The Shifting Fog Page 9

  It was little wonder then that the ringing of the phone rendered us all speechless. That the hour was so late turned astonishment into apprehension. We sat very still, ears strained, holding our collective breath.

  ‘Hello?’ Mr Hamilton called down the line. ‘Hello?’

  Katie drifted into the room. ‘I just heard a funny noise.

  Ooh, you’ve all got champagne—’ ‘Sshhh,’ came the united response. Katie sat down and set about chewing her tatty fingernails.

  From the pantry we heard Mr Hamilton say, ‘Yes, this is the home of Lord Ashbury . . . Major Hartford? Why yes, Major Hartford is here visiting his parents . . . Yes, sir, right away. Who may I say is calling? . . . Just one moment, Captain Brown, while I connect you through.’

  Mrs Townsend whispered loudly, knowingly, ‘Someone for the Major.’ And we all went back to listening. From where I sat I could just glimpse Mr Hamilton’s profile through the open door: neck stiff, mouth down-turned.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Mr Hamilton said into the receiver. ‘I’m most sorry to interrupt your evening, sir, but the Major is wanted on the telephone. It’s Captain Brown, calling from London, sir.’

  Mr Hamilton fell silent but remained by the phone. It was his habit to hold onto the earpiece a moment, that he might ensure the call’s recipient had picked up and the call was not cut off short.

  As he waited, listening, I noticed his fingers tighten on the receiver. His body tensed and his breathing seemed to quicken.

  He hung up quietly, carefully, and straightened his jacket.

  He returned slowly to his place at the head of the table and remained standing, his hands gripping the back of his chair. He gazed around the table, taking each of us in. Finally, gravely, he said:

  ‘Our worst fears are realised. As of eleven o’clock this eve, Great Britain is at war. May God keep us all.’

  I am crying. After all these years I have begun crying for them. Warm tears seep from my eyes, following the lines of my face until the air dries them, sticky and cool against my skin.

  Sylvia is with me again. She has brought a tissue and uses it to mop cheerfully at my face. To her these tears are a simple matter of faulty plumbing. Yet another inevitable, innocuous sign of my great age.

  She doesn’t know I cry for the changing times. That just as I re-read favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

  Mystery Maker Trade Magazine

  WINTER EDITION, 1998

  NEWS IN BRIEF

  Author’s Wife Dies: Inspector

  Adams Novels Halted

  LONDON: Fans eagerly awaiting the sixth instalment in the popular Inspector Adams novels will have a long wait on their hands. Author Marcus McCourt has reportedly stopped work on the novel, Death in the Cauldron, after the sudden death of his wife, Rebecca McCourt, last October, from an aneurism.

  McCourt could not be reached for comment, but a source close to the couple has told MM that the usually approachable author refuses to discuss his wife’s death and has suffered writer’s block since it happened. McCourt’s UK publisher, Raymes &Stockwell, refused to comment.

  McCourt’s first five Inspector Adams novels were recently sold to American publishers Foreman Lewis for an undisclosed sum thought to total seven figures. Crime Will Tell will be published on the Hocador imprint and is scheduled for American release in Spring 1999. Copies can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

  Rebecca McCourt was also a writer. Her debut novel, Purgatorio, is a fictionalised history of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony, and was short-listed for the 1996 Orange Prize for Literature.

  Marcus and Rebecca McCourt had recently separated.

  SAFFRON HIGH STREET

  The rain is on its way. My lower back is far more sensitive than any meteorologist’s equipment and last night I lay awake, bone moaning to bone, whispered tales of long-ago litheness. I arched and bowed my stiff old frame: nuisance became frustration, frustration became boredom, and boredom became terror. Terror that the night would never end and I would be trapped forever in its long, lonely tunnel.

  But enough. I refuse to ruminate further on my frailties. I’m boring even myself. And I must eventually have slept, for this morning I woke, and as far as I can tell the one cannot be done without the other. I was still in bed, my nightie twisted about my middle, when a girl with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a long thin plait (though not as long as mine) bustled into my room and threw open the curtains, letting the light stream in. The girl was not Sylvia and thus I knew it must be Sunday.

