Dangerous Things Read online

  ‘Oh, can’t I!’ Judith retorted. ‘Just watch me. She can’t do it for less than — oh, sixteen K a year.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd! The scale for a school nurse at middle level is £13,885 and I can’t —’ Roscoe protested but Judith threw her hands in the air.

  ‘You said she’ll be teaching hygiene and so forth, so that’s got to be worth more than just a school nurse. Fifteen and a half K and that’s my last offer,’ she cried. ‘Come on, Hilary. The Foundation isn’t that broke.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it! I can stretch another — oh, six hundred, I suppose. Fourteen and a half K, and there I must stick. We have money troubles, remember? Fourteen and a half K and the term starts on 6 September. Come and see us before that, of course. Get the feel of the place, but you’re not needed till the day before the horrors descend on us.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Hattie tried to say, but neither of them had been remotely interested in that.

  ‘She’ll be there,’ Judith assured Hilary blithely. ‘I’ll sort out the children and so forth. Best thing either of you could do. I congratulate you both.’

  Hattie went on laying the breakfast table now, putting the chocolate hazelnut spread in front of Jessica’s place and the Marmite in front of Sophie’s and the remains of the Cooper’s Oxford marmalade in front of her own. Would it be worth cutting bread now and setting it ready in the toaster? No, that would dry it out. But she’d have to be sharpish in the morning. There’d be just enough time if she really moved to get it all done and the house tidy and herself dressed and tolerably well made up before she had to leave at eight-fifteen. First day at school, she thought, and then laughed aloud. She was terrified, that was the truth of it; as scared as Sophie had been when she’d started at Ruggles Road Infants and Junior Mixed. Hattie had felt for her then; and now she felt even more keenly for herself.

  She finished the table and then drifted about the kitchen until she found herself standing in front of the fridge again.

  Oh, God, she thought. If I don’t go to bed right now, I’ll start checking that bloody list again. Tell me I haven’t made a complete ass of myself taking this job. Tell me it’ll be all right. Tell me it isn’t going to be sheer bloody murder …

  Two

  ‘OK,’ shouted Freddy rather more loudly than was strictly necessary. ‘We’re rolling — and cue Norman —’

  Dilly made a point of not looking at him, nor at the actor who was now walking slowly forward towards the camera, talking earnestly at it in a low tone, choosing instead to fix her eyes on the cameraman who was too occupied to notice her. That’ll show him, she thought illogically. He can’t push me around the way he pushes everyone else.

  ‘But he can,’ her inner voice whispered. ‘What the hell else are you doing here if you haven’t been pushed here?’ And she scowled and shifted her gaze to the far side of the street where a little band of gawpers was staring at what was going on and clearly enjoying the spectacle of Important Director at Work with which Freddy was obliging them.

  All this for a silly documentary, she thought scornfully. Who gives a piss about the Freedom of the City of London anyway? And across the other side of the road, as if in agreement, a plaintive baa-aa escaped from the van parked by the kerb and Freddy cursed and shouted, ‘Cut!’ and at once she felt better. To see Freddy so put out was balm, she told herself, to her wounded soul, and then repeated the words because they sounded so good. Balm to her wounded soul.

  The afternoon dragged on, with the sheep who were there to act the part of a flock being driven over London Bridge — though since there were only seven of them they were hard pressed to look more than a disorderly gaggle — behaving as foolishly and messily as only sheep can until the pavements and roadways were slippery with sheep shit, and then it started to rain so the whole crew had to stop and Freddy was made to wait balefully till the light improved again.

  The tea break came just as the sun returned, and that led to Freddy doing some fairly grovelling begging to get the crew to work on, or at least to get the stinking sheep in the can while the light let them film; they could hold over some of the scenes from today to tomorrow, but it would cost an arm and a leg to get those friggin’ sheep out here again; and Dilly watched, highly amused, as the nattering and bartering went on. But eventually they shot the sheep and packed them back into their van to send them back to wherever they had come from, and Freddy called the break. And Dilly slid down from her place on the wall outside the pub on the corner and wandered over to the catering bus parked beside the road. She wasn’t thirsty and she wasn’t hungry but having tea was something to do.

