A Lesser Evil

  ‘Wherever have you been?’ Clara asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion and irritation. ‘Carol’s been on the phone asking why you weren’t at Carwardines to meet her. I was really beginning to worry about you as it is such a cold night.’

  ‘I rang her office and left a message for her,’ Fifi lied. ‘I suppose no one told her.’

  ‘What was so sudden and important you had to let her down? Carol’s such a nice girl,’ Clara said tersely.

  Fifi had her head so far up in the clouds after the evening with Dan that she hadn’t even considered thinking up a plausible story for when she got home. She certainly couldn’t tell the truth – her mother would have fifty fits if she thought she’d been picked up by a strange man.

  ‘It was Hugh,’ she said hastily, hanging up her coat on the hall stand. ‘He rang me this morning and seemed in a bit of a state. I felt I had to meet him.’

  Hugh was an old boyfriend who lived in Bath. Fifi’s parents had liked him a great deal and probably hoped she’d marry him because he was doing his articles with a law firm and came from a very good family. They had split up just after Fifi’s twenty-first birthday, over a year ago, but had remained friends. So she didn’t think it was too terrible to use him as an alibi.

  ‘What was the matter with him?’

  Clara always used this deeply suspicious tone with Fifi. Patty, Peter or Robin could get away with just about anything, but for some unfathomable reason Clara always seemed to think the worst of her eldest child.

  ‘Oh, just a girl who’s messing him around,’ Fifi said lightly. ‘We had a couple of drinks and some supper. He was more cheerful when I left him. I’ll phone Carol in the morning and explain; it’s too late now.’

  ‘You could have phoned me,’ her mother snapped.

  Fifi sighed. ‘I didn’t know Carol hadn’t got the message. So why would I phone you? I wasn’t expected home.’

  ‘Most girls still living at home would let their mothers know where they were in case of an emergency. You treat this place like a hotel and your father and me as if we were caretakers.’

  Fifi rolled her eyes at the same old line her mother trotted out with monotonous regularity. ‘Mum, I’m tired and cold. I’m sorry I didn’t phone you, that Carol didn’t get my message and for anything else I may have done to upset you. Now may I go to bed?’

  Clara Brown turned and flounced back to the sitting room without so much as a goodnight. Fifi went straight upstairs, fervently hoping Patty was already asleep, as she didn’t fancy another interrogation.

  Fifi had made Dan laugh that night telling him just how difficult she’d been as a child, and she had no doubt he thought she was exaggerating. But in fact she’d played the truth down. It wasn’t only that she was so strange-looking; she knew her parents had been seriously worried for a time that her peculiar behaviour was caused by a mental deficiency. She couldn’t sit still or concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes; she threw tantrums and could scream for hours. She either stared balefully at people in complete silence, or she was firing personal questions at them. She didn’t mix well with other children; she snatched their toys and pinched their arms or legs. She wouldn’t eat or sleep and she talked to herself.

  It hadn’t helped that Patty, who was only fourteen months younger, was a cute, docile little poppet, with golden curls, plump pink cheeks and the kind of charm that made everyone want to pick her up and hug her.

  Fifi could appreciate now how desperate her mother must have felt, particularly in the last year of the war, when she had three under-fives and her husband was away most of the time. Clara had been so worn out after Robin was born that they had to have a live-in nurse for a while. It was that nurse who had suggested that Fifi’s brain might have been damaged by the forceps during her delivery.

  The nurse was wrong, of course. By the time Fifi was ten she could read and write as well as any child in her class, and her behaviour was vastly improved. While her mother claimed that she was still very difficult at home, elsewhere she behaved in a relatively normal fashion.

  Fifi went out of her way to tell people what a horrible child she’d been. But then, she could look in the mirror and see no trace of the peculiar, bug-eyed, skinny kid she’d once been. At twelve she’d begun to fill out, her white hair finally darkened to honey-blonde, and all at once her eyes and mouth were not just in proportion, but her two best features. She still remembered so well the first time someone remarked that she was pretty – it was like finding a crock of gold. Now she got on well with almost everyone; people remarked how much fun she was, and on her caring, easygoing nature.

