Mr Toppit (15 page)

“What’s the matter with you, Rachel?” I said.

“Stop being so grown-up. You’re as bad as them,” she said tearfully. “Everybody seems to have forgotten that Daddy’s dead.” She was still calling Arthur “Daddy.” It wasn’t a good sign.

In the afternoon, Claude took Laurie for a walk. She was dressed in one of her new outfits, a pair of black trousers and a loose white blouse with large red roses printed on it. “She looks
ridiculous,” Rachel said, but when it was getting dark and they still hadn’t returned she became fidgety. She was trying to read but every few minutes she kept getting up and going to peer out of the window. “Why are they taking so long?” she said. Finally, when it was so dark that we had to turn the lights on in the sitting room, she said, “Do you think something’s happened to them? Will you help me look for them?”

No sooner had we gone outside than we saw them at the other end of the field, walking slowly towards the house, their laughter traveling across the evening air. As they got closer, I could see that their arms were linked. When they reached the big farm gate that divided the field from our garden, Claude got over first, then helped Laurie maneuver herself over the top. She gave a little shriek when she jumped to the ground and her shoe came off. She held on to Claude’s arm to balance herself as she raised her leg to get it on again. She was clearly having some difficulty, because in the end she took the other shoe off and walked towards us across the lawn with bare feet.

Rachel was very still beside me. When they got to us, Laurie was still laughing. She patted Claude’s shoulder. “You’ve got such a true friend here,” she said to Rachel. “He’s been so dear.” It was too dark to see the expression on Rachel’s face, but in a strangely bright voice she said, “You two need a drink. Come on. It’s nearly supper. Martha’s been
slaving
and you know what a bad temper that puts her into.”

Rachel had been right: now it was Martha who was grumpy. After Claude had opened a bottle of wine, we sat in the sitting room waiting for supper. Laurie was asking us questions about Arthur’s books. She had taken to carrying the five paperbacks around in her bag so they were with her wherever she went. Martha kept coming in and out, sitting down, lighting a cigarette,
then stubbing it out and getting up to check something in the kitchen. It was an unusually over-emphatic display of domesticity, given that we were having cold chicken and potato salad, most of which had been prepared by Doreen, our cleaning lady who had left it covered in cling-film in the fridge that morning.

Nothing was right. “Why are you drinking wine out of toothmugs?” Martha asked.

“They’re
tumblers
, actually,” Rachel said.

“Well, we do have wine glasses. Laurie might prefer her wine that way.”

“No, I’m good,” Laurie said.

“And don’t drink any more of the decent wine,” she said to Rachel. “I want it for Friday.” Friday was the funeral.

“So, are there places in the Darkwood you can find in the woods here? Like, real places?” Laurie asked.

“You’ll have a headache in the morning, Rachel,” Martha said. “There’s a lot to do tomorrow.”

Rachel ignored her. “Well, of course, Luke can never quite find Mr. Toppit’s lair, that’s the point, but I’ve always thought it’s beyond the bit at the top where the big path divides into two—”

“Claude, don’t let that ash drop on the carpet. Doreen only vacuumed this morning.” Martha got up and put an ashtray on the table in front of him, next to the ashtray that was already there, then sat down again. “If we don’t eat now, we’ll never eat,” she said.

The food had hardly been served, though, when she gathered up her cigarettes, lighter, and ashtray and left the dining room, her plate untouched. “I have to phone Terry Tringham,” she said. “He’s going to give the address at the funeral.” The door slammed behind her.

“She must be hurting real bad,” Laurie said, after Martha had left. She had brought Arthur’s books into the dining room with her and now she put them in a neat pile to one side of her plate.

“Open some more wine,” Rachel said to Claude, then added nastily, “Don’t be scared, I won’t tell Martha. You go and help him, Luke—he’ll just make a mess.”

“Do you want red or white?” Claude asked, when he returned from the kitchen.

“Ssh,” Rachel said. “Laurie’s telling us a story.”

