The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (28 page)

‘As you wish,’ Jag called back.

She followed him out of the door and sat down in a chair to wait. Her legs felt like jelly – the aftermath of her panic. That’s what came of being such a weed. People were right to reject her. And if she wasn’t careful Jag would reject her too. She wished she’d talked more to Trixie about what to do when a boy tried to kiss you, because that was horrible, and as far as she knew it wasn’t supposed to be horrible. She was doing it wrong. It was all her fault. She was so childish – Jag must be laughing at her and already planning to dump her.

‘Come, let’s go back downstairs,’ said Jag as he reappeared, two Coke bottles steaming icy mist in his hands. ‘You go first.’

So Rika reluctantly led the way back down to Jag’s room. She had been hoping they’d sit on the balcony and enjoy the night air and the sea breeze, and just chat about – things. She’d wanted to suggest it but for some reason she couldn’t get out a single word – it was as if her brain was frozen. She needed distance – she needed him to prove his good intentions. She needed him to be
ordinary
– not somebody who kissed her by force. She needed time to find her bearings. But maybe it was all right. After all, he had taken her up to find the LP and he had gone to get the drinks, so it had to be all right.
Calm down, Rika!
She told herself sternly.

Back in Jag’s room she looked around; there was a faux-leather red couch and two matching armchairs in the area nearest to the door, as well as a sideboard on top of which stood an oversized radio and a gramophone, a pile of LPs next to it. The back of the couch divided off this sitting area from the sleeping area; a large bed took up the other half of the room. There was a wardrobe as well, and a door, which, presumably, led into a bathroom. The walls were covered with posters of tanned female film stars in bikinis, and motorcycles. Behind the posters the walls were painted black.

Jag gestured to the couch; she sat down. He put his Coke down on the sideboard and looked through his records; he chose several, removed them from their jackets and piled them on to the gramophone. The arm moved forward and back and the first record dropped on to the revolving disk. The arm moved forward again, the needle touched the record, and a second later the Rolling Stones were getting no satisfaction.

J
ag picked
up his Coke bottle and stepped across to the couch. He dropped down next to her, and placed his right arm along the back of the couch.

‘I really like you,’ he said again. His voice was slow, low and conciliatory; there was a rasp to it. She looked at him, into his eyes, hoping, longing to see reflected there the love she longed for. Love with a capital L. But his eyes seemed cold, opaque, unreadable; and this time around she did not say
I like you too
, and certainly not
I love you.
She said nothing, for doubt and anxiety had seeped into her soul again and that spoiled and diminished the clarity of spirit she had once known.
Love
was missing; that glorious, pure sense of unity and rightness – gone. She was sure it must show in her eyes.

‘You look scared,’ said Jag, and his hand dropped to her neck where his fingers played with the neckline of her dress. ‘Are you scared?’

She tried to speak but only a croak came out. The words she wanted to say stuck in her throat. She nodded. She longed to turn back the clock, turn it back to Palm Court and that wonderful sense of unity. She was sure that if he knew, if he felt, how much she had to give he would love her too and he wouldn’t behave like this: grabbing at kisses and lying to her about Bob Dylan. What did he
want?

‘It’s all right,’ Jag said, and his fingers crept up to play with her ear. ‘It won’t hurt. I’ll be gentle. I keep forgetting you’re so innocent. I really like that, you know. Your innocence.’

His voice was crooning, suggestive; he told her of his longing for her, his care for her, his experience, how he would do it slowly and gently so she wouldn’t feel any pain, and how much she would enjoy it because, he said, he was by far the best lover in Georgetown. How lucky she was, he said, that her first time would be with him, such a good lover, and how much he respected her purity. But now was the time to grow up, he said.

‘I’ll make a real woman of you.’

