The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne (11 page)

IT SEEMED THAT time simply flew by while they were together in the parlour of the Royal Ferry Hotel. It was the very finest hotel in New Brighton, right at the pier head, so it was almost the first thing anyone saw as they left the boat from Liverpool, but the parlour was burdened with a rather untrustworthy fireplace, which gave occasional coughs of smoke and not a great deal of heat. Still, it had a certain charm.

They chatted happily, and when the waiter came Mr Walker ordered tea for two with cakes and scones: “Let’s have a treat while we enjoy our chat,” he said. But no sooner had the waiter left with their order than he leaned across the table and interrupted Miss Ann Myfanwy in the middle of a story about a hat she had seen and said: “I’m sorry, could you excuse me for just one moment?” and hurried out.

He returned again a moment later and everything was as happy as before and he had her laughing behind her hand when he told her about the dreadful stormy crossing “over the pond”, but when the waiter returned there was only one sandwich, one cake, one scone. She noticed, but she did not remark.

“Won’t you, please, have a sandwich? That ham looks delicious.” He handed her a tiny plate. “Please, do.”

She was unsure, but when he insisted she slid half a sandwich, a little thing the size of a calling card, onto her plate.

“No, no, please. You must take all of it. I invited you for a proper tea, but I find I’m not in the slightest hungry. I had an enormous breakfast – as is my habit when I’m working with the horses – but I haven’t done half the work I’m used to.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Please. Milk?”

She nodded and he poured tea for them both and he seemed so happy and easy that she forgot all about the business with the sandwich. “Tell me more about your horses,” she said.

“Well, I run a small ranch a day or so outside Detroit. My grandfather set the place up getting on for eighty years ago . . .”

“Did he have to battle the redskins over it?” she said.

“I’m sure he had some stories to tell. Things were pretty wild in those days, you bet!”

She liked that. “You bet!” It was all so young and daring and so American.

“But I reckon some of Granpaw’s stories got bigger with the telling.”

He told her about the time of the big drought when the bullfrogs latched on to the old milch cow and sucked and sucked and when Granpaw came out in the morning they were bigger than the cow.

“He had a lot of stories like that. Like the time it froze so hard he couldn’t hear the cattle until the thaw came and all their moos unfroze.”

She laughed over that one too. “Do you still run cattle?”

“No, my dad thought it was an awful lot of work for not much wages, so he decided to go into horses instead. People are always going to need horses, that’s what my old dad said, and he was right.”

“Then you’re not a believer in the motor car, Mr Walker?”

“It’s a flash in the pan. It’s a confidence trick perpetrated on the public – the wealthy public with more money than sense. A fool and his money are soon parted, that’s what they say, and if you’re looking for a fool parted from his money, you will find him behind the wheel of an automobile!”

“Why, Mr Walker, you are very fervent!”

“Then I beg your pardon, but this is a matter I feel strongly about. I believe in honest dealing and I call it a downright swindle to sell a man a noisy, stinky automobile that can rattle along at upwards of twenty miles an hour when there is no road that can take him at more than five miles an hour! And I will go further, Nancy – no man alive could ever make friends with an automobile or feel for that mountain of nuts and bolts as you felt for your dear Boxer!”

She was impressed. He was hot-blooded. He was passionate. He believed in honest dealing. He understood what it was to love, truly love a horse, he was of a religious turn of mind, he was unmarried – and he had called her Nancy.

Miss Ann Myfanwy regarded him over the rim of her teacup for a moment, watching him push fingers through his thick, dark hair in an agitated fashion.

“Cake?” he barked.

“You called me Nancy.”

His hand flew to his mouth. “Why, Miss Jones, a thousand pardons. Please accept my apologies. Here I am, an absolute stranger to you, I intrude myself upon your acquaintance and now I force you into a familiarity I have no right to demand. Please, forgive me, Miss Jones. It’s only that all I’ve ever known of you is that dear photograph on Arthur’s piano and it has always been to me simply ‘Nancy’. I offer you my most sincere and humble apologies, Miss Jones.”

She laughed out loud at him then and said: “I do not object in the slightest, Mr Walker. Cake?”

After that, of course they were – “Call me Charlie, won’t you?” – the very best of friends and she forced him to share the one, solitary cake and she cut the scone in half and spread a tiny knob of butter very thinly across both sides and doled out the damson jam as if they had been sharing rations under siege.

He left his place on the other side of the table and he went to sit beside her and they watched the rain drumming up the pier to fling itself against the windows.

“Call me Nancy again.”

“Nancy.” He brushed his fingers over hers. “Nancy.”

And then she called him “Boxer”.

She said. “Why did you make the waiter bring cakes for one?”

“I told you. I’m not hungry.”

“Is that all? Really?”

“Really, that’s all.”

