Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles (13 page)

Everything that happened then happened very quickly. Bert, his face screwed up, uttered a succession of horrified noises and disappeared upstairs into the bathroom. Mother, cooing over Marie, who was crying, stripped her of her clothes and then tried to get into the bathroom to wash her down, but couldn’t because Bert had locked the door. ‘Just a minute!’ he shouted quite nastily. ‘I’m cleaning my shoes.’

‘Yes, but I need to sort out Marie.’

‘Can’t she wait?’ he yelled.

Marie was still crying, the poor thing. It’s horrible being sick. Guiltily, I could hear her sobs from downstairs, where I had set to with a bucket and cloth. The only thing more horrible than being sick is having anything to do with other people’s sick (funny how, no matter what the person’s eaten, sick always smells the same), but it was the least I could do. Actually I did start gagging, and had to exert all my powers of control to prevent a little sympathy-puke of my own.

I was on my third bucket of water, careful to breathe through my mouth not my nose, when Uncle Bert thundered down the stairs, holding his shoes in his hand. ‘A bag,’ he said, flicking his blond hair out of his eyes. He had obviously been sponging his trousers too because the bottoms were all wet.

‘Sorry?’

‘A plastic bag. Have you got a plastic bag? For my shoes.’

‘Um.’ I got up and rummaged around in the kitchen. All I could find was the stiff cardboard Pritchard & Benning carrier from earlier. ‘This do?’

He grabbed it. ‘It will have to.’

He put his shoes into it and then, his lip curled, pulled off his damp socks, smelt them and stuffed them in too. I got back on to my hands and knees to finish off. The cat was sniffing around the damp patch in a revolting way. ‘Hungry?’ I said, getting off the floor. ‘I’ll get you some proper food.’

‘What a to-do!’ I said to Bert as I passed him, swinging the bucket in my hand.

He glared at me. ‘Are you all ill?’

‘Just a bug’ I said airily.

‘What sort of bug?’

‘Oh, you know, upset stomach and the squits.’ I opened a can of KiteKat and started spooning it on to a dish for the cat. ‘It’s going round school. Julie’s off sick, as you probably know’

I saw him glance at the cat food and blench. ‘I thought that was a throat infection.’

I paused. ‘Oh. Maybe,’ I said. And then added very quietly, ‘If that’s what they’re telling you.’

‘Oh, Bert. I am so sorry’ Mother had come down the stairs, holding Marie’s hand. Marie was still shuddering with the after-effects of tears. ‘What will you think of us?’

‘I’m not sure that I shouldn’t head off. You know, you seem to have your hands full.’

Mother looked at the wet floor and the bucket filled with swill and gave him a look, which may have contained reproach and may have contained relief. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘Right. OK. Chickacheet.’ He kissed her on the head. ‘Call yer, right?’ And he swung out of the sitting room, still dangling the Pritchard & Benning carrier bag from his fingers. He had got to the end of the hall and was halfway out of the door before he remembered us. ‘Ciao, kids,’ he yelled before escaping with a slam.

Mother was terribly impressed that I’d cleared up, and very solicitous about my health. After she’d settled Marie, she made me some toast and Marmite. I ate it on the sofa, watching the news. The prime minister was on, looking grave and determined. War has been declared. It really is going to happen now.

I’ve got a bit stuck in this illness malarkey. I began pretending to feel ill and now I find I actually do feel ill. It must be all that shallow breathing and groaning. I expect it restricts the oxygen to your vital organs or something. I’m lying here in bed, all limp and listless. Occasionally I imagine myself jumping out on to the window sill to see if Delilah’s up, or phoning Julie again, but it’s too late to do either.

I could be preparing for confession, of course. I’ve now lost count of my sins. It’s awful how one seems to lead to another and each one seems quite valid at the time. It’s other people’s – in particular Mother’s – welfare that is driving me on, after all. It is also astounding how much you can achieve when you put your mind to it. In the past two and a half weeks, I have brought Bert and Mother together and wrenched them apart. The next step – finding her someone else – is bound to be easy All this and I’m only fourteen. The cat is next to me, and he’s purring in approval.

