‘How long have you got?’ Mr Hilditch pats his stomach. ‘You know.’
‘I’m four months gone.’
‘It hardly shows. Just a little. Just beginning to.’
‘You said could you – you said could you help me that day…’ She begins to stutter, then steadies herself. ‘I was wondering…’ Again she breaks off, and he nods to encourage her. ‘I was wondering if you could lend me the fare to go home.’ The stutter sets in again when she tries to say it’s a cheek asking a stranger. She says she doesn’t know where to turn.
‘You want to go back?’
‘It was a mistake coming over here, I shouldn’t ever have come over.’
‘What about your friend though?’
‘I’ll never find him.’
When the girl says that Mr Hilditch realizes she has lost heart. In spite of his reservations, he should have approached her again when he saw her on the street. It may now be too late: from his experience he knows that once they get a notion into their heads it isn’t easy to disabuse them of it. If she feels she has turned up every stone, that may simply be that. Mr Hilditch is aware of a coldness in his stomach, the feeling that something he considered to be his may be clawed away from him. Alert to the danger, he speaks deliberately and slowly, simulating a calmness that does not reflect this inner tumult.
‘The irony is, if your friend knew all this he’d be doing his nut with worry. I’ve had experience of that. If he knew what you’ve been through, all the hoo-ha at home and then looking for him in a country that’s strange to you, the poor fellow’d be beside himself.’
There are tears then, as he suspected there might be. It’s all down to the boyfriend’s mother, he hears again, and experiences a measure of relief, he’s not sure why. He listens while it is repeated that the mother wrote lies in a letter; that she said don’t come at Christmas, inventing some reason or other.
‘Do you know that for a fact, Felicia? Have you heard from someone it was the mother?’
‘It was her. I’d swear to it now.’
‘So you’ve heard from no one back home since you got here?’
‘No one knows where I am.’
‘But they know you came after Johnny?’
‘Only she knows the town he’s in.’
‘And of course she wouldn’t tell him you’d taken off. Naturally.’
‘No, she wouldn’t.’
She mentions a loan again, embarrassed, as she was before. She mentions the sum that is necessary, which she has calculated. He doesn’t respond directly, but says:
‘It doesn’t seem a pity to you to give up so easily? Since you’ve come so far with so much at stake? For starters, will they welcome you back?’
She has her carrier bags with her and hasn’t put them down. ‘I’d rather find Johnny,’ she whispers, sobs catching on the words. ‘Only I never will now.’
‘What I’m thinking is, after all you’ve been through maybe we should make one last effort. D’you understand me, Felicia? I could ask the girl in the office to ring round like I suggested to you. D’you remember I suggested that, Felicia? If Johnny said a lawnmower works, it must be there somewhere.’
She shakes her head, wiping her nose with a tissue. ‘I must have got it wrong.’
Slowly he shakes his head also. ‘Just an hour or two it would take, nothing great. That girl’s smart, she knows a thing or two. Another thing is, there’s places I’ve heard of where the Irish boys meet up of an evening. For instance, the Blue Light. Have you checked out the Blue Light at all?’
She says she hasn’t and he puts it to her that it could be worth looking at, it and a couple of other places. Just to make sure before she throws in the sponge.
‘It was understandable, you scuttling off like that the other week, dear. I passed that incident on to Ada when she had a bright moment and she said it was understandable. I only mention it because I wouldn’t want you to think there was offence taken.’
‘Is your wife getting better?’
‘Ada died, dear.’
Her hand goes to her mouth, a swift, uneasy motion. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The words come out in a rush, with a hint of the stutter again. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’
‘Three nights ago.’ He lets a silence develop, since one is called for. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he continues eventually, ‘we have to say a blessed release. We have to use that expression, Felicia.’
He can sense her trying to make a response, but she cannot find the words. He senses what she’s thinking. She’s thinking that you get caring and kindness from a person who has worries of his own and you turn your back on him in his moment of need. All he asked for that day was a couple of hours’ company, the only request he made.
