She's Leaving Home (66 page)

‘Surely not.’ Brenda giggled. ‘From the state of one or two dons I met they eat their food with their ties. And that was the ladies. The men were worse. Barking mad, some of them, I’d say.’

‘So it makes you wonder why we bother, doesn’t it,’ Meg continued. ‘Why do we go to that extra effort, entering more exams, hours writing essays, studying stuff which won’t be a scrap of use to us when we’re project managers at ICI? Kant, Wittgenstein – I ask you! I answered their questions, but it’ll be out of my head in three weeks’ flat, I’m sure.’

‘Culture, that’s what it is. They desire us to be more than mere scientists. I suspect they’d rather we weren’t scientists at all. Educationists in this country have never got their noses round the fact that civilisation depends not only on poetry and Shakespeare but on sturdy bridges and new fabrics and pesticides and ships and the like.’

‘And railways. We had the first passenger railway in this city, don’t forget. In 1830. If I were a boy I’d have gone in for engineering, but there’s no point. Girls in that subject are as rare as
swallows in winter.’

‘You? You’d have adored being the single woman on a course. A pioneer.’ Brenda was curious.

‘P’raps. But it can be grotty, being on your own. Constantly being teased and treated like a separate species. Who needs it? I’ll read chemistry, then later if my employer agrees I could take a second degree in something – more masculine.’ Meg grinned, and yawned. ‘God! The quicker we hear “yes” or “no” from those dreaming spires and what-not, the better I’ll like it. How did Helen get on, does anybody know? And where’s Colette? I haven’t seen her this morning. She’s spectacularly late.’

‘Helen’s on playground rota. She’s not said much. She’s desperate to get away, you know. If she has to stay at home I think she might throw it all up and emigrate. They don’t fight openly but her people are totally at loggerheads with her.’

Meg picked her fingers then began to chew a nail. ‘She’s lucky to have people. They might not encourage her to do what she wants but at least they notice her. There are times when I’m glad my parents split up but when you want to talk to somebody there’s no one around. My Mum only ever wants to talk about herself.’

Brenda frowned. ‘Haven’t you anybody else – grandparents?’

‘Them? Christenings and funerals, that’s when I see them. Cards at Christmas and a
two-pound
postal order. I haven’t seen the Wirral grandparents since Easter – they don’t get out much. I’m not sure they’d recognise me in the street.’

The Head Girl paused indecisively, hands on hips. On the table her half-empty coffee mug sat cooling. To her irritation the air of gloom had pervaded the prefects’ sanctuary. Meg in a self-pitying mood could be unendurable; the girl would think up negative ripostes to everything. If the dialogue lasted long enough Brenda herself, ever optimistic, would start to suffer also from self-doubt. That would not do.

‘Damn!’ Brenda muttered. ‘I think I’ll go to the Library. See you later.’

But as she opened the door Helen met her, her duffel coat still on, the gold and green scarf wrapped loosely round her neck, gloves in one hand. Helen’s cheeks were ruddy from cold and her mouth was set.

‘We’re wanted. Miss Plumb’s study. Now.’

‘Oh? Is it our results? Who is wanted?’

‘You, me and Meg. Nobody else. Miss Plumb called to me from her window. She was being ultra mysterious but when I asked she said it wasn’t anything to do with Oxbridge. Bit early yet. She seemed – I don’t know – strange, agitated. I’ll hang up my coat and see you there right away.’

It needed all Miss Plumb’s self-control, every last ounce of it, but still she felt herself perilously close to breaking down. She motioned to her visitors. Her voice quavered, then she swallowed and tried again. ‘Let me handle this to begin with. Will you want to speak to them separately?’
The taller of the two men spoke gravely. ‘Only if they have something to tell us. We’ll see.’

Miss Plumb had offered to take their mackintoshes but both men had demurred and sat with the beige folds covering their trousered knees, their belts trailing on the rug. Their hats were placed politely on the table in front of them, revealing short-trimmed hair and lined faces. The taller man was about her own age, Miss Plumb judged, his thinner colleague with the narrow moustache about thirty. The older one took the lead while the other painstakingly made notes in a flipover notebook. After some shuffles they had placed their chairs slightly to one side. Together, Miss Plumb reflected, the three of them must resemble an impromptu Inquisition. But who was in the dock? Was it herself? The school? The girls?