I wonder what the prime minister is thinking. Does he really want a war? Does he think of himself as all-powerful, omnipotent, as being able to do anything he wants? Or is he lying in bed, sick with dread and fear at what might be about to happen next?

Thursday 6 March

Still in bed, 9.20 p.m.

I didn’t go
to school today. I knew we’d have double French with everyone flashing their latest French-exchange letters about. And I didn’t even have to work on an excuse. Mother asked how I was the moment I came down. ‘Still feeling poorly,
chérie
?’ she said, so I only had to nod.

Mr Spence was sitting at the table in the back bit of the sitting room, drinking tea and eating toast. He seems to get here earlier and earlier. He and Cyril were discussing the relative merits of crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. I heard him say, ‘I like crunchy on top of ordinary butter, particularly combined with jam, but smooth if I’m just having a cracker. What about you?’

‘Same,’ said Cyril.

Mr Spence said, ‘You’re just copying.’ Cyril and Marie giggled. Honestly, the last thing Mother needs is another child at the table.

‘Yeah, well, I think I’d better stay at home today,’ I said. Mr Spence and Mother exchanged a glance. I should have seen what was coming. He said, ‘Well, I’m here all day. So I can tend to the invalid if ness.’ He was wearing a tight red top with a show-off logo on the shoulder and the kind of narrow jeans Julie calls ‘ankle-thinners’.

I shot Mother a pleading look. ‘Can’t I come to work with you?’ I said. ‘I don’t feel ill ill, just sort of not well. But I won’t be sick or anything.’

She ummed and ahhed. Mr Spence went into the kitchen and changed into his work clothes. I saw a flash of white leg and royal-blue he-man knickers. Yuk. ‘Please,’ I said, shuddering. ‘I’ll be very good. I don’t want to be –’ I rolled my eyes in his direction (she must know how creepy he is) – ‘
left
.’

She studied me for a moment, all sorts of thoughts chasing themselves across her face. ‘Oh. OK,’ she said finally. ‘But be good, huh? Bring a book.’

I hadn’t realized what a rush it was for her to get C and Μ to school, catch the train, change at Clapham Junction and get to work in time for 9.30 a.m. We had to stand all the way too. No wonder her legs ache all the time.

Pritchard & Benning Corsetières is tucked away in a backstreet off a backstreet behind Victoria Station, between a tanning shop and a dry cleaner’s. It has a very unprepossessing shopfront and when it’s shuttered up, as it was when we arrived, gives no outward indication of the wares inside. It’s like something from the olden days. You’d imagine only very ancient and grand ladies totter here to buy 18-hour girdles and Cross Your Heart bras. But actually it’s very much ‘on the map’, as Mrs Pritchard puts it. Posh women – or ‘girls’ – flock in their kitten heels from Hampstead and Notting Hill for their expert fittings. It is in certain circles
the only place
to get your bosom measured.

Last time I came was at Christmas, when Jack, the kids and I collected Mother on our way to see
Puss in Boots
in the West End. We hooted in the street and Mother came flying out. Today, Mrs Pritchard, a great owl of a woman with iron-grey hair and spectacles on a clanking chain round her neck, looked puzzled when she saw me. Mother, hanging up her coat and leaving no room for disagreement, said firmly that I would be ‘like a little mouse’ in the corner. Mrs Pritchard gave me a tight smile and said if I was good I could help double-check sizes with her in the stockroom. ‘Well, Bernadette, it looks like you guessed correctly with 34B,’ she said. ‘Are you happy with your Lejaby Fantasie, Constance?’

She’s so good at her job I hadn’t even realized she’d sized me up. I crossed my arms over my chest without thinking. ‘Yes, thank you,’ I muttered. I have to say The Bra was a bit more comfortable today.

