A Good Year for the Roses (1988) (6 page)

‘I've got nothing else to do,’ I said. ‘I want to find this girl, it shouldn't be beyond my capabilities. I was a copper you know, and a good one at times. Besides I need to get back into the swing of things. I want to start living again.’

‘Don't bother, it's hardly worth the effort,’ he said.

I knew I'd brought him down again, so I shut up. We finished our drinks in silence. Terry picked at his sandwich, but left most of it.

We walked out of the pub, and parted at the corner of the Stockwell Road with just a brief farewell and a promise to keep in touch. I went back to the car and drove slowly through the afternoon traffic back to my office.

It hadn't changed during my absence. I sat behind the desk for an hour or two thinking about old times. I seemed to be doing an increasing amount of that lately. I bought some fish and chips and shared them with Cat. He'd forgiven me for my behaviour earlier but seemed miserable as he lethargically pushed his food around his bowl.

Eventually we both left. Cat to parts unknown and me to crawl from bar to bar until I tired of the sight and sound of other people's social life and drifted home in the misty blue of the late evening.

Saturday morning was bright and sunny, with a light breeze from the south that flirted with the curtains at the open window next to my bed. I lay for a while watching the material billow into my room and dapple the carpet with moving shadows. Then I rolled out of bed to start another day.

I switched on the radio whilst I shaved and dressed. I chose a pair of faded, baggy Liberto jeans, a pink cotton sweater, ancient Nike high tops and pink socks. I felt very modern and colourful.

I decided to breakfast out as my cupboard was bare. I wandered down towards my favourite cafe. On the way I stopped at the newsagents on the corner of the street to pick up a pint of milk and a Daily Telegraph, so that I could look at the crossword as I ate. I glanced at the headlines as I waited for my bacon sandwich and coffee to arrive. Nothing registered.

After I'd eaten I flirted with the waitress as I digested the meal and longed for the comfort of a cigarette. She leant one nylon overalled hip against my table and allowed me to gaze into her shadowy cleavage. I would have asked her out for a drink but the varnish on her finger-nails was cracked and broken, and as she brushed up against me as I paid my bill she smelled strongly of old grease and dried sweat.

As I walked back home I wondered if I was getting too choosy. I let myself into the house and jogged upstairs, favouring my left foot on the steep steps. I unlocked my flat door and entered the empty room. I threw the paper onto the unmade bed and stored the milk in the fridge. Then I dropped into the armchair and contemplated the day ahead. The hours stretched in front of me in an endless stream. I had nothing to do until I could go back to bed again. Outside in the world people were looking forward to a warm Saturday swimming or playing polo, or motor-racing, then on to the opera followed by a light supper at a nightclub. I thought about cutting my toe-nails then getting drunk. I wondered where the action was, and regretted not making a date with my willing waitress.

My life was trickling away like potato water through a sieve, and was about as interesting.

After more minutes staring at the sky through my window, I stood up and began to pace the floor. I went into the kitchen and stared at the empty shelves. I decided to go shopping, I found my car keys and armed with a new sense of purpose and my overloaded Access card, I set off. I drove down to Vauxhall, cutting through the weekend traffic in the Jaguar. I slid to a halt at the entrance to Sainsbury's car park and got a ticket and a big smile from the girl manning the gate. I returned her smile and rolled the car into a parking space just vacated by a Mini-Metro. The supermarket was housed in a massive, low building next to the New Covent Garden Market. I locked the car and walked across to the entrance, dodging the drivers looking for somewhere to park. I found a trolley and pushed it into the air-conditioned chill of the shop.