  All except her mother, who still had plenty to complain about. According to her, Fifi was lazy, wilful, self-centred, undomesticated and completely oblivious to others’ feelings. Fifi felt her mother’s nastiness to her was just jealousy, because she’d never had the freedom or fun her daughter enjoyed.

  Clara married Harry when she was twenty-one, just as war broke out. Harry had been teaching mathematics when they married, but he spent the war code-breaking, and was away from home for months on end. Fifi was convinced that the reason her mother sniped at her about her job, her clothes, and going dancing every weekend, was purely because when Clara was the same age, she’d been stuck at home alone with a baby.

  Patty was fast asleep, but she’d left the little bedside light between their twin beds on. Fifi undressed quickly and got into bed, lying there for a moment remembering how when they were little they always slept together in one of the beds. The room still held so many childhood memorabilia. Cuddly toys and dolls still sat among their Enid Blyton books, a picture of a princess painted by Patty at seven or eight was still on the wall, and there were dozens of photos of them both. Patty kept pictures of her favourite film stars in a tottering heap of scrapbooks. Fifi had gone through a stage when she wanted to be a fashion designer, and the cards she made, with a sketch and samples of dress material pinned to them, were arranged on the wall by the window.

  It was a big, comfortable room, with flowery curtains, pinstriped wallpaper and a long teak dressing table with triple mirrors. Patty’s side was neat and tidy, little china ballerinas carefully arranged alongside scent, hair lacquer and cosmetics. Fifi’s side was the complete opposite, littered with tubes and pots with the tops left off, pens, old letters, reels of cotton all mixed up with her makeup. Patty moaned about it, but she stoically removed dirty cups and plates almost daily, and when she dusted her side, she did Fifi’s too, just as she hung up her clothes and made her bed.

  Dan had looked envious when Fifi told him about her brothers and sister. She had thought he was joking when he said he’d been abandoned as a baby in Swindon, but it turned out to be shockingly true. He’d spent his life in various children’s homes, and was kicked out at fifteen to fend for himself.

  Fifi glanced across at Patty, lying on her side with one plump arm protectively around her head, and she smiled affectionately. She loved Patty; they were friends and allies, even if they were as different as chalk and cheese. Patty was placid and patient, while Fifi was fiery and impetuous.

  Pretty little Patty had become fat, plain Patty with awful acne as she got into her teens, yet she was still so sweet-natured. She was training to be an optician, and she had the patience of a saint with old people.

  Fifi wished she was patient too, but she always wanted everything immediately. She couldn’t bear to wait in queues; she ran across busy roads instead of waiting for the lights to go green. She spent her wages mentally before she even got paid. She jumped into situations with both feet without stopping to think.

  She was doing it again now with Dan. She’d only known him for six hours, but she was already convinced they were made for each other.

  Getting excited over a new man wasn’t a new experience; she’d done it many times before. She would hang round the phone willing it to ring, count the hours till they met, weave improbable fantasies about the life they’d have together. But these roma
nces had always been shortlived.

  She knew exactly why. It was because she always hid her real character behind a phoney one, trying to be whatever she believed the man wanted.

  Hugh had wanted someone who would bolster up his self-image. Not too bright, not too stunning, a girl who would hang on his every word and be the perfect accessory of a would-be lawyer, never complaining or demanding anything of him.

  She’d been so good at it too, until she got bored with stroking his ego and kowtowing to him.

  Alan, the boyfriend before Hugh, had wanted a wild, arty girl. Fifi had been quite good at that too, wearing tight black slacks and baggy jumpers and tying her hair back in a pony-tail. She learned lots of obscure poems, pretended she liked jazz and red wine, and talked about going to live in the Latin Quarter in Paris.