There are lots of drawers in the stockroom, for each kind of bust, and basically I had to go through them checking they all contained what they should, that no 36EE had slipped into 32C. It didn’t take long – there were only a few strays in the lower ranges – and after that I made Mother and Mrs Pritchard some coffee in the little narrow kitchen behind the stockroom. ‘How’s Mrs Benning?’ I asked Mrs Pritchard when I brought the cups out. (I’d checked the shop was empty first; she’s quite strict about that.)

‘Not so good,’ she said. ‘Not so good.’

I put on a concerned expression. Mrs Benning has long been a ‘sleeping partner’, but since she went into a nursing home two years ago has done a lot more sleeping than anticipated.

‘Oh!’ It was about then that Mother let out a little cry. ‘Look!’ She raised her hand as if to wave and then thought better of it. A tall man in a dark suit was walking past the window. ‘The man with the “matching set”!’

‘The matching set?’ I said, momentarily confused.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘The credit note?’

‘The credit note that your mother so kindly spent on your Lejaby Fantasie matching 34B and Medium,’ added Mrs Pritchard, with a small note of reproof.

There are times when I think I am close to sluggish in the speed of my responses, when I despair of my ability ever to grab the moment with the alacrity of, say, Julie. On the other hand, there are times when I amaze even myself.

This was one of those.

‘Oh!’ I cried. ‘But I must thank him. I must thank him right now.’ And I charged out of the shop before anyone could say anything. All I could think was that here was a man who had shown my mother kindness, who we knew was single and who was, if the suit was anything to go by, in regular employment.

‘Excuse me!’ I shouted after him. He’d reached the corner, but he paused, looking round uncertainly. I panted up. ‘Sorry.’ I was still out of breath. ‘Sorry. Hang on. Phew. My name’s Constance and I’m wearing your bra. And –’ I had yanked a bit of strap out of my T-shirt but I stopped, registering the alarm on his face. ‘No. No. That came out wrong. I mean… I just wanted to thank you for –’

‘For what?’ His eyes were darting about in panic, his whole body poised for departure.

‘For the Fantasy…’

‘Good. Good,’ he said carefully, edging away, as if uncertain of my sanity.

‘No. No. Stop. The credit note. The shop!’ I had his attention and pointed back to Pritchard & Benning, outside of which Mother and Mrs Pritchard were now standing, looking after us.

‘The shop?’ he said, still uncertainly, but less wary now.

‘Do you remember? A few weeks ago? The credit note?’

‘The credit note?’

‘You know. The matching set you bought for your fiancée, “big on top, tiny down below”, the fiancée that then broke it off…’

‘Oh. The credit note’ He looked sad. ‘Oh. I see.’

‘It was so very kind. My mother,
a widow
, has had such a tough time recently. And an act of generosity like yours… well… it made her week. Her month! But, of course, being the sweet person she is she spent it on me. On my bosoms. I mean, she bought me a bra! And, well, I just wanted to thank you. And I know that she’d like to thank you herself. So, I mean, if you had a minute and could spare the time just to return to the shop so that she could do that, well…’

He looked at me as if he still thought I was barking, but then looked again down the road to where Mother was standing, her hands held at her tiny waist, her rosebud mouth twisting, the light playing with her shiny dark hair. She looked gamine and beautiful.

He nodded – as I’ve said before, Mother does have that effect – and followed me.

Mother looked less unsure and more cross when we reached her. She said, ‘Constance!’ but I jumped in quickly.

‘Mother, we wanted to thank Mr – Sorry, I don’t know your name –’

‘Savonaire.’ The man and I both looked at Mother after she’d spoken. She added quickly, ‘It was on the credit note.’

He smiled. ‘Victor Savonaire,’ he said, and put out his hand for both of us to shake it.

I heard myself breathe rather than say, ‘You’re French.’

(It was the way he’d pronounced Victor that clinched it.)