Ever since I'd been a young student looking forward to making my way in the world, I'd been subject to a number of recurring fantasies. I'd been convinced that one day I would meet the woman of my dreams in a supermarket or a launderette. I can report a definite lack of success at either venue. I must admit to having occasionally bumped trolleys with a young mum struggling with her kids and had a bit of a fling over the frozen peas. But that's as far as it's gone. Once I was infatuated with the lady who did my service wash, but she turned out to be a transvestite saving up for her operation, so that little romance went down the drain with the soap suds. That Saturday proved to be no exception to the rule. I wandered amongst the shelves and cabinets, picking up exotic pickles, replacing them immediately with an embarrassed smile as if to say, would a man like me want hot prawn sauce with his mild cheddar dip. I kept on prospecting and eventually my trolley contained frozen hash browns, half a dozen free range eggs, streaky bacon, baked beans, two cartons of orange juice, two dozen cans of lager, a small loaf and a tub of fake butter. Before I went to the checkout, I went back and found the pet food section and bought Cat half a dozen tins of food. I felt like I was making a gesture of friendship, and it made me feel good.

I stood in line with ten other shoppers and waited patiently while the checkout girl changed the till roll, lost a cash card, flirted with the security man and finally went to tea. When I'd eventually paid my bill and packed my purchases into a brown paper sack, I retrieved the car and headed back to Tulse Hill. I stocked up the fridge and took a walk down to the pub.

On the way I stopped and fed Cat. He seemed pleased to see me as he gobbled down the food. Feeling like a philanthropist, I went into the boozer to swap lies with my bar-room buddies. I had a few pints and got beaten at pool by a crafty old Irishman who tried to get me to bet on his ability to pull off complicated cushion shots. I declined the offer and bought him a pint of Guinness instead.

When the three o'clock bell sounded, I dawdled home again. Patsy Bright had been at the back of my mind all day. I looked at her photograph in the dimness of my room. She stared back with a pouting, enigmatic look. I mentally tossed a coin and lost. I reached for the ‘phone and dialled George Bright's number.

He was at home, just waiting by the telephone, he said. Waiting for news of his lost daughter.

We exchanged strained pleasantries, then I told him I wanted to ask him some further questions and take a look at Patsy's room and belongings.

He agreed that I could go round. He didn't seem to care one way or another. I got the feeling that he had expected me to conjure his daughter out of thin air like a genie from a lamp.

Any action on my part was going to disappoint him I could tell.

I wanted to reassure him, but there were no words in my vocabulary to do so.

I told him I would be at his house within the hour.

I really didn't know if there was going to be any point to my visit, but I went anyway. Perhaps I just wanted to make a date with a phantom. I'd been dancing in the dark too long to stop, it seemed.

The address that George Bright had given me for his home was fairly close to my flat in location, but a long way away on the social scale. I discovered that his house was situated at the end of a leafy lane in Dulwich, just off the South Circular Road.

It was part of London that hadn't changed much in years, and probably never would. Few developers’ greedy little fingers had left their marks there. The area was firmly buttressed with money. Old money earned during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and greedily clung to through slumps and booms, depressions and wars. Mixed with lovely new cash pouring in from the media and the Stock Exchange. After all, it was only a twenty minute run in the old Range Rover from there to the City of London. It was an advantage of course if one could ignore the fact that the drive took one through some of the worst urban blight in western Europe on the way. But once there, all that loot was ready for the taking, inside the glass and concrete monuments to commerce that stood glittering in the sunlight. I'd been reading a lot lately about the foreign banks that had moved into our little island to use it as a clearing house for buying and selling cash. Treating it like an off-shore money rig to pump out profit. The funny thing was that it seemed no-one ever saw what they were dealing. It was just little green figures on the screen of a computer terminal, or neat rows of black figures on a balance sheet. Hell, I was just jealous.

I stopped the car to bathe in the feeling of affluence. It was hard to imagine that only a hundred yards from where I was sitting, thousands of cars an hour were speeding along a major arterial thoroughfare.

The track I drove down was untouched by the local council. I suppose the capitalists thought of it as rural. It was rutted and potholed and had no drainage. It looked as if it would flood every time there was a heavy rainfall. Trees dipped down to the dirt pavements, and together with thick growths of bushes hid the houses set well back off the road.

