinger triumphantly. ‘It’s little Billy Moore. Fancy him thinking of coming asking after her. There’s manners for you.’

‘Tell him to take his manners away and come back later.’

‘I can’t do that, dear. It’s very nice of him to come down on a Sunday when I’ve no doubt they’ve got all kinds of other things to do. You come out now, George, and let them have a little time together. They’re such chums. You can finish the tale another time.’

‘Indeed I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m a very busy man, and when I do give up my time, I don’t expect to have to take a back seat to every whipper-snapper schoolboy. We don’t want him inter rupting us, do we, Jo?’

‘George, please – there’s a dear.’ Mrs Abinger said nervously, knowing what Jo would answer.

But he persisted: ‘Which would you rather, Jo – have more reading, or see the boy?’

Jo looked down and plucked at the sheet. ‘I want to see Billy,’ she mumbled.

‘There!’ Mr Abinger stood up and shut the book with a snap which released its musty odour about the room. ‘That’s the way children repay kindness nowadays. Well, you needn’t ask me to read again, young madam, just when it pleases you. It may not please
me
another time.’

‘Come along, dear.’ Mrs Abinger took his arm. ‘It’s nearly time for you to go to bowls, anyway.’

He drew his gold watch from his waistcoat. ‘There is exactly fourteen and a half minutes before it’s time to go to bowls,’ he said. His watch was always dead right on a Sunday, because he took a special walk before lunch to set it by the clock of St John’s, Lansdowne Crescent, in which he had great faith.

Now he had nothing to do for fourteen minutes. He wanted to go on reading. He enjoyed reading aloud; it was a fine opportunity to hear the uninterrupted sound of his own voice. He shook off his wife’s hand, and stalked out, thrusting his long head forward like an angry moose.

Jo did not mind. She was too excited about seeing Billy. He
came in rather self-consciously, swinging a cap in one hand, the other distorting the pocket of his shorts. He greeted her with the artificial breeziness of Tom Merry.

‘Hullo there,’ he said. ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo, kiddo.’

‘Hullo Bill.’ She looked at him shyly from under her lashes. He looked handsome and lively, a breath from the gay outdoors from which she was banned.

‘Come and sit down, dear.’ Mrs Abinger fussed round him as if he were a princeling. She drew the chair up to the end of the bed, and Billy sat on the edge of it, still whirling his cap. ‘Let me get you something nice to eat,’ she jerked the curtain more tidily across the corner where Josephine’s clothes hung, as if he were a grown-up, who would notice the details of the room.

‘Oh – no, thanks awfully. I don’t want anything.’

‘Now that’s not true, I’m sure. I’ll get you a slice of my iced cake. And lemonade – would that be all right?’

He grinned and nodded at her, not knowing what to say. He found her rather overpowering. His own mother was thin and cool and did not lean all over you.

When she went out, he turned to make sure she had really gone, then turned back to Jo and shifted his chair forward. ‘I thought I’d better come and see you,’ he began.

Jo sat up very straight in the exact centre of the bed, smoothing down the sheets coquettishly, like a queen waiting to receive tribute.

‘Yes.’ He looked over his shoulder again, and hitched his chair farther forward, holding on to the bed rail. ‘I thought I’d better come and tell you, because you
are
one of the gang, aren’t you?
We’re going in to-night?
He hissed it at her, his round, healthy face alight with excitement.

‘You never!’ Jo’s eyes snapped wide open as she looked up.

‘Yes we are. We must, you see. We – ’ He broke off and sat back as Mrs Abinger came in with a plate and glass.

‘Oh I say, thanks awfully.’ He took them and sat holding them awkwardly, while she lingered, enjoying the scene. Perhaps she could ask all the Moores up to tea, now that Billy had been. She would make meringues, and there were those new fancy chocolate biscuits that she kept for special customers. She
might even arrive at having Mrs Moore to tea one day when George was sure to be out.

‘There’s plenty more cake,’ she said. ‘Just give me a call. Why, what’s the matter with you, Jo? You look as if you’d seen a ghost. Do you want a slice of cake?’ Jo did not answer.

‘Do you want some cake, I said. Where’s your tongue?’

