Never Die in January Read online

  “Just passing. I’ve got a few days off.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You thought why not go and see Mandy.”

  “You should be flattered.”

  He waited to be offered a coffee but the question was not raised.

  “I am, George, lam.”

  There was a fake ormolu clock on the fake mantelpiece. She glanced at it. It was showing 10.08.

  “How’s Joe?”

  “He’s fine. He’s gone to work.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “For God’s sake, George, what do you care how he’s doing? Oh! Listen, if you’ve come to see if you can get me to reduce the maintenance payments for the kids forget it.”

  “I told you why I came.”

  “You’ve always been a rotten liar.”

  “Aye, that’s a fact. All right, I came because I knew Joe would be at work. I came because I thought you and I — ”

  “You randy old bugger!”

  “Lassie, you always do it to me.”

  “Well, it’s got to stop. It’s not fair on Joe, is it?”

  “Joe’s got you all the rest of the time. Anyway, how’s he doing?”

  “You just asked that. Why’re you so interested? You’ve never given a stuff about Joe before.”

  “Well, I mean…looking around…everything seems nice…”

  “Joe’s doing OK. He works hard. He wants to give me nice things.”

  “Has he still got three cabs?”

  “George, what the hell has Joe’s financial affairs got to do with anything?”

  “I’d like to have a word with him about something.”

  “So it isn’t a quickie with the ex-wife. I don’t know whether to feel insulted or pleased. I suppose you’ve still got that tart Frenchy hanging about.”

  “She’s a good friend to me.”

  “I never thought you’d have to buy it, George.”

  “That’s not the case at all.”

  “What’s this something you want to have a word with Joe about?”

  “A business proposition.”

  She laughed, unamused. “Business proposition! You? Come on, George. You wouldn’t know a business proposition if you fell over one. Not unless…George, you’re not in trouble are you? Is that it? I mean this whole thing, the visit, just passing — ”

  There was a crash as the front door burst open. Joe Parrish, taxi driver and master of the house, stood on the threshold. He looked at Macrae and seemed stunned for a moment.

  “You! Christ, I never thought it was you!”

  “Joe!” Mandy’s voice was like a whip.

  He planted himself in front of Macrae. He was inches shorter. “Joe! Don’t be stupid.”

  Usually he did what Mandy told him to do. This time he didn’t. “Shut up!” he shouted.

  “Don’t you tell me to shut up!” She grabbed his arm and turned him towards her.

  He slapped her hard in the face.

  “Oh!”

  The unexpectedness of it as much as the blow caused her to drop into a chair holding her cheek.

  Macrae said, “Joe! This isn’t what you think. I was passing and — ”

  “You bloody liar. You’ve been having it off with my wife in my house in my bed. You bastard!”

  “That’s not true, laddie. If you want to know the truth it was you I came to see.”

  “Bollocks! There’s something going on here. I’ve known about it for weeks. That’s why I came back.”

  “You rotten little bugger!” Mandy pushed herself up out of the chair. “Sneaking. That’s what you are, a sneak!”

  “You want another?” Joe shouted. “You’re going the right way about it.”

  That seemed to exhaust them for a moment and they stared at each other in silence.

  Macrae said, “Joe, I swear to you — ”

  “Who’s that?” Joe said. There was the sound of a car engine idling outside the front door. Joe turned to the window. Macrae caught a sudden look of apprehension in Mandy’s eyes.

  Joe ran down the passage to the front door. There was a squeal of tyres and the car accelerated down the street.

  Mandy said to Macrae, “A fine mess you’ve made of this, George.”

  “Don’t be bloody silly. He might have caught you in bed. As it is he won’t be sure now.”

  Joe returned. His face was bloodless.

  “Well?” Mandy said, seizing the initiative. “What’re you accusing me of now?”

  Joe was genuinely bewildered. “If it’s not George it’s someone else. I’m bloody positive.”

  “Just anybody, is it? Anybody who stops his car near the house. You’re going barmy, Joe.”

  “Aye,” Macrae said. “You’ll have a breakdown if you go on like this.”

  Joe sat down and put his face in his hands. “I could have sworn. I…Maybe it’s being alone in the cab all day.”

  “Too much time to think,” Macrae said.

  “And maybe you should apologize to both of us,” Mandy said. “You want some coffee, George?”

  But the purpose of Macrae’s visit was damaged beyond repair. “No thanks. I’ll be off. Take it easy, Joe. Remember Othello.”

  Joe and Mandy stared uncomprehendingly at him as he went out into the street.

  Irene stood at the door of her mother’s room and, unnoticed, watched her for a moment. Mrs Isard was sitting upright on the edge of her bed, hands folded in her lap, staring straight ahead as though she was blind. She looked so small and frail that for a moment Irene felt her throat close with emotion. She shouldn’t look like this, she thought, not in her seventies. It was unfair.

  “Have you been waiting long?” Irene crossed the room and kissed her.

  “Since half-past nine.”

  It was now half-past eleven.

  “We’re going out for lunch, Mother, not breakfast.” It was meant as a joke, but Mrs Isard did not smile.

  “Have you got everything? Do you need to go?”

