Saving Agnes (22 page)

‘It wouldn't be right,' said Greta firmly. ‘Someone has to be boss. Besides, I've got other plans. I want to be a gardener.'

‘A gardener?'

‘Sure. I found this place in Highgate where I can learn. I start next month.'

‘But why?'

‘Well, it would be kind of peaceful, don't you think? All those pretty flowers, and you get to wear overalls, and being outside all day is really good for your complexion as well.'

‘I suppose so.' Agnes looked at her miserably.

‘Don't look so glum, honey! You can find some robot to do all the work, and you and me can have a great time going out and getting smashed. It'll be neat.'

‘Actually,' Agnes confessed, cheering up, ‘I can see you as a gardener.'

‘I knew you would. And you'll do a better job here than that Bible-bashing hussy, and things will turn out just fine. Just you wait and see.'

‘Oh, Greta.' Agnes found herself becoming quite tearful. ‘What will I do without you? I'll be so lonely here.'

‘You need to have some fun,' said Greta. ‘You need to find yourself a honey and that way you'll feel fine.'

‘Oh.' Agnes put a hand to her own face. ‘Oh, I don't think so. Besides, I don't suppose anyone would be interested in me now.'

She felt a solitary tear roll down her cheek.

‘Stop that sniffling,' said Greta. ‘Let's go out and celebrate. Actually, I think I could stand a little action too, while we're on the subject. Something sensitive for a change. Someone with a little innocence.'

‘Greta,' said Agnes, ‘I have to introduce you to my friend Merlin.'

AGNES Day packed some clothes in a bag and left the house like someone leading a double life. It was cold and already dark, though she had left the office early so as to complete the commission in hand before the hours of witch and rat approached. The darkness made time uncertain. It floundered about the craven streets of north London like an amateur detective, looking for clues.

She headed towards the Blackstock Road with a furtive air. Only that morning, she and Nina and Merlin had had their modest bid for the house in Elwood Street accepted, and as a newly inaugurated member of the property-owning classes she wondered if her currently charitable behaviour would be deemed appropriate by that mysterious breed. Their purchase of the house was in itself a moderately charitable act. They were, they were agreed, to save it from the jaws of death. They would seal the crack, support the outer wall, and thus prevent their warmth, friendship and security from leaking inadvertently out. Agnes's parents had been delighted by this news. It was, they assured her, the right time in her life to be making such a move.

She took the bus to Camden. On the high street, the yellow light overlaying the darkness gave it the look of an alien city. Beside the shuttered shop-fronts sacks of rubbish lurked lumpily in the shadows. A man rooted in a bin, tossing unwanted articles over his shoulder and putting others in his
pockets. He dug out a half-eaten piece of pizza and raised it to his lips.

Agnes got off the bus and walked back to the doorway where she had loitered that evening several weeks ago, dragging the sack of clothes behind her. A group of smartly dressed people walked past her, laughing noisily. Their perfumes collided behind them like skidding cars, with disastrous results. One of the women's jewellery clanked as she walked, as if she were made of tin. Agnes saw something on the pavement and she bent down to pick it up. It was a black leather wallet. She opened it and saw it was full of money.

‘Excuse me!' she cried to the retreating group.

They walked on obliviously. She realised she had reached the doorstep, and she went to inspect it. It was empty. Moments later she guiltily remembered the wallet in her hand.

‘Excuse me!' she called again, running to catch them up.

One or two of the group heard her cries, and stopped.

‘I think you dropped this,' she panted, thrusting the wallet into the hands of the bejewelled woman.

‘Oh.' The woman examined it. ‘No, it's not mine. Ted!' she called to one of the men standing ahead. ‘Ted, is this yours?'

Agnes waited while Ted searched his pockets and shook his head. The other men began searching their pockets too. The woman was now holding the wallet as if it were contaminated.

‘No, this is nothing to do with us,' she said, shaking her head. She held it out to Agnes.

