The Hearts and Lives of Men (25 page)

“You look wonderful!” said Sylvester to Angie, and so one should hope. She’d paid Harrods £27 in the end, but the proper bill, including the streaking of her hair, electrolysis and a new wonder facial, had come to £147 and £147 can make quite a difference to a woman’s appearance, even at today’s prices. And we’re talking about
then
, fifteen years ago! As of course can real eighteen-carat gold earrings and a rare red-gold necklace worn with expensive black cashmere (rather high-necked, for her skin
was
dull). Make no mistake about it! At least the years have taught Angie how to dress, if not how to behave.

T
HAT NIGHT ANGIE AND
Sylvester spent thirty-four pounds on their dinner for two. (Over a hundred pounds by today’s prices.) Angie had a good appetite. They went to a rather grand Italian place in Soho, where the pepper for their pasta came from an antique giant grinder, and the cheese was the very best Parmesan—soft, as fresh Parmesan should be—flown in that day from Italy. The couple also drank rather a lot of gin and tonics before the meal, and very good wine with it, and very, very old port after it which put up the price considerably.

That same night (in London) Simon and Janice Best lunched (in Tokyo) on sushi, and Janice insisted on champagne as well as sake, which emboldened Simon to tell her he thought they should perhaps not see each other again. Gossip, he told her, was distressing Helen. Simon spoke as gently and tactfully as he could, but how can such things be kindly put? Janice threw a glass of warm sake in his face, and though the quantity was small—the Japanese drink a lot, but always little by little, little by little—some of the drink splashed onto a rather rare wall-hanging behind his head.

HACKETTE DOWSES HACK
went the headline in
Private Eye
,
AS UGANDAN RELATIONS ARE BROKEN OFF
. Nowhere’s safe! Nowhere’s private! Not even, perhaps especially not even, a tucked-away restaurant in downtown Tokyo!

Simon felt obliged to pay the restaurant something toward the cost of cleaning. The bill amounted to almost fifty pounds. He phoned Helen in Muswell Hill at 9
P.M.
English time and Helen didn’t answer, Arthur Hockney did. Arthur told Simon that he was baby-sitting for Helen. Arthur did not tell Simon, of course, that Helen was meeting Clifford, but somehow Simon knew it. Who else would Helen agree to see, on the spur of the moment, leaving Arthur Hockney of all people as baby-sitter for the precious Edward? Supposing Edward had an attack of croup, to which he was prone? Helen seldom went out, just in case Edward had croup. And now, suddenly, Arthur Hockney baby-sitting? Simon was too aware of Helen’s occasional meeting with Arthur; of her continuing refusal to believe that Nell was dead. Simon saw Arthur as Helen’s co-conspirator and liked him none the better for it. Simon took the first flight home, within the hour. His marriage had to be put on a proper footing, and quickly.

Clifford took Helen to the Festival Hall Restaurant, partly because he thought he’d meet nobody there he knew, and partly because, although not the most modish place in the world, the view is the best in all London. Neither Clifford nor Helen said much at first. Clifford thought she was astonishingly lovely, lovelier than he had remembered. There was something about the gentle, tender, almost submissive way she held her head—and yet he knew how stubborn, how almost vicious (in his terms) she could be. He knew that the air of purity, of steadfastness, was deceptive. She was faithless, sluttish, vapid! Wasn’t she? And, as for Helen, she knew that Clifford’s courtesy was skin deep; that his charm was a trick, a trap; that he sweet-talked her today only to devastate, hurt, destroy her tomorrow. And the image of Nell stood between them: the child they had loved, but not enough, because the love had been overwhelmed by misery, injured pride and hate. It was their rage, their disappointment with each other which had led to their losing her. How could they talk about any of this? And since they couldn’t say what was important, they had to make do with small talk. Even so, through their diffident talk of fashions and events—something else kept emerging: perhaps just the memory of the few stunning, perfect months they’d had together, years ago, which couldn’t be kept down. Clifford caught Helen’s hand as she reached for a glass and held it, and she let it be kept.

“I want to talk about Nell,” he said.

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” said Helen. “I won’t talk about her being dead. They never found her body.”

“Oh, Helen,” he said, distressed for her, “if you want to believe that, by all means do. If it makes it better for you.”

Such unexpected kindness brought tears to her eyes.