The people who owned these properties valued their privacy. But even if the council didn't lay tarmac, they weren't stupid. They knew who paid big rates and the street was spotlessly clean. There were no leaking black sacks of garbage on the kerbside, no abandoned cars, and the one man I saw walking his dog was carrying a poop-scoop in his hand.

Finally, I came to a gate-post to which was nailed a board with the name of George's house neatly picked out in clean white letters. I had to get out of the car to open a five-bar gate. I half expected to be greeted by a herd of Friesian cows. I drove through the gate and left it open behind me. The drive stretched ahead, then turned and vanished into a grove of trees. I motored slowly down the roadway. Through the trees I caught sight of a brooding mansion, dark and forbidding like the house of Usher. Once through the trees, the drive opened up into a circular parking area in front of the house.

Close up the building seemed even more sinister. It was a Gothic monstrosity which had orginally been built in the middle of a wood, and trees surrounded it still on all sides. It reminded me of the hospital in which I had spent too many months. It stood three storeys high, and was topped with turrets and curlicues making it appear even taller. It was built from dark red brick, which years of weather had turned almost black. I could almost feel the decades wound tight like watch-springs in the stone-work, ready at a moment's notice to break free and tell their secrets with the smug wisdom of the old. The roof was dark grey slate with a greenish tinge. The windows stared down at me blindly. Two lions made of pale stone flanked the three steps that led up to the massive front door. In front stood a shiny navy blue Mercedes saloon. I parked the Jaguar behind it and got out.

The front of the house was screened by thick banks of rose bushes. I recognised most of the varieties. The flowers were waxy in the late afternoon light, and their fragrance filled my nostrils. I touched first one bloom and then another, disturbing some loose petals that drifted to the ground by my feet.

There seemed to be no sign of life in the house at all. It was almost as if Patsy's leaving had drained all humanity from the building and left a vacuum in it's place. I climbed the stairs and wrestled with the old fashioned bell pull. I heard a faint ringing from within and waited. I half expected Vincent Price to answer the door, but when it creaked open it was only George who appeared, dressed in a black sweatsuit. Naturally it fitted like a glove.

‘Good afternoon George,’ I said. ‘Nice pile you've got here.’

‘Hello,’ he said vaguely, ignoring my comment.

I stood on the marble step by the front door and scuffed my feet.

I felt uncomfortable being there.

I turned and faced the driveway.

‘You've got some healthy looking bushes there,’ I said, gesturing at the garden.

‘You know about roses?’ he asked, almost animated for a moment.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘At least I used to.’

‘It's been a good year,’ he said. ‘A good year for the roses.’

But nothing much else, I thought.

‘Why don't you come in?’ George invited at last. ‘That's what you're here for.’

I mumbled something in the back of my throat and crossed the threshold at his bidding to find myself standing in a massive, shadowy hallway panelled in dark wood.

In front of me, a staircase carpeted in rich brown wool stretched up to the first floor. George took my arm and led me through double doors into what he referred to as his library. It must have contained at least four books. A full sized snooker table dominated the room and down one wall stretched a professional wet bar with five padded captain's chairs arranged in front of it.

Very ritzy, I thought.

In front of one of the chairs, on top of the bar was a bottle of Remy Martin and a half filled glass of amber liquid.

A massive colour TV with video attachments showed cartoons with the volume turned down.

‘A drink?’ asked George.

‘Maybe later,’ I replied. ‘Can I see Patsy's room first?’

George cast a sorrowful eye in the direction of his glass and gestured me to leave the room. I allowed him to lead me up the wide staircase. We turned left when the steps reached the first floor and walked down a dark corridor, hung with dark paintings of dark old men in huge dark frames.

I wasn't surprised that Patsy had wanted to leave. I did already and I'd only been there for two minutes.

At the end of the gloomy corridor, George stopped in front of a door, hesitated, then opened it and allowed it to swing wide.