  ‘Having fun, sweetie?’ Freddy called in his brightest voice as she passed him and his attendant knot of cameraman, sound recordist and actor, and she knew what was expected of her and managed to deliver it, baring her teeth in the most artificial grin she could conjure up and murmuring, ‘Oh, yes, Daddy, lovely, Daddy, thank you,’ and went on to the urn, pleased with herself. He knew now if he hadn’t before. She only ever called him Daddy when she was livid with him. The politeness had all been an act for the others, who had been impressed by it, she had seen that clearly. And that meant he couldn’t bawl her out for showing him up when he got her on her own, because she hadn’t. He’d be in the wrong and she’d be in the right, and that maybe would give her the chance to try again to get him to see things her way. It was getting late, but it wasn’t too late. She could still get back to Liverpool on the night train, and march into school next day as though it had all been arranged. They’d let her stay. They hadn’t wanted her to leave in the first place; and as she took the strong black tea and clicked a couple of saccharin tablets into it from the tub in her pocket, she let her fantasy slide away agreeably.

  No more stuck here in London with Freddy pretending to be a Marvellous Father, so-difficult-to-bring-up-a-child-on-your-own-when-you’re-a-man-especially-if-it’s-a-daughter-but-good-old-Freddy-he’s-a-goer; no more being made to go to some ghastly school full of poncey boys who’d never seen a skirt on the premises before and wouldn’t know how to treat a woman properly if their bloody lives depended on it; no more being so alone. She’d be back where she belonged, and she watched her imaginary self being surrounded by the people in Liverpool and fussed over deliciously, and then watched herself working marvellously well and not just getting her four A levels but getting them all with A grades and then setting off for university —

  ‘Christ, but it’s like pulling teeth to get any work out of these buggers,’ Freddy said in her ear. ‘Sorry it’s a bit slow this afternoon, Tuppence. Thought you’d enjoy today’s shoot — sheep and all —’

  Dilly, who loathed above all things being called by her baby name, first scowled at him and then smoothed her face into a friendlier expression. She still had favours to ask, after all.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Freddy,’ she said. ‘Listen, have you a moment? Because I’ve been thinking …’

  He looked sideways at her and took a deep draught of his tea, noisily. She could have hit him for it.

  ‘If you’ve been thinking about going back to Liverpool to that bunch of scouses you’ve got another think coming. You’re going to the Foundation tomorrow and you’ll love it.’

  ‘Just because you did it doesn’t mean I will,’ she said, still controlling her temper. ‘I’ll hate it. It was great at St Aloysius. I liked it there. They liked me —’

  ‘They’ll like you at the Foundation too,’ Freddy said. ‘Listen, what do you want of my life, Dilly? I’ve got enough problems, haven’t I, with your stinking — with your mother taking off like that? And a living to earn. I can’t make it in Liverpool, that’s for bloody sure. It’s here I get all my jobs and Christ knows there aren’t that many around even for a man of my record. I can’t leave you in Liverpool —’

  ‘Why not? I can look after myself.’

  ‘You’re sixteen and you can’t. And if you think I can afford to pay for you to live there when I’ve a
perfectly good flat here in London, think again. Grow up, Dilly, for the love of Mike. It’s money that’s the problem, and it’s no good pretending otherwise.’

  ‘But you’re paying for this bloody school,’ she blazed, unable to control her anger another moment. ‘Use that to rent me a room in the ’Pool and —’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly and banged his thick white cup down on the ramshackle table beside them. ‘It’s not on, and there’s an end to it. Anyway …’ He hesitated. ‘If you must know, the fees for the Foundation are being paid by your grandmother. She’d not pay for a room in Liverpool this side of Armageddon, so there it is. You’re stuck, kid. Just the way I am. Like it or lump it. I’m going to shoot three more scenes before we wrap tonight, one way or another. Are you staying?’

  ‘No,’ she said sulkily. ‘It’s boring.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’ He said it with real feeling. ‘It’s not my idea of making bloody War and Peace, believe me. Listen, Tuppence, let’s not be bad friends over this. We’ve got to live together, so make it easy for us both — swallow the medicine. You can’t do anything else.’

  She stared at him, her face smooth and expressionless, and he stared back uneasily.

