Harold Read online

  ‘Well, what have I got to do with that?’

  ‘Well, you were his wife, weren’t you? And there it is in block letters: Husband of local author.’

  ‘He’s no longer my husband. They know that, you know that; why do you say it like that, Gran? It’s as if you were enjoying it.’

  ‘Now look here, lass, don’t forget who you’re talkin’ to. I’m tellin’ you what’s in the paper. Anyway, you’re out of it now, aren’t you? You don’t have to put up with it.’

  She spoke as if she was at the receiving end of something, and then in the next moment her explanation came: ‘I could hardly get through the club door last night afore there they were. “Stickle’s at it again,” they said, as if he was a damn relation.’

  I held the phone away from my face and looked at it as if looking at her, and my mind was saying, You were glad to be classed a relation when Nardy was alive. You used to make skits about my being married to a nob and preening yourself because you were connected with me. Why did people change? What made them act as they did? It was the same emotion, I suppose, as that which made me react as I did the next instant by bringing up a topic that I knew irritated her and which I had refrained from mentioning over the past weeks.

  ‘I didn’t tell you that the adoption had gone through, did I?’

  There was a short silence before she said, ‘No, you didn’t. But all I can say in that direction is, you’ve made a rod for your own back.’

  I felt the colour rising to my face and my irritation boiled over as I cried into the phone, ‘Why don’t you like him, Gran? What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘There’s nothing the matter with me, lass. And you ask why I don’t like him. Well, I’ll tell you why, and our George thinks the same, an’ Mary an’ all, and it’s this way, if you want to adopt a bairn it should have been somebody decent, not a raw-mouthed little cockney.’

  I glared at the mouthpiece, then banged it down onto the stand, and marched away into the bedroom, slammed the door, then attempted to make the bed as if I were attacking it, throwing the clothes here and there. But all of a sudden I stopped, sat down in a chair, drooped my head and began to cry, all the time whimpering, ‘Oh, Nardy. Nardy.’

  If Nardy had been there he would have had an explanation of why Gran felt like this: he would have soothed my ruffled feathers; and although I thought I knew perfectly well why she felt like this, his soft voice would have put a different light on her attitude, explaining once again the tangents of our complex personalities.

  But Nardy wasn’t here.

  After a while I got up and finished making the bed, more gently now, and when, a short time later, I left the bedroom I suddenly wished that it was evening and I could see Tommy and I could talk to him about it. Such were the vagaries of my own nature …

  Janet had hardly got in the door and said, ‘Morning, Mrs Leviston, ma’am. Nippy isn’t it?’ before I could see she was bursting with news of some kind. She took off her hat and coat, stooped down to lift up Sandy who was barking a welcome at her before making her way to the kitchen.

  I stood at one side of the kitchen table, she at the other, and she nodded at me before she said, ‘She’s left him.’

  ‘Who? Hilda, the Mohican, I mean John?’

  Janet smiled now, saying, ‘That’s a good name for him; different from what some of the boys call him. Big Chief Bloody Nuisance, that’s what my ’Arry calls him, ’cos he says he’s never away from the door. But then that isn’t true, ’cos he goes off and we never see him for days. Neither does Hilda. We don’t know where he goes. But no, it wasn’t him, it’s the other one, Jimmy, Jimmy Stoddart the father.’ She nodded to the side as if Harold were present.

  My mouth widened into an ‘Oh!’ before I said, ‘The woman’s left him?’

  ‘Flat. Apparently she was only sticking because she thought she was going to have the baby, but since the miscarriage she’s acted different like. She thought young ’Arold was a nuisance, but then she found the two girls were almost as bad. It was the way she treated them: May’s good; they behave themselves with her because they want to stay there. So the bold boy’s on his own now, and that serves him right. But being who he is he won’t be like that long if I know anything about it. From what I can gather from his piece’s cousin who knows Hilda, the woman thought that with Maggie coming back from Australia with that bloke, she was wanting to marry him and ask for a divorce. That shook me, mind, Maggie wantin’ to marry again. Anyway, Jimmy’s piece thought the bloke would marry Maggie. But it seems he told her she was barking up the wrong tree. And I’ll tell you this, ma’am, if Maggie hadn’t had marriage in her mind again I don’t think she would have agreed to the adoption; likely the bloke, whoever he is, didn’t want to take on the responsibility of a ready-made family. Anyway, has the person in question’—she pulled a face here—‘been behaving himself?’