After the sombre tones outside it was like walking into another world. The room inside was long, light and spacious. Someone had spent a lot of time and money with their Habitat catalogue getting it to look like it did. The walls were painted white and upon them hung framed posters of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean airbrushed into romantic unreality.

Carelessly tacked up next to them were photos of Madonna and Curiosity Killed The Cat cut out from magazines.

There was a double bed covered with a bright print duvet. On a table under the window was a black and chrome Sony midi-system. Under the table were neat piles of record albums. Along the length of one wall was a built-in wardrobe and dressing table, with full length mirrors on the wardrobe doors. In front of the dressing table was a low stool. In the centre of the room was a leather and metal armchair. The carpet was navy blue and the curtains that hung by the long windows were buttercup yellow. Everything seemed to be in it's place and the whole room was immaculately tidy.

On top of the dressing table was a single wicker basket containing trinkets and badges.

I stood in the room and slowly looked around.

George stood beside me pulling at the seams of his tracksuit with his fingers.

‘What do you want to see?’ he asked.

‘It's OK, George,’ I said. ‘I'd rather look around on my own if it's alright with you.’

He seemed unsure.

‘I won't steal the towels,’ I said.

‘There's no towels in here,’ he replied. ‘Patsy's bathroom is next door.’

‘Joke, George,’ I said, and wished I'd learn to keep my big mouth shut.

‘Very well, if that's the way you want it,’ he said, and with a sad backward glance at me, left the room.

I started my search with the bed. I checked beneath it. The gap between the frame and the floor was empty. Then I felt under the mattress. Nothing. Finally I flicked the mattress right over. Still nothing.

I went to the wardrobe and opened it. I caught sight of myself in the long mirror as I did so. I looked hunched and ugly.

I pulled open the wardrobe door quickly to lose the reflection. The interior was deep and wide and packed tightly with dresses and coats on hangers. On the left hand side was a section of shelving that held neatly folded shirts and sweaters. That was where the lacquered box must have been hidden.

I took the clothes from the shelves carefully, one by one. There was no sign of anything.

Equally carefully I replaced them. Methodically I went through the garments on the hangers. Where there were pockets, I felt inside them. I came up empty. At the bottom of the wardrobe were piles of children's toys and books. I pawed amongst them, feeling like an intruder. I found a Cindy doll, boxed jigsaws and games. Once again there was nothing extraordinary. I was happy to finally close the door.

I went over to the window, knelt down and went through the record collection. It was pretty much what I'd expected. At the back were yesterday's heroes, like Adam Ant and David Essex. Towards the front were Wham! and more recent flavours of the month, but she was beginning to mix in other, newer bands, some whose names I barely recognised. I checked inside some of the sleeves, but for what I don't know. Finally, I went and sat on the stool in front of the dressing table. I dug through the stuff in the basket on top.

It contained a school prefect's badge and a few cheap silver rings, a champagne cork with a five-pence piece pushed into the bottom and some cocktail stirrers and the little plastic animals that come with them. At the bottom was some loose change. When I'd finished the search I looked up at the mirror in front of me.

I knew that the real secrets, if there were any, would be hidden in the dressing table itself. That's why I'd left it until last. I felt like a voyeur. I'd never got my kicks from delving into people's intimate lives, not like some coppers did. Then I looked more closely at my reflection and the goatish gleam in my eyes, and wasn't so sure.

I opened the drawer in front of me. The inside was packed with make-up. Boxes, tubes, bottles, all colours, all makes, glitter, matte, you name it, it was there.

I lethargically pushed a few items about. I opened a giant box of face powder, and found just face powder. I pushed the drawer shut again. There were four drawers remaining. Two on my left and two on my right.

The top drawer on the right held a hair dryer and a bag of thick plastic rollers. The drawer beneath contained a selection of gloves and belts, a woolly hat and some socks.