  That had been fun for a while, but she missed pretty clothes, and got tired of pretending to be a Bohemian. There had been other characters she’d played too; it seemed preferable to be anyone other than her real self.

  *

  Tonight, however, she’d just been herself. That was partly because of the way she and Dan met, when she wasn’t dressed up. She had been in her work clothes, her hair needed a wash, there was a ladder in her stocking and she hadn’t even put on any perfume. She didn’t once try to impress Dan, nor did she build him up to be something he wasn’t either.

  It was all the laughing that made it so easy to be natural. Dan was neither a clown nor a joke-teller; he was just a funny person with his witty turn of phrase, his razor-sharp observations and ability to see humour in just about everything.

  After his question about whether she’d kiss a man in his work clothes they had gone on to a couple of other pubs, so he could get an idea of the area he’d be living in. She found out that he was twenty-five and had done his National Service in the Army; although he never went out of the country, he had enjoyed it so much that he was tempted to sign on as a regular.

  In the past he’d had a spell living rough; he’d spent six months in a leaky caravan in the middle of a field, and stayed in many other grim lodgings when the building firm he worked for sent him off to a different town.

  His friends were the men he worked with, and it seemed to Fifi, by the affectionate way he spoke of them, that they were the nearest thing he had to family. He hadn’t accumulated many personal belongings as he had never had a real base. But he said his boss would be bringing the rest of his stuff from Swindon tomorrow, a few more clothes, a radio and some tools.

  ‘What I’d really like is to settle down and have a real home,’ he said at one point, the only time in the whole evening when he sounded less than content with his lot. ‘I’d like to decorate it myself and have furniture I’d chosen. To lock the door and know no one could barge in on me.’

  Fifi turned off the bedside light and snuggled down under the covers. She had been moved by the simplicity of what Dan wanted. Most men coveted a smart car or a hand-tailored suit; they wouldn’t care about a decent place to live. And she’d never known anything else. She took this warm and spacious four-bedroomed house, with its plethora of lovely antique furniture passed down from both her parents’ families, for granted. However much her mother might irritate her, she was always there with whatever any of them needed, be it a meal, an ironed dress or a mended zip. Cleaning, cooking, washing were all done as if by magic; there were homemade cakes in the cake tin, sandwiches ready every morning for their lunch. If one of them was ill, their mother fussed over them.

  As children, their home was open to all their friends. Fifi’s father would erect tents for them in the garden, play cricket with them and hang ropes on the trees for them to swing on. Her mother never minded how many extra mouths she had to feed, and she would run up costumes for little shows they put on, hide Easter eggs in the garden, haul huge boxes back from the grocery shop for them to make into toys or houses. She was there bathing grazed knees, comforting them when they didn’t get school prizes, celebrating when they did, always loving and caring.

  Dan hadn’t had any of that.

  He didn’t invite sympathy; he was too amusing, too manly and confident. Yet all the same Fifi knew that her parents would take one look at him and disapprove. What they wanted for her was a man from a similar background, well bred, with a good family and excellent prospects. Fifi didn’t feel her father was a snob – he liked nothing better than getting students from working-class homes attending his lectures, and he made himself accessible to them to give them extra help. But neither he nor her mother would welcome a roaming bricklayer with a poor education for their daughter.

  To be truthful, Fifi had always imagined herself marrying a man in one of the professions. She’d never been attracted to louts that hung around on street corners or stumbled drunkenly about dance halls. All her previous boyfriends had been friends of other friends; not one had been an unknown quantity. And she had been out with all of them in a group situation before she took the chance and met them alone. It was completely out of character for her to behave the way she had tonight. But it felt as if it was meant to be.

  She knew Dan was special. He might not be educated, but he was clever, funny and strong. When he’d kissed her goodnight at the bus stop, she had almost cried because it was so heartstoppingly wonderful.

  The few short hours she’d spent with him had been the most memorable and happy of her whole life. Just before they left the last pub, ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’ sung by Elvis came on the jukebox. They’d kind of looked at each other and smiled, and Dan sang along with it in an amazingly good impersonation of Elvis, all the time looking right at her. She supposed that was pretty corny, but it had made her feel all fluttery inside.

