The Hearts and Lives of Men (40 page)

“Not
our
love, Mr. Kildare. Yours. And please, please, don’t tell me about it; it isn’t fair.”

But he would, he did: his hands came nearer and were less easy to push away. And Brenda began to look at her oddly. Oh, it was intolerable! Nell packed her things one night, put her lucky tin teddy bear around her neck, took her savings (£63.70) out of the bank and caught the train to London. It would upset Mrs. Kildare but what else could she do?

The smoke of Father McCrombie’s black candles drifted over the Kildare household, twining in and out of the trees, puffing around the kennels, making the dogs whine and grow restless. Or something did.

“What’s the matter with them lately?” Mrs. Kildare asked. “I expect they miss Nell,” said Mr. Kildare. Now Nell was gone the smoke was getting out of his mind; it was clearing again; he could hardly remember his own behavior, his own straying, pinching hand. Of course he loved his wife. He always had.

“It happened before she left,” said Mrs. Kildare. “If anything, they’re better now. It’s just me who’s not,” and she cried a little. She missed Nell and not just because now she had to work twice as hard—up at five and in bed by twelve, when the last upset, homesick, howling hound had been soothed and quietened (and even later sometimes when the moon was full and bright), but she’d loved her almost as much as Brenda, for all that she’d been such a problem of late.

Only Brenda said nothing about Nell. She didn’t know what to say, Nell was her best friend, and she’d seen how her father looked at Nell, and now Nell was gone, and she didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. She became rather stolid and spotty and dull-eyed, as girls who look after animals seem to do in their late adolescence. Evil never clears completely away; it leaves a residue, a kind of greasy film over hope and good cheer. “I like animals best,” she’d say, as she’d heard her parents say before her. “They’re much nicer than humans.” But she agreed to get engaged to Ned. She’d rather be a farmer’s wife than the daughter of kennels, for now Nell had gone it was as if the sunlight had gone with her. She could see the place for what it was—muddy, noisy, dismal, sad. And, like Nell, she wanted to be out of it.

Of course Angie had no idea that Nell was alive. Had she known it, I have no doubt she would have instructed Father McCrombie to light a black candle for her, too. As it was, the dark father just had to direct ill-will in a general direction, which is why it got to Mr. Kildare’s heart, but not to Nell’s. In fact, things turned out very well for Nell as a result. Or was that Evelyn’s doing again—Evelyn, looking down from heaven, puffing out the candles as fast as Father McCrombie lit them?

Look, we could speculate on this forever. Middle-aged men fall for young women without the dark powers having to be involved, God knows, so let’s just say Mr. Kildare was a dirty old man. But I don’t know—say that of Brenda’s father? It seems unkind.

B
E THAT AS IT
may, at about the time that Helen recovered from her night horrors, and the dangerous Homer McLinsky looked oddly at Clifford (who had no protector: why should Evelyn even
think
of the man who caused her daughter so much trouble), Nell turned up at the House of Lally workshops behind Broadcasting House in London’s West End. She was a black-haired, punkish, too-thin, scraggy Welsh girl with rough hands and no A levels, let alone an Art School training.

“I want a job,” she said to Hector McLaren, Helen’s business manager. He was a broad, fair man with boxer’s shoulders, and thick stubby fingers which moved surely and delicately amongst fabrics, seeing profit or loss in every swatch. Which was just as well, since Helen could be carried away by beauty and cease to be practical.

“You’re not the only one,” he said. He was busy. A dozen girls a week turned up, on spec, in just the same way. They’d read about the House of Lally, or seen the clothes on a young Royal back, at some Royal spectacular, and wanted to be involved. They were turned away, automatically if kindly. The House of Lally took on ten apprentices a year, and trained them well. Two thousand applied, ten were chosen.

“I’m not like the others,” she said, as if it was obvious, and smiled, and he realized she was both beautiful and bright, and doing him the favor, not he her.

“Let’s have a look at your portfolio then,” he said, not quite sure why, and someone else answered the telephone. A call from Rio.

He knew before he opened the portfolio, stretching and releasing the neat, white confining bands, that it was going to be exciting. He’d opened thousands. You got to know; the pleasure of discovery couldn’t restrain itself, got to you a moment too soon. He was right. What a portfolio it was! Swatches of natural fabrics, lichen dyed, but finely finished. Now how had she contrived those? Wild, brilliant squares of embroidery, intricately worked. She liked color—if anything it was too strong, too bold—but what he usually saw in such portfolios was so tentative, so well-behaved. And then sheet after sheet of dress designs—untrained and amateurish, but done with such a surety of line—almost a kind of blind conviction. A handful were even usable—a couple more than usable.

