Rebuilding Coventry (12 page)

‘No
sweat, old chap,’ said Willoughby D’Eresby. ‘Never did like pigeon, prefer
woodcock.’

‘Darling,’
said Letitia, ruffling her son’s matted hair, ‘it
is
nice to see you
eating. Shall I fetch you some redcurrant jelly?’

Keir
spat out a feather and whined: ‘I’m not eating because I want to
eat.
I’m
doing this as a public service. If it wasn’t for me, London would be overrun… They’re vermin you know, absolutely crawling with parasites.’

‘Yes,
well, you will make sure it’s cooked
through,
won’t you, darling?’ said
Letitia, staring with some dismay at the pigeon’s pin-button eyes. Keir turned
his attention back to his cooking, and after a long pause the professor said, rather
too heartily, ‘Well, m’boy, we’ll leave you to your breakfast.’

As we
trooped out of the door Keir said: ‘It isn’t my breakfast, it’s my
campaign.’
The only adult objects in Keir’s room were the smoking materials on his
bedside table. Even the toasting fork was stamped with Winnie the Pooh
decorations. The room was a museum piece. There ought to have been a braided
rope across the door and a printed card on the wall:

A TYPICAL FIVE-YEAR-OLD BOY’S BEDROOM

CIRCA 1969

‘Is there much nourishment
in a pigeon, darling?’ asked Letitia outside Keir’s door.

‘There’s
protein of course,’ replied Professor Willoughby D’Eresby. ‘I’ll have a word
with Archie Duncan, the nutritionist.’ And that was that. They went into the
bathroom to share a bath.

I was
reminded of a horror film I once saw. A group of holidaymakers had rented a
Gothic castle for a fortnight. At dinner on the first night a violent
thunderstorm broke out. A chandelier fell onto the dinner table. A statue
toppled down the stairs. And all the candles went out and then mysteriously lit
themselves again. Yet the holidaymakers cheerfully went to bed in their spooky
bedrooms and managed to sleep through organ music and screams coming from the
cellar.

The
Willoughby D’Eresbys and the holiday-makers in the film had much in common:
severe cases of taking life as it comes. Had Keir been born on the Grey Paths
Estate he would have been secure in the care of the community. Some nosy
neighbour would have reported him for strangling pigeons on the windowsill.

18
I Leave the Unconventional Household

I was stirring porridge
when Professor Willoughby D’Eresby came into the kitchen and said, ‘I’ve been
watching breakfast television. Your name is Coventry Dakin, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your
photograph has just been on the news. In the photograph you’re pointing some
kind of firearm and looking quite fierce.’

‘A
firearm?’ I was baffled.

‘You
look frightfully pretty in the photograph. You were wearing a rather fetching
blue and white checked frock.’

‘Oh
that,’
I said. ‘It was a pop gun; the photograph was a joke. It was my son’s
birthday… .’

‘According
to the police you’re rather dangerous. They have warned the public not to
approach you.’

‘Oh
dear.’

‘You
have a grudge against men, according to the boys in blue.’ I shook my head.

‘But
you killed a man?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you
are
rather
a violent person?’

The
porridge was heaving about at the bottom of the pan, dangerously near to
sticking. My wrist had gone limp; the wooden spoon bobbed about independently,
rattling the sides of the saucepan.

‘Are
you going to turn me in?’ I asked.

‘Not
in.
But, sadly,
out.
It’s not that I’m shocked, my dear. Murder is
yawningly ordinary to me; but, even so, I cannot harbour you under my roof I’m
a professor of forensic medicine. I’m in daily contact with the police. You do
see the position I’m in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Letitia
is
desperately unhappy.
She was hoping that you’d be with us for years.
Servants are such a problem, what with her naturism and Keir’s eccentricities.’

‘When
do you want me to go?’

‘I
think immediately would be best, don’t you? I’m so very sorry.’

The
porridge burnt, so I gave them Weetabix. They ate in uncharacteristic silence.
After I’d put the bowls in the dishwasher the Willoughby D’Eresbys gave me a
leopard-skin coat and a fifty-pound note.

‘Was it
a
crime passionnel?’
asked Letitia. ‘If so, you may be treated leniently
by the courts.’

‘What
is
a
crime passionnel?’