  Just remembering his kiss made her tingle too. No other man had ever stirred her that way or made her feel she could easily lose control. She and her friends often discussed whether they would go to bed with someone before they were married. Fifi had always been insistent that she wouldn’t. But tonight she’d experienced real desire, and she realized that those feeble little flutterings she’d felt in the past with boys were nothing compared with how Dan made her feel.

  What was she going to do? If she told her parents about him, they’d ask her to bring him home. That might frighten him off. If she saw him in secret and her parents found out, they’d assume she had something to be ashamed of.

  ‘Wait and see how it turns out,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Maybe you won’t feel the same tomorrow.’

  ‘You look even more beautiful than I remembered,’ Dan said as they met by the Odeon the following night.

  ‘You look pretty handsome yourself,’ Fifi retorted. She had rushed home from work, wolfed down her tea and spent an hour getting ready, so she had half expected him to com-ment on how good she looked. But he was transformed, wearing a brown pinstriped Italian suit with a fashionable short jacket, white shirt and highly polished shoes. She hoped she might run into one of her friends so she could show him off. No one she knew had a boyfriend as gorgeous as Dan.

  ‘Are you sure you want to see this film?’ Dan asked, looking apprehensively at the poster for A Taste of Honey with Rita Tushingham.

  ‘My sister said it was brilliant,’ Fifi said. ‘She cried buckets.’

  Dan grinned. ‘Is that what makes a film good for girls?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Fifi agreed. ‘But we could go to another cinema if you like.’

  ‘No, it’s too cold to walk about.’ He looked down at her winkle-picker stilettos. ‘And I don’t think you’d get far in those anyway.’

  *

  The film was unbearably sad, and even though Fifi tried hard not to cry because she was afraid her mascara would run, she couldn’t help herself. As they came back out into the foyer, Dan pulled her over to one side, and using the handkerchief he’d had in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he wiped her face clean.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said when he’d finished, kissing her on the nose. ‘You’re a bit o
f a surprise! I thought you were too sophisticated to cry.’

  ‘I felt so sorry for Jo; she was so plain and unloved,’ Fifi said. ‘And her mother was such an unfeeling cow.’

  ‘They all reminded me of people I’ve met,’ Dan said thoughtfully as they left the cinema. ‘It was a bit too much of real life for me.’

  ‘Is your room as bad as the one she lived in?’ Fifi asked as they walked into a pub in the city centre for a drink before she had to catch the bus home. The pub was crowded, with nowhere to sit, and she wished they had somewhere they could go to be alone.

  ‘It’s a lot smaller,’ Dan replied, waving a pound note at the barman. ‘But the kitchen could star in a kitchen-sink drama – it doesn’t look as if it’s been cleaned for months.’

  ‘You didn’t say you’d got a kitchen,’ Fifi said in surprise.

  ‘I have to share it with everyone else,’ he said. ‘I won’t make anything more than a cup of tea in there, I’d be afraid of catching something.’

  Fifi had a Babycham and Dan a pint of bitter, and she began quizzing him anxiously about where he’d eat and do his washing.

  ‘There’s cafés and launderettes,’ he said airily. ‘I’m used to all that.’

  On the bus ride home later, Fifi’s mind kept alternating between reliving Dan’s kisses and thinking of him going home to that horrible room. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in a daze over a man’s kisses, though she’d never met anyone who kissed quite as wonderfully as Dan. But it was the first time she’d ever been troubled by how someone had to live.

  It was the combination of wanting to be with Dan all the time and worrying about him that confirmed she really had fallen head over heels in love with him. She could think of nothing but their next meeting. Her heart pounded when she saw him and just the touch of his hand made her feel she was on fire. But the thought of him washing and ironing his own shirts, having to work outside in the pouring rain and going home without anyone to make him a cup of tea moved her to tears.