He moved nearer, and at the same time, his hand on the back of her head drew her closer too. Her body stiffened;
stop, stop!
She wanted to cry out, but no words came. She was paralysed with trepidation; not exactly fear, for surely he wasn’t dangerous, but nervous energy that filled every cell of her body. Trembling slightly, she sipped the dregs of her Coke through the straw and then Jag took the bottle from her and placed it on the floor and moved in. All of a sudden his mouth was crushing down on hers, his tongue pushing her lips apart and probing to get past her clenched teeth.

With all the force she could muster, she jerked her head back, but Jag tried to follow with his face.

‘No, no!’ she cried, as if at last the words, the only words available to her, had broken out of her body.

Jag drew back with an expletive.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said, his forehead creased with annoyance. ‘You know you want it!’

‘No! I don’t! I can’t!’

‘You’re just scared. I know it’s the first time. Look – I’ll be gentle. Just relax. You’re so stiff. Relax and you’ll see how sweet it is. Real sweet. Come on now, don’t be a little prude. You’ll like it. All girls do.’

He placed his hand on her right breasts, cupping it, and kneaded it with his thumb. Rika grabbed his wrist and pushed the hand away. There was a slight scuffle as he tried to resist. Their eyes were locked in a silent battle; in his flashed anger, and then something else as he gave in, removed his hand, and put it on her cheek, a sort of managed, calculated capitulation.

‘It’s all right, baby,’ he crooned. ‘I know it’s all new for you. Just trust me. I know what I’m doing. I just want you to taste the sweetness. Come on now. Be good to me. You love me. You know you do. This is what big girls do with the men they love. You don’t want to stay a little girl forever, do you? A tight little virgin? Let me help you. Let me. You don’t have to do anything. Just relax. Relax, baby. Relax.’

But she only stiffened all the more in his arms, and pushed against him. His rasping voice sounded not sweet but poisonous, treacherous, lying. She could almost hear the falsehood in his words. Hear the deceit. And when he moved in again for another kiss she lashed out; involuntarily her right hand flew to his face. She slapped it, hard. He flinched as her nails caught and scratched him across the cheek. He drew away and touched his cheek, now marked by three red welts.

‘You little bitch!’ he looked at her, venom in his eyes.

‘Take me home, Jag! Please take me home!’

She was crying, blubbering like a baby, and she didn’t care what he thought of her, didn’t care about the horrible name he had just called her.

And then all the fear and disgust and disappointment that had been churning in her since the moment she had entered this building rose up in her body and erupted through her mouth in a stinking gush of vomit, all over Jag’s crisp new shirt-jak.

‘Aaargh!’ He sprang to his feet, vomit-coated arms held up, and threw her a look loaded with such malevolence she could have sunk through the floorboards. He dashed to the bathroom at the back of the room.

All the way home – racing through Kitty, squealing around corners, honking at bicycles – he regaled her with expletives and diatribes.

Cock-teaser. Frigid little prude. Tied-up pussy. Fucking virgin. Leading him on. Playing stupid games. Deliberately flirting only to lock the gates. He should have known better after last week. He gave her a second chance and she threw it away. Idiot girl.

It didn’t matter. Inside she had turned to stone. She could not even cry. She didn’t care what he said. It didn’t matter. It just didn’t matter. All she wanted was to run to Rajan and tell him everything and beg his forgiveness.

T
he night
after the burglary we were all at home when the doorbell rang. I opened the door a crack as far as the chain would let me. My heart skipped a beat. George Clooney stood on the threshold; that is, a twenty-something version of George Clooney, all dark brooding eyes and charm. ‘Yes?’ I said, opening the door wide and trying hard not to stare, or appear anything other than thoroughly bored.

We exchanged a few words and I returned to the dining room, leaving the front door ajar. They had finished eating and Gran was on her feet, already shuffling towards the door.

‘It’s a
Daily Mail
reporter. For you, Gran. He wants to interview you. Is it OK?’

‘No!’ cried Mum.

‘Yes!’ cried Gran. Gran was louder. And quicker. She shoved her rollator forward, right into Mum’s path as she raced to the door, blocking her path. She blocked the hallway, too, and so it was Gran who first got to the front door. She flung the door wide open.