  “No thank you.” Her mother’s expression became irritated.

  “It’s sunny. What about the country?”

  “I don’t mind where we go as long as it’s out of this bloody place.”

  Irene took her arm as they went along the corridor. Lift doors clanged. Old people shuffled in and out.

  “Going up?” a voice said.

  “Down,” Irene said.

  They waited.

  “The more senile you get the higher you go,” Mrs Isard said. “When you reach the sixth floor that’s the end. You’re finished then. You’d think they’d do it the other way; start at the top and work down to the basement. That’s where the incinerators are.”

  “You’ll be out of here soon, Mother, I promise you.”

  They drove into the Thames valley, the sunshine was bright, the morning frosty. They stopped near Marlow at a pub on the river.

  “It’s in the Guide,” Irene said. “The food’s supposed to be good.” The pub restaurant was rather smart. They were seated at a window. The river was below them. A couple of narrowboats were moored on the far side. A pair of swans drifted by.

  They ordered sole. Mrs Isard had always liked Dover sole. Irene worried about the bones.

  “Would you like me to ask them to take it off the bone?”

  “I can manage.”

  A waiter appeared and asked if they’d like to see the wine list. “No thanks — ” Irene began.

  “I’d like some wine,” Mrs Isard said. “White wine with fish.” “Do you think you should, Mother? You know how it — ”

  “I’d like a glass of white wine.” Mrs Isard was firm.

  Irene ordered two.

  “I’m not an alcoholic,” Mrs Isard said when the waiter had gone.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  But you think it.”

  “It’s just that it makes you…you know. Do you want to go?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Mrs Isard picked a
t her sole. The bones got in her teeth and she left most of it.

  “Would you like something else? A sweet from the trolley? An ice cream?”

  “I’d like another glass of wine.”

  “I don’t think that would be wise. And Mother, please, not that old tin.”

  Mrs Isard had taken out her old tobacco tin and was selecting a half-smoked butt.

  “Let me get you a proper packet.”

  She ordered a packet of cigarettes and her mother lit up.

  “Your father used to smoke these.”

  Irene remembered the picture of the bearded sailor on the packet.

  They settled back with their coffee. Mrs Isard seemed to have forgotten about ordering the second glass of wine. She smoked and looked at the swans.

  “When you were little I used to take you to see the ducks in Battersea Park.”

  Irene had a fleeting memory of mud and bits of soggy white bread floating on the filthy water. The ducks had been too bloated with food to eat her offerings.

  “I used to take Grace to the Serpentine,” Irene said. Then, “I spoke to the milkman.”

  “What milkman?”

  “I told you. She was found by her milkman. He said he’d hardly ever seen her. But he’d heard her typing.”

  “Typing?”

  “That’s what he said. Maybe it was secretarial work.”

  “Where did she get the money to live?” Mrs Isard said. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “I sent it to her bank. It was Carl’s really.”

  “Blood money! Guilt money!”

  “Not so loud, Mother!”

  “You ignored us, Grace and me.”

  “Please…not now. Don’t you want to know about the milkman? He said she owed him for three weeks. That’s why he went round the side of the house. He saw her through the window.”

  “I saw your father look through a window at me once.”

  “Where was that?”

  “At the refuge. I’m thirsty.” She caught the waiter’s eye. “Bring me a brandy. A large one.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Mother. Why not — ”

  But the waiter had gone.

  “You didn’t like the refuge, did you?”

  The people at the nearest table paid their bill and left and Irene was able to relax slightly.

  “No, I didn’t. Nor did the other kids.”

  “It saved my life — and yours. Vic would have killed me in the end. Or I would have killed myself.”

  She drank half the brandy in a gulp.

  “You nearly did anyway. Later, I mean.”

  “Don’t be impertinent. It was my life.”

  “I was part of it. You forgot that sometimes.”

  “Oh, so I’m to blame, am I?”

  “I’m not apportioning blame. It just happened.”

  Mrs Isard finished her brandy and looked round for the waiter. “No more, Mother. That’s it!”

  But Mrs Isard was not to be balked. “If you don’t order me another I’m going to piddle on the chair.”

  “Don’t you dare. Do you want to go?”

  “No, I don’t want to go. For God’s sake stop treating me like a child. Just order me the brandy.”

  “Mother, listen to me. If you don’t behave I’m going. I’m leaving you here. Don’t think I won’t. And you can find your own bloody way back.”

  Mrs Isard looked at her, a calculating expression in her eyes. “You would, wouldn’t you? You left me before.”

  “That’s right. Now go to the loo and I’ll order you another brandy. A small one. OK?”

  Mrs Isard rose. Irene rose with her, spoke to a waiter, physically turned her mother in the direction of the ladies’ toilets, and watched her totter off. She had a sudden and overpowering desire to flee the place and never see the old woman again. But she went back to the table.

  It was true about Vic. He would have killed her mother. And Irene too. His drinking had been getting worse and worse.

  Irene had written a letter. She would never forget some of the words. They were an epigraph to her mother’s life.

  Vic had thrown boiling water at her mother. She could not use her right arm. Irene was a teenager at the time. They had read about Women At Risk. Irene had written to them in her mother’s voice.