The headmistress felt totally bewildered and inadequate. And, obscurely, guilty. An iciness had begun to seep through her, as if she had always known some terrible disaster would occur in this God-forsaken hole and she had failed to take steps to prevent it. But what exactly had occurred? The men had been reticent. The barest details had been imparted and she could make no sense of them.

A tap came at the door. Maybe the prefects would know more. They’d been pals and confidantes. With alacrity and to lessen the tension Miss Plumb leaped forward and turned the handle. ‘Come in, come in,’ she urged the puzzled schoolgirls.

‘This is Detective Inspector Cummings, and this Detective Sergeant Clarke,’ she indicated. ‘Liverpool CID.’

The two men grunted, half rose in their chairs, settled down again. The inspector cleared his throat and gazed gravely from Brenda the leader to Meg to Helen and back.

‘Good morning,’ he said briefly. ‘I won’t trouble you for long. Could each of you tell me when you last saw or spoke to Colette O’Brien?’

Brenda counted. ‘Wednesday. She was in school then. I was away Thursday and Friday – we three all were. She hasn’t been in today.’ The other two murmured their agreement.

‘Why – where’s Colette? Has she disappeared?’ Helen asked anxiously.

‘Now why should you ask that, miss?’ The inspector’s eyes glittered under heavy brows.

‘She’s not been well recently. Is she OK?’

The inspector pondered then looked at each in turn once more. ‘Did any of you know she was pregnant?’

A cry broke from Helen. ‘Oh, God, that was it. We should have realised. When she collapsed at prizegiving.’ The three girls, open-mouthed, reached for each other.

Brenda steadied. ‘We knew she was off-colour as Helen says, but we had no idea that she was – expecting. She never said anything to any of us. Did she?’ The girls shook their heads.

Miss Plumb clutched her chair and sat down heavily. From her handbag she took a handkerchief and pressed it to her cheek. Eau de Cologne scented the air, faintly, like incense.

Helen stepped forward. She looked directly at the inspector.

‘You said she was pregnant. Past tense. Does that mean she isn’t pregnant any more? Has she lost it – is she in hospital? Please tell us. Has she been beaten up or something? We know she had a miserable time at home and was unhappy but she never told us much. But if we can help her I’m sure we’d do our utmost.’

‘It’s too late.’ The sergeant’s voice was reedy with suppressed excitement. He spoke with a pronounced Scouse accent.

‘What do you mean?’ Helen demanded fiercely. Brenda’s hand touched her arm to restrain her but she shook it off. ‘How can it be too late? Has she had an abortion, is that it? Because if she has, I’m glad for her, but I don’t have any information on the abortionist for you. None of us has, I’m sure.’

‘Helen.’ Miss Plumb came to her side. ‘Listen to the police officer.’ The teacher’s mouth opened and closed without a sound, then she covered it with her handkerchief. She turned to the men. ‘Don’t keep them in suspense, please. This isn’t a game. You’d better tell them.’

‘Well, miss.’ The inspector rose to his feet. The announcement was too portentous to be made seated. He coughed once, then his voice took on a gentler tone. ‘Your friend Colette is dead. She was found late last night at the foot of her block of flats. It appears she fell off the balcony. She’d have been dead the moment she hit the ground. And she was about five or six months pregnant, the police surgeon reckons.’

‘And that’s not all,’ whined the sergeant quickly. ‘In the flat upstairs was another body. Her father, Mr Joseph O’Brien. He was dead of a stab wound to the upper abdomen. One wound. Died of shock and loss of blood. Kitchen knife, we think. Her fingerprints were on it. The flat was awash with
blood everywhere.’

‘Clarke, that’ll do.’ Sharply.

But it was out, and the younger officer smiled secretly at the reaction he had produced. With a yell Meg ran from the room and banged the door after her. Brenda pursued her; their voices could be heard arguing furiously in the hall beyond. Helen sagged in Miss Plumb’s arms, then bent her head on to the teacher’s shoulder.

‘Colette – pregnant? Dead? And her father too? But she never had a boyfriend, Miss Plumb. She was a virgin. I’m sure of that.’

The two women’s eyes met.

Helen started to scream. ‘Oh, no, no. Oh no. It can’t be. Oh, God.’