‘Come in,’ she said, ignoring Mum’s protest. She and I exchanged a glance; she rolled her eyes, shrugged in resignation, and submitted to what seemed our destiny. Gran led the reporter into her room, Mum hard on his heels. I followed them into the room and, like the day before, sat down on the edge of the bed, still trying not to stare at George. Mum shrugged again and sighed and sat down on the sofa next to Gran. George sat on the Luxury Commode Chair, seat down. He switched on a tape recorder, laid it on the table next to Gran’s laptop.

‘My name’s Ted,’ said George. ‘Ted Fisher. And as I understand it, a very valuable stamp belonging to you was stolen. Would you like to tell me more?’

Mum piped up, some kind of protest or denial, but Gran simply ignored her and launched into the same spiel as the day before.

‘An original British Guiana One Cent 1856 Black on Magenta! My husband’s grandfather Theodore Quint make that stamp famous, he sign it ‘T.A.Q.’ Passed down from father to son, a family heirloom, priceless. Millions of pounds worth.’

The stamp had made a huge leap in estimated value from yesterday; Gran had obviously thought this out carefully. Not only was she not (yet) admitting that the stamp had
not,
in fact, been stolen; she was actually hyping it, jacking up its value. And slowly it dawned on me:
Gran was creating
buzz.
Nobody apart from us yet knew about her precious stamp, and it was valuable only because of the
other
British Guiana Black on Magenta, the DuPont stamp.
This
stamp, Gran’s, was at the moment just what it was at face value: an ordinary scrap of paper, worthless in itself. It would only become valuable
when the world knew about it.
When the philatelic world, and the general public, discovered its existence. When as many people as possible wanted it, coveted it. Until then it remained a worthless scrap of paper.

Throughout all this George’s expression hardly changed. He kept his eyes on Gran and nodded every now and then as if deeply intrigued. But his eyes kept wondering over to me, and then he would start and yank them away and back to Gran. It was as if there was a magnetic pull between our eyes. I know I felt it, and I was reasonably sure he felt the same. In fact, I was certain. This was the first time since Tony that a man had had such an effect on me; I had to force myself to stay calm and be aware of what was going on.

And I knew exactly what was going on. This was media manipulation and product promotion at its finest, and Gran seemed born to the art. On and on she rambled, telling the story of the stamp, her family history, the inestimable value of this wonderful heirloom.

I noticed how she’d dropped her dialect for the reporter’s sake. Her speech had been grammatically flawless, no mutilated
th
’s or false pronouns. But the more she spoke, the more her language began to degenerate.

‘I am inconsolable! To think that I, a poor old lady with not a penny to me name, should be the one to lose this precious heirloom that been in my husband family for over a century!’

George interrupted now for the first time. ‘Mrs Quint, where did you keep the stamp album?’

‘Under the mattress!’ she wailed. ‘I know, I know, is a stupid place. My granddaughter done tell me is stupid. But what do I know, an octogenarian just come to dis country from me homeland. I just a poor disabled lady, see me Zimmer ting? And that chair you sitting on, is me potty. I can’t even walk up de stairs to go to the toilet.’

George jumped as if he’d been pinched in his bottom, and turned bright red. He looked around the room as if for an alternative seat to the Luxury Commode Chair, but finding none, stayed put.

‘How old are you?’ he managed to ask.

Gran told him, adding several years to make herself pushing ninety. Once again I recognised her plot. She was now playing up the
human interest
side of the story
.
She knew how the media thrived on maudlin sensation. She hadn’t devoured those reality shows for nothing.

‘See, I can’t walk a step on me own. I totally dependent on daughter and granddaughter, bless their hearts. I come all the way from Guyana, only last month. I ain’t got nobody left in the world to look after me. And me daughter here, struggling to make two ends meet. We is just a poor immigrant family. We was in de church praising the Lord when the attack came.’