  The girl—Helen, read her name badge—bundled me into the shower, gripping my arm to steady me, mulberry fingernails burrowing into flaccid white skin. She flicked her plait over one shoulder and set about soaping my torso and limbs, scrubbing away the lingering film of night, humming a tune I do not know. When I was suitably sanitary she lowered me onto the plastic bath seat and left me alone to soak beneath the shower’s warm course. I clutched the lower rail with both hands and eased forward, sighing as the water rained relief over my knotted back.

  With Helen’s assistance I was dried and dressed, thoroughly processed and seated in the morning room by seven-thirty. I managed a piece of rubbery toast and a cup of tea before Ruth arrived to take me to church.

  I am not overly religious. Indeed there have been times when all faith has deserted me, when I railed against a benevolent father who could allow such earthly horrors to beset his children. But I made my peace with God a long time ago. Age is the great mellower. And besides, Ruth likes to go, and it’s a small enough gesture for me to make.

  It is Lent, the period of soul-searching and repentance that always precedes Easter, and this morning the church pulpit was draped in purple. The sermon was pleasant enough, its subject guilt and forgiveness. (Fitting when one considers the endeavour I have decided to undertake.) The minister read from John 14, beseeching the congregation to resist the scaremongers who preach millennial doom and to find instead an inner peace through Christ. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ he read. ‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ And then he bid us take our example from the faith of Christ’s Apostles at the dawn of the first millennium. With the exception of Judas, of course: there is not much to recommend itself in the traitor who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver then hanged himself.

  It is our habit, after church, to walk the short distance to the High Street for morning tea at Maggie’s. We always go to Maggie’s, though Maggie herself left town with a suitcase and her best friend’s husband many years ago. This morning, as we ambled down the gentle slope of Church Street, Ruth’s hand on my arm, I noticed the first eager buds emerging on the brambly hedgerows that line the path. The wheel has turned again and spring is on its way.

  We rested for a moment on the timber seat beneath the hundred-year elm whose mammoth trunk forms the junction of Church and Saffron High streets. The wintry sun flickered through the lacework of naked branches, thawing my back.

  Strange these clear, bright days in winter’s tail, when one can be hot and cold all at once.

  When I was a girl, horses and carriages and hansom cabs rolled along these streets. Motor cars too, after the war: Austens and Tin Lizzies, with their goggle-eyed drivers and honking horns. The roads were dusty then, full of potholes and horse manure. Old ladies pushed spoke-wheeled perambulators and little boys with empty eyes sold newspapers out of boxes.

  The salt seller always set up on the corner, where the petrol station is now. Vera Pipp: a wiry figure in a cloth cap, thin clay pipe permanently hanging off her lip. I used to hide behind Mother’s skirt, watching bug-eyed as Mrs Pipp used a big hook to heave slabs of salt onto her handcart, then a saw and knife to carve them into smaller pieces. She turned up in many a nightmare, with her clay pipe and shiny hook.

  Across the street was the pawnbroker’s store, three telltale brass balls out front, same
as every town across Britain at the dawn of the century. Mother and I visited every Monday to exchange our Sunday best for a few shillings. On Friday, when the mending money came through from the dress shop, she would send me back to collect the clothes, that we might have something to wear to church.

  The grocer’s store was my favourite. It’s a photocopy place now, but back in my time it was run by a tall, thin man with a thick accent and thicker eyebrows and his roly-poly wife, who made it their business to fill customers’ requests, no matter how unusual. Even during the war Mr Georgias was always able to find an extra packet of tea—for the right price. To my young eyes the store was a wonderland. I used to peer through the window, drinking in the bright boxes of Horlicks malt powder and Huntley & Palmer ginger biscuits. Luxuries the likes of which we never had at home. On wide, smooth counters sat yellow blocks of butter and cheese, boxes of fresh eggs—still warm, sometimes—and dried beans, measured out on brass scales. Some days—the best days—Mother would bring a pot from home, which Mr Georgias would then spoon full of black treacle . . .