  ‘I’ve told you all there is to tell you. I can’t afford to keep you in Liverpool. Your mother’s buggered off somewhere, and your grandmother’s willing to cough up and send you to a decent school. It’s not so bad, for Chrissakes! It could be worse. Just get off my back, will you? Go to school tomorrow. Give it a chance. You might like it. There should be a lot of talent lying around.’ He looked as though he were about to produce a leer and then thought better of it. ‘Like I say, there’s not much else you can do, is there?’

  She was silent for a while and then lifted her brows in resignation. ‘OK. I suppose so.’

  He hugged her fervently, and she could smell the faint sweatiness of him and feel the way his muscles seemed to shake with a fine tremor as he held her, and, as usual, her carefully built structure of anger against him crumbled, and after a brief hesitation she hugged him back. He wasn’t all that bad, really, she thought as she watched him going back to the others with a little swagger in his walk. He’s a silly show-off, of course, but what else do you expect of a man?

  Stella stretched her back, pushed the last of the sports socks into the completed pile, and breathed deeply, waiting for the sense of virtue to overwhelm her. There had to be a reward for such a boring task, and usually it came in the form of that deep smugness which filled her after she’d managed to force herself to do something she loathed. Cleaning the oven was a good source of it, and so was doing the ironing — the most hateful task ever invented, in her opinion — and marking Genevieve’s clothes for school should have been a very rich seam.

  But it didn’t come, and she picked up the socks again and began to separate them into pairs and then rolled them up neatly into balls, checking as she went. Socks, T-shirts, swimsuit, regulation blue one-piece — not that Genevieve was likely to wear it much; she always got out of swimming if she could — skirts, shirts, blazer. At least there wasn’t as much of it as there used to be. Now she was a sixth-former she could wear her own clothes most of the time. She only needed full uniform, Dr Roscoe had assured Stella, for ‘those school events when one wishes to inculcate a sense of community — Founder’s Day and so forth — I know you’ll understand.’ And he’d smiled devastatingly when he said it, a fact that Stella refused to think about now. She’d liked him too well for that. Instead she contemplated the clothes in front of her; the whole lot would barely fill one shelf of Genevieve’s wardrobe. Was that why there was less satisfaction in making sure it was all properly marked? When the boys had been at school, she’d had to sew those bloody name tapes on to great heaps of the stuff, and had cursed herself for not giving the boys the same initials. If they’d been called James and Jeremy and John or whatever she’d have been able to hand things down easily without all that laborious unpicking and resewing; but with a surname as colourless as Barratt initials had to be correct. There could be any number of Barratts in a school as big as the Foundation, after all.

  Genevieve at the Foundation; Stella let her hands fall into her lap and stared sightlessly at the wall in front of her. Genevieve in the sixth form; it was ridiculous. Another few months and she’d be gone too, like the boys, and would she ever come back? She felt the cold fill her at that thought; it had been bad enough that the boys had never come home after university, but at least she’d had her baby girl to keep her busy and content. She had never let herself think of Jenny being grown up and gone, like the others.

  But she’d have to soon. They both would, and she tried to imagine how Gordon would be when the time came, and felt colder than ever. He’d suffer even more than she did, so intensely was he attached to his daughter, and Stella at once made her eyes focus back on the pile of uniform. No sense in thinking about all that now. There was still a lot to be done before she could get ready to go out for dinner with them both tonight. That was the best bit of the last day of the holidays before the first day of term; they’d started the ritual of going out for a Chinese supper with the second boy, Peter, and continued it ever since. Tonight would be just another one, a lovely family event — and the last but one, a wicked little voice deep inside her head whispered, and she hated it. Why waste the present fretting about the future, for God’s sake? That way madness lies, she told herself, and managed to laugh at her own foolishness.

  Later that evening, watching Genevieve playing with her chopsticks and insisting she wanted to eat Chinese style, taking bits from the communal dishes rather than loading her own bowl, Stella felt the old worry come back. Was Genevieve all right? Was she happy? And she said suddenly, as with much laughter Genevieve managed to drop a carefully collected piece of sweet and sour pork back into its dish, ‘Darling, you don’t have to go to the Foundation if you don’t want to. You could stay with the girls in St Monica’s.’

  Genevieve put her chopsticks down and looked at her, her head on one side, birdlike, and her face bright and inquiring. ‘Oh, Mummy, do stop! We’ve been through it over and over! They’ve got much better facilities at the Foundation than they’ve got at dismal old Monica’s and I know I can work better there. I’ll never get the chance to get decent grades at the old school. Do stop worrying, darling.’

