The Diary Of Pamela D. (16 page)

He paused to let her consider his words.

Pamela frowned in concentration. Who could it
be? Someone from church? The daughter of one of Theo’s business
associates?

‘I was sure you’d know right off without any
help from me,’ he said, causing her to raise her head and stare up
at him. His expression, though deadpan, couldn’t conceal the smile
in his eyes.

Finally, she said, ‘You must be mistaken. I
can’t think of anyone.’

‘No?’ he said, watching her reaction
carefully. ‘Not even Tessa?’

Pamela’s reaction was immediate and
overjoyed. Like an excited child she blurted, ‘What? Tessa? Tessa’s
coming here? For how long? What about Albert Askrigg? You said I
couldn’t go visit her because of him-’

‘This place is literally crawling with CID,’
he assured her. ‘She’ll be safe; I’ll make sure of that. Besides,
you will want her here for our wedding, won’t you?’

Pamela could only nod, feeling elated.

‘As to the reason she’s coming here,’ Theo
continued, ‘Ellie let me know that Tessa was looking for just such
a job. There were other . . . considerations,’ he added
thoughtfully, but didn’t elaborate. ‘The long and short of it is,
she’s coming here to live with us.’

Later that evening, as she lay with the man
who would soon be her husband, she found herself thinking, ‘How
like him. I can’t think of a kinder thing that he could possibly
have done, yet without any mention being made of friendship or
making up for not allowing me to go to Hornsea, or doing something
to make me happy. It’s as though he thinks of both Tessa and me as
assets, and nothing more.’

She fell asleep unable to believe what her
own thoughts were still telling her, yet not yet daring to believe
that she had seen past his exterior.

Pamela’s choice of “new” car, an ancient
Austin that was in surprisingly good condition, had caught Theo
entirely off-guard. In fact it was the only car on the lot that
wasn’t brand-new, its presence the result of a trade-in. Both Theo
and the salesman tried talking her out of it, the salesman because
Theo could obviously afford a brand-new and infinitely more
expensive car and obviously wanted to spend the money, some of
which would end up in the salesman’s own pocket, and Theo because
he thought Pamela wanted the car because it was only a few hundred
pounds. But Pamela had fallen in love with the car on first sight,
having spotted it when the two men were talking and looking over
what the dealer had to offer. She had wandered off, and as though
guided by fate or instinct, discovered the car where it lay
deliberately concealed behind a dustbin.

Theo carefully checked the car over himself,
taking the salesman’s advice that the car was on its last legs with
a grain of salt. ‘Compression’s good as new . . . engine runs like
a top . . . someone obviously kept this car in perfect running
order! What on earth did they trade it against?’

‘It were a young fellow,’ the salesman said.
‘Car belonged to his old dad who just snuffed it. Lad brought it in
and traded it against one of them new Japanese sports cars.’ He
barked a short laugh and shook his head. ‘Banged it up same day.
Can’t thole them young buggers, them as never had to work a day in
their lives! If you ask me, it served him right, spending his dad’s
hard-earned cash that way. The lad done nowt to earn it-’

He stopped when he noticed that Theo had
turned very pale.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean owt by it.’ Watching
Pamela who was looking over the old car, oblivious to the two men,
he said contritely, ‘Look, tell you what- I’ll sell you that car
for exactly what I paid for it- fifty quid. Any road, it were just
a token sum. I hadn’t planned to do owt with it but sell it to the
scrap merchant, which was a pity ‘cos I knew the old man as owned
it. He used to look at that car with the same expression as yon
lass.’

Learning to drive was a
dream come true for Pamela. She had never dared hope that she would
ever sit behind the wheel of a car, or that she would ever have one
of her very own. But from the outset Theo laid down the condition
that as long as Albert Askrigg was at large she wasn’t to go
anywhere
without Fred or
Theo himself accompanying her.

‘Turn right, here,’ Theo told her as she
drove in the heart of downtown Bradford. ‘There it is, behind that
brick building. Turn right, there . . . see where it says “Staff
Parking?” Pull into that stall on the far left- the one that says
“Dewhurst.”’