‘Well, I’ll say good-night.’ He hesitates, experiencing an impulse to recall ‘Blue Hawaii’, to breathe it soundlessly over his lower teeth. ‘Unless you’d care for a beverage of some sort?’ he offers, resisting this urge to honour the melody. ‘You’d be welcome of course. I’m making tea.’
After a moment’s hesitation on her part also, she mounts the steps to the hall door.
The kitchen is enormous, the biggest Felicia has ever been in. Its wooden ceiling is stained with the vapours of generations, a single ham hook all that remains of the row there must once have been. Two dressers are crowded with china; a long deal table occupies the central area; pairs of tights hang from drying-rails on a pulley. There are four upright chairs, a step-ladder against one wall, an old sewing-machine in a corner, a mangle. The refrigerator and an electric stove seem out of place.
‘They’re near by,’ the man who hasn’t yet told her his name says, running water into an electric kettle. ‘The places where the Irish boys meet up. I could run you over.’
‘You mean now?’
‘It’s early yet. The Blue Light’s a fish bar. I have high hopes of the Blue Light, a feeling in my bones. To tell you the truth, it would lift me to go out. If you wouldn’t mind a drive.’
Half-heartedly, Felicia shakes her head. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t mind.’ Her tone is bleak. It won’t be any good. All that’s left is the chance of borrowing money.
‘We’ll have a bite to eat first.’
She wonders if his wife’s body has been brought back to the house, and as though something of this thought has crept into her expression he says the funeral was this morning. She sees him noticing the tights on the drying-rack. He turns away from her while in silence he lowers the rack and clears it. When he has folded them and placed them in a drawer, he deposits liver and vegetables on the table and sets about preparing them. He opens a tin containing different varieties of biscuits and invites her to help herself while she is waiting, inviting her also to sit down.
‘That’s very bad about your money,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘Have you nothing left at all?’
She tells him: how much she has now, how because the Salvation Army hostel was full she spent last night in a house that was being rebuilt.
‘You’ll try the Sally hostel again tonight?’
‘I don’t know.’
She doesn’t want to say it will be too late if they go out to the places he has heard about, but from the way he nods ruminatively, while cutting the green off carrots, she can tell that this has dawned on him. And he says:
‘Perhaps we should leave it for tonight. I’ve delayed you enough with my talk. I’m sorry about that.’
‘I’d like to go tonight.’
He nods again, in that same way, as if he has guessed this would be her response.
‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ she says.
With his back to her, he washes the carrots under a running tap. Ada was devout, he says; she came of a devout family. All that was a help to her towards the end.
‘She would be happy to see you back with us, dear. She’d be happy to see us going out to look for Johnny.’ Slicing liver, he tells her about the funeral: the Reverend Arthur Chase, and a large tu
rn-out, a great spread of wreaths.
‘I apologized on account I couldn’t invite them back to the house, not being up to anything social. But the Reverend Chase said come in for a bite and a few of us did. A few of my regimental cronies were there, always had a soft spot for her. And of course her friends from the voluntary service, out in force. I have to say it was touching, what they commented about her.’
They eat in the dining-room. Felicia’s deadened gaze passes over the mahogany expanse of dining-table and sideboard, the tallboy in the bow window, the portraits in pride of place on three walls, the set of brown Rexine-covered chairs. On the mantelpiece there’s a framed photograph of a plump-cheeked woman with a black ribbon trailed around it. ‘A crematorium service,’ he says, and she imagines a church, not knowing what a crematorium is. When he has poured tea and offered the tin of biscuits again, they collect up the dishes they have eaten from. Pausing by the photograph before they leave the dining-room, his massive shoulders heave, and the bulge of his neck heaves also. When he turns to address her, to remark that his wife was a wonderful woman, his pinprick eyes are lost behind his misted spectacles. She feels ashamed all over again that she took fright after he’d been so good to her, having time for her when there was the worry of his wife’s operation. No one has been as concerned: she remembers the hostile faces in the Gathering House, and the suspicion in Mrs Lysaght’s face, and her father calling her a hooer. Lena and George walked off, wanting to be on their own. She remembers Miss Furey warning her to be careful about what she said.