  I have spoken to my lawyer. He knows my husband’s terrible record for violence. He says that until he actually kills me, or seriously injures me, nothing can be done.

  Actually kills me.

  She remembered that phrase best of all.

  And it wasn’t for want of trying.

  He’d hit her with bricks and fists, he’d kicked her. He’d smashed a glass in her face. He’d thrown her from a moving car.

  And the teeth. She remembered those. On the kitchen floor.

  So one night, when he was out drinking, they’d left. Just taken a few things in a suitcase, and caught the Underground to Hammersmith and knocked on the door of the refuge.

  I wrote you a letter, her mother had said. Come in, they said.

  For the first time in her life Irene did not feel afraid.

  It took her mother longer. Vic would find them, she had said.

  And he had.

  He’d looked at them through the window.

  I want my wife and child, he’d said.

  But the other women would not let him. They’re ill, they said. Sick. Go away.

  He’d smashed the gate, but he’d gone. Irene never saw him again.

  “Excuse me, madam. The lady with you…”

  Irene came hurtling back to the present like a missile from its silo.

  “What?”

  “The elderly lady

  “What’s happened? Has she had a fall?”

  She followed the waiter through the restaurant. Her mother was in the bar draining the last of a glass of brandy.

  “Mother!”

  Mrs Isard turned slowly.

  “How many has she had?”

  “That’s the second at the bar, madam”.

  “My daughter will pay,” Mrs Isard made an expansive gesture with her arm that almost unbalanced her. She steadied herself on a bar stool. “I do not carry money. Will you take a cheque? Makes no difference, they don’t let me have a cheque-book.”

  The young barman was looking apprehensive.

  Mrs Isard held on to the bar stool. “Can I have another?”

  “No you can’t. We’re going.”

  Mrs Isard went down on her knees and embraced the bar stool. “I don’t want to go!”

  Irene paid the bill.

  “Mother, you’re making a scene.”

  She took her mother’s arm but Mrs Isard clung on to the bar stool.

  “Can you help me?” Irene said to the waiter.

  Mrs Isard began to weep.

  “Prise her fingers off,” Irene said.

  They managed to get the stool away from her mother.

  “Let me, madam. She’s only a little thing.”

  The waiter picked Mrs Isard up as he might a small child and carried her out of the pub to the car park. Between them they managed to get her into the car with the seat-belt fastened.

  “A strait-jacket!” Mrs Isard plucked at the seat-belt. “Just like the hospital.”

  Irene gave the waiter a fiver and thanked him.

  “Not at all madam, I had a grandmother who liked brandy.” Mrs Isard slept all the way back to London.

  CHAPTER XIII

  “Leo, you’ve got to do something!”

  “What can I do?”

  “Don’t ask me. It’s your family.”

  “I know,” he said, gloomily.

  They were in the Old Vienna, off the Strand, a wine bar that Zoe liked because the food often tasted slightly burnt, which gave her confidence that it didn’t come from an imagined central cooking complex in Swindon pre-packaged for microwaving.

  “It’s only a tooth, you said.”

  “I know.”

  “F
orty-eight hours, you said.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll be with you every evening, you said.”

  “I know.”

  “So where were you last night?”

  “Yesterday was a bastard. I had to go to Suffolk. When I got back there was a siege in a council flat in Westminster, a man holding a young girl. That didn’t end till three in the morning and it was too late to phone you. I was so bloody tired I went home to bed.”

  “Home?” she said. “What’s that? Oh, yes, I remember. It’s our flat in Pimlico.”

  “Did you have a dull evening?”

  Dull, she thought, was not a word she would have chosen. Advertising copywriters had to be precise in their use of words. Boring, tedious, wearing, frustrating…those were some. Then there were others such as rage, fury, violence, frenzy, hysteria, that also sprang to mind.

  She had had her dinner with Manfred.

  “Do you know what is backhendl?” he asked when she came in.

  She had decided not to be bullied by Manfred. “Is that Willibald Backhendl who wrote the famous concerto for glass harmonica and kettle drum?”

  He stared at her unhappily. This is what you got from a mother who lived in a commune and ate nuts. What had he done that God should have visited this woman on his only son?

  “ Backhendl is fried chicken in the style of Vienna.”

  “We’re having steak and chips,” she said. “How do you like yours?”

  After supper she asked him if he was going to his chess club. He shook his head. She picked up the paper and decided to endure Manfred until Leo got back.

  “Leo tells me you like music.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What?”

  For a long moment her mind went completely blank. She could not think of a single composer or a single piece of music.

  Manfred said, “Johann Bach’s Greatest Hits?”

  Stung, she said, “Not at all. I like a lot of things. I studied the piano at school.”

  This did not impress Manfred, the music teacher. “You want to listen to something?”

  She thought he meant a tape, instead he led her to the music-room and sat down at the Bosendorfer. There was only the straight-backed chair he used for his lessons and she sat down on that.

  “You know Sorabji?” He played a few bars that sounded vaguely like a sitar transcribed for keyboard. “Opus Clavicembalisticum. Four and a half hours. No repeats. The longest keyboard piece in the world (vurld).”