They got out and walked into
the back entrance of The
Crown
Tavern, a rustic-looking pub that claimed to have
been established in the year 1818. Pamela could tell at once that
business was not good. The place was all but empty, except for a
few old regulars who sat on barstools, talking with the barkeep.
She found the place dim, depressing and stuffy. It had potential,
though. The place was constructed of oak beams and stone, its
tables and chairs likewise solid-looking and heavy. There was a
huge fireplace, but its functionality had obviously been long ago
supplanted by central-heating. The walls were strewn with old
relics, most of which meant little or nothing to her.

‘Well? What do you think?’

She ventured a timid look at
him. ‘You want my
honest
opinion?’

Frowning, he said, ‘Of course.’

Swallowing, mustering her courage, she said,
‘It looks more like a museum than a pub. It’s far too cluttered.
Everything’s badly in need of cleaning but everything in here,
including the building, isn’t made of the sort of thing that shows
dirt. I mean, can’t you smell it? And those windows over there, the
ones that have been bricked in? They need to be opened up again to
let some light in here. And there should be some sort of counter
running along the entire wall, so people can see in and out-’

‘Those windows were bricked in because to do
so was far cheaper than making the needed structural repairs to
that wall.’

Surprised at her own audacity, she said, ‘Did
business drop off when you did that?’

Giving her a gauging look, he said, ‘As a
matter of fact it did. Ever since then I’ve been trying to find
ways to turn things around.’

Speaking with certainty, while wondering
where that certainty was coming from, she said, ‘Then you should
get the work done, otherwise you’re just going to keep losing
money.’

Theo glanced past her shoulder, causing her
to notice that the barkeep and patrons were listening very closely
to every word, their expressions somehow . . . hopeful?

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
‘All right. You may begin by getting estimates for all the work you
want done and all the changes you’d like to make. When you’re ready
I’ll take a look at what you’ve done and we’ll take it from
there.’

She felt panic set in as he spoke. ‘But . . .
but Theo, I don’t know the first thing about . . . any of that
stuff!’

‘For some reason,’ he said, leading her back
to the car, ‘I think that you will have the hang of it in fairly
short order.’

She was so nervous when she started the old
Austin that she kept clashing gears until she managed to force
herself to calm down. What did she, Pamela, know about running a
business, or for that matter turning one around that was failing?
Why was Theo giving her responsibility for something that she could
easily wreak disaster upon? She didn’t want that sort of
responsibility! It simply wasn’t in her nature to blithely meet the
world on its own terms with the necessary confidence that went
along with it. She would much rather he let her stay a maid. As a
maid she was happy in her work; happy and safely inconspicuous. All
she had to do was work hard and trust that the world would keep at
a safe distance, that her comfortable routine would go on
forever.

As she gripped the steering wheel, she became
conscious of her engagement ring which suddenly felt strange and
awkward on her finger, as though it were a large and cumbersome
thing that shackled her to commitments and pressures she wasn’t up
to dealing with. The thought of adding a second and more binding
band made her feel increasingly claustrophobic.

And what if Theo soon wanted children? she
thought to herself, feeling an ugly thrill of panic in the pit of
her belly-

‘Careful! Mind your driving; you’re wandering
too near the shoulder.’

Theo’s voice brought her back into the
moment, which was the last place she wanted to be, for there lay
her fears, her anxieties.

‘Here, pull over onto the layby,’ he said
gently. ‘I’d better drive for a while.’

Once again feeling as though
she had let him down, as though she were a failure who
deserved
to fail, she did
as he told her, and spent the remainder of the trip staring out the
window, wishing she could please him, and that for once in her life
she could do something right.

-8-

Tessa’s train was late by almost an hour,
which caused Pamela some considerable anxiety. Ellie seemed
unperturbed, however, so she tried to take her cue from Ellie’s
calm patience. Fred Pascoe had left them for the time being but sat
nearby on a bench within easy watching distance.

