Crooked Heart (6 page)

She opened the envelope at the top of the stairs, and it was a summons, non-payment of rates, arrears amounting to eight pounds, eighteen and sixpence. Full restitution before 31st July or an appearance before the Justices on 15th August.

There was a noise behind her and she looked round and saw Noel coming up the stairs. She'd forgotten, for the moment, that he even existed. The light from the window fell across the side of his face, and she could see the bruise that she'd left beneath his eye. It was finger-shaped. It wouldn't do for a teacher to see it.

‘How do you fancy a day trip tomorrow?' she asked, the idea bobbing up like a duck in a hip bath.

‘What?'

‘Well, not a day trip,' she amended, remembering her obligations. ‘I have to do Mrs Pilcher first. But after lunch. And you could take the morning off school. I expect you could do with a rest.'

He didn't argue.

‘And I'll put some arnica on that,' she said. ‘It'll soon fade.'

D
onald woke him, shaking his shoulder until Noel opened his eyes.

‘Up,' said Donald, quietly. ‘Now.'

Noel scrambled out of bed and heard the mattress groan as Donald eased himself beneath the blankets. He was a large man, fat in a smooth, firm way, like a sea lion or a walrus.

‘Pass me that, would you?' he said, nodding at the cup of tea he'd left on the tallboy.

Noel brought it over.

‘And the cigarettes,' added Donald. ‘D'you know how to light one?'

‘No.'

‘Put one in your mouth, strike a match, hold it to the end of the fag, breathe in.'

He watched critically for a while and then shook his head. ‘Give it to me,' he said. ‘And if you're going to heave, do it out the window.'

Noel lifted the sash. The world outside moved gently. His legs seemed to be made of string.

‘When you're ready,' said Donald, ‘bring over that shaving mirror.'

Noel watched him examining his reflection, twisting his head from side to side to see the jawline and running a finger along the line of hair above his upper lip. ‘That'll do nicely,' said
Donald, complacently. He lifted his top lip to stare at his teeth, and then laid the mirror down. ‘Get dressed and out, then,' he said. ‘And bring me a cup of tea at eleven. Two sugars.'

There was no one in the kitchen. Noel had heard Vee washing dishes earlier, but she had gone now, leaving a scattering of hair grips on the table, and a note for her mother.

NOT BACK UNTIL LATE AFTERNOON. FOR LUNCH THERE IS PIECE OF PIE AND REMAINS OF BLAMMONGE IN DISH ON TOP SHELF. NEW WRITING PAPER FOR YOU ON SIDEBOARD, FORGOT YOUR HAND CREAM, SORRY, WILL GET LATER. VIC ALLERBY SAID HE'D CALL THIS AFTERNOON, HAVE LEFT FLOWERS IN BOX ON TABLE, TELL HIM NOT ENOUGH FELT FOR LAST TWENTY VIOLETS, NOT MY FAULT. DONNY HAS APOINTMENT THIS AFTERNOON, ASKED TO BE WOKEN AT 11. LOVE YOUR VEE.

Noel opened cupboard doors until he found the blancmange. There was quite a lot in the bowl, so he took a spoon and ate a half-inch all around the circumference, neatening the edges as he went. Then he broke off a square of the chocolate that was on the same shelf, and screwed a wet finger into the bag of sugar.

His cheekbone still hurt. He touched it, tentatively, and then pressed harder, enjoying the pain. She could hit him again, if it meant he got a morning off school. He put on the kettle, and walked idly around the room. There was nothing to look at, or to read. The furniture was new and cheap, or old and broken, the ornaments pale with age: a box covered in seashells, a yellow pincushion with the words ‘THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME' picked out in maroon beads. You could break everything in the place and it wouldn't be worth sixpence. He
pulled all the beads off the ‘H' in Home, and dropped them behind the sideboard, and then he made some tea.

‘Mother doesn't get up till later on,' Vee had said. He went and sat on the old woman's chair, wrote ‘BOLLOCKS' on her slate, rubbed it out again and tried on the headphones. The wireless fizzed and boomed as it warmed up, and then, from far away, an unctuous voice began talking about prunes. He tipped the chair back and put his feet on the table. Vee had told him that her mother, Mrs Sedge, hadn't been able to speak since she'd fainted and hit her head nineteen years ago, after receiving a nasty shock. It suddenly struck him as very odd that Vee was also called ‘Mrs Sedge'. Could the older Mrs Sedge be Vee's mother-in-law, rather than her mother? But then, why not say so? ‘This is my mother,' Vee had announced, in that urgent, high-pitched voice.

He turned the question over in his head, looking for possible solutions.

