Starlight (32 page)

‘
No – I – can – not
. Leave me alone – I’m sick of it here – I’ll get out, I think – I’ve been meaning to.’

She went towards the door, and he stood aside, unwilling to touch her, because the detestation of him, and the contempt that came from her, made him profoundly sad. Sadness held him in a kind of paralysis.

‘I’ll go to my mother at once, now,’ he said dejectedly as she went past him, ‘and we’ll see … it is all pretty shady, you must admit …’

‘Oh go to hell.’ She ran downstairs, and in a minute he heard her talking to the dogs in the hall as she buckled them on to their leads. He thought that her voice sounded different; there was hysteria in it, under the cheerful words.

He lunched in London, and did not see her again. Late in the afternoon he returned to MacLeod House to find his mother sitting in her favourite place overlooking Hendon in its valley. With her was Mrs Lysaght, also enjoying a martini among the house plants. Arnold came into the room to overhear his mother complaining about the ingratitude of the servants, which, she was saying, had been worse than usual lately. Mrs Lysaght was agreeing and sympathizing though in fact she was so satisfied with her new Crimplene suit that she could not feel anything was very unpleasant: the skirt, thought Mrs Lysaght, hangs like a dream.

‘What
I
cannot get over is your Miss Pearson’s mother and my medium being the same person … I do wish you would change your mind about coming for a sitting … it would be such fun!’ she attempted, feeling the lament gone on long enough.

‘Oh I couldn’t, dear … I hate anything creepy,’ Mrs Corbett said absently, ‘and just now I’m too worried about all this to enjoy
anything
. Doris and Frobisher have never got on well, as I told you, but downright quarrelling … I cannot
stand
it. And Peggy’s been so funny to-day.’

‘Where is she this evening?’ said Mrs Lysaght.

‘It’s her free evening; she can go out any time, of course, but Tuesday is a fixture. I wish,’ plaintively, to Arnold, who was sitting in silence with his hands hanging between his knees and an empty glass beside him, ‘you hadn’t gone for her like that this morning. I’m sure you’ve upset her. I can’t imagine what you were thinking about.’

‘I didn’t “go for” her. I simply thought you ought to know her mother was mental and lived in a slum, and I told her so.’

‘Well of course it isn’t nice, dear, and as I said just now, I do hate anything creepy, or anything shady either … I always thought her people were comfortably off – she only gets five guineas a week here – nothing nowadays, with secretaries getting twelve and fourteen – but she’s always seemed satisfied – why her mother has to live in what you call a slum I don’t know. But I don’t care; Peggy suits me, and it really isn’t my business. I do wish you’d left well alone.’

Arnold shrugged, and Mrs Lysaght said that she thought Peggy had the look of a medium’s daughter; you could tell; she had thought then something was queer there the first time she saw her.

‘Well I only hope you haven’t upset her badly, that’s all. I’ve never had anyone so good with the dogs since dear Alice,’ said his mother, ‘I don’t want her leaving … yes, do draw them, please, Doris,’ (as the old woman came into the room), ‘it’s getting chilly.’ The dogs, disturbed, got up and rearranged themselves, turning in circles, at her feet.

Doris waited until she had performed half her task before she sent up her rocket. Pausing precisely between the drawn curtain and the undrawn, and looking full at Mrs Corbett, she said, in her primmest voice:

‘I beg your pardon, Madam, but I think there’s something you ought to know.’

‘Oh. Well I hope it’s something pleasant for I’ve heard enough unpleasant things for one day … what is it?’

‘Miss Pearson’s took her cases off with her, Madam. And the drawers is all anyhow, and her room upside-down. I’ve just been in to turn the bed down.’

Arnold started. Mrs Lysaght exclaimed, ‘Well!’ Mrs Corbett said, ‘There, Arnold, that’s
your
fault. She’s gone off now – I knew it – I knew she would.’

‘Shall I see if there’s anything missing, Madam?’ Doris asked, no muscle of her face reflecting her triumph in this moment of kitchen-prophecy fulfilled.

‘Of course not – don’t be silly,’ said Mrs Corbett, distractedly, ‘I expect she’s taken some things over to her mother’s. Now don’t go telling everyone she’s run off, Doris.’

