The car-boot man approached her one day when she’d just come out of a shop. If ever she had anything she wanted to get rid of — articles of clothing she had tired of, odds and ends she might dispose of — he’d give her a good price, old or new, it didn’t matter. She went with him to his house and spread out on a table what she had just acquired. He didn’t pay much in spite of what he’d said about a good price, and never has on any of the occasions she has visited him since. He makes an offer, take it or leave it; the best he can do, times are hard. Bearded, with glasses, he has never revealed his name. His house is stuffy, the windows always tightly closed. The money he pays her comes from odd jobs, she tells Albert, who always wants to know where money comes from. Cleaning, she says. Working a price-gun.
‘No, man. No more.’ The last of the black man’s crumbs have been scattered, but the pigeons still crowd his legs. Two weeks he has gone without a drink, he assures the pigeons and the companion who is not present. ‘Honey, that is for you. Honey, I suffer.’
People wait outside the cinemas, drab against the glamour of the posters and the familiar faces of the stars. Georgina Belle could be a star’s name, and Pettie wonders how it came into her thoughts. ‘A total waste that was,’ a cross voice complains, and a couple walk away.
The grandmother said they’d only minutes ago decided on another arrangement. She would be coming to live in the house herself, to take her daughter’s place as best she could until the baby was older. It was sensible in the circumstances, but Pettie didn’t listen to why that was. The clock in the panelling struck, five o’clock it would have been. The grandmother said something about the heatwave when she held the front door open, then gave her the ten-pound note.
In a Wimpy Bar Pettie squirts tomato ketchup on to chips and grey minced meat. When out to dinner, Miss Rapp’s column laid down, refrain from recounting the details of a hospital operation while other folk are eating. You’d get into the way of things in a house like that one. You’d leave something for Miss Manners, you’d get your grammar right. Blush pink on your fingernails, nothing objectionable, nothing the woman holding the stepladder could sniff at. Magic Touch on any skin defects.
Her Coca-Cola comes. She sips a little, then slowly begins to eat, not registering the taste, nor where she is. She lights her remaining cigarette and crumples up the empty packet. ‘Come downstairs for a sherry,’ he invites, his quiet baby asleep, a rag doll on the pillow. The sherry glasses have long stems, two glasses on a red and gold tray. ‘It suits you, Nanny,’ he says, about the uniform they have given her. Two shades ofblue, with only touches of white, the stockings black. A widower is lonely: that’s there between them. He doesn’t say it; he doesn’t have to; the old woman couldn’t manage it is what he says, too much for her. It’s dark outside, a winter’s evening and the fire is lit.
4
Six days go by and then Thaddeus does what he feels he has to, having put it off, but now wanting to get it over. He has been given a time and a place, four o’clock in the Tea Cosy. He brings with him fifty pounds in notes.
The teashop is in the town where Mrs. Ferry was once the receptionist at the Beech Trees Hotel. The Beech Trees has gone, and with it Mrs. Ferry’s onetime husband, whom she would settle for now. She lives alone, in a room above a confectioner’s. The Tea Cosy is in a busier street, five minutes away.
‘Bad Hat!’ Mrs. Ferry exclaims from where she sits when Thaddeus enters, lowering his head beneath the beam with a sign on it to warn him. Bad Hat! her Valentine message ran seventeen years ago, among others in a local paper. But good for his ever-loving Dot!
She has ordered tea, and a plate of cakes, which she was always partial to and used to say she shouldn’t be. She bulges out of a spotted yellow dress, a hat reminiscent of a turban hiding much of her henna hair, her lipstick a splash of crimson. Coloured beads lollop over double chins and reach an artificially deepened cleavage, exposed between mammoth breasts. There is no sign in this spectacle of the ill-health so regularly touched upon in Mrs. Ferry’s letters. Only her weight would seem to be a subject for a consulting room.
‘Hullo,’ Thaddeus greets his afternoon woman of long ago, recalling her underclothes on the back of a chair, the curtains pulled over. ‘Hullo, Dot.’
