The Last Girl (8 page)

'I'm sorry,
Larry, I didn't mean to laugh. It's just you really did scare me for a moment.
Then when I heard it was all those years ago ...' Seeing the look on my face
she stops, and starts again. 'And the other one. When did that happen?'

To be honest,
I had a good mind not to answer, but being the man I am, I go ahead anyway.
'Six, maybe seven years ago.' This time I don't look at her. 'Go ahead, laugh,
but that doesn't mean it won't happen again. If a woman's going to go out night
after night when it's all dark, in a neighbourhood like this, what can you
expect? Someone's bound to get the wrong idea. All I'm saying is, a young girl
like yourself should be taking a lot more care.'

Silence then.
At least she's not laughing. 'Thank you, Larry,' she says at last. And for a
moment it all seems worth it.

But there was
still one more thing at the back of my mind.

'What I don't
understand, Mandy love, and I'm sure you'll excuse me asking - how come you're
so hardup? What about your dad? He must have pots of money. Enough surely so
you don't have to be walking the streets of London at all hours.'

That's all I
said, honestly. Just those few little words, but talk about blue touch paper!
Nothing intentional, of course, but you should have seen the effect. That sweet
little face of hers goes all hard, like water freezing. And her eyes! No
exaggeration, you could have lit a match off them.

'Listen
Larry,' she says. 'The last person in the world I'd take money off is my
father. I don't need him, and haven't done these last two years. All right?'

And there's
nothing I can say, because she's slammed the door in my face.

The funny
thing is, it didn't bother me a bit - for the simple reason it wasn't me she
was upset about, but him - her dad. Either I'm no judge or there's an almighty
difference of opinion there. And it's not just a case of all those thousands of
miles between them getting in the way, we're talking about a major gulf. Did
you hear the way she snapped at me? Seems as if you only have to mention his
name and suddenly you're swimming in shark-infested waters. If you ask me,
something's gone terribly wrong in that family.

Now for all I
know, it may be her fault. But Larry's not one to take sides, especially not in
a case like this. Because we're in exactly the same boat, Mandy and me, cut
adrift and left to sink or swim. And who's done it to us? Family, that's who.
Which makes you think there never could be two people with more in common.

It would
explain all those blips, as she calls them, though! Poor girl just hasn't
learned to get angry, that's her problem.

Still, I
didn't want to leave on an unfriendly basis, so I knocked on the door, just
softly, and called out to her. 'I can see you're busy, Mandy love, but listen
to me. I don't want you worrying about what I told you tonight, about the women? 
You stop at home and nobody will touch you. Larry will see to that.'

All very interesting, you might say. But it goes downhill
after that. You'd hardly have expected to see any more of her that night, but
what about the next night, and the night after? To make matters worse, Friday
night is Harry's night.

Harry. He
calls in on his way home from the stall. Has done every single Friday, barring
accidents and holidays, for twelve years, ever since Doreen left. It's the
guilt, what with her being his sister and treating me the way she did. I reckon
he only meant to come the once to talk about it, get it out in the open, maybe
do a bit of apologizing on other people's behalf. But then he should have
realized the first time, wild horses wouldn't have persuaded me to mention that
woman's name. Yet he keeps on coming, as if he's still waiting.

That being
the case, though, it doesn't leave us much else to discuss. Nowadays he can't
even talk about Molly. After years of being a creaking door she surprised us
all by finally pegging out last year. I was sympathetic, naturally, but there's
only so much you can say. And at least she stuck by him, right to the end, so
he can hardly have anything to complain about there. All he's got now, though,
is the stall, and that's hardly a topic for debate. Conversation, therefore, is
- to say the least - limited, generally proceeding on the lines of Harry
lifting the lid off his sandwich and saying: 'Egg again, Larry?'

'Egg again,
Harry.'

I didn't say
a word about Mandy, though. Partly because I'd expected her to find her own way
up here, so the introductions could speak for themselves, and partly because if
she didn't, then I would have looked a right Charlie, going on about this girl
who can hardly keep away from her old Larry. And I was right, wasn't I, because
there was no sign of her. Yet she must have known we were here, both of us.

The next day,
Saturday, I did see her, but from a distance. She was on the other side of the
road, marching off in the Archway direction. My guess was she was making for
one of the parks. But why go by herself, I wondered. If she wanted a walk, I
would have kept her company. And I could have told her this - it was hardly the
weather for it. It may only be October, but you should feel that wind.