‘Keep it!' Agnes cried. She darted across the road and into a side street. After a while she heard them move on. They were discussing something in bemused voices. She wondered what they would do with it; whether they would hand it over to the police, perhaps, or give it away. Perhaps the woman would keep it, guiltily, in a drawer, while it burned a hole through her expensive lingerie. The thought of it made Agnes laugh, and the sound of her own laughter reminded her of her purpose.

She walked back on to the main road and headed for the
tube station. On her way, she discerned a figure huddling amongst a mountain of rubbish bags on the pavement. He had erected a shelter for himself out of cardboard and was lying on his side within it.

‘Excuse me,' she said, approaching him. ‘Do you know where I can find Annie?'

He appeared to be asleep. Halfway through her question, however, he opened one bloodshot eye and peered at her.

‘Spare some change,' he said.

‘Annie,' repeated Agnes. ‘Do you know where I can find her?'

‘Spare some change for an old man,' he said.

Agnes fumbled in her pockets. At this rate her quest was going to cost her a fortune. The man nodded as she gave him the money and promptly shut his eyes again. She gazed despairingly along the deserted road. Shortly ahead of her on the right was a small side street. She turned into it, hearing the noise of restaurants, and saw that it was full of people going in and out of cafes and standing on the pavements. Several passers-by had stopped and were observing a group of men on the other side of the road, who were arranged in various positions of repose between two skips. They were surrounded by plastic bags, on which some of them sat. One man remained standing in the centre, and spoke while the others listened.

‘Blessed are the poor,' he announced. As she drew closer Agnes saw that he was reading from a book. ‘For they shall get bleeding rich. They shall inherit the bleeding earth, lads.' He surveyed them imperiously. ‘But not before bleeding time.'

The group laughed, and several coughing fits were precipitated.

‘What's more,' he continued. ‘Blessed are the hungry, 'n' all. They shall be satisfied. Satisfied!' he bellowed.

‘Mine's sausage and chips, mate,' chirped one of them, a small bald man, looking at the sky. The group roared.

‘That's enough of your wit, slaphead,' retorted the leader. ‘Blessed are ye when people despise you and call you all sorts of names, except on this one occasion, right?'

A subdued wave of laughter rippled among them. Agnes approached from behind the skip.

‘Excuse me,' she said.

A heavy silence descended. All eyes turned to her. One or two people murmured.

‘Bugger off,' said the leader. ‘Can't you see we're busy?'

‘Yes,' said Agnes. ‘But I'm trying to find someone – a friend, that is, and I wondered if you might know where she is.'

‘Nice sort of friend, is she?' replied the man, to varying volumes of laughter. ‘Live around these parts, does she?' He indicated the derelict lot behind him.

‘She's called Annie,' continued Agnes hurriedly. ‘She used to be in a doorway up there. She said people round here knew her. I've brought her some things, that's all. I thought—'

‘Anyone 'ere know Annie?' announced the man, unnecessarily loudly. Several heads were shaken.

‘She that Scottish bird?' volunteered one.

‘Yes!' Agnes cried. ‘Yes, that's her. Do you know her?'

‘Not so's people would talk about it,' quipped the man.

‘Well, do you know where she is?'

The man looked at her. He was bearded and wore a tattered tweed hat.

‘She ain't here,' he said finally. ‘And you ain't going to find her, neither. She's gone.'

‘Where? Where has she gone?'

‘Dunno. She's just gone, is all. Haven't seen her round for a couple of weeks.'

‘She the Scottish one?' said the leader belatedly. ‘I got you now. I know 'er.'

‘Do you know where she is?' said Agnes.

‘Skin and bone, that the one? Yeah, I got you. Used to be up by the river, up there? Yeah, she's gone.'

The sack in Agnes's hand was heavy and she put it down. She was too late. Annie had died, in the coldness of a London night with no one in all the city to comfort her.

‘But where's she gone?' she said again.