  Ruth tapped my arm and hoisted me to my feet, and we set off again down Saffron High Street toward the faded red-and-white canvas awning of Maggie’s. We ordered the usual—two cups of English breakfast tea and a scone to share—and sat at the table by the window.

  The girl who brought our order was new, both to Maggie’s and to waitressing I suspect, judging by the awkward way she clutched a saucer in each hand and balanced the scone plate on a trembling wrist.

  Ruth looked on disapprovingly, raising her eyebrows at the inevitable pools of tea on the saucers. She was mercifully restrained, however, remaining tight-lipped as she planted paper napkins between our cups and saucers to soak up the spills.

  We sipped in habitual silence until finally Ruth slid her plate across the table. ‘You have my half as well. You’re looking thin.’

  I considered reminding her of Mrs Simpson’s advice, that a woman can never be too rich or too thin, but thought better of it. Her sense of humour, never abundant, had all but deserted her of late.

  I am looking thin. My appetite has abandoned me. It is not that I don’t hunger so much as I don’t taste. And when one’s last brave tastebud curls up and dies, so does any lingering inducement to eat. It is ironic. After striving hopelessly in my youth to affect the fashionable ideal—thin arms, small breasts, no blood—it is now my lot. I am under no misapprehension, however, that it suits me as well as it did Coco Chanel.

  Ruth dabbed at her mouth, chasing an invisible crumb across her lips, then cleared her throat, folding the napkin in half and in half again, and tucking it under her knife. ‘I need a prescription filled at the pharmacy,’ she said. ‘Are you happy to sit?’

  ‘A prescription?’ I said. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’ She is in her sixties, the mother of a grown man, and still my heart skips.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Not really.’ She stood stiffly then said in a low voice, ‘Just a little something to help me sleep.’

  I nod; we both know why she doesn’t sleep. It sits between us, a shared sadness tied up neatly by our unspoken agreement not to discuss it. Or him.

  Ruth rushed on, filling the silence. ‘You stay here while I dash across. It’s warm with the heating on.’ She gathered her handbag and coat and stood, considering me for a second.

  ‘Don’t you go wandering now, will you?’

  I shook my head as she hurried to the door. It is Ruth’s abiding fear that I will disappear if left alone. I wonder where it is she imagines I am so eager to go.

  Through the window I watched until she vanished amid the people rushing past. All different shapes and sizes. And what clothes! What would Mrs Townsend have said?

  A pink-cheeked child wandered by, rugged up like a blimp, dragging behind a busy parent. The child—he or she, it was difficult to tell—regarded me with large round eyes, burdened by none of the social compulsion to smile that afflicts most adults. Memory flashed. I was that child once, long ago, lagging behind my own mother as she hurried along the street. The memory brightened. We had walked by this very shop, although it hadn’t been a cafe then but a butcher’s. Ranks of cut meat on white marble slabs lined the window and beef carcases swayed over the sawdust-strewn floor. Mr Hobbins, the butcher, had waved at me, and I remembered wishing Mother would stop, that we would take home with us a lovely ham hock to turn into soup.

  I lingered by the window, hoping, imagining the soup—ham, leek and potato—bubbling atop our wood stove, filling our tiny kitchen with its salty film of steam. So vivid was my imagining I could smell the broth so that it almost hurt.

  But Mother didn’t stop. She didn’t even hesitate. As the tip-tap of her heels drew further and further away, I was seized by an overwhelming instinct to frighten her, to punish her because we were poor, to make her think I was lost.

  I stayed where I was, certain she would soon realise I was missing and rush back. Maybe, just maybe, relief would overcome her and she’d decide gladly to purchase the hock . . .