“Simon won’t let me believe it,” she said.

“He’s a journalist,” said Clifford, wisely not referring to him as the dwarf, “and it’s in the nature of journalists to like things cut and dried. You’re not happy with him.”

“No,” said Helen, and was surprised she said it.

“Then why are you still with him?”

“Because of Edward. Because if I leave Simon something terrible will happen to Edward.”

It was her superstition, her dread. He understood this, too.

“No it won’t,” he said. “It was because of me Nell died, not because of you. And Simon will behave better than me. That’s in his nature too.”

“That’s true,” she said, and managed a smile. She shook her head as if to free it from a muffling of hearing, a misting of sight.

“Oh Lord,” she said, “you make me feel so alive! Life comes pouring in from all directions. What am I to do?”

“Come home with me,” he said. And of course she did, forgetting all about Arthur, or if not quite forgetting, certainly not caring.

T
HAT EVENING, AS CLIFFORD
and Helen’s lives came together again with at least a promise of happiness, Nell’s world lurched into further disarray. As Helen picked at her salmon mousse, and Clifford at his lamb cutlets, a meeting was being held at the Eastlake Assessment Center to discuss the future of a small group of children, including Nell. Now little Nell had begun to recover from the shock of losing home and family yet once again, and from the terrible sights of death and destruction she had witnessed, and was doing quite nicely, thank you. She was beginning to speak normally, and in English, not French, although she still suffered from patchy amnesia.

She shared a dormitory with five other little girls—Cindy, Karen, Rose, Becky and Joan. They had hard mattresses (healthy, and cheap) and not enough blankets, for what the houseparents saved out of the Center’s heating allowance could be diverted into their own pockets. Rose and Becky wet the bed and were smacked every morning and made to wash their sheets. Cindy stumbled over her words and sometimes said good-night when she meant good-morning and was stood in the wastepaper basket to shame her and make her more sensible. Karen and Joan were diagnosed as being out of control, though both only seven, which meant they were very naughty indeed, and would tear up the blankets and kick the doors, and punch you suddenly in the stomach for no reason at all. Nell was very careful to be good, to be quiet and to smile as much as possible. She liked Rose very much and they were good friends. She tried to work out sensible ways of Rose’s not wetting the bed; she would take Rose’s before-bed orange drink (the yellow, sweet artificial kind, not the concentrated juice, which was expensive) if no one was looking and drink it herself, and it worked. She understood, even at this early age, that no one was being deliberately unkind—they were just stupid, and liked to save money. She had, after all, a profound sense of her own worth; had not her mother and father fought over her, each one wishing to possess her; had not Otto and Cynthia bent over her crib and smiled; had not Milord and Milady de Troite seen her as the source of all happiness, and youth, and hope? These things were vaguely remembered, but assimilated into the depths of her being. Nell saw that she was misunderstood, and therefore devalued—not that she was worth nothing—and therefore survived. She bowed her head but her eyes remained bright and her complexion clear. She knew that she would not be here forever, and in the meantime, as was her custom, determined to make the best of her circumstances. She might cry herself to sleep at night—quietly, in case she was heard and slapped for ingratitude—but she woke in the morning cheerful and smiling, thinking of tables to be learned or spelling mastered, or Karen to be helped, and new games to play with Rose, and ways to avoid the censorious red-rimmed eye of Annabel Lee, houseparent.

Now Annabel Lee, and Horace her husband, were both heavy smokers, and cigarette smoke always made Nell feel quite ill, so that, apart from everything else, she kept as far away from them as she could. We know that this reaction was because of her memories of Erich Blotton, but Nell is in no position to explain this, even if she understood it herself, and Mr. and Mrs. Lee, both gray-faced and coughing from tobacco, did not understand it either. They did not think their behavior deserved quite such a response.