George’s eyes glowed with the wonder of it all. I could almost read his swirling thoughts, the headlines forming in his head: ‘
Rare Stamp Stolen from Wheelchair Immigrant Grandmother’.
All the stuff about her keeping it under the mattress, saving it for her granddaughter; the fact that this stamp, unlike the DuPont one, had remained in the Quint family for over a hundred years; the heirloom stuff, the ‘sentimental value’ stuff. The stuff of tabloid middle-spreads.

And then Gran dropped her bombshell. In the middle of the interview, she remembered. Oh, what a silly old goose she was!
Of course
the stamp hadn’t been stolen! She was so absent-minded! She had taken it out of the album and hidden it, and then forgotten she had done so. It all came back to her She had it! She actually had the stamp! She pointed to the Luxury Commode Chair. ‘It’s in there!’

George’s eyes glowed brighter yet. He had found it: the perfect scoop. Promotion and an overnight breakthrough as a front-page journalist would be his.
‘Wheelchair Grandmother finds Million-pound Stamp in POTTY CHAIR!’

He stood up and removed his camera from around his neck, waved it and smiled at Gran, all charm and sweetness.

‘May I?’

George took several photos of Gran, and then one or two of me with her, of her with the potty chair, her lifting the potty seat to triumphantly remove the stamp and wave it at him. And then he said:

‘Thank you so much, Mrs Quint. This is a wonderful story. May I have your telephone number, just in case?’

That was my chance. I gave him our number, and I gave him my mobile number as well, just in case, and gave him my most charming smile. And George smiled back at me knowingly, and I knew for sure I’d be hearing from him again, and it wouldn’t be about the stamp.

W
e were
at the breakfast table, on the third morning after George’s article, which had been published in the
Femail
section of the paper; we’d read it online. Even though it had, as I’d predicted, been embellished and slanted to make it predominantly a women’s human interest article, the central fact was big news.

The legendary DuPont stamp, the rarest stamp in the world, had a challenger! Since they were not identical – one being signed ‘E.D.W.’ and the other ‘T.A.Q.’ – they were truly rivals for that title. But unlike the DuPont stamp,
this
one was not buried in a vault; this one was
out there,
floating around in the real world. It could be seen, admired, inspected, discussed – and, perhaps, acquired. At least, that’s what they thought.

In the following days, the media took up the chase. Mainstream newspapers, magazines and TV news reporters all hounded her, and she basked in the attention. Gran loved it. You’d think that she had been discovered herself, rather than the stamp.

She now fancied herself as a minor celebrity. She agreed to one interview after the other, including an appearance on a breakfast TV show. Our little household, already in a state of disarray, descended into chaos as Gran’s schedules took precedence over our own and her demands grew ever more rarefied. It was awful.

‘I got to go to the hairdressers! And I need a new dress!’ she fretted, and when Mum tried to talk her out of that – ’I just can’t afford these extras!’ – Gran flipped.

She flung her spoonful of porridge across the table.

‘Is who raise you up since you was a baby?’ she bawled at Mum. ‘Is who buy you story-books and bicycle and Pony Club and them Beatles records and Schoolgirls’ Picture Library and t’ing? And now when you old mother want a little something extra, such a fuss. Such a fuss. I don’t know what the world coming to! You young people so selfish!’

So saying she stood up, grabbed her rollator, and trundled off to her room, there to sulk for an hour or two. Mum was almost in tears.

‘I can’t take it! I can’t take it anymore!’ She sprang to her feet, her own breakfast unfinished. ‘Inky, listen. I need to scream. I really need to scream. I’m going up to my room to scream. Just don’t worry, OK? It’ll be over in a few seconds. Just ignore it and if any passers-by come knocking at the door tell them it’s OK; nobody’s being murdered. OK?’