He told her about his life raising horses and how he had brought the best of them all the way across the Atlantic, sleeping alongside them in the hold of the ship so they might have at least a familiar voice to listen to in the dark, and how he had crossed all the way to Ostend to sell them and how, in a few days, just a few days, he would join his ship at Liverpool and sail back to America.

“This time I plan on making use of my cabin. It’s going to be a good deal more comfortable but a whole lot lonelier.”

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Oh, I’ve rented two rooms from a fine old lady, Mrs Graham, along in Riversdale Road. No. 10. You will always reach me there.”

The waiter came in to tend to the fire, and when he was finished he made a point of noisily clearing away their tea things.

“The rain has stopped,” Walker said. “I suppose we should go.”

“Yes . . . Boxer.”

“Unless you want a fresh pot of tea.”

“No . . . Boxer.”

“Nancy!”

“Yes . . . Boxer.”

“Why do you call me by that silly name?”

“It’s not a silly name. And you remind me of him. Your mane is not so long and it is rather more silver, but otherwise there is quite a resemblance.”

“Did he have a mouthful of gold teeth too?”

“Don’t be silly . . . Boxer.”

By the time they had their coats on and he had paid and left a few pennies in the saucer for the waiter, by the time they were back out on the street, his new name seemed perfectly familiar and commonplace.

They walked slowly together down to the pier head and then back along the shore to the promenade where they had first seen one another, talking, talking, talking all the way mostly about how lonely they each were and how disappointed they had been but mostly about how lonely they were and how happy they had been for these few hours, all the way back up the hill to the gates of the old magazine.

“Father will be home from the business soon,” she said. “I must go in and see to his dinner.”

“Of course. Of course. I understand. Of course. Nancy, do I dare to hope that we might meet again tomorrow?”

“I should like nothing better. I long for it. When? When shall we meet?”

“As soon as we can. Let’s meet as soon as we can. When can you be free?”

“I can be here at nine o’clock.”

“And we can have the whole day together. The whole day.” He folded his huge hands around her tiny hands and kissed her fingers. “Oh, Nancy. My Nancy. Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow, my dear, sweet Boxer.”

He stood at the corner of the lane and watched until she went through the gate of No. 102 Magazine Lane. She turned, waved to him and opened the door. His arm was still raised in farewell when she went inside.

“Stupid bitch,” he said.

THE RAIN WAS unceasing all through the night. Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones lay in her narrow bed in the tower of No. 102 Magazine Lane, listening as it hammered on the windows. Far away, downstairs, she heard the clock strike one. She watched the tiny pile of coals in her grate cool to a single stuttering flame and go out. The room was suddenly darker. The wind howled in the chimney. She heard it screaming among the trees across the street and imagined them reeling and bounding and dancing out there in the night. Miss Ann Myfanwy Jones was afraid that he might not return, that the weather would keep him away. How could it be, how could it be that now, after all these years of waiting and watching when, at last, the knight had arrived on his horse to save her, the weather might part them? Her pillow was a lump of rock. She beat it with her fists. The bedclothes tangled round her frozen feet. As the clock struck two, she rose and remade the bed, stopping to look out her streaming window. If the storm kept up, the ferry might be cancelled and Father would not be able to go into the business. He would expect her to spend the day with him. He would expect her to entertain him. He would expect her to smile at snatches of articles he read from the paper – little snippets he thought suitable for ladies. She would have no excuse for going out. Hope sank in her chest and the familiar sense of disappointment returned. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t,” and lay down again.

She did not hear the clock strike three, but at seven o’clock she was awakened by a violent and repeated flushing of the water closet and the sound of Father running his bath. When it was her turn, she found a scattering of whisker shavings in a tidemark round the sink and a dribble of tooth powder where he had spat it out. He always did that. She always meant to talk to him about it, just to mention how, little by little it was driving her mad, just to ask if he might not simply wash round the sink, only for a moment, after he had used it, just to tell him how damned annoying it was. But she never did. It was so important to remember that Father had his share of disappointments too and she had no wish to add to them by appearing bitter or complaining or ungrateful.

“I expect the ferry has been cancelled for the sake of this storm,” he said at breakfast.

“Yes, Father, I suppose it has.” The threat of the day ahead loomed over her.

“So, I shall have to hurry up. If I leave promptly I can catch the train from New Brighton station, but I don’t suppose I shall be the only one thinking that this morning. There’s bound to be a crush and the train takes that bit longer, and if I want to be at my desk for the start of business, I’d best get a shift on. You know what they say about the rubber trade, m’dear.”

“Yes, Father, we always bounce back.”