“She still shies away when I come near,” said Annabel at the Relocation Meeting. “I don’t think foster parents could cope. What we don’t want is for Ellen Root to be returned time and time again, when yet another placing fails.” Ellen Root! Yes, reader, this was the name by which little Eleanor Wexford is now known. Well, she had to be called something, this child out of nowhere. Remember how she was found, with her few stumbling words of English, standing in a daze on the edge of a Route Nationale, against a background of fire and mayhem? They called her Ellen, because the word she whispered over and over again, when they bent to hear, was “Helene” and those who listened thought that must be her name. In fact she was remembering and pronouncing her mother’s name, dimly remembered, the French way—although the French itself had been driven from her child’s brain by shock and fear. So “Ellen” she became, and the “Root” from “Route Nationale.” Geddit? Annabel Lee thought she’d been rather clever in choosing the name, and no doubt she had. Annabel was a secret drinker. No one knew it. Not her husband Horace, certainly not the Social Services Authority which employed the couple. How could they? Nevertheless, “Ellen Root” was not the most glamorous of names, and this was perhaps the end Annabel Lee desired. A plain, heavy, hardworking woman herself, she did not much care for spectacularly pretty, charming, light-limbed little girls. Just as well, perhaps, they did not very often turn up at Eastlake.

There was an epidemic of head-lice which plagued the Center, of a particularly stubborn kind, and somehow or other Ellen Root’s head was always the one to be shaved, while other children’s hair could be satisfactorily combed and shampooed. Mind you, Ellen’s hair was so thick and curly—as well as shiny, fair and pretty—Annabel may, indeed, just possibly, have had exceptional trouble with it. We must give her the benefit of the doubt. To do so is part of practicing virtues, the better to acquire them.

Someone on the Relocation Panel remarked that the child had been at the Assessment Center for an unusually long time. Nearly a year. Surely it was time she was moved on to somewhere more like a home, even if she was not yet ready for fostering? The Center was a halfway house for children in trouble—either of their own making or the world’s—and not intended to be their permanent residence.

“It’s fine by me,” said Horace. “But where are you going to move Ellen Root
to
? She’s E.S.N.” (Reader, these initials mean Educationally Subnormal. Backward, that is to say. A right little thicko. Our Nell!) “It’s written there large as life on her papers. The only place that will take her is Dunwoody, and that’s hardly suitable.” Dunwoody was a home for the mentally disabled and disturbed, and Nell, though her I.Q. tests kept showing her up as backward, was at least always quiet and cooperative.

“I don’t know so much,” said Annabel. “Whenever I try to comb her hair she pulls away.” And so Nell did, for fear of having it shaved, but Annabel didn’t think of that, or chose not to. “And once our precious little Ellen bit Horace. Remember?” So Ellen had, waking once from sleep, shaken awake by Horace, when a fire alarm had sounded at 2
A.M.
and the whole institution had to be evacuated. Memories had come flooding back; she was terrified; she struggled—yes indeed, she had been uncontrollable. She had bitten. Biting! An unforgivable sin in child-care circles. “She was upset,” said Horace.

“She’s disturbed,” said Annabel, grimly. “She bit almost to the bone, like a wild animal.” It had been, of course, a false alarm: everyone’s peace had been disturbed. (Joan it was who had crept out of bed and broken the glass with the tempting little red hammer, which hung from a hook just at child’s eye level.) But fire is a real hazard in such homes—some of the children think nothing of arson—and the threat of it is always taken seriously. Even worse than biting!

Now, reader, you may be wondering why Nell, or Ellen, came off so badly in intelligence tests. It was for a very simple reason. Asked questions such as “Does the sun shine at night?” Ellen would reply “Yes”—thinking of the way the sun rises on the other side of the world even as it sinks on this side—whereas the real answer—as ordinarily given by under-fives—is “No.” (And Nell was being given tests for four-year-olds, inasmuch as her linguistic ability was at that level, because of her two-and-a-half years of speaking no English at all.) These things happen. Children in care are assessed wrongly, by accident, stupidity or just occasionally by virtue of adult malice, and end up very much in the wrong place.

And so it was decided that night that Nell should stay a little longer at Eastlake, and not be fostered. “Some evidence of mental disturbance,” was entered on her form, adding to the doom of “E.S.N.” and another obstacle placed in the path of Ellen’s future well-being within our child-care system.

At that same meeting a motion of gratitude was proposed and passed in relation to a certain Mrs. Erich Blotton, who had presented the home with yet another large sum, this time £750. Mrs. Blotton never appeared in person, but was understood to give generously to many children’s homes in the area. She was assumed to be some kind of nutter, which didn’t make her gifts any the less welcome. It was also voted that a letter be sent inviting Mrs. Blotton to visit Eastlake.