“Um,” he said cautiously. “When did you do all these?”

“I just sat in class and drew,” she said. “School gets so boring, doesn’t it?” (Late nights and hard times at the kennels, reader. Mostly she was just short of sleep.)

She was very young. He asked a few personal questions. He thought he was getting lies in return, so he changed tack.

“Why House of Lally?” he asked. “Not Yves St. Laurent? Not Muir?”

“I like the clothes,” she said, simply. “I like the colors.” She was wearing jeans and a white shirt. That was sensible. If you can’t afford clothes, don’t try. Wear what you look good in. He hired her.

“It’s hard work and low pay,” he warned her. “You’ll be sweeping floors.”

“I’m used to that,” she said, and didn’t say what came into her head next, that at least this kind didn’t get any harder and longer when the moon was full. It occurred to her that perhaps she’d had, for her age, quite an experience of the world. The thought both pleased her and saddened her, and she longed for someone to talk to; but of course there was no one, and then the kind of whirling pleasure and triumph came: “After all that, I’ve done it, I’ve got a job, I’ve actually got the right job, I’m exactly where I want to be,” and there was no one to tell about that, either. So she just smiled again at Hector McLaren, and he thought, now where have I seen that smile before, half happy, half tragic, but he did not make the connection. Afterwards he wondered, now what
have
I done? Why did I do that? We’re overstaffed as it is. Helen had the same effect on him, sometimes: overriding his better judgment in the most extraordinary way. He decided he was just susceptible to women. (Which of course he wasn’t, reader, or only to Lally women.)

And that’s how Nell came to work for her mother. Well, since like calls to like, it was not surprising. Something of John Lally’s talent ran in both their veins, mother and daughter alike.

N
ELL LEFT HOME ON
Wednesday and was taken on by Hector McLaren on Thursday, and started her job on the following Monday. She lodged in a small hotel in Maida Vale—her room free in return for two hours’ cleaning between 6
A.M.
and 8
A.M.
, six days a week. She walked to work. There she swept floors, and was allowed to hand-sew a seam or so, and watched the cutters carefully. In the evenings she went out to discos and fell into bad company. Well, not very bad, just rather brightly-haired and with the odd safety-pin through earlobe and nose; amiable, passive and, for Nell, safe. Her new friends made no demands on her, intellectual or emotional. They drooped about and jigged around, and smoked dope. So did Nell, having noted how it had soothed and cheered Clive and Polly, forgetting how their general idleness had led to their downfall. She got to work tired, but she was used to being tired.

One Friday afternoon Helen Lally herself came into the workshop. Heads turned. She wore a cream suit and her hair was piled on top of her head. She went into the office and spoke for a little while to Hector McLaren, behind the glass. Then she came out and crossed straight over to where Nell sat, and picked up the coat she was working on, and inspected it, and seemed to approve of what she saw, though Nell knew the seam wasn’t perfectly straight. She’d fallen asleep over it, at one point, and hadn’t bothered to go back.

“So your name’s Nell,” she said. “Mr. McLaren speaks very well of you. Nell’s such a pretty name. I’ve always liked it.”

“Thank you,” said Nell, pleased and blushing. She did her best to look tough and cross, but it wasn’t much use. Helen thought the girl was too young, too thin, and probably living away from home and shouldn’t be. Later she spoke to Hector about her, looking through the glass to where Nell’s dark cropped head bent over the cloth.

“She’s too young,” she said. “It’s a responsibility. Not like you to take her on, Hector, and her seams do wander, rather. We’re overstaffed.”

“Not if the Brazilian order comes through,” he said. “We’ll be really pressed if it does.” At which point the phone rang with confirmation of the order from Rio. It was the kind of thing the House of Lally seldom undertook—an entire wardrobe for an impossibly rich and fanciful young woman, newly married, who had a penchant for red roses—or else her husband had—and such a flower had to be either discreetly or effusively, at House of Lally’s discretion, delicately embroidered on, or flamboyantly fixed upon, every single garment, from suspender belt to greatcoat.

“Why ever did we say we’d do it?” mourned Helen. “It’s so
vulgar
.”

“We’re doing it because of the money,” said Hector, briskly. “And whether or not it’s vulgar depends on how it’s done.”

“But I’ll have to stand over someone
all
the time”—and then, cheering up, “Well, I suppose a red rose is what you make it.”