‘My mother,’ he said. ‘So, half French, yes. But born and brought up in London, so a bit of a swizz, I’m afraid.’ Until then I hadn’t been sure about his looks. He was slim and tall, not thin, but his face was bony. He had nice eyes but rather too prominent eye sockets. And something odd was going on on the top of his head. There was pale-brown hair, tufting upwards as if gelled, but not as much as there should have been. Someone was hiding something. Still, HALF FRENCH! You could forgive some follicular fudging for that!

Mother began asking whether he was feeling, er, better since their last meeting. He looked down at the pavement and kicked the dust about with his shiny shoes as he answered. His voice was very posh, but faltering.

Mother said, ‘I was worried, as I remarked to you at the time, that our choice of lingerie had not been appropriate, that it might have made the situation worse.’

He said, ‘No, no. I mean, rather, yes, but no. It was more that she was already confused and a gift of that nature reminded, or rather not reminded but… ‘And he trailed away.

I looked from one to the other of them. Mother had on her sick-child expression. I could see she was just longing to get out the Calpol and wrap him in her duvet on the sofa. And he – well, I don’t know. But he didn’t have to stand there talking to her, did he?

I could see Mrs Pritchard peering out at us over Mother’s shoulder. And then a taxi drew up and a couple of women carrying the kind of logoed handbags that look like miniature suitcases got out and started tottering towards the shop.

‘Oh,’ said Mother. ‘It was charming to meet you and, once again, thank you for your act of generosity’ She smiled and turned and, following the women with the mini luggage, went back into the shop.

Victor Savonaire continued to stand there for a second, looking dazed. At the time, I assumed it was bewilderment at Mother’s beauty, though as I sit here writing, it strikes me that maybe it was the churning up of Valentine’s Day memories, the one minute walking along the pavement, the next forced into an intimate conversation, that threw him. But it doesn’t matter. If I was deluded, so be it. It gave me confidence to do what I did next and confidence, as I’m beginning to see, is what matters in life.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘OK. Well, thank you, or rather thank you for thanking me, and for…’

‘Come to tea.’

‘What?’

‘On Saturday. Come to tea.’

His mouth dropped open and one of his hands shot to the top of his head, where the fingers twiddled vaguely for a moment before falling to scratch behind his ears.

I fired out our address. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘We would so like to thank you. I’ll make a cake.’

He ummed and ahhed but finally, hesitantly, said he would. I wrote our address down on the back of his hand. Then we said goodbye and I went back into the shop.

Mother was in and out of the fitting room with armfuls of small boxes, dancing attendance on one of the women from the taxi, and could only look at me suspiciously. Then Mrs Pritchard sent me out for some teabags. And then there was a flood of second-wind shoppers (customers buying bras to go with the outfits they’d bought in the morning), so it wasn’t until much later in the afternoon that I had to ‘fess up. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest. I’d had time to prepare a tiny little embellishment to make it sound more plausible. I told her he’d said, ‘It would be nice to meet again in more auspicious circumstances,’ and that I’d felt it would have been rude not to arrange something after that. Her brown eyes widened. I said, ‘And so tea seemed the most harmless, don’t you think?’

‘Er.’ She laughed, more in shock than anything. ‘You really invited him to tea, Connie?’

‘Yup.’

She laughed again. Actually, I don’t think she believed me yet. ‘When again?’

‘Saturday’

‘And how does he know where we live?’

‘I told him.’

‘And, Connie –’ She was standing with her hands on her hips. ‘What about your job at the chemist’s?’

I’d forgotten that. But it didn’t throw me. ‘Well,’ I said boldly, ‘I suppose you’ll have to entertain him until I get there.’

I’m in bed – exhausted. It’s been a busy day for an ill person. I only have one more thing to recount and that’s that I did manage to speak to Julie before I came to bed. Her mum, who answered the phone, said I could talk to her as long as I was quick and didn’t ask too many questions. ‘She’d like to hear your voice, I’m sure,’ she said.