Pretty Lady Read online

  Her butterfly touch was on Denny’s arm again, urging him past the man, towards the stairs. Denny moved obediently. The man also turned and followed them down the stairs, as though reluctant to let Merelda out of his sight.

  In the study, Denny groped in his airline bag for a moment, surfacing with the tawny-gold chalk, which he peeked at quickly. It was the exact same colour as Merelda’s hair. Satisfying himself on this point, he struggled into his overcoat, not noticing that Merelda slipped something else into his airline bag while his back was turned.

  She was smiling when he faced her, buttoning his coat, and the man was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Threateningly – or protectively?

  ‘Come again, Denny,’ she smiled, holding out her hand. Behind her, the man frowned.

  ‘Thank you.’ Denny tried to remember his manners. ‘It was a very nice tea. Good night.’

  On the pavement again, he found he was still holding the chalk in his hand. Under the street lamp, he bent and quickly drew the outline of her hair, as he remembered it, on the bottom cement step. The soft tantalizing curls sprang from the chalk as though they had been imprisoned within it, waiting for the stroke of chalk against cement to bring them to life. The colour was perfect. It would never be the same to draw a cocker spaniel’s ears again.

  But the rest of her was fading from his memory. Although he could still see her face when he closed his eyes, he knew he would not be able to recapture it in the other coloured chalks. Not until he had seen her again and again, knew her better.

  Meanwhile, it was past tea time and Sheila would start to worry. So would Mum, when she got home, if he was not there. Women got upset about nothing at all.

  He moved off in the direction of home.

  POLLY

  With Vera gone, the silence became a warm and cosy thing. The tiny, homely sounds from the kitchen, where Sheila was preparing tea, were reassuring in their eternal familiarity. (‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be –’ No! That was blasphemy. A sin, another sin, among so many. And minor, when measured against -) Polly sat up abruptly, swung her legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the couch until the dizziness abated.

  ‘Mum, are you all right?’ Hearing the springs creak, Sheila had rushed to the doorway.

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Polly blinked hard, blinked again, and the blur in the doorway became the slim silhouette of her daughter. ‘I was just thinking it was time I was getting along to the surgery. Get there early, get home early –’ Her voice trailed off. Good job Sheila couldn’t follow her thought.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? Wouldn’t you rather wait until Denny gets home? Then I could go with you.’ Sheila glanced at her watch. ‘He’s late. He should have been home half an hour ago. It is bad of him to be so late when you’re not well. He knows you worry – ’

  ‘Denny’s a good boy,’ Polly defended automatically. ‘He loses track of the time, that is all. God knows, it’s not as though he could help it.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Sheila said. Still, there are times when he could try harder. I’ll –’

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Polly spoke more sharply than she had intended. ‘I’ll see to Denny!’ She tried to soften her voice, to allay the uneasiness which had suddenly shaken Sheila. ‘You just leave him to me.’

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ Sheila agreed, ‘the way he listens to you. You seem to make him understand when no one else –’ She broke off, as though there were thoughts of her own she didn’t want anyone else following.

  ‘Perhaps I can come with you, anyway,’ she said. ‘Surely Denny can manage for himself for one night.’

  ‘No!’ Polly said. Poor Denny, coming home to darkness, to an empty house, not knowing where everyone had gone – that was what she wanted to spare him. A lifetime of uncertain emptiness like that. For the time that was left to him, Denny must have the warmth and security he had always known.

  In the kitchen, the kettle began to boil loudly. Sheila half-turned, but still hesitated in the doorway.

  ‘Go and turn the kettle off,’ Polly ordered. ‘And stop fussing so much. I’m all right.’

  After another moment, Sheila disappeared and the kettle stopped humming abruptly.

  It had to be done, and the best thing was to get it over with as quickly as possible. Thinking about it didn’t do any good. The decision was made, the time was past for thinking, for praying.