Doris compressed her lips and went out of the room.

‘Would you like me to telephone her mother, and see if she’s there?’ said Mrs Lysaght. ‘I do have her number.’

‘Oh no, no – leave it alone, please – I’m not running after her – if she can walk out as calm as you please, leaving me and the dogs, after all my kindness – let her go.’ Mrs Corbett was almost crying. ‘I’m not surprised – I told you I thought you’d upset her, Arnold.’

‘Oh nonsense,’ said Arnold. ‘I’ll go up and have a look – there may be a note or something – the whole thing’s probably a scare – Doris always hated her, anyway (I don’t know why you can’t sack that bunch and get in some human beings) … She’ll be back. She knows which side her bread is buttered.’ He hurried out.

Mrs Corbett and Mrs Lysaght sat in silence, Mrs Corbett gently moving her toe among the curled-up, silky mass that was the dogs. Once, Cee barked a gruff little ghost-bark, as he hunted some flying cat through his dreams.

Peggy had gone to the nearest Underground station, and the telephone boxes.

They were all occupied, the one outside which she took up her place by two laughing, very young girls, their faces sparkling with sexual mischief as they took it in turns to speak, feeding the box again from a mass of coppers in the pocket of one as fast as a call was concluded. After a few seconds, Peggy tapped sharply on the window.

The faces turned to her, amused and defiant; then they went back to their fun. She rapped again, furiously this time; her heart was beating painfully and her eyes seemed to burn; her throat ached.

‘Coo – look at ’er! I can’t remember his number, where’s the book?’ The young voice sounded sharp and fresh through the closed door.

Peggy wrenched it open, gripped each child by a shoulder and, amid shrill cries of anger, pulled them out of the box and went in and slammed it. At once, the noises of the station and their voices were shut off; she was alone with her purpose.

She had the right money; she had made all her plans. She gave a number, seeing, out of the corner of her eye, a coloured woman ticket-collector good-naturedly shepherding the protesting children, with their spike heels and tight black trousers and mermaid hair, towards one of the exits. Then she gave a great, harsh, breath –

‘Fred? I … I …’

‘Where are you?’ said his voice instantly, ‘where are you, Peggy?’

She told him, hearing with furious impatience the sound of another voice, fainter, that was saying something in the background. (‘
Don’t talk to her, Fred, please don’t talk to her, please
–’ it was saying. Gabbling, thought Peggy. Shut up. You’re done for.)

‘I’ll come and get you to-night? Where will you be? (
Don’t, Janey, it’s no use
.) Yes? I can’t hear?’

She gave him the name of a railway station in London, and a place.

‘I’ll be there …’

‘
Please, Fred, please – please
,’ said the voice of his wife.

‘
Leave me alone, can’t you … I’m sorry, God knows, but leave me alone
… Peggy? Yes, right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘All right. I’ll wait.’

She thought that his wife had dragged away the receiver. She heard his voice shouting, then the line went dead. She replaced the receiver and stood for a moment, drawing in breaths that were sweet with triumph. The rapture was almost unbearable; the release from pain too exquisite. She was going to see him, to be with him, and for ever. She had given in; her battle was over. She had surrendered.

Presently she found herself sitting in a taxi that she did not remember entering, going down into London. Janey Rattray and her brats, who had held Fred back from her for nearly a year, were defeated.

She had won.

When the taxi reached the station, she paid off the driver, and picked up her case and went to the appointed place: to wait for her life to begin.

The daily visits from the clergy of Saint James’s were welcomed by the Barnes sisters, just as soon as Gladys realized that neither Mr Geddes nor the curate were going to take advantage of them to plead with her and Annie to go more often to church.

Gladys felt herself responsible for this incursion of respectability, in its highest form, into life at the cottages, and the feeling was accompanied by a sensation of being protected. Someone, she felt, was now keeping a daily eye, so to speak, on the more helpless inhabitants.

Too much of an eye, she was soon saying, so far as Erika was concerned; for Mrs Geddes had had the latter to a buffet-supper at the Vicarage, introducing her on that occasion to some members of the Youth Club; and was now talking about ‘training’; this, looming ever larger on Erika’s small horizon, seemed to be connected with ‘being a nurse’, and, as it threatened those vague but splendid plans of being a cook that Gladys had in mind for her protégée, it was suspect.