The lecture on prunes ended and the news began. Noel took off the headphones and the tally of Messerschmitt losses was replaced with the noise of splintering wood. He wandered over to the back window. Outside, it was a clear day, and the air was full of swallows. A man was breaking up a piano with a sledgehammer, and a postwoman was crossing the yard.

He knew things; he wasn't ignorant. Mattie had always liked the word ‘frank'. ‘To be frank, Noel . . .' she'd say, when he asked a difficult or awkward question. ‘To be frank, Noel, I'd say that “Vee” probably stands for “Vera”, and “Mrs” almost certainly stands for “Miss”.'

There was a knock at the door of the flat, and he went downstairs. The postwoman handed him a bundle of letters. There were six for ‘Mrs Flora Sedge', three for Fat Donald and one for Vee, in Geoffrey's handwriting.

You could learn a lot from reading detective fiction; Noel had never steamed open an envelope before, but it was quite
easy, the gum separating into viscous strands as he eased up the flap.

Dear Mrs Sedge,

We are so pleased that you have been kind enough to offer Noel a ‘home away from home', and I'm sure he will be extremely happy and of course safe with you. We have had two alerts already this week, both false alarms, but that won't be the case for much longer, we fear.

As I hope Noel has told you, he has been living with us since his godmother sadly passed on last December. As her cousins we stepped forward ‘into the breach', which of course we were delighted to do, although since we are not yet his legal guardians, having another mouth to feed (and body to clothe!) has placed quite a financial burden upon us, though one which, of course, we are more than happy to shoulder. Mrs Overs is in poor health and unable to travel, however I will endeavour to come and visit Noel, though since civil defence duties take up so much of my time when not at work, it may be several weeks before . . .

And on and on, diddly dee diddly dah, as Mattie would say. There was another small sheet of paper in the envelope, folded in half, his own name written on the outside.

He opened it at arm's length, as if lighting a firework.

Dear Noel,

Just a ‘p.s.' to say that we have received an overdue note from Queen's Crescent Library for ‘The Roman Hat Mystery' by Ellery Queen. Is it possible that you took it with you when you were evacuated? If so, could you return it, as we may otherwise be fined.

Yours affectionately

Auntie Margery and Uncle Geoffrey

The writing paper seemed to exude a faint smell of furniture
polish, the same smell that had pervaded his aunt and uncle's flat. Every surface there had been utterly clean, every loose object put away, so that if Noel left a book on his bed in the morning, it was re-shelved by the time he came in from school. A pencil on the floor, a notebook on the windowsill, a comb, a comic – even a fingernail clipping, left deliberately as a test – were whisked out of view, as if Auntie Margery were trying to pretend that Noel wasn't there at all. He'd started to wonder whether that were actually the case, if he was really, truly living in the flat, or whether it was a dream of some kind. There had seemed no reason for the three of them to be in the same place; they were like random items found together in a junk shop: two gloves and a spigot, a fez and two spoons.

The school he'd been sent to was full of children who tried to walk straight through him and one morning it had occurred to him that he might actually be invisible. He'd stepped into the path of a cyclist, just to check; there'd been a scream of brakes and the bicycle had slewed sideways and thrown its rider into the gutter.

‘You really must try and be more observant, Noel,' Uncle Geoffrey had said.

It was after that that Noel had made the decision to stop talking. He would speak (he'd decided) in the event of a fire or a bomb, but most other things could be covered by a nod, a shake of the head or a shrug. He had also discovered that if he pretended to go to his room, and then hid under the coat rack in the little entrance porch to the flat and covered himself with the folds of Uncle Geoffrey's warden's greatcoat, then he could hear everything that went on.

When the evacuation order came from the school, Auntie Margery had said, ‘Oh thank God, Geoffrey, because with the best will in the world I truly can't bear another day of being stared at by that child.'

In the frowsty clutter of Vee's kitchen, Noel looked at the
letters again. He could almost see Uncle Geoffrey's smile, lingering like the Cheshire Cat's above the paper.

. . .
since we are not yet his legal guardians
. . .

He twisted the envelope and its contents into tapers, and burned them in the sink. Then he took the pad of writing paper that Vee had bought for her mother. It was not hard to imitate Vee's uneven capitals and telegraphic style.

DEAR MR AND MRS OVERS

I AM VERY GLAD TO TAKE NOEL. HE IS SETTLING HERE AND AT SCHOOL VERY NICELY. DON'T WORRY ABOUT VISITING BECAUSE I THINK IT WOULD UNSETTLE HIM AT THE MOMENT SO NO NEED TO COME ALL THIS WAY. MAYBE NEARER XMAS. HE SENDS YOU HIS LOVE AND HOPES YOU ARE WELL.