When she was at school, when she was fifteen and the least popular girl in her class, Laurie had auditioned for the end-of-term play, which was to be
Oklahoma!
She sang “I Cain’t Say No” at the audition and, to everyone’s amazement, was given the part of Ado Annie. Shyly she sang us a snatch of the song, and I could see why: she had a wonderful voice. The problem was that she had hated being on stage when she wasn’t singing: she felt lumpy and awkward and she couldn’t dance and everyone was horrible to her, particularly Rick, the boy playing the lead, whom all the girls, including her, were in love with. He had beautiful blond, curly hair and some of the girls he had been out with had kept locks of it. People were always trying to touch it. He took longer to have his hair and makeup done than anyone else in the cast.

When the gingham dress that had been made for her split during a dance number in the rehearsals, Laurie was demoted to the chorus and replaced by Rick’s girlfriend, Jerrilee, who seemed mysteriously to know all of Ado Annie’s lines already. Rick was now Laurie’s boss at the radio station and he was married to Jerrilee, but he had lost most of his hair. “He’s got a wig the size of a moose pelt—but he doesn’t always wear it,” Laurie said, giggling.

Rachel was almost weeping with laughter. “Moose pelt,” she kept screaming.
“Moose pelt!”

Claude said, “Rach, we should tell her about us doing
Guys and Dolls
at school.”

Rachel wiped her eyes with a paper napkin and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, she doesn’t want to hear about that. Anyway, you spent your entire time mooning over that boy who played whatever-he’s-called—Nathan.” She got up, moved to the place next to Laurie and put an arm round her. “Tell you what,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll take you into the woods and give you a proper tour. I’ll show you some of the places in the books.”

Laurie’s face lit up. “Oh, I’d love it. But I need to go into town in the morning. There’s something special I want to do for Martha.”

“We could go at lunchtime! We could have a picnic!” Claude said excitedly.

“Girls only,” Rachel said with a little smirk.

The “something special” that Laurie wanted to do for Martha was to cook the food for the funeral. When I got up the next morning, Martha and she were in the kitchen discussing it. “I thought chimichangas,” Laurie was saying. “Tortillas, nachos, maybe, lots of dips, definitely guacamole, salted almonds—my mother’s recipe—maybe some refried beans.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“No, you’ll like them. They’re really tasty.”

“But, Laurie,” Martha said, “even if they don’t all come back after the service there’ll still be fifty or sixty people. You really don’t have to do this. Doreen will help. We can give them lots of drink and something simple, like sandwiches.”

Laurie went over and hugged Martha. “You’ve all been so kind. It would be my pleasure.”

“Do you think Arthur liked Mexican food?” I said doubtfully, to Martha, after Laurie had gone out. She waved away my objection. “The best kind of food is the kind somebody else cooks.”

In the event, there would be one fewer at the funeral: Claude had left. His car was gone from the front of the house. Rachel was nowhere to be seen. I found her eventually in the garden, sitting on the swing Arthur had made for us as children.

She had been crying. “Where’s Claude?” I asked.

“We had a fight. He said I made him feel surplus to requirements. How ridiculous! Anyway he’s gone. Back to Damian, of course.”

The trip to the woods was off. Rachel had retired to her room: she had a headache.

Laurie took her some lunch on a tray, but when she went to collect it afterwards, nothing had been eaten. “Poor munchkin,” she said, as she washed the dishes. “I guess it’s her time of the month.”

Rachel had been wrong when she said Lila would turn up soon enough. It was amazing that it was four days since Arthur had died and there had been no sign of her. When we heard the crunch of gravel that afternoon, and I looked out of the window to see a taxi drawing up, I knew our run of luck had ended.

Martha closed her eyes. “Someone did call her, didn’t they?” Her voice was doom-laden. “Baby?”

“Don’t look at me,” I said.

“Maybe Rachel did.”

The doorbell rang. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“Do you want me to get that?” Laurie called from the kitchen.

“No, we’ll do it,” Martha shouted. “Please don’t let her speak German. I can take anything but that.”