  Polly scuffed her feet into her shoes and stood up slowly, the way she had learned to these past few months, so that the dizziness didn’t overcome, or the pain rocket through her. Slowly, that was the way to take it. Slowly and unthinkingly, from this point onwards.

  ‘I’ll be going along now,’ she called out, keeping her voice steady. Above all, she must act natural, seem the same as she had always been, so that nobody could suspect – until it was too late to make any difference.

  ‘Are you sure you should?’ Sheila appeared in the doorway again, staring at her uncertainly. Polly smiled and straightened slowly.

  ‘I’ll be there early – get away early. That’ll be best. Collect my prescription on the way home. Then I can take my pill, have a hot drink, and get to bed early.’ Her smile wavered, steadied. ‘Sure, I’ll be a new woman in the morning.’

  There was no poignancy about it being the last – or next-to-last – walk through the old neighbourhood. With detachment, Polly noted the changes of the years – almost unnoticed at the time they happened. Perhaps it was because of the feeling of being not quite present. Of already being half-way ‘there’ – wherever there was.

  In the early days, she’d walked down this street often with Brian. In some funny way, he seemed to be close to her tonight. Or was it that she was closer to him? If so, she must cling to this feeling – because it would be all she had of him. For ever more. She wouldn’t be with him after this, couldn’t go where he had gone. They wouldn’t even bury her in consecrated ground. Denny, yes. But not her. And yet, there was no other way.

  (No other way, Brian. Her mind raced wildly, talking to him, trying to dispel the disapproval she felt emanating from him. If ’twas me had gone first, and you was left, wouldn’t you be doing the same now? He’s ours, Brian, and nobody but us to look after him. Such as he is, he’s our responsibility. Mine, now. If I can’t stay with him, then he’ll have to come with me. There’s no other way -)

  ‘Good evening, Mrs O’Magnon.’ The black figure on the other side of the low wall moved forward.

  ‘Good evening, Father Flaherty.’ Polly halted reluctantly. The last person she ever wanted to see again, and there was no escape.

  ‘I haven’t seen you at church lately.’

  Briefly, she considered lying, saying she’d been going to a different Mass, but there was no escape that way, either. The parish was dwindling. There weren’t so many other Masses, or so many priests, either.

  ‘I haven’t been feeling awfully well, lately, Father,’ she said. ‘Besides,’ she added mildly, ‘it’s not a sin any more to miss Mass once in a while, is it? Not if you aren’t feeling well?’

  ‘No, no.’ The old priest shook his head regretfully. ‘But we must remember that the operative phrase is “once in a while”, not just because it’s convenient for us. We mustn’t presume to – ’

  He had begun gesturing with the hand holding his breviary, and the black book caught his eyes. Crammed, it was, with bits of paper. Once it had been a solid, satisfying line of defence, its orderly bulk marked only by holy cards and memorial cards. Now, it bristled with communications from the Hierarchy – new prayers, new translations, new changes in the ritual. Fresh marching orders every week, it seemed, and no way of knowing any more who was out of step and who wasn’t.

  ‘Ah, Mrs O’Magnon,’ he sighed, abandoning the homilies, ‘we’ve seen a lot of change, you and I.’

  ‘Indeed, we have, Father,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking that, coming along.’ She’d seen the tell-tale glance at the breviary and followed his
mind without effort. She’d known him long enough – he’d married her and Brian when he was a new curate; tried to comfort her, first over Denny, then over Brian’s death. He was interwoven into the fabric of her life, and she into his. Like it or not, that was the way of it. And what she intended to do would come as a crushing blow to him. More so than to Sheila, perhaps. He was older and not so resilient.

  ‘Everything’s changing so fast,’ he said fretfully. ‘Look at that –’ he waved his breviary at the new block going up across the street, where once a terrace of Victorian working men’s cottages had stood. ‘Are people going to live any better in vertical glass hutches than they did in the old houses? New places, new ways – that’s all people think about nowadays. But are all the changes for the best?’