‘Well, dear, you haven’t changed. He’ll have put on a year or two, I said, but truth to tell you hardly have.’
He smiles, wiping away with his fingers the lipstick she has left on his cheek, which would have been his mouth if she’d had her way. She pours his tea, remarking that, after all, it wasn’t yesterday. She speaks in a hurried gabble, doing her best to be lighthearted. She offers Thaddeus the plate of cakes.
‘I have to explain,’ he interrupts when there’s a chance.
But she hurries on, as if fearful of what might be said. ‘We’ve had good times, dear. Don’t think I didn’t appreciate that. I lie alone in my little place, watching the light come at the curtains, and I think how good the times were. I haven’t been well, you know.’
‘You said. I’m sorry.’
‘I wouldn’t have asked another living soul. I lie there remembering our times and I think there’s no one I can ask except my old Bad Hat.’
He wishes she wouldn’t call him that, but of course it is her right and once he didn’t mind. Thad dear, her letters have begun: that, also, he didn’t mind.
‘I’ve come over because of something that has happened. I didn’t send anything before-’
‘Shh now, dear.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He lowers his voice. ‘I didn’t send anything before because strictly speaking the money’s my wife’s. I didn’t feel I could.’ He pauses until her cup is raised, and hurries on while she sips her tea, spreading another red smudge on the china surface. ‘But then my wife came across one of your letters.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Careless herself now, Mrs. Ferry causes people to look their way. ‘Oh, my dear God!’
Thaddeus doesn’t give the details of how the letter came to light. ‘It upset her that you were in need. When she read about it she wanted you to have something.’
‘I don’t believe I follow this, dear.’
Thaddeus does not intend to disclose the fact of his widowhood, feeling that in the circumstances it would not be sensible to do so. He has respected Letitia’s wishes, he’ll send whatever is demanded in the future, but the consequences of divulging that he is again on his own are very much to be avoided.
‘My wife simply wanted to help you. She read your letter and was upset.’
‘I’m to blame for a commotion!’ is Mrs. Ferry’s response, declared in the same noisy manner.
‘No, no, of course you’re not.’
She shakes her head. A shock, she says; she nearly fainted. Her eyes seem smaller than they were a moment ago. Her mouth remains slightly open when she has finished speaking, the tip of her pink tongue revealed.
‘I wanted to explain, Dot. I’m very sorry you got a shock.’
‘I never meant harm, dear.’ Though stated more quietly, a degree of Mrs. Ferry’s natural perkiness has returned. ‘No one wants that. You believe me, dear, no harm was meant?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Another fact is, there was nothing any time I wrote to you that was an indiscretion. We have had our indiscretions, not that I regret them, not a single one. But nothing was written by me that could have offended a wife, for I said to myself I must not do that. I wrote when I was at my lowest. The first time I was at my lowest, the next time not so bad but still not able for things. I’m ailing through and through, to tell you the honest truth. Now that you’ve been kind enough to come over I can say that.’
She lives like this, Thaddeus finds himself reflecting. She writes men begging letters without threats, needling their guilt, sniffing out money. God knows how many overnight commercial travellers have benefited in the past at the Beech Trees. God knows how often the handwriting that slopes in all directions succeeds in eliciting assistance, with mutter
ed oaths.
‘I have no money of my own, Dot.’
‘You never had, love.’
‘I think I tried to explain when you wrote the first time that it felt wrong to give you my wife’s money, but I don’t think I succeeded.’
‘Isn’t it strange how things pan out? I was well set up, married to a prosperous man, you hadn’t a bean. I didn’t want presents, it never mattered.’
She unlocked the door of Room Twenty when the chambermaids had gone home. He went up the back staircase and waited for her, and sometimes — if it was easy — she came with two drinks on a tray, gin and Martini. He used to smoke in those days, but she never let him in Room Twenty because the smell of cigarettes would be a give-away when the evening maid came on. She didn’t want talk in the hotel. She was particular about that.