HOPING THIS FINDS YOU WELL AS IT LEAVES ME
MRS V SEDGE

He posted it on the way to meet Vee, using a stamp that he found in the kitchen drawer. As it disappeared into the postbox he heard himself laugh. It was an odd sound, unpractised and staccato.

By the time Vee finished at Mrs Pilcher's (‘Just one more little job, Mrs Sedge, it won't take a moment') it was twenty past one. She found Noel waiting exactly where she'd asked him to wait, on a bench at the south side of the abbey, beside the memorial to the Great War. He didn't move or speak as she approached, only watched her with that flat, judgemental gaze.
Thou God, seest me
, she thought; it had been the text on the wall in the outside lav when she was a girl, and it always made her think of carbolic, and drains.

‘Did you wake Donald up?' she asked, and he nodded.

‘And did he say where he was going?' she asked. He shook his head. The fingermark on his cheek had faded to a shapeless blotch.

She took a ginger snap out of her bag and held it out to him. ‘Mrs Pilcher baked these, you can have one. Only you need to limp,' she said. Noel stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘Because of your bad leg,' she added. ‘And if I talk to anyone you're not to say anything at all. Understand?' He nodded, and inserted the biscuit without thanks.

‘Come along, then,' she said.

He limped steadily. On the Watford platform at Abbey station, they bumped into Mrs Farrell, the butcher's wife, and Vee was able to say, as planned, ‘I'm just taking my little evacuee to his hospital appointment to have a leg iron fitted. Have to look after their health, don't we?' and Mrs Farrell had acknowledged Vee with a tiny, icy nod, which was at least better than her usual habit of cutting her dead.

‘I have to do something in Watford,' Vee said to Noel, as they stood together in the train corridor. The carriages were full of soldiers, as usual. ‘Business. Door to door.'

Watford was big enough, she'd decided. There'd be no danger of meeting anyone she knew. She was wearing her good slate-grey coat and a hat that nearly matched, and a gilt pin she'd found on the pavement outside chapel one Sunday morning. It had a dot of red enamel in the centre, and looked vaguely official if you didn't peer too closely.

Noel didn't ask any questions, and when they got off the train, twenty minutes later, he hobbled after her without reminder.

It was as they walked out of the station that she began to get nervous. Ideas fluttered through her head. She thought about trying the row of houses opposite the entrance, and then decided that they were too public. She thought about taking a bus to the bigger houses in the suburbs. She walked past a row
of shops, turned into the first street she came to, caught the eye of an old lady who was washing her windows, hesitated, started to search around in her bag for the collecting box and then lost her nerve and did a quick about-turn, treading on Noel's foot in the process.

‘Out of the
way
,' she said, and then ‘sorry'. Her heart was stuttering like a road-drill. She stopped by a draper's to catch her breath, and eyed the display of silk-effect blouses in the window. The pink one was the colour of calamine lotion. She could feel Noel looking at her and she began to wish she hadn't brought him; the intensity of his stare was giving her the jitters. Until she knew what she was doing, until she'd got the
hang
of it, she'd rather not have a witness.

At the corner of the next street, she pointed to a low wall.

‘Sit there till I come back.' He sat, his gaze still upon her, and she turned and walked rapidly away.

There was no one in at the first house, and at the second, the door was answered by a child.

‘Is your mother in, dear?' asked Vee. The girl disappeared without a word, leaving the door ajar. Vee took the collecting box out of her bag. It was borrowed from the Sunday School cupboard at Bethesda; she'd covered up the writing on the side with a picture of an aeroplane that she'd cut out of an illustrated paper.

‘Yes?' said the woman, not opening the door further, but sliding sideways into the gap. She was a shrunken little thing – Vee's age, but with a withered, papery complexion. From within the house came a steady shrieking.

‘Spitfire Fund,' said Vee, giving the box a silent shake. It came to her, too late, that she should have primed it with a few coppers.

The woman nodded, and closed the door. Vee waited, uneasily. A minute went by. Should she stay? Should she try next door? Should she
run
? It wasn't the sort of house that
would have a telephone, but might the child have climbed over the back wall, and be racing to call the police? She was just turning to leave when the door reopened to reveal the girl with her fist outstretched.

‘Mum says to give you this,' she said, and dropped a sixpence into the slot.

The door closed again.

The rattle of silver on wood seemed to linger in the air; Vee thought she had never heard a sweeter sound. Sixpence.
Sixpence
. The ease of it – she had knocked on a door and a child had given her money. It had the jingling simplicity of a nursery rhyme. She seemed to float along the pavement towards the next house.