She rushed from the room and up the stairs. I heard her door slam. I was not just worried, I was scared. This wasn’t Mum. Mum
never
lost her cool. The last time she’d raised her voice was way back when I was fourteen and I’d done something truly terrible, but not so terrible that I could even remember what it was. Mum was so laid-back, she was supine. Mum
never
screamed! Maybe she was cracking?
Could
Mum crack? I’d always believed not. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I wondered for a moment whether I should follow her, try to calm her down. I decided against it. Maybe she
needed
that scream. Everybody needs a good scream now and then, or else a good cigarette, even Mum. It was a sign that she was human, a healthy sign. I took a deep breath and continued with my breakfast, ears pricked for Mum’s scream from up above.

It never came.

I waited and listened. Nothing. Five minutes. Nothing. I finished my coffee. I needed to go out for my hit of nicotine, but by now I was beginning to worry. Mum wouldn’t
do
anything to herself, would she? Slit her wrists or something? I knew
I
would if I had Gran on my hands and no cigarettes. Well, maybe; I’d certainly want to.

But, I thought, maybe Mum was having a good cry instead. That would be just as good as a scream. I decided to put off my nicotine hit. I needed to check on her. What if she’d already slit her wrists and was lying on the bedroom floor right now, bleeding to death? I had to go up. It was my duty.

H
alfway
up the stairs I smelt it. That sweet, almost sickly scent that sometimes pervaded the house, creeping under doors and embedding itself into clothes and hair and upholstery and carpets and curtains so that the whole house was subtly suffused with it, like babyskin fragrance. And I knew what Mum was up to. She wasn’t human after all.

I rapped on the door.

‘Come in!’

I entered.

She was sitting cross-legged on a folded blanket on the floor, in her meditation corner. A single candle glowed on a makeshift altar. Two thin, white strands of smoke rose from a stick of incense.

‘Oh, excuse me. I didn’t hear you scream, so I came to make sure you’re OK.’ Automatically my voice lowered to almost a whisper. It was a reflex, a response to the muted atmosphere. Mum smiled, stood up and opened the curtains. Sunlight flooded the room. ‘I’m fine. I dissolved the scream.’

I nodded, uncomfortable with such talk. ‘OK, then.’ I paused respectfully before changing the subject. ‘Mum, I wanted to tell you something.’

I took hold of her hand and sat down on the edge of her bed, pulling her down beside me.

‘I just wanted you to know, I’ll pay for Gran’s hairdo and her new dress. It’s OK. I’ve got a bit of savings and I’d love to help.’

She leaned forward and hugged me. ‘You’re a sweety,’ she murmured into my hair. And I knew everything was all right. But then she yelped, sprang to her feet.

‘Look at the time!’ she cried. ‘I’ve got to go to work!’

‘Work? But today’s Saturday!’

‘An emergency. Two of the storyliners were ill this week. I’ve got to go in and finish writing the script. I’ll be back by one. If you could get Mummy’s hair done by then …’

I nodded. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

She dashed off, leaving me in the room. The bed was still unmade. I decided to make it for her. I tugged away the rumpled duvet.

That’s when I found the letter. It was buried among the rumpled bedclothes, both the open letter and the envelope. The letter was slightly crumpled, as if it had been crushed and then smoothed out again.

It was one of those familiar ones, the ones with the handwritten envelopes. I remembered seeing it among this morning’s post, which Mum had taken upstairs before breakfast. A pile of unopened letters lay on her desk; bills most likely. This one, she’d opened and read …

Now, I swear I’m not a snoop. I don’t go around reading people’s letters for fun. But there was just something about
these
letters in particular. Perhaps a pattern I’d unconsciously seen in Mum’s behaviour when they arrived, a pattern of slight, almost imperceptible dismay, a slight blanching of the skin. I was only vaguely aware of such reactions, but over time – for I had seen many of them arrive, and many of them taken upstairs – that was the general impression. So yes, I might as well admit it. I was bursting with curiosity.

Downstairs, the front door slammed. She was gone. All was quiet. I couldn’t help it. My fingers operated on their own volition, unfolding the letter, and so did my eyes, reading it.