‘No, Mum,’ said Jo, still staring at Billy.

‘No, thank you. Good gracious, whatever will Billy think of you? Now I’ll leave you two to have a nice little chat.’ She thought perhaps Billy might be shy of eating in front of her.

When she had gone, he put the glass on the floor, and eating the cake rapidly without tasting it, said: ‘Yes, we’re going in to-night. Isn’t it spiffing? We’ve knocked out tons of bricks, and there’s loads of room to get through. I’ve been right up to the grating twice. I didn’t mind a bit. Norman’s written a warning letter to his father, in thieves’ code, if you know what that is.’ He did not know himself, but luckily she did not ask.

‘You’re never going without me?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Well, can’t you come? You don’t look very ill.’

‘Mum won’t let me go out.’

‘Don’t tell her then. Sneak out when she’s not there.’

‘I can’t,’ she wailed. ‘You don’t understand. She’s always there.’

‘It’s a bally swizz for you, but never mind. We’ll tell you all about it after.’

‘You mustn’t go. You shan’t. Not without me. ‘Tain’t fair. Who was it went up the drain first? You wouldn’t never have known Art and Norm if it hadn’t have been for me.’

‘I’d have got to know them, I expect,’ he said airily. ‘I say, it’s going to be super fun to-night. Norm and I are going up first. I’ve made a cosh, and Wilf’s taking his jack knife. I say we ought to wear masks, like highwaymen – ’ He burbled on, obtusely elated.

She hated him. ‘If you go without me, you’re a mucking swine,’ she said, using one of the Goldners’ milder expressions.

‘We must,’ he said. ‘Everything’s ready. We can’t wait, because it’s St Leger day on Wednesday. Besides, my father’s coming on leave this week, and that means we can’t go out on
our own so much, because he’s always wanting us to play something with him.’

Mrs Abinger, unable to keep away, came back to dote like Boots at the Holly Tree Inn on what she was beginning to think of as a childhood romance. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Jo?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You’re never crying?’

‘Mum!’ Jo rubbed the sheet into her eyes. ‘I don’t feel well.’

‘What a shame just when Billy’s here. It’s her head, you know,’ she told Billy. ‘She gets these pains, and I daresay the excitement of you coming brought it on.’

‘I’m going now anyway,’ he said, getting up.

‘Perhaps it would be best, and you can come back another time when she’s feeling brighter. I’ll just go through and show you the way out.’ She hurried back into the sitting-room to put the lid on her mending basket, in case Billy should tell his mother that he had seen Mr Abinger’s pants.

‘Good-bye, Josie,’ said Billy. ‘Wish us luck.’

She bit the sheet and looked at him sullenly over it, her eyes glazed with furious tears. ‘I hates you,’ she muttered through the sheet. ‘I hates the lot of you. I’ll get even with you, see if I don’t.’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ he said. ‘Fortunes of war.’ This was what his father told him when he got a disappointment. It consoled Josephine no more than it ever did Billy.

‘Go away!’ she howled, and slumped down in the bed, drawing the clothes over her head.

‘I am,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I wish I hadn’t come.’ He did not quite know why he had come. He had been bursting to tell someone, and he had suddenly been seized by a desire to see Jo. He had run down the Portobello Road on an impulse, without thinking why.

He went out through the sitting-room, where Mr Abinger looked up, sniffed at him, and went on reading the paper. Billy did not like the stuffy smell of the room. He had never liked Mr Abinger, and he escaped quickly, glad to be out and heading for the evening’s adventure.

When George had consulted his watch, settled his hat in the
dead centre of his box-like skull and gone to Avondale Park, Mrs Abinger had a look at the evening paper. Most evenings, she never got a chance at it until last thing, for even when he was not reading it, George carried it about on his person, folded up small and thick at the piece he was going to read next.

Glancing at the photograph page first, her eye was riveted. Six years rolled away and she was in the train with Dot in that navy frock coat of hers that she was still wearing, poor soul, for all she tried to disguise it with new buttons. The man in this picture, darkened and slightly blurred by the newsprint, was the fair young man in the elegant uniform who had sat opposite them, reading the
Tatler
and swinging a polished toe.