  ‘I think most of them must be,’ she spoke slowly, trying to choose the right words to absolve him of any sense of guilt at failing her when he looked back at the scene in the light of the knowledge he would soon have. He must not blame himself that he could not have read her mind and averted her from her planned course.

  ‘Isn’t it better that people should have the light?’

  ‘Ah,’ he pounced, ‘but do they see The Light?’

  ‘Isn’t the whole point of it,’ she said, ‘that there are many lights? Aren’t we now admitting that every man must be free to see his own? To follow the dictates of his own conscience, and not just dictates?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘The curates keep telling me -' She was contrite. He was old and tired. There were too many changes, happening too fast, for him. Perhaps for them all. It wasn’t the church they used to know, and it was still changing. Could anyone blame the parishioners who had drifted away, deciding, ‘We’ll come back when you’ve made your minds up’?

  So many things were no longer strictly right or strictly wrong. There were still rules left, of course, but for how long? Perhaps, some day, even what she was about to do would be permitted – the law of the land had already changed about that. In a few more months, a few more years, who knew?

  But she didn’t have a few more years, nor even months. Her time was ticking away by the minute. It could be measured in hours now, the time left to her – and to Denny.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Father?’ He had been speaking, saying something to her, and she had missed it.

  ‘No matter, no matter.’ He gestured impatiently, and an envelope bearing an official seal slipped from the pages of the breviary and slapped against the ground.

  Automatically, she bent to retrieve it for him and the pain caught at her middle. She gasped, and froze.

  ‘Eh?’ He picked up the envelope, brushing it off, and looked at her keenly, for the first time. ‘You’re not well, Polly O’Magnon. What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, Father,’ she denied quickly. ‘Nothing serious. Sure, I was just on my way to the doctor now for some of the medicine to put me straight I’ll be all right.’

  ‘And I’ve been keeping you standing here talking. I’ve been selfish. Go along, I won’t keep you any longer.’

  ‘Yes, Father, I will then,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, but I would like to get to the surgery before it gets too crowded.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ he said.

  She started to turn away, when he called her suddenly. ‘Polly–’

  She turned back.

  ‘God bless you.’

  SHEILA

  Mum had gone. Sheila sighed and put the chops in the pan. As so on as Denny came in, she’d turn the grill on. He’d be famished. He must have roamed a fair piece to be this late getting home.

  That was another of the endless worries. Denny, roaming all over the city, into neighbourhoods where he wasn’t known, where people might be alarmed by him, not realizing he was harmless. Where they might say or do something to upset him or hurt him.

  But what could you do? You couldn’t chain him up, the way they sometimes did in Victorian times. He was healthy and happy, he needed lots of fresh air and exercise. It was a perpetual question – one that came into the foreground every time Aunt Vera visited, with her pursed lips and her head-shaking and her endless hints about forebodings.

  You could worry about everybody, though. There was danger in crossing a street. Anyone could be in the wrong place at the wrong time and be hit by a stray bullet, or a car out of control. Or – like Daddy – by a pile of building materials falling on him at a building site. Denny would just have to take his chances with the rest of humanity. It was a pity, though, that he wasn’t so well equipped to deal with the things that might happen as the rest of humanity.

  For that matter, it was time to worry more about Mum.

  She was putting a brave face on it, but she wasn’t getting any better. Although she denied it, she seemed to be getting worse. She’d never fainted at work before.

  Perhaps it might be a good idea to drop in and talk to the doctor. Ask him if he’d really given Mum a thorough examination, or just taken her word for it that a few sleeping pills were all she needed. Ask him what was really wrong. Would he tell? Would he admit it – even to the next-of-kin – if Mum’s illness was really serious? There was some medical rule, wasn’t there, about doctors keeping their patients’ secrets? Would that apply, in this case?

  Don’t worry, that was all doctors ever seemed to say. Don’t worry. As though worry was something you could turn off, like the television set, by twisting a button.