‘I wouldn’t have written unless I was down.’
‘I know. I understand that.’
‘Do you, Thad? Do you really? Do you know what it is to be down?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And short when you’re getting on a bit? You weren’t much more than a boy when you were selling your garden produce. Oh, how I remember that!’
He filled the van with what he grew or picked from the fruit trees, and set off in the early morning. He supplied Fruit ‘n’ Flowers on the way and then the Beech Trees, and she was in and out of the kitchen. A grey A30 the van was, second-hand and hardly big enough.
‘I was always surprised, you know, you didn’t have ajob.’
‘It was a job of a kind.’
‘Oh, heavens, yes. Anyone could see you worked. I often wish we could turn the clock back, Thad. She’s younger, is she?’
‘A few years.’
‘I must have guessed it. You wouldn’t have written that.’
‘No, I don’t think I did.’
‘You only wrote back to me the once, dear.’
‘All I could have kept on saying was that the money wasn’t really mine to give away.’
‘Money, money! What a curse it is! Extraordinary, a wife not minding though. You have to say extraordinary, Thad?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Well, there you go, as they say these days.’
‘Yes.’
‘I hate them, really, these new expressions.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m all right, you know. Except for being short I’m all right. I take pills. I’ve got a few things wrong inside, you know, but there you are. Worse at the moment is the heat. You relish the heat, Thad?’
‘Yes, actually I do.’
‘You’re weather-beaten. It suits you. I wonder if he’ll be weather-beaten? I said. He’s an outside man, I said, stands to reason it’ll show. D’you know what I’d like? I’d like to show you my little place.’
‘Oh, look, I don’t think-’
‘Old times’ sake, Thad. Five minutes for old times’ sake. I’d love to show you.’ And Mrs. Ferry whispers, grimacing to make a joke of her reservation: ‘I wouldn’t want anything handed over here, dear.’
The bill comes swiftly. He pays it and stands up. She gathers together her belongings.
‘You haven’t lost your looks, Thad.’ She lowers her voice again for that, working a dimple, the way she used to. ‘A dear, dear friend,’ she whispers to a couple who nod to her as they go by, who examine Thaddeus with curiosity. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve mislaid a glove!’ she cries, and people at the nearby tables stand up to poke about on the floor for a lace glove, of sentimental value. ‘Oh, I’m so fussed today!’ Mrs. Ferry apologizes when it’s discovered in the pocket of her skirt, and the Tea Cosy settles down again.
Two pounds and fourpence arrive in change. Thaddeus reaches for the coins and leaves a tip. With a plastic butcher’s bag, the Daily Telegraph and the Radio Times, her lace gloves in place, a large velvet handbag held tightly, Mrs. Ferry is ready now, and on the street outside she takes his arm.
‘That’s never your car, dear!’ she exclaims, eyeing Thaddeus’s battered old Saab and Rosie in it. ‘Well, I never!’
‘Are you far? Is it worth driving?’
‘A minute’s walk. You have a dog, dear.’
‘Yes.’
‘Remember the Sealyham at the hotel?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘H died, of course. We buried him at the back. Remember Oscar? The daytime porter?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘He went a fortnight later, poor old Oscar.’
She opens a door beside a shop window full of jars of sweets, Rolo and Kit-Kat and Mars bars advertised, Easter eggs reduced. The hall they pass through to reach uncarpeted stairs is stacked with cartons of similar confectionery, and strewn with junk mail. People listen in the Tea Cosy, Mrs. Ferry explains, they listen and they watch, he probably noticed. In the room she lives in she pours out gin, not offering it first. Both glasses have lipstick on them.
‘I haven’t changed my tipple.’ Mrs. Ferry winks, adding the Martini. There should be lemon, she apologizes, there should be ice. But lemons are a price these days, and ice she can never manage, the fridge she has. A fluffy teddybear, in blue with one eye gone, is on the bed.
‘Cheers, dear.’
‘I must be careful. I have to drive.’