“We always bounce back, and don’t you forget it, Nancy my girl. I should have had that carved over the gates of Bodyngharad as a family motto – and I might yet. We always bounce back, that’s what I say!” He stopped by her chair and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t you touch those dishes, m’dear. Leave them for Tetty when she comes in. She might as well work for her pay. What will you do today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I had planned to go up to the library and change my book, but the weather is so awful, I just don’t know.”

“You’ll find something,” he said and he left her. Then there was the sound of him struggling with his coat and hat, a brief call of “I’ll try to be back at the usual time,” a blast of damp air as the door opened and the noise of it banging shut behind him.

Miss Ann Myfanwy looked up at the wall. It was barely eight o’clock. There was still an hour – at least an hour – before Boxer was due at the old magazine gates. Was that a long time, too long a time or not long enough? There was time to dress, time to undress and get dressed again. The dress she wore yesterday, when they met? A different hat? This hat? That hat? She longed to see him, she feared to disappoint him, but why would it matter? How could it matter after a scant day of acquaintance on a day of rain when she would be covered, top to toe, in that dreadful raincoat?

She changed her hat for the third time and glared at herself in the mirror. “He liked me well enough this way, yesterday,” she said. “Maybe he will like me well enough again today.” She hurried down the stairs to the front door, but the clock said it was not yet half past eight. She could not go out and stand in the rain for half an hour in the hope that he might come. She could not. She would not. It was beneath her dignity. So she cleared away the greasy breakfast dishes and took her coat off and rolled her sleeves up and washed them all, plates and pans and cutlery, in the kitchen sink – despite what Father had told her. Miss Ann Myfanwy was careful to wash the soda off her hands and she hoped they would not go rough and red and she wondered if Mrs Corn Merchant Pryce ever had to wash her own breakfast things a single day of her life.

Even boiling a kettle had done very little to eat up the empty time of waiting. She remembered how, long ago in a different life, she had learned French because it was regarded as an accomplishment suitable for young ladies, like playing the piano or embroidery or watercolours. Each and all of them made a girl more marriageable, and Miss Ann Myfanwy was highly accomplished in each and all. But she was stubbornly unmarried. The French for ‘waiting room’ was ‘
salle des pas perdues
’ – the room of lost steps. It was a lovely thought. She stood in front of the hall stand, where the umbrellas and the walking sticks were kept, where the coats and the hats hung, and she looked at herself in the big round mirror and at the backwards clock behind her. “
Il est neuf heures moins cinq,
” she said. There were bruised shadows under her eyes. A night of broken sleep – that was all. She leaned forward and looked close in the mirror. Two or three red threads of broken veins across her cheekbones. That was what came of spending so much time on the promenade. Soon she would be as weather-beaten as a sailor. She pointed her chin to the ceiling and rubbed at her throat. The flesh was still quite firm. It was. Truly. But Mother had developed a dreadful turkey wattle in her last years. She dreaded that. “
Tu n’est pas jeune mais tu
est vraiment de rigolade.
”

She resolved not to waste a single lost step. She would stand there in one spot, never moving, watching the clock moving backwards until it reached the hour. She stood waiting, watching, breathing calmly, but then the glass in the door darkened, the sound of a key in the lock, the doorknob rattled, and Tetty came in, scattering raindrops everywhere.

“Miss Nancy! You near gave me a heart attack standing there!”

“Tetty! Oh.” She felt she had been caught out in something wicked and her only thought was to flee. “I was just going out,” she said. “Must dash. Goodbye.”

She was already beyond the gate when Tetty said: “Will you be home for dinner?” She was already at the corner when the clock in the hall struck nine, and he was already waiting under the turrets of the old gate.

She stopped running. It was unseemly that he should see her running like a girl and unbecoming that he might think she was running to him, but when he saw her, he ran to her so she stopped stopping running and started again and they met in the middle of the street. In the middle of the street, in the rain.

“Nancy!”

“Hello, Boxer. You’re all wet.”

“I had to walk a mile along the shore to get here and I’ve been waiting half an hour at least.”

“I’ve been waiting too, but I was indoors, afraid to come out.”

“I was afraid too. Horribly afraid. Nancy, I’ve wrangled some mighty big animals, but none of them ever gave me the terrors like you.”

“I’m not terrifying.”

“No, but not seeing you is.”

She took his arm and folded herself close to him and turned her face up to be kissed, but he did not kiss her, which was disappointing.

“Do you think we might find somewhere out of this weather?” he said.

No. 102 Magazine Lane was just around the corner. She could see the top of it from where she stood, but it was impossible. “Yes,” she said. “I know exactly the place. Let’s run!”

So they ran off together through the rain, Miss Ann Myfanwy kicking along in half a dozen short steps to each of his long-legged strides, her long coat and the wet hem of her dress binding round her ankles as she went, and then, when they reached Seabank Road, they could see the tram coming. They hurried to jump on board, shaking raindrops off their clothes in glittering circles like spaniels emerging from a ditch, and they sat down together in the privacy of the rearmost bench.