  ‘Of course stop worrying!’ Gordon said heartily and put his hand over Genevieve’s. ‘She’ll be fine there. It’s a great old school, great.’

  ‘It was for you and the boys,’ Stella said sharply. ‘But they’ve never had girls before.’

  ‘We’re not creatures from another planet,’ Genevieve said, and laughed. ‘Darling, you sound so Victorian. Do stop fussing,’ And she looked brightly at them both and took her hand away from Gordon’s.

  ‘Try some of this, Genevieve,’ Stella said then, trying to sound light, casual. ‘It’s divine. Deep-fried seaweed — it’s incredible the things they think of. I wonder who was the first Chinaman to fry the stuff? And why he thought it’d be any good?’

  Genevieve looked at the heap of deep green shreds and shook her head. ‘I’ve had masses of everything,’ she said lightly. ‘Enough, no more! ’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.’

  Stella couldn’t help it. ‘You’ve eaten hardly anything. Daddy’s had most of it, and I’ve had masses and —’

  ‘Mummy!’ Genevieve said warningly, and looked at her father and they both laughed indulgently and Stella looked at Genevieve’s profile, with its small nose and the sharp line of her jaw over her polo-necked sweater — and why on earth did she put that on on a warm summer evening? — and then down at her delicate bird-thin wrists, and with every atom of effort she could make managed not to say another word, watching the waitress carry away the half-full dishes without a murmur. But it wasn’t easy. The waste was dreadful; but that wasn’t why she was so upset. She knew it, but she had to pretend she didn’t. It was very difficult.

  The man rolled over in b
ed and grunted, and then, with as much care as if he’d been a cat, stretched each limb one by one and then arched his back and yawned hugely. The boy beside him, who had drifted into a restless sleep, was still hovering on the edge of it and the man turned his head and saw him and then bent his knee and kicked him hard, and the boy fell out of the bed and lay blinking on the floor, his body very white against the deep crimson of the rug. He sat up and, moving awkwardly, scrambled to his feet, twisting his body a little so that he hid his genitals, but not very successfully. His body was thin to the point of scrawniness and that made them look even bigger, just as the pallor of his skin made them seem duskier. The man stared at his crotch with a thoughtful look and then yawned again.

  ‘Get me something,’ he said and the boy peered up at him in the half light, because the curtains were closed, and stared, not knowing what to do or say, and the man laughed.

  ‘Don’t sit there gaping at me like a bush baby, for Chrissakes! You heard what I said, get me something to eat. No, don’t get dressed,’ as the boy made a move towards the chair where his clothes were. ‘Do it like that. Let me watch you. Open the curtains first.’

  The boy stood still and the man made a small but clearly menacing movement and the boy moved away, not quite scuttling like a crab, but giving that impression. He opened the curtains and then, his back to the bed, moved across the room to the far side where a half-wall separated the space to form a kitchen.

  It was hot; behind him the window glowed orange with the late afternoon sun and the sky was a brassy blue that filled the room with its weight. If it hadn’t been for the watching eyes from the bed, the boy would have been happier being naked. As it was, he felt as though he’d lost his skin as well as his clothes.

  He moved about the kitchen, getting the food ready, very aware of the room behind him as well as the man in the bed. It was an expensive room, but squalid in its disorder. Papers were piled about and there were discarded clothes and half-eaten food and empty wine glasses and bottles, and dust greying the edges of the crimson carpet. But none of that took away the overall effect. The room was filled with furniture made of glass and chrome, or highly polished slender wood, obviously original art deco pieces, and a couple of sculptures of naked men in deep green alabaster and the creamiest of marble that, though small, were perfect, and fitted into mirrored alcoves on each side of the empty pink marble fireplace. The room should have felt light and cool, in spite of the September weather, for it was large and high, but it would have felt oppressive even if the sky outside had been filled with snow, for the ceiling was painted a deep crimson to match the carpet and the walls were papered with black, with a few silver flashes stuck on in a random pattern. It was a disgusting room in many ways and the boy hated it; not least because when he’d first seen it, in the days when the man had been so different, it had seemed to him the acme of elegance and sophistication.