Her mind could scarcely encompass the question. Where,
after all, was there to go? Did one just disappear, and then die again as gradually people forgot the particulars of one's life? She felt terror grip at her throat. She wondered if Annie would haunt her, her withered little ghost scuttling about the room while Agnes slept alone.

The group were regarding her now with some sympathy.

‘Sorry, love,' said one of them.

“Er son come to find her,' said the leader suddenly. ‘Took ‘er off home with him, so I heard.'

‘What?' Agnes stared at him. ‘Her son?'

The faithless Jacky had returned, then! She felt her heart swell with relief.

‘'S right. Took ‘er back to Scotch-land. Know ‘er well, did you?'

‘No,' Agnes cheerfully replied. ‘No, I didn't really know her very well.'

She turned to go, leaving the bag with them. Perhaps they could find some use for its contents. The group of men watched her.

‘By the way,' she said, turning back to them, ‘what exactly are you all doing?'

‘What does it look like?' said the leader. ‘It's a bleeding Bible class, innit?'

On the bus to Highbury she sat at the top and looked out of the window. At this level, the pavement classes were all but obliterated. One sailed, ship-like, through a strange element of streetlamps and first-floor windows, a post-diluvian world. She thought of the strange congregation she had just stumbled upon. Really, they hadn't seemed mad at all. In fact, they were quite ordinary. For a moment the empty bus appeared to shift around her to accommodate them. It struck her that faith was a free element, like air. One could have it for nothing. One could have it when one had nothing else. It was one of the comforts of ordinariness. The bus shuddered to a halt and one or two people clomped up the stairs. A man in
a long coat sat down in the adjacent seat. Out of the corner of her eye Agnes could see that he was young and rather handsome. He did not look at her. She returned despondently to her perusal of the window.

It was perhaps, after all, very simple, she thought as the bus turned into the Holloway Road. It was just a question of not looking too closely at things. Close up, the mad weave was bizarre and imageless, but from a distance a pattern could perhaps be discerned and somewhere within it all that she knew: her family, her friends and then herself, all of them busily plaiting and sewing, creating the small corner of life they would one day look back on, together or apart, as their own. She supposed one only found out how one compared by looking at the picture. It was the final result and she would wait for it, as those around her were now waiting.

The bus became entangled in a long rope of traffic. There was a unanimous sigh as the passengers settled back, resigned, into their seats. There was no hurry, after all. For ordinary people, such as herself, there was nothing to hasten towards, no defining moment. She too leaned back in her seat, succumbing to the journey's hiatus.

The bus lurched forward a few feet and then stopped. She thought of John, of his irreversible loss. Tears began to start up behind her eyes. She felt his name forming in her throat, swelling in her brain; the cipher of her desire, the word that lay between herself and the unthinkable! He was no longer perfect. In fact, he was irreparable. The worst of it was that she no longer needed him. He hadn't even left her that. For a moment her mind roared with grief for him; and then he was gone.

Agnes looked up, blinking. The light in the bus was exceptionally bright. Someone seemed to be speaking to her.

‘Excuse me?' she said.

‘I said, it gets boring, doesn't it?'

It was the man in the seat next to hers. He was smiling benignly at her. She wondered what she had been doing to make him so concerned.

‘Only if you want to get there,' she replied.

He appeared to be considering her answer.

‘That's true,' he said, nodding.

‘I mean,' she explained, ‘if you were going to the Odd Fellows' reunion party, you wouldn't be in such a hurry, would you?'

He looked at her bemusedly. She felt herself blushing. Suddenly he laughed.

‘I suppose not,' he said. ‘But I don't know if it would be worth it.'

‘That depends on how odd a fellow you are,' she replied. ‘You never know, it might open up a whole new world.'

He laughed again, this time more heartily.

‘My name's Steven,' he said, extending his hand.

She looked at the hand and then at him. Perhaps things weren't so ordinary after all.

‘Agnes,' she replied, shaking it. ‘Agnes Day.'

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The Country Life