‘Poor Oscar went in the hall. He carried in a couple’s bags, the next thing was we were loosening the poor chap’s collar. “I’ll sit down just a minute,” he said. Well, truth to tell, that was the end.’
Thaddeus nods, remembering Oscar, old even in 1979, burly and genial. He always suspected that Oscar knew.
‘Your mother wasn’t long gone in our day, dear. You used to mention your mother the odd time.’
‘Did I? I don’t remember that.’
‘Oh, definitely. On the strange side, I considered, but of course I never said. One’s nervous, young. A foreign lady, wasn’t she?’
‘My mother was Polish.’
‘Romantic, it sounded. Not that you’d ever say much.’
He never had; he never did. His childhood in that thread-bare past is one of shame: his unwanted presence, his garden friendship with the ghosts of pets, footsteps that passed by when he lay awake, whispers on the stairs.
‘Close you were, dear. Oh, very close.’
‘I suppose I was.’
He takes two twenty-pound notes and a ten from his wallet and places them on a bamboo table. He can see her counting them from a distance. He tells her how much is there.
‘Butter side up you’ve landed, dear. I haven’t done so well myself. What’s she like?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about Letitia.’
‘I know, dear, I know. I always thought you’d end up with a smasher, I bet she’s that. An eye for the ladies, Chef used to say when you hawked your produce in the Trees.’
He smiles, but it isn’t enough. He knows what Mrs. Ferry is thinking because it’s there in her eyes. It was there in the teashop, it was there when she embraced him: she was his fancy woman, and now he’s gone stuffy on her. ‘He can be so blooming stuffy,’ she used to say, referring to her husband. ’He gets my goat sometimes.’
‘Palpitations is what I suffer mainly,’ she’s saying now. ‘A warning, they give it as, and then there’s the digestive thing. I’ve had more barium meals than a cat’s had mice, and still it’s a bewilderment to the medics.’
‘I’m sorry, Dot.’
‘You were romantic yourself, you know, left alone in your big old house. I’d think of you, and long to be there with you. Oh, others did too, I don’t delude myself. What was she called, that girl you had before you and I had our naughtiness? Beatrice? Beryl?’
‘Bertranda.’
‘Funny, that, I always thought. You’re still seeing Bertranda, dear?’
‘I haven’t seen Bertranda since 1977.’
‘Well, there you go. Not that I ever knew the girl, but everything’s of interest as you get older. You find that, Thad?’
‘Not really.’
‘You sp
ent a night at the Trees. When his Cheltenham uncle died. Remember that? You had to skulk about, Twenty not being en suite.’
Thaddeus doesn’t want to remember, but images and sounds occur: the narrow corridor, shoes outside the doors, the lavatory with the cracked window-pane, someone having a bath, a radio on in a room he passed.
‘You parked the van two streets away.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘That same chef’s in the Royal now. We still keep up.’
‘I must be going, Dot.’
‘Oh, love, you’ve only just come.’She stands with a bottle in each hand. Old times’ sake, she says again. Old times, old flames. A laugh comes moistly, a giggle that rises from some depth within her. The flesh of her chins and of her propped-up breasts wobbles, then settles again. ‘Remember that first afternoon, eh? My, you were keen that first afternoon!’
That was long ago, Thaddeus says, then realizes this sounds dismissive. Friendships belong to their time: he corrects his remark in an effort to mend matters. But the effort is wasted because Mrs. Ferry still isn’t listening.
‘Not that I wasn’t keen myself, dear. I’m not saying that for a minute. Bucketing down it was. That gutter leaking above the window, drip, drip, drip. I told him afterwards — the gutter above Number Twenty, and he said he’d get Oscar up a ladder.’
‘I really must go now.’
‘I treated him badly, Thad.’ Idly she caresses the blue teddybear, prodding at the empty eye. ‘He worshipped me and I threw it back at him.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘Poor little man, he wore that cravat to give himself a presence, like he tried for with the moustache. Everything for me, he said, and I threw it back. I lie awake sometimes.’
‘I’m sorry.’