The
professor answered. ‘It’s French, m’dear. Means bumping off a person you’ve
been rogering or want to roger. Usually because they’ve started rogering
someone else. The frog judiciary recognize that when one’s glands are
overexcited, then one’s common sense flies out of the window and one is likely
to act somewhat erratically.’

I said,
‘Oh no, it was nothing like that at all. There was never any question of …
rogering.’

‘Oh
dear,’ said Letitia. ‘In that case I
shouldn’t
give myself up; should
you, Gerard?’

‘Wife!
Are you asking me to put myself in the place of a murderer? Have you forgotten
that my profession
is
partly the investigation of murder?’

‘I’m
only asking you to empathize with the poor girl.’

‘I do,
I do. But you really mustn’t ask for my advice on what I’d do or where I’d go
should
I
have committed a murder.’

‘But I
didn’t…’

‘I
expect I’d nip up to Scotland and plead sanctuary in my old friend Buffy’s
hilltop castle. He’s got twenty thousand acres of low-lying ground for a garden
… and a moat. Could see the boys in blue approaching for three miles.
Simple, pull up the drawbridge, pretend we’ve all gone to the shops and sit in
front of the library fire with a Trollope and a glass of Scotland’s finest.
There, Letitia, are you satisfied? That’s what I would do. Good old Buffy,
decent old stick.’

‘Husband,
shut your gob. Coventry doesn’t want to hear about that dreadful snuff-stained
old soak you call a friend. She’s anxious to be off, aren’t you, dear?’

I shook
their hands. Then they both kissed me and I opened the door and left. The
professor came out onto the steps to wave me goodbye, but Letitia, being naked,
stayed inside the house and waved through the letter-box.

The
late autumn sun was showing off like mad, getting in people’s eyes, dazzling
drivers, illuminating dirty windows. I sweated inside the leopard-skin coat.
The trees in Russell Square gardens flamed red in the buoyant air as I threw
two pound-coins onto the patch of grass where I’d lain, underneath Leslie, the
man with the missing teeth.

There
was a little café in the corner of the gardens. A sprinkling of chairs and
tables were set outside. It didn’t seem like England, more like how I imagined
a Saturday abroad to be. I ordered a cup of coffee and a toasted teacake, then
remembered I’d only got a fifty-pound note.

‘I don’t
suppose you can change …
?’
I held the large note out.

‘You
suppose right, lady. This ain’t the tea-room at the Ritz. I ain’t catering for
the moneyed classes ‘ere.’

I went
back to the area where I’d tossed the two pound-coins, found them, picked one
up, left the other, went back to the café and paid the man behind the counter.

He
laughed. ‘Christ, lady, you got a good nose for money, ain’t you? … Just
leaps from the grass into your hands.’

It felt
very strange to be sitting in the sunlight, smoking a cigarette and drinking my
coffee, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. No husband hurrying me to drink
up and move on. No whining children rocking the table and spilling their Coca
Cola. I think the strange feeling was happiness.

Whenever
Gerald Fox’s dead face swam into my mind, I pushed it out.

It was
only ten-thirty in the morning, so the whole day stretched ahead. My agenda was
that of a rich woman: buy shoes, get ears pierced, find a hotel room. But
meanwhile, how lovely to sit under the trees and look around. I left when the
sun went in. The man behind the counter shouted: ‘See you, your ladyship,’ as I
fastened my fur coat around me and left the gardens.

19
Boots to Change My Life

‘Into fifties stuff, are
you?’ said the girl in the shoe shop.

‘Fifties
what?’

‘Fifties,
as in nineteen-fifties,’ she said, looking at my
suit and coat. ‘You want some roach killers like these?’ she said, showing me a
pair of spiky stilettos with pointed toes.

‘Winkle-pickers,’
I said. ‘We used to call them winkle-pickers in my day.’

‘When
was your day?’ she asked.

‘Nineteen
fifty-seven,’ I said.

‘Oh, so
you’re not into fifties
nostalgia,
then?’

‘No, I’m
the real thing. Could I see a pair of comfortable ankle boots, please?
Something I can run in?’

I love
my boots. I keep looking at them and feeling the soft leather. I like the way the
laces bind them tight around my feet and ankles. I could run ten miles, dance a
ballet or climb a rock face in them.