One thing
will come out of this, however. I'm going to tell that Harry what I should have
told him years ago - namely that he can find something else to do with himself
on a Friday night. It's not as if he's a friend or anything. See, I've been
thinking. I reckon he gave Mandy the wrong impression, coming here that night.
I mean there was I, making it quite clear that Larry Mann didn't have a soul in
the world, and then up he pops, making her think there's hardly a word of truth
in it. No wonder she steered clear of me all through the weekend.  Now she's
probably telling herself that Larry's got pals all over the place, and the last
thing he needs is another one.

So no more
Harry then.

All the same,
even Harry can't be the only reason. What about us being neighbours? I've seen
more of Ethel this weekend than I have of her, and the last thing you could
call Ethel is a friend. Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd think she trying
to avoid me.

Isn't that just the way? You can live with a problem night
and day and still not see the answer even when it's staring you in the face.
Come last night, it was a relief when finally it got too late to stay up,
meaning I could relax, stop the waiting and the listening, and think about
getting some much-needed sleep. And it's only then, as I'm climbing into bed,
with my mind on something completely different (whether a hot-water bottle was
called for, to be exact) that the answer hits me, bang, right between the eyes.

It was the
phone call. Of course. One moment she had been sitting there, full of friendly
interest, practically pleading with me to tell her my life story, and the next
moment she's gone. Vanished. And what took her away? The phone call, that's
what. I have to say - I laughed out loud then. I did! It was so obvious, yet I
hadn't given it a thought. Only it's then the next logical thing occurs to me.
What could there be in a phone call that could make a friendly old kid like
Mandy suddenly become all retiring?

Bad news,
that's what.

No doubt
about it - she heard some terrible news that night, and that's the reason she
hasn't been up. Because she doesn't want to let on. I tell you, that girl is
the mirror image of me - a very private person not given to airing her
problems. I reckon she's been down there, huddled away in those rooms of hers,
mulling it over and wishing there was someone she could turn to. Too shy to go
bothering the one person she knows would care. That would be my Mandy all over.
It's enough to make you weep, really it is.

I got to sleep,
no problem, after that, but naturally she was the first thing on my mind when I
woke up this morning. And by then, one thing was for sure: it couldn't go on.
The poor girl could waste away before anything could be done for her, and whose
fault would that be? Mine - for not doing anything about it.

Which is why
the first words that entered my head when I woke up were: Something Must Be
Done.

Only what?

I can tell
you what I would not be doing for a start. That is, marching downstairs,
banging a tattoo on her kitchen door, and yelling, 'Now then, Mandy, hows about
telling your old Larry what's up?' And why not? For the simple reason that
Larry Mann is not the sort to go poking his nose anywhere he's not wanted. It's
just not in my nature. Another person's life is their own, and you don't go
barging in, trying to take over if they don't want you to.

On the other
hand, what could you do? You couldn't just sit around, waiting for her to tell
you, because that might never happen. What I needed was a clue, the merest hint
as to what was going on. That was the only way I would be able to help. And if
I couldn't get that clue from her, then the only sensible solution was to look
elsewhere.

Which is a
roundabout way of explaining why it is that at half-past ten in the morning,
long after Mandy has gone out, and Ethel has done her rounds, I'm here, outside
Mandy's lounge, my hand on the door knob. There's no-one in of course, but
that's the whole idea.

I'm looking
for clues, that's all.

The problem
is now, when it's time to turn the knob and walk in. You may laugh, but it's
not as easy as it sounds. All this time I've been making her welcome as can be
in my own place, yet she hasn't once returned the compliment. I haven't seen
downstairs since she moved in. And now here I was, all set to enter uninvited.

Daft, I know.
Like a second home these rooms should be, seeing as I must have been in and out
of them hundreds of times over the years. No-one has ever thought twice about
calling old Larry down when there was a hairdrier that needed fixing or plug
that wanted  changing. Then there have been all the times Ethel has sent me in
with an errand of her own. So what was the difference now?

Hardly any.
That's what I said to myself. Hardly any, and with a good firm grip on the
handle I opened the door.

Even so, it
comes as a shock.

These rooms
have always been dingy, and the lounge the worst of the lot. Decrepit, damp,
neglected are words that spring to mind. Old rooms in an old house. It would
take an awful lot of good money to turn them around, but you can't expect that
of Ethel not when it's someone else who'd get the benefit.