At last the train arrived, and there was
Tessa, struggling with her carry-on luggage. The moment the two
girls spotted one another, they ran to each other’s arms and
embraced.

‘Is this all the luggage you’ve brought?’

‘Yes, for now. Not to worry, I’ve got pretty
much everything I need.’

‘Then let’s get going,’ Pam said smugly.
‘I’ve got something to show you.’

When they reached the old Austin, Tessa burst
out, ‘Where did you get that beautiful old car? Is it yours? Where
on earth did you find it?’

‘Here, let’s get your stuff into the boot.
Isn’t it great? Theo bought it for me. The dealer was just going to
give it to the wreckers but I went and rescued it. We got it for
next to nothing!’

For the moment unnoticed and forgotten, Ellie
and Fred exchanged a meaning look. To them the car looked
old-fashioned and ugly and was probably suspect, though it
performed in a manner that was unmistakably sound and reliable.

As the two girls chattered incessantly all
the way to Dewhurst Mansion, Pamela found that she was elated not
only by Tessa’s presence but by the way the two were so easily able
to mesh once more, as they had when they had first met. Pamela had
never in her entire life had a friend like Tessa, someone her own
age who was apparently unscarred by the sort of marginalizing
forces that had shaped Pamela’s own life. For Pamela, being in
Tessa’s presence was like being reborn to a new and hopeful world,
a world where she was accepted, where she belonged, a world filled
with people she cared about and who cared about her.

They were just getting Tessa settled into
Pamela’s old room when Pamela suddenly burst into tears and sat
down on the side of the bed.

‘Pamela? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?’
Tessa said in sudden concern.

‘Oh, it’s nothing bad,’ Pamela said, wiping
at her eyes and laughing at the same time. ‘It’s just that I’ve
never been so happy in all my life. I never knew that it was
possible to feel like this. I’m sorry- it’s just a bit much for me,
that’s all.’

‘Well,’ Tessa said, smiling crookedly and
sitting beside her, ‘if that’s all, then I sha’n’t waste any time
feeling sorry for you.’ She said this with mock-disdain, which had
its intended effect.

‘You don’t find me abjectly pitiable,
then?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Not even if I made big puppy eyes?’

Rolling her own, Tessa said, ‘That may well
work on Theo, but the female of the species is not so easily taken
in. Speaking of Theo, you never did tell me how he got down to
proposing to you.’

Her mood fading somewhat, Pamela told her
friend the entire story, leaving nothing out.

‘What are you looking so depressed about?
He’s a wonderful man, and it’s obvious, whatever you may think,
that he’s very much in love with you.’

Pamela gave her a baffled
look. ‘Why does everyone keep
saying
that, when I’m the one who’s getting married to
him and
I
can’t see
it?’

‘Oh, dear,’ Tessa said, her
expression sympathetic, ‘It seems that you’ve just added an
entirely new dimension to the old saying, “Love is blind.” Not only
is your
love
blind,
but it seems that you’re blind
to
love, all at the same time.’

Pamela gave her such a comically disparaging
look as sent the two into peals of uncontrollable laughter.

‘Do that again! No please, don’t! No, not
again! Ow, I can’t laugh any more . . . my face hurts. My sides
hurt . . . If I pee myself, I’m going to slug you . . . ’

‘Don’t either of you
dare
wet my nice clean
linen!’ Doris interrupted, her expression carefully neutral.
‘Supper will be served in about five minutes, so you’ve just nice
time to wash up. And
do
stop blushing,’ she added with a smile, ‘or you’ll have me
going. And we can’t have
that
, now can we?’

When they sat down to eat,
Pamela found herself feeling eternally grateful that between Ellie,
Doris and Norrie she had been trained in “proper” table manners and
was now accustomed to them. This was her first experience
sitting
at
the
table in the dining room, being served instead of serving, and she
knew this would be the moment of truth where her relationship with
the household staff, of whom she was no longer a member, was
concerned. But to her relief, when she looked up apprehensively and
apologetically at Ellie, the woman gave Pamela a surreptitious wink
just to put her at ease.