  Still, she ought to see the doctor, try to get an honest opinion out of him. In the morning, perhaps, die could telephone and let them know she’d be late to work, and stop in on her way to the office -

  The front door slammed suddenly. ‘Denny, is that you?’ she called.

  ‘It’s me,’ his voice agreed amiably from the front hall.

  ‘Go and wash your hands, then.’ She snapped on the grill. ‘Tea’s nearly ready.’

  He clattered upstairs and was back again, in the briefest possible time, pulling out his chair and seating himself at the kitchen table. But he seemed in no hurry to start when she put his plate down before him and drew up the chair opposite.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she asked.

  He picked up his fork, more as though he wanted to show willing than to actually use it. ‘Had some tea,’ he said, ‘with a friend.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Sheila was hungrier than she had realized. ‘Anyone we know?’ Denny was always on about his friends. Sometimes he meant stray dogs, or birds, and sometimes he meant people. It wasn’t always easy to sort out his reports of his day. To be honest, she generally made listening noises and didn’t really bother.

  'Pretty lady,’ Denny said. ‘Lots of cakes.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Then something in his voice made her look up sharply. He was leaning forward on one elbow, idly building his mashed potato into a shape like a sand castle with his fork.

  It wasn’t like Denny to be uninterested in food, no matter how much he had eaten, or how recently. The strange, bemused expression on his face was new, too. Sheila felt a sudden pang. In somebody else, they might be symptoms of love –calf love, at least. But Denny? Denny?

  Not another of Denny’s crushes! They had been spared one for some time now, had been hoping that that phase might be over. Not that he was any great trouble. Like a child, he just wanted to follow the woman around, grateful for a few words, and he’d stand outside her house, just staring at it. Mind you, it often made the woman concerned very nervous (one had actually moved away because of it), and it added fuel to Aunt Vera’s constant flaming concern. (‘It may be all right this time,’ she’d say darkly, ‘but one of these days ...’)

  ‘What lady?’ The sharpness of her voice surprised herself as much as Denny. It brought him sitting upright, injured innocence on his face. He’d done nothing to deserve that tone of voice. Nothing that he could remember, anyhow.

  ‘Merelda,’ he said, as though that explained everything. ‘Merelda.’

  ‘Merelda,’ she tried to keep her tone quiet
and even. ‘Merelda – who? What’s her last name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Denny said cheerfully. ‘Just Merelda. Pretty lady.’

  ‘And where –’ she was calmer now, Denny looked like his old self again, she must have been imagining things – ‘did you and Merelda go for tea and all those cakes?’

  ‘Her house,’ Denny said.

  ‘And where –’ it was like sweeping water with a broom, you seemed to be getting somewhere and then you realized you’d made no progress at all – ‘where is her house?’

  ‘That way,’ Denny gestured happily.

  ‘Don’t point! I’m sorry, Denny, I didn’t mean to snap at you. Just tell me in words, can’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Along the river.’ He was turning sulky now. He sat there, hunched up, and stabbed at his chop, pretending to concentrate on his food. She’d get no more out of him now.

  Well, what did it matter? He was good-natured, but you could only push him just so far. Let him be now. So, some woman had taken him in and fed him like a stray cat – it probably wouldn’t happen again. If it did, then she could find out more about the woman. Probably the woman had just been acting on a random impulse – it had happened sometimes when Denny was a little boy – and it would never be repeated. It would be too bad, though, if Denny built it up to more than face value somewhere in the mazes of his cloudy child’s mind. But that was another risk you couldn’t protect him from, another area where he had to take his chances with the rest of us.

  Unconsciously, Sheila sighed. Denny looked up quickly, still defensive.

  ‘It’s all right, Denny,’ she said quickly. She stood and moved to the stove, filling the teapot.

  Denny ducked his head with relief. She turned in time to catch his other gesture.

  ‘Use your handkerchief, Denny.’

  Denny nodded, groping in his pocket. His hand connected with something greasy and unfamiliar. He pulled it out with his handkerchief. The remains of the buttered breakfast toast he had forgotten.