So why the
shock?

Because
looking around me now was like seeing the place for the first time. I've never
had to think very hard about what it would be like to live here. After all, if
it's Indian girls you're talking about, these rooms might not exactly be your
ideal home, but they're still a darn sight better than what they must be used
to on the Subcontinent. I've yet to hear whether they have wallpaper over
there. But now, looking at it, as it were, all through Mandy's eyes, you start
seeing things afresh.

It's a case
of copping the wallpaper, trying to remember when it first went up, and
failing, it was that long ago. Yet it was me that put it there. One thing I was
fairly sure of, it wasn't brown in those days, and nor is it because of me that
it's coming away from the ceilings. Those great spreading dark patches are
responsible for that.

The
plasterwork is just as bad. I reckon you could hoover up twice a day here, and
you'll still find it scattered like dandruff over the floor. It's a shame that,
because it was on the plaster that I remember Ethel gave me free rein. 'Do what
you want, Mr Mann,' she said. So I went ahead and painted the rosettes and
garlands in colours I reckoned would brighten up the place. They're still
there, the lime greens and the oranges, but they don't do me credit, not with
all the cracks and gaps everywhere.

Mind you, I
don't suppose Mandy gives two hoots about the plasterwork. I reckon she'd be
happy if there was just some way of stopping the wind howling through the gaps
in the window frames. It doesn't matter where you stand, you can feel the hairs
on the back of your neck lifted by something stronger than just a draught. What
I want to know, though, is why Mandy has tied back the net curtains. They're
not going to keep out the wind like that, and don't try telling me that Ethel
approves.

Then there's
the furniture. The wonder is that any of it is still standing. You won't
believe it, but most of it used to be mine - till I got shot of it along with
Doreen. Gave the whole lot to Ethel, I did, job lot for ten shillings. Couldn't
wait to get rid of it. The settee was a disgrace even then, which was hardly
surprising seeing as we'd had it for over twenty years, and it had  been
Doreen's Aunty Freda's before that. Looking at it now, you'd never think we'd
been grateful to have it at the time. The main thing about it was, it had a
little lever you could pull down to make the whole thing into a double bed.  I
never quite got the hang of it somehow, but Doreen knew how to use it all
right. Anyway, it's on its last legs now. The leather's showing its real age
and there's horsehair falling out of places where it's worn away.

It's a miracle
Mandy spends any time down here at all, when you think about what she's welcome
to upstairs.

Nothing new
then - in all senses of the word. Except that there was something different
about the place, it's just that it took those first few seconds to see what it
was. She'd gone and moved it around - settee, table, everything. Everything was
in its natural place before, now it's all out of kilter. She's pulled the two
armchairs and the settee right up to the fire so she's made almost a little
room within a room there. Which is all very well, only what about the rest of
it? Now there's a great open space in the middle of the floor, and nothing to
fill it with. You wouldn't believe how bare it is. And that's not all. Look a
bit closer and you start noticing that the walls seem awfully blank as well.
She's taken down every one of the pictures - even the nice ones like the one of
the skinny kid with eyes nearly bigger than his face.

Still, I
wasn't here to check out the furniture. I was meant to be looking for clues.
With that in mind, I headed over to the big table. She'd moved it from the side
over to the window and covered it with books and bits of paper, and more books
- in short made an awful mess. Lord only knows what Ethel thinks. All the same,
there was enough there to make you think there must be something useful amongst
it all - if you could ignore the straightened-out  paper clips and elastic
bands and empty biros with the ends chewed off.. And I'll say this, when I
picked up the first bit of paper that came to hand, and started to read, I
actually thought I'd hit the jackpot. There it was, a whole page of little tiny
writing (not that different from mine!) where certain words just seemed to jump
out and hit you in the eye - words like Love and Desire -even the little word
that begins with S and ends in X. Honestly, I didn't know where to look. Then
gradually, it dawned on me. She wasn't writing about herself at all, but about
the people in some book she was reading. Well that was a relief, but it took a
minute or two to get over the shock.