In the top drawer on the left were Patsy's night clothes, neatly folded pyjamas and nightdresses. Nothing special, just what any average, middle class, affluent eighteen year old would wear as far as I knew.

When I opened the last drawer, I found what average eighteen year olds don't normally use.

The interior was packed tight with underwear. Not schoolgirl's knickers, but sexy, provocative gear.’ I pulled out G-strings made out of slippery silk, suspender belts that were no more than froths of lace. Bras with straps no thicker than string and at least a dozen pairs of stockings, all in different colours. Some still in their cellophane wrappings.

And it was all quality stuff. I could tell from the labels attached to the flimsy garments. It was more Bond Street than East Street. I sat there with a hand full of silk and lace and could feel myself almost drooling. Quickly I dropped the underthings back into the drawer and slammed it shut.

And George had told me that Patsy wasn't interested in boys.

I sat for a while longer in that strange room, full of shadows that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun coming through the window. A room that belonged to someone who was half child and half sophisticated woman.

The strangest and somehow worst thing was that there were no photographs, no letters, no diaries, no address book. It could have been an hotel room where the occupant had just taken a stroll down to fetch a newspaper.

Had Patsy got rid of every scrap of paper that bore any importance to her life, or had George, or had none ever existed?

I thought of Judith's room, which was crammed with notes to herself and exercise books full of childish scrawl and all the birthday cards she'd ever had pinned to the walls.

I thought of my own room when I'd been eighteen where you couldn't move for the garbage strewn about.

Patsy's room was like a morgue. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore and left.

There was another door directly to my right. I guessed it was Patsy's bathroom. I entered. It was well appointed if rather small for the house. Just about the size of my whole flat. The room was decorated in pale blue with a navy bathroom suite. All very tasteful and colour co-ordinated.

Dark blue towels hung across a rail. I felt them. They were bone dry, as was the interior of the bath and the sink. I found some blonde hairs stuck to the side of the bath. I held them between my fingers as if somehow I could capture the essence of the girl from the few strands. I touched them with my tongue, but could taste nothing except ancient shampoo.

I opened the bathroom cabinet. It contained a fresh bar of soap, aspirin, Tampax, a dry tooth brush in a glass and a tube of toothpaste. I even opened the cistern and found nothing but dusty water.

I turned off the light and left.

Reluctantly, I walked back down the flight of stairs to the ground floor. I found George sitting in his library like a priest in a strange house waiting for a death to occur.

I felt that he didn't belong in that huge mansion any more, maybe since Patsy had left, he didn't want to belong. In his hand he held a full glass of brandy.

As I walked into the room, he poured me a drink unasked. I took it. I felt as though I deserved it.

‘George,’ I said, ‘didn't Patsy have an address book?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied.

‘Where is it?’

‘She always carried it in her handbag.’

‘No old letters?’

‘She wasn't a great one for keeping things. If she got a postcard or something like that, she'd read it, then throw it away.’

‘How about her friends? Hasn't anyone called her up or come around to see her?’

‘She kept her friends separate from here. She knew I didn't approve of them.’

Now we were getting somewhere.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What was wrong with them?’

‘Scum, most of them.’ He spat, his eyes narrowing. ‘I didn't want her to associate with that kind.’

‘Do you know any names or addresses?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘George,’ I said slowly. ‘You don't know much, do you? You've given me very little to go on. How about her modelling contacts? You approved of them surely? You seem happy for her to do that kind of work. Surely you checked their credentials?

He didn't seem too sure.

‘Well, did you?’ I asked again.

‘I'm a busy man,’ he replied lamely.

‘What you're saying,’ I interrupted before he could continue, ‘is that exactly two months ago on the ninth of June, your eighteen year old daughter took a hike. You know she dabbled with drugs. That is all you do know. You don't know where she went, or with whom. You don't know if she had a boyfriend. You don't know any of her other friends. You don't know what she did when she wasn't with you. You don't seem to know anything about her. It's an impossible task for one man to find her. Especially if the police have failed.’