  I pulled a face back at her as I said, ‘Only in part. He’s been ringing Mr Brown’s emergency bell again.’

  ‘Ooh, the little devil! But then that’s a boy, any boy would do that. But it’s his language that worries me an’ what he’ll get up to at that school, it being connected with the church like … Well, I’ll make a cup of tea and then we’ll get started.’

  ‘By the way, Janet,’ I said, ‘I’ll be popping out; I’ve made an appointment with Doctor Bell, he’s seeing me at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘You had that pain again?’

  ‘Yes, a little. It’s beginning to worry me.’

  ‘Well, the best thing you can do is to see him. Put your mind at rest anyway. One thing you’re certain of, it isn’t your appendix this time.’

  It was just over an hour later when I left the house and as I stepped out of the front door I was met by the astonishing sight of the Mohican. It was astonishing for he looked more like an Indian Chief than ever. I stammered, ‘Hel … hello, John,’ and he replied in that surprisingly well-bred tone of his, ‘Good morning, Mrs Leviston. No doubt you’re surprised to see me.’

  ‘N … no. No,’ I stammered again; ‘not at all.’ He laughed gently now and leant back against the iron rail that bordered the steps to the basement and as he did so I looked past him down the street to where stood two more Indians. Well, they weren’t quite Indians, and I couldn’t really see from this distance whom they represented, but it certainly wasn’t anyone in the British Isles.

  ‘I just wanted to leave a message for Hilda with her mother. I’ve … well, unexpectedly got to go off for a few days. I didn’t know till just a little while ago, and … and I don’t want to go to the factory.’ And the marks on his cheeks spread again as he added, ‘She doesn’t like it very much: she’s with it herself, but they still kid her.’

  I nodded at him, saying, ‘I can understand that,’ then pointedly I asked, ‘Why have you to go off at a moment’s notice?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said; then turned to look down the street to where his two friends had moved somewhat nearer, and I could now make out they were on the other side from the Indians, more like something left over from Custer’s last stand, in fringed leather gear.

  And as if remembering my question, the Mohican said slowly, ‘Well, we just feel the urge, you know, to move, to get away, to do something different.’ As he finished he stood up straight and, leaning slightly towards me, he said, ‘I’d like to talk to you some time, Mrs Leviston; I think you’d understand.’

  For my part, at that moment I was thinking I couldn’t understand the reason for his get-up, let alone his desire to do something different, when two heads appeared coming up the area steps. They were those of Mr Brown and his policeman son, and no sooner had the young policeman spotted the Mohican than defences were up on all sides.

  ‘What do you want here?’ demanded Mr Brown.

  ‘Is he pestering you, ma’am?’ This from the young policeman; and now a bark from the Mohican as he swung round, yelling, ‘No! I wasn’t pestering her, copper.’ He spat out the last name. ‘I was just having
a word with … ’

  ‘I know what you lot are just having. Now get yourself away and quick if you don’t want any trouble. Now I’m … ’

  ‘Officer’—my voice sounded cool, icy, even to myself—‘this young man happens to be a—’ I paused on the word ‘friend’, but I’d no sooner got it out than the Mohican put in, ‘Mrs Leviston’s being kind in calling me friend. I’m not a friend of hers but a friend to the daughter of her daily, and I wanted to leave a message for her. That’s why I’ve dared to walk on the pavement in this part of town. Now what d’you make of that?’

  Both Mr Brown and his son looked at me, and I said quietly now, ‘He’s right.’ Then turning towards the young fellow, I said, ‘Go on up and see her. It’s the top floor.’