I was still a
bit shaky when I moved over to the mantelpiece. But it was no better here.
Ethel's knickknacks had all completely disappeared. Instead there were
postcards, tens of them, arranged higgledy-piggledy along the shelf. Well, you
can guess what I thought. Whatever else she was short of, it wasn't friends
willing to remember her when they were off on their hols - or maybe it was just
one special pal suffering from a travel bug. In other words - precious information.
But when I looked at the back of one, and then another, and yet another, they
were all blank. She must have bought them herself and stuck them up for show.
In fact, looking at the pictures on the front, there wasn't a beach or palm
tree in sight. They were all what some people like to call 'art', meaning they
were mostly blurs and blobs and sawn-off guitars.

I can tell
you, it almost made me cross, having my hopes raised like that. I thought I was
going to learn something at last, and all I'd found out was that Mandy was
odder in some ways than I like to admit.

In a nutshell
then, I didn't find a single thing in that sitting room that was of the
slightest help. So there was nothing for it but to proceed to the kitchen. Even
here, though, I had a shock. It's only been four days since I was last in.
Surely not long enough for all this. I'm talking about those blooming
postcards. They were here as well, only worse, stuck to the wall wherever you
looked like some creeping plague. You couldn't even open the fridge door
without some nasty little figment of an artist's imagination practically biting
off your hand.

Was this what
one lone phone call could drive a girl to do? Namely turn her kitchen into a
chamber of horrors overnight. Those pictures were the sign of an unhealthy
mind. And when a girl starts posting this sort of stuff up beside her sink,
it's a sign that she needs help, fast.

Unfortunately,
that's just about all I did find there. If I told you her cupboards were bare
as Old Mother Hubbard's it would be no more than the truth. All she had were
these little bags of beans, all dried-up and nasty, and no difference between
them and the gallstones Harry had taken out and would insist on showing folk
for ever after. Apart from that, not so much as a tin of sardines. I mean, even
sardines might have been a clue to something - if you thought about it hard
enough.

So there you
are. I was afraid it would come to this. All the time I had been looking
through her sitting room and .kitchen there was always the hope that I would
find something, anything, which would mean that I could leave it there and not
look any further. But what was the use? Neither room had come up with a
sausage. There was nothing for it now, I would have to carry on, open up the
last door.

I suppose I
must have known I would end up here, outside Mandy's bedroom. Remember June? If
there was the least little thing she wanted to keep hidden, it was off to the
bedroom every time. You always knew where to look. And if I was ever going to
find anything to help me now, there really had only been one place all the
time.

The trouble
is, if I had any hesitation about walking into her lounge those few minutes
ago, it was ten times worse now. I mean to say,  bedrooms are private places.
Call me over-sensitive, but nothing could have made me barge in without a
second's thought. In the end I had to get a grip, even if it meant speaking
sternly to myself. I actually said it aloud: 'All right, so it goes against the
grain, but just you remember - this is for Mandy, no other reason. So get on
with it, Larry my boy. Open up the door.'

And that does
it. Next thing is I'm doing what I should have done straightaway. I'm opening
the door.

Only very
nearly to close it again.

Did I say
Mandy was odd? That was  putting  it mildly. And if ever proof was needed, go
and stand in Mandy's bedroom.  See what  she's done to it. The ironical thing
is, this was the one room you could almost describe as nice. The wallpaper here
was roses, faded of course, but pretty enough. The curtains had roses on them
too so you could nearly say that they matched. There was a frill round the
bottom of the bed and another around the dressing table. In fact, it was a
proper girl's room, the one you'd least expect anyone to want to change.

As I said,
you should see it now. Remember the pictures on the walls, the one of the cats
and the other with the horses on a ploughed field at sunset? Gone. And not just
them either. You can't see the roses any more. She's gone and pinned up these
great squares of material that take up nearly the whole wall - all zig zags
and stripes, in browns and blacks. Like the colour of the people who wear them.
Because I'll tell you what they were. They were exactly the same things you see
native women wrapping themselves up in because the missionaries never taught
them how to wear decent clothes. That's what she has chosen to cover up her
walls, and if that wasn't bad enough, she's got them on her bed as well. Which,
by the way, used to be June's right from the time she was a child. Look at it
now, though, and you might not even be able to recognize it. But it was her bed
all right. You only have to touch it the once, and the whole frame begins to
shiver like one great big creaking rusty spring. And what with my bedroom being
right above hers (in fact we're practically room-mates when you think about
it!) that's the very noise I have to listen to if Mandy so much as breathes
heavily. Lord knows how she ever gets to sleep.