George made no reply to my outburst. He just sat and fiddled with his glass.

‘I'll go if you like,’ I said eventually.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You're probably right. I've not been the perfect father.’

Which of us can say we have, I thought.

I hesitated before asking my next question.

‘Your daughter has an exotic taste in underwear, hasn't she?’

George looked as though he could kill me. I didn't blame him.

‘You get everywhere,’ he said.

‘You didn't tell me not to. I was only looking for hints to Patsy's whereabouts.’

‘In her knickers?’ he asked sarcastically.

It was my turn to be silent. After a moment, I said, ‘In fact her whole wardrobe is on the expensive side.’

‘I'm not a poor man,’ George retorted. ‘Patsy needed clothes. It's vital when you start out in a modelling career. If she wanted anything she had the plastic for the shops I'd opened accounts in. She didn't want for anything.’

‘Did she have a lot of cash on her when she left?’ I asked.

‘I'm not sure, not a great deal. About fifty pounds I expect.’

‘That's not bad for a girl of her age.’

‘I give her an allowance,’ George said stiffly. ‘It's hers to do with as she pleases.’

‘Does she have a bank account?’

‘Of course.’

‘Has she used it since she left?’

‘I don't know.’

The man was hopeless.

‘Did she have a job?’

‘She was fortunate enough not to have to. Sometimes she helped me in the office. I can never get a decent secretary. At the moment I'm relying on the answering machine. It's a damned nuisance. Patsy was good at the job.’

‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘What was she really like? As a person, as a daughter?’

For the first time I saw some light in George's eyes.

‘She's beautiful,’ he said. ‘Full of life and looking forward to the future. Here, look.’

He went over to the cabinet upon which the colour TV sat and opened the double doors at the base.

He pulled out a pile of photograph albums and brought them over to the bar. He dropped them in front of me onto the mahogany top. I opened the first book, and realised that George had collected Patsy's life together like an exhibit under glass.

There were baby pictures, then pictures of her as a young child, in what I took to be the garden of the house where I was now sitting. She was pictured with a younger, longer haired version of George, and sometimes with a pretty woman who must have been his late wife.

There were photographs of Patsy in the street, at the zoo, by the seaside, at the fair and at all the other places that children love. Once again, I was taken by her resemblance to my own daughter. I hadn't mentioned Judith to George, as I hadn't wanted to upset him further. Although she wasn't with me, at least I knew where she was. At that moment she was probably sitting, eating her supper in front of the same cartoons that were still being pumped out silently by George's TV. Soon she would be cosily tucked up in her own little bed.

I wondered where Patsy would be sleeping that night. It struck me coldly that she might be sleeping the final sleep that we all go to.

All of a sudden I couldn't look at any more happy snaps.

I reached for my glass again. After I'd taken a long swallow I looked at George and asked, ‘What was she wearing when she left?’

He thought for a moment and then replied, ‘Jeans and a leather jacket, with a yellow T-shirt. And she was carrying a big black handbag.’

‘Big enough for clothes?’ I asked.

‘No it was a bit of a joke between us. Her bag was always so full of junk that there was certainly no room for clothes.’

‘Is there anything missing from her room?’

‘No, not as far as I know.’

But would he know anyway? I wondered. If she had charged everything to accounts, she might have had a suitcase hidden outside when she left.

George's mood seemed to have taken a down turn again. We sat there, the pair of us, two men missing our golden daughters who had been snatched away.

We sat looking for comfort in each other, that neither of us could provide. And for comfort in a bottle which is no comfort at all. We were trapped in misery, and as we sat together in silence, the TV set continued to spew out coloured images of happiness which we both ignored.

The minutes stretched out. I could hear the tension in my inner ear, as if fingernails were being scratched along a blackboard inside my head until I felt like screaming.

When the ‘phone rang, it shattered the silence like an axe striking a rotten log.

George walked over to the telephone and answered it.