  All of a sudden I was wrenched about and dragged in the direction from which I’d come. It took me a moment to realise what was happening, that the button from my coat was caught in a well-dressed lady’s string bag and I was being led spiritedly away. I remember vividly my little hand reaching out to tap her broad, bustling bottom, only to withdraw, overcome with timidity, as all the while my feet pedalled fiercely to keep up. The other lady crossed the street then, and I with her, and I began to cry. I was lost and becoming more so with each hurried step. I would never see Mother again. Would instead be at the mercy of this strange lady with her fancy clothes.

  Suddenly, on the other side of the road, I glimpsed Mother striding ahead amongst the other shoppers. Relief! I wanted to call out but was sobbing too much to catch my breath. I waved my arms, gasping, tears streaming.

  Then Mother turned and saw. Her face froze, thin hand leapt to her flat chest, and within a moment she was at my side. The other lady, heretofore oblivious to the stowaway she dragged behind, was now alerted by the commotion. She turned and looked at us: my tall mother with her drawn face and faded skirt, and the tear-streaked urchin I must have seemed. She shook her bag then clutched it to her chest, horrified. ‘Get away! Get away from me or I’ll call for the constable.’

  A number of people had caught the whiff of impending excitement and started to form a circle around us. Mother apologised to the lady, who looked at her the way one might a rat in the larder. Mother tried to explain what had happened, but the lady continued to withdraw. I had little choice but to follow, which caused her to squeal louder. Finally, the constable appeared and demanded to know what all the ruckus was about.

  ‘She’s trying to steal my bag,’ the lady said, pointing a shaking finger at me.

  ‘That so?’ said the constable.

  I shook my head, my voice still lost, certain I was to be arrested.

  Then Mother explained what had happened, about my button and the string bag, and the constable nodded and the lady frowned doubtfully. Then they all looked down at the string bag and saw that my button was indeed caught, and the constable told Mother to help me free.

  She untangled my button, thanked the constable, apologised again to the lady, then stared at me. I waited to see whether she would laugh or cry. As it turns out, she did both, but not right then. She gripped my brown coat and led me away from the dispersing crowd, stopping only when we turned the corner of Railway Street. As the train bound for London pulled out of the station she turned to me and hissed, ‘You wicked girl. I thought I’d lost you. You’ll be the death of me, you hear? Do you want that? To kill your own mother?’

  Then she straightened my coat, shook her head and took my hand, holding it so tightly it almost hurt. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d made them take you at the Foundling Hospital after all, so help me God.’

  It was a common refrain when I was naughty and no doubt the threat contained more than a grain of true feeling. Certainly there
were plenty would agree she’d have been better off to have left me at the Foundling. There was nothing so certain as pregnancy to lose a woman her place in service, and Mother’s life since my arrival had been a litany of scraping by and making do.

  I was told the story of my escape from the Foundling orphanage so many times I sometimes believed I was born knowing it. Mother’s train journey to Russell Square in London, with me wrapped and tucked within her coat for warmth, had become for us a legend of sorts. The walk down Grenville Street and into Guilford Street, folks shaking their heads, knowing full well where she was headed with her tiny parcel. The way she’d recognised the Foundling building from far up the street by the crowd of other young women like herself who milled about outside, swaying dazedly with their mewling babes. Then, most important, the sudden voice, clear as day (God, said Mother; foolishness, said my Aunt Dee), telling her to turn around, that it was her duty to keep her wee baby. The moment, according to family lore, for which I should be eternally grateful.

  On that morning, the day of the button and the string bag, Mother’s mention of the Foundling Hospital moved me to silence. Though not, as she doubtless believed, because I was reflecting on my good fortune at having been spared its confinement. Rather, I was drifting along the well-trod paths of a favourite childhood fantasy. It cheered me no end to imagine myself at Coram’s Foundling Hospital, singing away amongst the other children. I should have had lots of brothers and sisters with whom to play then, not just a tired and cranky mother whose face was lined with disappointments. One of which I feared was me.

  A presence at my shoulder pulled me back down memory’s long passage, back to the here and now. I turned to look at the young woman by my side. It was a moment before I recognised her as the waitress who had brought the tea. She was watching me expectantly.