‘I want
to wear them now,’ I said to the girl. She took my fifty-pound note and my old
plimsolls and gave me back thirty pounds, one penny and a carrier bag, which
contained my disgraceful old shoes. The boots are so soft that they have
already taken on the shape of my feet. I can see every one of my toes, and the
slight bunion on each foot. I love my boots. I intend to buy them a tube of
black polish. These boots are going to keep me out of prison, find me a job and
change my life.

20
Sidney Comes Up for a Breath

‘Ruth?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s
Coventry!’

‘Oh
hello, Coy, how are you?’

‘I’m
very well, how are you?’

‘I’ve
had a bad tummy, due to a dubious chicken, but I’m all right now. How’s Derek
and the kids?’

‘I don’t
know.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I’m not at home, am I?’ ‘Aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m
in London. Hasn’t Sidney told you?’

‘Told
me what?’

‘I’m in
a bit of trouble.’ ‘Shoplifting?’

‘No. He
didn’t tell you?’ ‘You’ve left Derek?’

‘I can’t
believe he didn’t tell you.’ ‘You’ve got cancer; you’re in hospital.’ ‘No.’

‘You’ve
run off with another man?’

‘No.’

Ruth
sighed. ‘Look, I’ll fetch Sidney. He’s in the pool with his snorkel gear, so I
may have to wait for him to come up for a breath.’

‘I’m in
a phone box, Ruth. Hurry.’

I had
put three pounds of my precious money into the slot before Sidney came to the
phone.

‘Coy?
Sorry, couldn’t find my fags.’

‘Hello,
Sidney.’

‘Look,
Coy, I told you to give me a week.’

‘I’m
frightened. I was passing the phone box and I had all these fifty-pence pieces.
I bought some boots and she gave me five pounds’ worth of silver.’

‘Look,
stop crying; you know it upsets me.’

‘Why
didn’t you tell Ruth?’

‘Because
I want to enjoy myself, Coy. I’m not spending the rest of my holiday sitting at
the side of the pool watching Ruth break out in eczema. She’s already a bloody
nervous wreck due to the Portuguese drivers. You should see the mad buggers;
talk about “see the Algarve and die”.’

‘When
will you be back in England,
exactly?’

‘Sunday
afternoon. Gatwick. Give me a bell at the shop on Monday, eh?’

‘I’ve
got no more money to put in.’

‘Keep
your pecker up, Coy.’

‘Yes
and yours.’

‘Mine’s
always up.’

He
laughed and put the phone down.

I shouldn’t
have made the phone call; it was a mad extravagance. My only excuse is that I
love my brother and I wanted to hear his voice. Had Sidney murdered somebody
and needed my help, I would have walked across Portugal and France and swum
whichever sea separated us. I would give Sidney my last penny. I would lie and
cheat and steal and fight to protect him from unhappiness. It is a great
sadness to me that Sidney does not love me with the same intensity.

I’ve
got twenty-five pounds and a penny in a pocket of the leopard-skin coat. I am
usually very careful with money. I know
exactly
where every penny goes. Went.
Derek opted to receive a wage packet every week rather than have his wages paid
into the bank, like most of the shop floor workers. Every Friday night he and I
would sit at the kitchen table and divide the money into little piles. Derek
clicked on his calculator and instructed me what to put where. Then I would
note down the figures in a red cash book. The total could never exceed
eighty-one pounds, sixty-seven pence which was Derek’s net weekly earnings. If
I say it myself, I was an excellent housekeeper. I was very clever with offal.
Everything that came into the house that was usable was washed and recycled. It
was a full-time occupation. I knew the prices in the supermarket by heart. I
took note of seasonal fluctuations. I bought sheets and pillowcases in the
January sales, mended my own shoes, knitted, sewed and crocheted our clothes. I
made birthday and Christmas cards (including envelopes), bread, cakes and
biscuits. We grew our own vegetables and flowers, cut our own hair. When we
were ill we waited until we were better. There was no column in the red cash
book for prescriptions. We were careful with light and heat. The central
heating was never turned on before mid-October, and it was turned off
religiously on Good Friday. Derek cycled to work with a box of sandwiches in
his saddle bag. There was an egg-timer by the phone.