Gladys had loudly pointed out that nowadays nurses had to be ever so clever and ‘go into a lot of those examinations’, whereupon Erika had announced that examinations would not frighten her; Mrs Geddes had said she was ‘bright as a botton’.

‘Oh you are, are you?’ retorted Gladys, jealousy wrestling with affection and pride in her heart, ‘well that’s nice to hear – p’raps she’ll tell you how you can smoke smoke smoke all day without drying up the poor souls you’re nursing like so many kippers? We’d just like to know, wouldn’t we, Miss Gallagher?’

The three were standing outside a small greengrocery shop in one of the back streets near the cottages; Gladys had suggested going to old Mrs Watson’s that afternoon, as it was ‘that blowy, sure to rain again any minute, we won’t go up the Archway.’ The use of her old acquaintance’s surname, rather than the usual ‘Violet’, was intended to make Erika feel her present behaviour was more or less shutting her off from familiar intercourse with approving friends.

Miss Gallagher, having named her requirements to Mrs Watson while the latter moved slowly around a kind of cave in the wall piled up with potatoes and carrots, felt that something pleasant might usefully be said.

‘Going to the dance next week?’ she asked of the silent Erika. ‘In the church hall.’

‘Never knew there was one!’ cried Gladys, eager, as always, for news, ‘never heard about no dance, did we, Erika?’ Erika slowly shook her head. She had progressed to lipstick; it was called
Way-Out Melon
.

‘You ought to go,’ Miss Gallagher said; she, for her part, was always eager to send someone off to somewhere nice, and, for that matter, to go herself, when her very exiguous means would permit.

‘I would lak,’ pronounced Erika, after some, but not much, reflection.

‘Oh Mrs P. would never let her, no, can’t be done, it’s the Church, see?’ Gladys accompanied this with meaning nods and more than one wink at her friend. ‘Very funny about Church she is, isn’t she, Erika?’

‘I would lak,’ Erika slowly repeated, her eyes fixed on distance.

‘Oh she ought to go. It’s going to be lovely. They’re having The Spacemen and refreshments. Only three and six. You ought to go,’ said Miss Gallagher earnestly.

‘Well, best forget it,’ said Gladys. ‘Don’t want no more trouble – Vicar knocked him over, don’t want any more of that, do we? I was just looking out of the window, drawing the blackout – blackout! hark at me!’ (a cackle of laughter in which Miss Gallagher more gently joined) – ‘and there they were, just down the street. Called out at him and the Vicar stopped and they had a word and he hit him. Never so surprised in my life – gave me quite a turn.’

‘The Vicar did? Hit who?’ Miss Gallagher exclaimed, stupefied. ‘The
Vicar
?’

‘Shouldn’t have said that, no, don’t tell a soul, Violet, never do if it got round, no it wouldn’t, yes he did. Fell over. I nearly hollered out loud. The rackman. Fell over. Good thing it wasn’t raining.’

Many years’ acquaintance with Gladys Barnes had taught Miss Gallagher that incidents related by her had a colouring of drama which they did not, if you happened afterwards to hear the facts from someone else, actually possess. She now dismissed the account as ‘one of Glad’s tales’ and turned the conversation once more to a matter about which she might afterwards hear something interesting that was also true.

‘Oh you ought to go,’ she said to Erika, ‘oughtn’t she?’

Gladys earnestly repeated that it wouldn’t never do; the dance was ‘got up’ by the Church.

‘Let her go up to that buffy-supper at the Vicarage but I s’pose that’s different, p’raps she might, as it’s that Youth Club, I don’t know, reckon all your money’s gone on cigarettes, hasn’t it?’ to Erika, ‘spends I don’t know what, don’t you?’

‘I zmoke Mrs P.’s cigarettes,’ explained Erika with dignity, ‘all der time.’

‘Oh … well. I s’pose it’s all right then,’ said Gladys, righteous indignation collapsing under the calm enormity of this statement, ‘so long as she don’t mind … ’ow many a day do you reckon, for mercy’s sake?’