It would be hushed up. Inspector Cummings had given that assurance. Since no one else was sought in connection with the two deaths, a hue and cry was not appropriate. The girl’s pregnancy would come out at the inquest. Her demise would be put down to accident or misadventure. There was nothing to suggest she had been pushed. The man, her father, had a record of petty thieving and drunkenness but not of violence. The level of alcohol in his blood was high but not unusual. Half the district were drunks; every street corner sported a pub. Nothing remotely inexplicable there. An open verdict, most likely.

There’d been a domestic quarrel: that much was self-evident. Police would have been reluctant to interfere even had a concerned citizen heard the row and called them out, but no one had. The force had enough to occupy them without intervening in the endless altercations of tenement dwellers. That would have made them piggy-in-the-middle every night.

An exercise book had been found on the kitchen floor which appeared to be a sort of diary, but it had been caked in blood and nearly unreadable. Inspector Cummings, a kindly man at heart, had tried to prise open its pages, his features twisted in distaste. He had decided eventually that it contained no more than the wild jottings of a youngster who probably didn’t know who’d made her pregnant and under cross-examination would not have told – had she still been alive to question.

The inquest would be in a month; whatever the police regarded as sufficient would then be reported in the
Echo
, and no more. No editor would upset his local Chief Constable by publishing unduly salacious material. What went on in families was private and best left so. Who would gain by incest being broadcast, if that was indeed the cause?

There were other members of that family and neighbours to consider. Plus her teachers and her friends, who must have realised what was going on but stayed mum. Nobody would be helped by a public laundering of dirty linen. Some things were better unsaid.

He had closed the pages with a deep sigh and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. His search for a clean towel proved fruitless so for a moment he stood shaking the drops from his wet fingers. Another life, gone. Two, rather. Or three, if you thought about it.

Meanwhile a multiple affray down on the docks required his attention; six men were in the infirmary and one in the morgue. Real criminals, not domestic fights. Then it would be all hands on deck for Christmas and the New Year. He would get no leave before February. He must remember to book a table at Reece’s for St Valentine’s night. If he forgot again this year like last, his wife would scream blue murder.

‘Mum, can I have an aspirin?’

Annie peered up. ‘You got a headache? Or is it your period?’

‘No.’ Helen fetched a glass and filled it with water from the tap as her mother rummaged in a drawer for the aspirin bottle. ‘We had some terrible news today at school. D’you remember my friend Colette O’Brien? The Irish girl, green eyes, black hair. She was in my chemistry class and we used to
go to the Cavern together.’

‘Y-yes,’ her mother answered uncertainly. The only girls she knew well were those Helen felt confident to bring home, which did not include non-Jewish people. This O’Brien sounded like a Roman Catholic.

‘She was found dead last night. The police came to school. Said it looks like an accident. She fell off the balcony ten floors up. Oh, Mum, it’s so horrible. She was so clever, and could have gone to college. Now she’s gone – snuffed out. I can’t believe it.’

Helen swallowed two tablets, her head averted. It was wiser to spare her mother some of the more gruesome details, or the dreadful conclusions at which the three friends and their headmistress had arrived.

Annie made sympathetic sounds while preparing supper. ‘Your father will be home soon,’ she remarked non-committally. ‘He wants a little chat. Why don’t you go upstairs and get out of your school uniform? Then you’ll be more comfortable.’

The headache dulled Helen’s reactions. ‘Yeah, good idea. Has there been any post?’

‘From Cambridge, you mean? No, nothing. Don’t fret, I’m sure you’ll hear soon.’

Helen trudged up the stairs and donned a pair of jeans and a thick sweater. Gradually the medication soothed the throb behind her brows but left her giddy and lightheaded. She had intended to go out that evening and had told her mother so the previous week. An assignation with Michael had been planned but until the bases were released from their alert that would be impractical. Instead she would find a telephone box and phone or leave a message. Or find somewhere quiet to write to him in peace.

But there could be no peace. Michael would want to discuss the Kennedy murders and agonise about Johnson and the future. Helen desperately needed to talk about Colette: it came to her with a shock that under normal circumstances she would have been able to talk to Colette, as they used to. In recent months the two girls’ friendship seemed to have cooled. Helen had wondered whether the reason was the divergent directions in which their lives appeared to be travelling. Now, she saw, it was the pregnancy, its cause, its probable aftermath. Colette had been dragged where her companions had never ventured. Colette had found hell.