  He made no move for a moment but glared at the policeman. Then bending to the side towards where his two companions had come within earshot, he yelled, ‘I’m under surveillance,’ and had just turned back to the door when it opened again and out stepped the Captain and his wife. Then an odd thing happened, and I wasn’t imagining it: on the sight of them there passed over the Mohican’s face a look of surprise; then he turned his head quickly away and his gaze fell onto the policeman, and I thought, Ah, someone from his past, he recognised him; but although there was little chance of he himself having been recognised, the next moment, with head down, he almost slithered past the couple and entered the hall, and the Captain, looking at Mr Brown, said, ‘Where’s he off to?’

  It was I who answered him: ‘He’s going up to my flat with a message, Captain,’ I said.

  ‘Well, well.’ He looked from Mr Brown to the policeman, then to the two American Civil War relics passing us now, and when one of them snorted like a pig, he cried, ‘Scum! Scum! They should be put into the army … Perverts. I would shoot the lot of them, horsewhip them.’

  What caused my silly mind to make me enquire, ‘Put them in the army before or after shooting them, Captain?’

  ‘What?’

  And stupidly I still persisted: ‘Would you horsewhip them before you shot them or after, or … ?’ My voice trailed off as he shifted his piercing gaze from me to his wife, then to Mr Brown, then to the policeman, and because he seemed lost for a reply I now said, ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ and edging my way between Mr Brown and his son I walked away down the street.

  When I crossed over the road towards the private gardens that fronted the terrace I knew that the four people I had just left were now deep in conversation, the while their eyes were following my progress.

  Each of the tenants had a private key to the gardens and for only the third time since I’d lived here I used mine this morning and went in. The trees were bare, the shrubs and bushes heavy with hoar frost and overall there was a silence. It was strange, as I had found before, how once you passed through the gate you were in a different world. I looked down on this garden from the drawing-room window every day, but you had to walk in it to feel its presence, and it had a presence all of its own. Now, as I passed round the shrubbery into the rose arbour where the bushes looked like bits of small dead twigs sticking out of the earth, I promised myself that I would come here more often.

  Under the designed overhang of a stone wall was a wooden bench. The front of the seat still showed the frost clinging to it, but nevertheless I sat down, then drew a few deep cold breaths and looked across one of the beds to where a cherub’s head protruded from a wall, its mouth agape but with no water pouring from it now. The head reminded me somewhat of Harold, and I should have felt heartened by the fact, but I didn’t.

  It was Friday again all right. It had started with Gran as it usually did; and then this morning there was Janet with her news that Harold’s father was, as one would say, a freelance now, and why this should trouble me I didn’t know. Yet it did. Then that scene with the Mohican. As my mind touched on that I thought, I don’t like that Captain. As for the young policeman, he was, I thought, just doing his duty as he saw it, and I had to admit that the Mohican did look very out of place in this part of town. Yet London was free and open to all. If he had just been walking up the street likely there would have been no open opposition to him; it was the fact that he stopped outside a house and he was talking to a woman, perhaps begging, even on the point of mugging her. Yes, I could see the policeman’s point of view.

  Oh dear me! What more today? What would that doctor say after he had examined me? Well, I must get up and on my way to find out. Yet I was reluctant to leave this spot, although the cold was beginning to penetrate even my fur coat. I recalled other times when I had sat on a park bench, but always at these times I had had Hamilton for company. He would lean his hooves on the back of the bench while giving me advice. As if now expecting him to appear I looked from side to side, but there was no sign of him: my mind had apparently sent him to regions beyond recall. Harold had taken his place; and Tommy too. Oh yes, Tommy too. What was I going to do about Tommy? And again the question arose: Did I love him? If I was comparing the feeling I had for him with that which I held for Nardy, no, I didn’t love him. Yet, were he to go out of my life now I should miss him greatly. So what did I feel for him? Affection? Yes, a quite deep affection, but it wasn’t love. It was more than a year now since Nardy had gone from me and the pain of his loss was still with me, not so sharp, but nevertheless there.

  If you’re going to the doctor’s you had better get on your way.