And so indeed it is! Hector thought of Nell’s portfolio and Nell was extracted from the ranks and embroidered a specimen rose or two, from scarlet buds to crimson extravaganza, which woke her up no end—and within the week was sitting in the attic studio of Helen’s St. John’s Wood house, sewing roses for all she was worth, upon fabric of every shade, weight and texture, adjusting color and thread with a sure instinct.

“Good heavens,” said Helen, “what did I ever do without you!” and to Hector she said, “I hardly have to tell her a thing. She seems to know how my mind works. And it’s really nice to have a girl in the house—I’ve gotten so used to boys.”

“So long,” said Hector, “as you don’t start seeing her as a daughter! She’s an employee. Don’t spoil her.”

It was Hector’s opinion that Helen spoiled the boys; indulging them, allowing them their own way, spending too much money on them. And he may have been right—but they were a happy household, and there is no point at all in “beginning as you mean to go on.” Why? Why not just have good times while you can, is the way many a mother feels when the children’s father is gone.

“Nell,” said Helen one day, when Nell was a week into the rose spectacular. “Where are you living?”

“In a squat,” said Nell, and then, sensing concern and offering reassurance, as was her habit, “It’s okay. There’s water and mains services. I was paying my way as a chambermaid but the squat works out cheaper.”

And she smiled, and Helen thought, where have I seen that smile before? (On Clifford, of course, but she tried not to think about Clifford.) If I had a daughter, Helen thought, I would love her to be like this. Direct, kind, open to the world. I would like her to be living somewhere other than in a squat, of course. I would like her to be less waif-like, not so thin, properly looked after. Bother Hector, thought Helen, and pursued the conversation.

“Most of our girls live at home,” she said.

“They have to,” observed Nell, “because you pay them so little.” And she smiled to take the sting out of the words. “But I don’t have a home. Not a proper home. I never have.”

Perhaps if Helen had been listening she would have pursued Nell’s history further, and made necessary connections, but she was still brooding about what seemed to her an accusation. Did she really underpay the workshop girls? She paid the going rate: was it enough? She brooded, of course, because she knew in her heart it was far from enough. House of Lally traded on its reputation in this respect also—if people line up for the privilege of working for you, you need pay them very little. This, reader, is what I see as natural justice. If Helen hadn’t been guilty she would not have been riled, and brooded, and would have regained her daughter earlier. As it was, she had to wait.

She would bring up the matter with Hector.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked Nell, and Nell blushed.

“I do in a way,” said Nell, thinking of Dai, who had written to her once, “and I don’t in a way,” because when she came to think of it, or rather him, she no longer felt what she had. Distance had somehow dispersed obsession—which no doubt is why parents are forever taking girls on long trips abroad (or used to) in the hope they’ll forget an unsuitable love. At the same time, Nell could see, loving Dai, at least in theory, kept her out of all kinds of trouble.

“No thank you,” she could say to importuning boys. “Nothing personal. It’s just that I’ve got this one true love—” and they would defer, regretfully, to this mysterious passion and leave her alone. And if they didn’t, it was remarkable what a swift upper (or lower) cut not necessarily to the jaw our Nell had developed at Ruellyn Comprehensive School. Smiling her glorious smile the while. Quite a girl. Helen, who knew only a fraction of all this, looked at her daughter, whom she did not recognize as daughter, puzzled and impressed.

“Nell,” said Helen, “if I found proper lodgings, would you move into them?”

“How would I pay for them?”

“The House of Lally would pay. I’d see to it.”

“I couldn’t do that,” said Nell. “The other girls wouldn’t like it. Why should I have something the others don’t?” Which was why Helen, after much argument, prevailed upon Hector to raise the workshop girls’ wages by a full twenty-five percent—which meant the garment prices had to rise by five percent. And the market stood it without apparently noticing. So they notched them up a further five percent. And Nell consented to move out of her squat—she was heartily glad to go, as it happened. Her friends were wearing thin—quite literally, a couple were on heroin by now. The trouble with drugs, as Nell now remembered from the old Faraway Farm days, is that they’re a dead stopper on conversation. If you want to talk, tell your life story to your doper friends—forget it! Nell lodged with Hector and his wife. The food was good, the hot water plentiful, the attic room was warm and she saved up and bought an easel and even got a little painting done on weekends. She woke in the mornings to the agreeable feeling, which the young have when all’s going well for them, of life opening up, and the right choices being made, that the world was her oyster.