‘It’s good of you to say it,’ her benefactor replies when she stumbles through an apology for going off. ‘Like I say, dear, no offence was taken.’
There is a generosity in his voice, a warmth that cheers her up.
Mr Hilditch is careful. He brings up the subject of crouching in the back of the car by explaining that it’s necessary because the wrong complexion might be placed on the presence of a young girl in his company so soon after the death. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologizes when they are clear of the immediate neighbourhood, adding that he wouldn’t want Ada’s memory insulted by talk. He draws into a lay-by so that she can join him in the front.
‘So you’ve been around?’ he prompts, and hears more about the religious house while they drive, and then about two down-and-outs, one of whom seemingly sends birthday cards to bishops. There’s a man who’s endeavouring to rid himself of the nuisance of a sitting tenant, and a bag woman who wheels her belongings about in a pram. Soft in the head, the one with the birthday cards sounds.
‘You meet a rough crowd when you’re out and about,’ is the only comment he allows himself. ‘I’d take good care if I were you. Well, you know to your cost.’
They call in at a Happy Eater on the way to the fish bar, which is a good thirty miles further off; then at the Dog and Grape, where he took Beth a few times. He chooses the saloon bar because he remembers the public bar has a juke-box. A middle-aged couple glance their way once or twice, but a foursome with a poodle are too engrossed in the jokes one of the men is telling to pay any attention. ‘7-Up’, she asks for and he has the same himself, with a packet of crisps. When a lull occurs in the conversation he says:
‘A Malaway, Ada was. Ada Daphne Malaway, Daphne after her mother. A manufacturing family. Ball-bearings for the heavy-vehicle industry.’
She sits there, glancing about her for the face she’s after, not drinking her 7-Up.
‘We often looked back to our wedding day, Ada and myself, in later days. Walking beneath the drawn swords, and then of course we cut the cake with a sword. All sorts of comradely traditions there are at a regimental wedding – champagne drunk from a regimental helmet, fellow officers embracing the bride. Nothing untoward, of course.’
With a friendly nod, Mr Hilditch acknowledges the presence of the middle-aged couple when he goes to the bar for another packet of crisps. The woman looks away, the man just stares. Pointless remaining here, Mr Hilditch reflects, and stuffs the crisps into a pocket, to nibble in the car.
‘The Blue Light’s our best bet,’ he confidently predicts as they drive off. He has taken them all to the Blue Light at one time or another, it being their kind of place, Gaye’s particularly. He doesn’t care for it himself, even though the chips are good. On the rough side in his opinion, which is borne out as soon as they enter, when a crowd of rowdies begin sniggering.
‘No?’ he murmurs when she looks about in a way that had been eager in the places they went to earlier, but now is jaded. ‘No go, dear?’
She shakes her head. She listens to the voices around her, and says in a defeated voice that they aren’t Irish.
‘Happen the Irish lads’ll come in later. Give it twenty minutes, would we?’ He pushes his way to the counter to order plaice and chips. When he returns to her she has found a seat in a booth. She tells him she doesn’t want anything to eat, and he says she should take in some nourishment because of her condition. It’s a disappointment for her, of course: he understands that, he says.
‘Bear with me a minute, Felicia, while I put in a quick call to check out the state of play. Only it’s occurred to me there’s a bloke I know who employs Irish labour – manager of a smelting works about a mile off. Won’t take me a jiffy to get the info about where the lads go of an evening if they’ve changed from coming here.’
He stands about in the Gents for a minute or two, not long enough to allow his food to become cold. When he gets back to their booth two of the rowdies are trying to pick her up.