Although Lila was an art teacher, she gave private German tuition and that was how Martha had first met her. Martha had wanted to read her favorite book,
Buddenbrooks
, in the original. Lila had a special technique for teaching German: she called it “living conversation.” Her method made conversation more natural, she said, and it had the added advantage of illuminating particular aspects of German life. For each pupil, she would invent a set of German characters tailored specifically to their interests who could be discussed during lessons, as if casual conversation was being had about mutual friends. For a girl doing A levels who was keen on horses, she had invented a kind of German National Velvet who spent a lot of time show-jumping in Potsdam. For Martha, she had conjured up a bourgeois family in the 1900s, the Untermeyers of Lübeck, and they would sit and talk about Uncle Heinrich, who ran a shipping business, and his infinitely expandable set of relations, who spent their lives visiting each other for tea and organizing evenings of chamber music. Although the lessons had stopped long ago, when Martha grew bored with them, Lila went through an elaborate pretense that they still continued.

She was standing on the doorstep, leaning on her stick. In one hand she carried a large bag and in the other a bunch of flowers. She was wearing a hat. As we approached, she arranged a tragic smile on her face and put out her hands towards Martha.

“Gnädige Frau,”
she began,
“ich muss Ihnen sagen, wie erschütternt ich bin.”
She let out a wail as she launched herself aggressively into Martha’s arms. “Oh, darling, you should have told me, you should have called. I’ve been waiting.”

Martha and I led her into the sitting room. She took off her hat. As always, she was wearing a hairnet decorated with colored beads. When we were small we thought someone had sprinkled hundreds-and-thousands over her head. Martha sat her down on the sofa. A glass of brandy had to be procured. Lila produced a handkerchief out of her large bag—large, because whenever she visited friends she always carried a nightdress and change of clothing in case she was asked to stay the night, and a selection of handmade gifts to thank them for having her if they did—and sniffled tearfully into it. She looked angrily at Martha. “My dear, I’m only a taxi ride away. You know that.”

“Oh, Lila,” Martha murmured.

“What you have gone through …”

“Well …”

“I cannot bear it. When I heard, when I saw it in the paper, I told the school to cancel my Tuesday life-drawing class. Then, naturally, people called to ask if I had heard. I said, yes, of course, but only from the paper, not from
you
. I was so embarrassed.”

Martha confronted the issue head on. “I’m so sorry, Lila. We presumed you’d ring us. There’s been so much happening.”

“My dear, I did not want to intrude. I called Graham Carter to see if they were doing a reprint because of all the mentions of the books in the obituaries. He has not had the courtesy to return my call. Actually, my calls. With an
s.”

Whenever Graham came down to stay, Lila had to be kept away from the house: she had many suggestions as to how the books could be published better. She felt that the paper they were printed on was too thin, that her illustrations would reproduce better on thicker stock; she felt September or January or June were not good months for publication; she felt there should be more publicity; she felt it was a scandal that the books
had not found an American publisher. Once she had inveigled Graham into having lunch with her when she went up to London for the January sales. After that, he had avoided taking her calls.

“He’ll be at the funeral tomorrow, I’m sure,” Martha said soothingly.

“Thank God—
thank God!
—we finished the last book when we did. Oh, if it had been only half finished …” I never really knew whether Arthur had wanted her to illustrate his books or whether she had simply made any other option impossible, but once she had started it was clear that, in her eyes at least, she was inextricably linked to their creation. “But now, what happens now? Mr. Toppit has only just come out of the Darkwood. Oh, poor Arthur. What you have all been through, it’s unthinkable. I could have been so useful. Look!”

She dived into her bag and came up with a set of plastic folders. “I’ve done them in triplicate,” she said, thrusting them at me and Martha. Inside, Xeroxes of the various newspaper pieces about Arthur’s death were mounted on card. The three sets each had a different-colored sticker. “Green is for you, Martha, your favorite color. Blue is to go into The Big Book of Hayseed and red is for spare. Do we need more?” Rachel and I called it the BBH. In those days, it was not big at all: a leatherbound album, only half full, with the reviews and the various bits of publicity that the publishers had done. It was only later that it overflowed into many thick volumes, and clipping became a full-time job for Lila.

“You should have
called
me,” she said. It wasn’t quite a shout, but rising towards one.

“Rachel’s not been at all well,” Martha said.

“Of course she hasn’t. She’s an adolescent. I spend my life with adolescent girls at the school,” Lila snapped. “And poor
Luke—now the little man of the family.” She looked at me pityingly. “I could have helped, Martha, I could have helped you. All you had to do was ask.”