“It’s a circular route,” she said. “We can pay our fares and then, so long as we don’t get off, we never have to pay again. We can stay here all day for tuppence each.”

When the conductor had left again and gone back to standing at the front of the car with the driver, he said: “That’s a strange thing to say, Nancy. What made you think of that?”

She looked at his face, at his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and settled her gaze on his chin. “I was thinking – I was up half the night with thinking . . .”

“Oh so was I, Nancy my dear, so was I.” He gave her hand a squeeze and she hurried to pull off her damp glove and squeeze his hand in return.

“Yes, but I was thinking about when you took me to tea and there was no cake for you, only for me.”

“I told you. I simply wasn’t hungry.”

“Is that all? You’re not the tiniest bit strapped for cash?”

“Oh, Nancy. You mustn’t say such things.” He lit a cigarette from a silver case – he asked her permission first, of course – and drew deeply on it, but when she dared to look up into his eyes, when she kept her gaze fixed on his, at last he crumbled. “Oh, there’s no point lying to you. I may as well try to deceive myself.”

“So you are in difficulties?” She was delighted, not because of his troubles but because she was right and, more than anything, because she had forced it out of him.

“It’s all so stupid. Simple bureaucratic nonsense.” He took another long drag on his cigarette, and when he lifted it from his lips, she reached up and took it from his fingers. He had never kissed her, but now her mouth was on the cigarette, still a little damp from where his mouth had been. He watched as she puffed on it, almost shocked.

“You are very daring, Miss Nancy Jones.”

“My brother taught me.”

“Arthur? Well, I’ll be! He turned his back on the evil weed. Gives me the most awful rollicking if he ever sees me smoke.”

“Never mind that. Tell me about the money.”

“Oh, I hate to talk of it.”

“Please, dear Boxer. Aren’t we friends? Friends share their troubles.”

The tramcar rattled and jolted its way round a long bend. “You mustn’t give it a thought,” he said. “I’m sure things will sort themselves out tomorrow. Or in a day or two at most.”

“What things? Please tell me.”

“It’s just a mix-up with the banks, that’s all. I have three and a half thousand pounds coming to me, more or less. The profits from that cargo of horses I sold over in Flanders, but there’s some hold-up with the bank. They are quick enough to take the money out of my customers’ accounts, but they are taking their own sweet time about transferring the funds to me.”

“How long has it been?”

“Nearly two weeks. I write them every day, but I can’t get any sense out of them.”

“You don’t think you might have been swindled out of your horses?”

“Nancy!” He was offended. “I’ve known Anton for years. This is not the first time we’ve done business. No, I don’t believe that of him for two reasons: he’s an honest man, and he knows I’d come back and kill him where he stood.”

She looked at his gold teeth glinting and she believed it.

“Then I’m sure you are right. Just another day and it will be sorted out.”

“Yes. Just another day.”

They spoke of other things. Life in America, horses, horses, horses, the endless rolling fields of fine grass, the sweet, floral smell of hay in a stable, what it feels like to run a brush over a horse’s back, Arthur, only half a day away from the horse farm, what the house was like, square and low and sheltered by trees with a dusty road running by it but lonely and empty and, above all, lonely. She told him about Bodyngharad and she told him about Boxer again, but she did not tell him about Mr Pryce the corn merchant or their understanding. She told him about her tower and its view across the park to the river and the Lady of Shallot and the Prisoner of Chillon and how her room in the tower was like his house on the stud farm: lonely and empty and, above all, lonely.

“You have your father,” he said.

“Or he has me.”

“Nancy, I have no one at all.”

They had returned again to Seabank Road and the thought of the money came back to her. “How much do you need? Just to see you right?”

“Nancy, please don’t.”

“Stop being so stubborn. Let me help you. Wouldn’t Arthur want me to help?”

“If needs be, I can cable for money. I’m just grateful I paid old Mrs Graham in advance. Ten shillings for two rooms and a shilling a day for breakfast, so I won’t starve.”

“But you need more than that.”

“That’s the worst of it. I do need more than that and I haven’t a bean. Not one red cent. And if my bankers don’t come through, well, I don’t know what I will do.”

“Yes you do. You’ll let me help you.”

He said nothing.

“Let me help you.”

He lit another cigarette.

“I can put my hands on twenty pounds.”

“Twenty pounds?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“It’s an enormous amount of money.”

“Good, then it’s settled.”

“I cannot. My pride would not allow it. I cannot take money from a lady I have known for only a day.”

“Boxer! Please.”

“No. It’s impossible. But, on the other hand, I would be proud to accept assistance from one whose life and fortune were forever linked to my own, from my fiancée. Marry me, Nancy.” That was the first time he kissed her.