  I got abruptly to my feet: it was as if Hamilton had spoken. But then, what had Hamilton been but my inner self; I might not see him any more but his voice remained …

  Doctor Bell had finished his ordinary surgery. He greeted me kindly. What was my trouble?

  I told him.

  ‘Ah, well, we must see what it’s all about, mustn’t we? Just go behind the screen and the nurse will attend to you.’

  Mike had never had a nurse in attendance. What Mike had said and would still say was, ‘Get your clothes off.’ His manner had been rough at times, oh, very rough, but he never treated me as a child.

  The nurse appeared from somewhere behind the screen, smiled sweetly at me and without a word began to help me undress, making me feel very like a cross between the child suggested by the doctor and a geriatric.

  Doctor Bell came in, smiled benignly, and rubbed his hands together as he said, ‘It’s a cold morning.’ They were still cold when they touched my flesh.

  After prodding and probing for a time, he said, ‘You say you feel the pain mostly in the stomach?’

  ‘Yes; mostly; but in other places too, in my chest.’

  He sat me up and tapped my back; told me to say Ah; told me to take a deep breath. Then he tried the reflexes of my legs; asked a few more questions, then left me to the ministrations of the nurse again.

  Later, seated at one side of his desk, I was again reminded of Mike and my regular Monday morning visits to his surgery and his acid tones and his bristling beard, but only by comparison with this doctor who, in a very quiet voice, said, ‘As far as I can ascertain, Mrs Leviston, I can find nothing wrong.’ He coughed, leant back in his chair, put his fingertips together and then said, ‘You are no doubt still feeling the loss of your husband, yes?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, I still miss him very much.’

  ‘Well, my dear, I think that there might lie the problem of your movable pains.’

  I stiffened. ‘You think I’m imagining them?’

  ‘No, no, not at all, they’re very real to you, but as far as I can gather they have no organic source: you haven’t any lumps or tender spots, your chest is sound, your heart is very good. What you likely need is just a tonic, and I shall give you a prescription for that.’ He leant forward now and began to write. Having finished, he got to his feet, came round the desk, handed me the slip of paper and, reverting to his fatherly manner, bent over me and said, ‘Now if we don’t feel any better in a week or so, drop in again and see me, eh?’

  I allowed a short silence to fall between us before, looking him straight in the fa
ce, I said, ‘I’ll do that.’

  A certain amount of indignation caused me to walk briskly home. He thought I was imagining the pain. Likely, he had read my first book, Hamilton, and come to the conclusion that if I could think up a horse with which I held conversations then it would be quite easy for me to create a few pains here and there.

  As soon as I got in the house Janet greeted me with, ‘There’s been a phone call from the school. And what did you think of Big Chief Workshy having the nerve to call here? I gave him the length of me tongue. He’s off again. And I ask you, Mrs Leviston, ma’am, where does he get the money? Of course, he’s on the dole but that doesn’t pay for his flittin’ ’ere and there. I said to him … ’

  ‘Who was it phoned from the school, Janet?’

  ‘It was a man. I think it could have been the headmaster ’cos … well, he spoke nice, pleasant like.’

  I almost grabbed up the phone, and when I heard the school secretary’s voice at the other end I asked her to put me through to Mr Binn.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Mrs Leviston.’

  ‘Good morning … You wanted to speak to me?’

  ‘Yes. I wondered, if you had the time, could you pop in some time today?’

  ‘What’s wrong? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Oh no, no, no, nothing serious.’

  I wanted to ask now, Is it to do with Harold? Of course it was to do with Harold. He had been up to something. Or perhaps not; perhaps it was to do with the choir. I understood the choirboys were in need of new cassocks; perhaps it was something to do with that. My voice had a light tone to it as I said, ‘I could come straight away.’

  ‘There is no rush; whatever time suits you.’

  ‘Very well.’ I put the phone back on its stand and turned to where Janet stood near the kitchen door as she asked, ‘He’s in trouble?’

  ‘No, no. As far as I can gather, no. I think it must be something to do with his going into the choir.’