She had often caught herself wondering what had become of Sir Rodney Cope, but she put it from her, because all that was finished and done with, now that Jo was legally hers. It made her proud sometimes to toy with the idea that Josephine might be Joy Stretton, and lately, since Jo had gone about so much with the Moores as naturally as if she was a lady born, Mrs Abinger could not help seeing her, not as the baby of the church porch, but as the baby in the Moses basket, lined with quilted pink muslin, the baby with the elegant uncle.

And now, here he was. She peered at the photograph, trying to see a family likeness.

‘Racing at Doncaster,’
the caption said.
‘The Hon. Lydia Manning-Day with Sir Rodney Cope in the paddock.’
His girl friend, like as not. Trust him to pick himself a title. He wore a bowler hat, check suit, and racing glasses, but looked just the same as he had in uniform, six years ago, as if everything were a bit too much for him. He was looking down at his race card in the same perplexed way as he had once looked down at the crying baby. The Hon. Lydia, in tweeds and a hat like a pudding basin, was as tall as he, and looked tougher. He still carried a stick. For smartness, Mrs Abinger wondered, or was he still suffering with his wound, poor thing?

She picked up the paper and carried it into Jo’s bedroom. Jo, who had been brooding under the bedclothes, sat up when she heard her mother come in. She did not want her to think she
was ill and fuss over her. She wanted to be left alone to chew her nails and think dark thoughts.

‘Look at this picture Mum’s found,’ said Mrs Abinger. ‘A gentleman I used to know. Don’t you think he looks nice?’ She laid the paper across the sheet. Vaguely, she thought that some instinct in Jo might respond; that she would take a liking to the photograph, as children took to some pictures in books and ignored others. ‘Look, he’s at the races at Doncaster. Uncle Reg went there once.’

Doncaster! The name was salt rubbed into Jo’s wounds. She turned her head away.

‘Don’t you want to see?’

Jo leaned her head back and closed her eyes. ‘I got a headache,’ she said wanly.

‘Yes, I know. It’s a shame. Have a little lay down now with the curtains drawn and I’ll see if I can find you a treat for supper.’

‘Don’t want any.’ Jo stuck out her underlip. Mrs Abinger looked from the paper to the child and back again, trying to see a resemblance between the determined little face on the pillow and the irresolute, moon-like face under the bowler hat.

She sighed and folded the paper. Fancies got you nowhere. It was silly of her to keep on, when she had sworn to herself long ago that she would never worry about who Josephine might be. She was hers, that was all that really mattered.

The bed creaked as she sat down on it. Her weight tightened the sheet across Jo’s legs and the child wriggled to the other side, pressing her shoulder against the wall. Mrs Abinger leaned across. ‘Give us a cuddle then.’

‘Don’t, Mum.’ Jo went stiff. Were children like this sometimes with their real mothers? When she was tiny, Jo had turned to her instinctively as if they were linked by blood. Adoption had seemed to make no difference then. But as she grew older and more independent, it seemed sometimes almost as if she
knew,
although not a whisper of it had ever been told her.

‘Do you love Mum?’ She could not help asking it.

Josephine pouted and jammed herself still closer against the wall.

Mrs Abinger put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up from the low bed. ‘Proper little misery, aren’t you? You didn’t want Billy to go, is that it?’

‘It
ain’t!’

‘Isn’t,’ corrected Mrs Abinger. Josephine’s vehemence made her think she had touched on the truth. She pounced gladly on something that lay on the end of the bed. ‘Well there now,’ she cried. ‘Boys are alike all the world over. Left his cap behind. That’s his school cap, I suppose.’ She looked inside it at the name of the shop, and admired the crest. ‘He’ll be back for it soon, I daresay.’

She was pleased that Billy had left it, because now he would have to come back. She hung the cap on the bed post where Jo could see it.

When she had gone, Jo plunged to the end of the bed, snatched the cap, and going to the window, opened it and flung the cap out as hard as she could. It fell in the road and she waited, shivering in her nightdress in the evening chill, until a car drove by and she saw its wheels crush the cap. She was glad. She wished the cap were Billy.