‘Can I be of assistance to you?’ He smiles at them agreeably, but immediately they become abusive, then go away. He guessed that if he left her on her own they would approach her, giving him the opportunity to make it clear what’s what.
‘No dice,’ he reports. ‘Out for the evening seemingly.’
The rowdies are leaving now, and only a few couples occupy the booths. A slatternly girl is sweeping the floor.
‘Tell me more about yourself, Felicia.’
He prompts her, asking questions to cheer her up: about her home life, if pets are kept, the friends she has and if any of them knows where she is. She shakes her head: she told no one, she asserts again, and repeats that if her father has gone to the police and they question the boyfriend’s mother she’ll probably mislead them as to his whereabouts. A picture of this woman has begun to form vividly in Mr Hilditch’s imagination, but he doesn’t want to think about her now. When the moment is suitable he says:
‘I hope it’s not a presumption on my part, Felicia, but have you considered your condition at all?’
He has raised his voice a little. The slatternly girl is quite close to them now, obviously interested.
‘It’s lovely news, of course,’ he says, and then lowers his voice again. ‘I’m only thinking, Felicia, that no matter what the outcome of tracking Johnny down is you don’t want to let yourself get caught. Don’t let it go too far was always the advice Ada gave, and my own as well. Enough to say you lost it, a form of words that is, covers a multitude. You understand me, Felicia?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s beggars and choosers, Felicia. I know what you mean when you say you’d want to talk to Johnny first. You and myself would both rather that and of course we’ll try for it, but it isn’t looking like an option at the moment.’
She doesn’t appear to be listening. There’s a faraway look about her, as if his inquiries about her home life have drawn her back into it. He rouses her with a practicality.
‘Would you care for something, dear?’
She asks for tea. He smears ketchup on the last of his chips before he rises to fetch it for her. They remember him behind the counter, of that he’s certain. They know him by sight even though it’s a long time since he last was in, even though they didn’t greet him and never have. They remember him because of the girls, one girl and then another, and now a new one, who’s in the family way. A little tick of pleasure begins in him somewhere as he carries the plast
ic cartons back to the booth.
Her head is turned away and he knows there are tears. Another thing, he puts it to her, is that if they don’t locate Johnny and she goes back home the way she is now, it’ll definitely be too late when Johnny turns up there himself. And it stands to reason he will, being in the habit of regularly visiting the disagreeable mother.
‘What I’m saying is, you’d be in Johnny’s better books if you weren’t wheeling out an infant he didn’t know a thing about. I could be wrong, dear, but there you are.’
‘I don’t want to do a thing like that.’ A sound like a sob comes from her and he moves around the table so that he’s sitting beside her. He puts an arm around her shoulder, and she begins a long palaver about visiting some woman in a farmhouse who apparently had intimacy with her brother.
‘Wipe your eyes, dear.’
Before he knew Sharon she’d got rid of three little errors in that department. She mentioned the place she went to the third time, paid for by the manager of a dry cleaner’s. Scared out of his wits, Sharon said. The Gishford Clinic, up Sheffield way. Posh, Sharon said.
‘Sorry.’ The present girl blows her nose on a tissue she has been twisting between her fingers. People are definitely noticing now, a man and a woman waiting for chips at the counter, a girl and a youth in a booth across the aisle.
‘Don’t say anything, Felicia. Don’t try to speak until you’re recovered.’ Mr Hilditch’s small hands grasp one of hers, and out of the corner of his eye he can see that the couple in the booth and the couple at the counter are still noticing. There’s been a lover’s tiff is the assumption in their expressions, a little misunderstanding that is now being put right.
‘Drink up that tea while it’s warm. The good’s in the warmth, they say. No, I only mention it because the night I came in and told Ada I found you wandering she said, “I wonder if she’s in the family way?” A woman can tell, you know, even at a remove. Whereas I had no idea myself, although I’d actually been in your company. The thing is, a doctor’s obliged to fix you up over here if you request it in the early stages. On the other hand, if it’s left too late you’re shown the door.’