Marnie (2 page)

‘Bobby’s, seven guineas,’ she said, as soon as she saw me looking. ‘I took it off the peg, one advantage of keeping your figure, isn’t it? They know me there now.
Hard to please, they say, but not hard to fit. Well, Marnie, you’re looking a bit peaky, not like you should after being abroad. I hope Mr Pemberton hasn’t been working you too
hard.’

Mr Pemberton was my fiction man. I’d made him up three years ago, the year after I left home, and he’d worked like a charm ever since. He was a wealthy business executive who took
trips abroad and took his secretary along; it explained me being away and not always able to leave an address; it explained me being flush when I came home. Sometimes I had nightmares that Mother
would find out; because there’d be Hell to pay if she ever did.

‘And I don’t like your hair that colour,’ she said. ‘Blonde hair looks as if you’re trying to attract the men.’

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘No, dear, you’re sensible that way. I always said you’d got an old head on young shoulders. I always say so to Lucy.’

‘How is Lucy?’

‘I sent her for some scones. I know how you like scones for tea. But she’s gettin’ slower and slower. It tries me beyond human patience sometimes, what with this leg and seeing
her
creep
about.’

We were in the kitchen by this time. It never changed in here; honestly it didn’t; not any of the house really; it always struck me coming home like this; you moved homes and you stayed
the same;
everything
moved with us; from Keyham, I suppose, to the bungalow at Sangerford, then back to Plymouth, and now here. The same cups and saucers even, laid out for tea on the
plastic tablecloth, the framed colour print of
The Light of the World
, the rocking chair with the padded arms, the awful fretwork pipe-rack, the Welsh dresser with the woodworm, that clock.
I don’t know why I hated the thing. It was oblong, coffin-shaped with a glass front, and the lower half covering the weights and pendulum was painted with pink and green love-birds.

‘Cold, dear?’ Mother said. ‘There’s a fire laid in the front, but it’s a close day and I didn’t put a match to it. Of course, this side of the street
don’t get the sun in the afternoon.’

I made tea while she sat there eyeing me up and down like a mother cat licking over its kitten. I’d bought presents for both of them, a fur for Ma and gloves for Lucy, but Mother always
had to be got into the right mood first, she had to be talked round so that in the end it was as if she was doing you a favour by taking it. The only risk was getting her suspicious that you had
too much money. She went word for word by the framed texts in her bedroom, and God help you if you didn’t keep in step too. Yet I loved and thought more of her than anything else in the world
because of her guts in the struggle she’d had and the way above everything else she’d kept up
appearances
. Appearances for her were the Holy Bible. I still remembered the
terrible rows she gave me when I was ten and had been caught stealing; and I still admired her for acting like she did even though I hadn’t enjoyed it at the time and even though I
hadn’t reformed the way she thought I had – only got smarter so she didn’t find out.

She said suddenly, ‘That’s French silk isn’t it, Marnie? It must have cost you a pretty bit of money.’

‘Twelve guineas,’ I said, when it was thirty. ‘I got it in a sale. D’you like it?’

She didn’t answer but put her stick down and fidgeted round in her chair. I could feel her eyes boring my back.

‘Mr Pemberton all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes, fine.’

‘He must be a man to work for. I often tell my friends, I say Marnie’s private secretary to a millionaire and he treats her like his daughter. That’s right, isn’t
it?’

I put the cosy on the tea and the caddy back on the mantelpiece. ‘He hasn’t got a daughter. He’s generous, if that’s what you mean.’

‘But he’s got a wife, hasn’t he? I doubt she sees as much of him as you do, eh?’

I said: ‘We’ve gone into this before, Mam. There’s nothing wrong between us. I’m his secretary, that’s all. We don’t travel
alone
. I’m quite
safe, don’t you worry.’

‘Well, I often think of my daughter knocking about the world the way you do. I worry about you sometimes. Men try to catch you unawares. You’ve got to be on the lookout,
always.’

Just then Lucy Nye came in. She squeaked like a bat when she saw me and we kissed, and then I had to go about the business of giving them their presents. By the time this was over the tea was
cold and Lucy stirred herself making some more. I knew of course what Mother meant about her; she moved round the scullery emptying the teapot like an engineer in a go-slow strike.

Mother stood in front of the mirror, fidgeting with her new fur. ‘Do you like it under the chin or loose over the shoulders? Over the shoulders is more the thing, I shouldn’t wonder.
Marnie, you spend your money.’

‘That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?’

‘Spent proper, spent right, yes. But saved too. You’ve got to think of that. The Bible says love of money is the root of all evil; I’ve told you so before.’

‘Yes, Mam. And it says that money answereth all things.’

She looked at me sharply. ‘Don’t scoff, Marnie. I shouldn’t want a daughter of mine to scoff at sacred words.’

‘No, Mam, I’m not scoffing. Look.’ I moved across and pulled the fur down at the back. ‘That’s the way I’ve seen them worn in Birmingham. It suits you that
way.’

After a bit we all sat down to tea again.

‘I had a letter from your Uncle Stephen last week. He’s in Hong Kong. Some port job he’s got, and with a good screw.
I
wouldn’t like it among all those yellow
people, but he was always one for something different. I’ll find his letter for you later on. He sent his love.’

Uncle Stephen was Mother’s brother. He was the one man I really cared about; and I never saw enough of him.

Mother said: ‘What with my fur and one thing and another. Your father never give me anything so good.’

She did an act with a bit of scone, picking it up in her thumb and first finger as if it was breakable and putting it in her mouth and chewing as if she was afraid to bite. Then I noticed the
knuckles of her hands were swollen, so I felt cheap for being critical.

‘How’s your rheumatism?’

‘Not good. It’s damp this side of the avenue, Marnie; we never get a gleam of sunshine after twelve; we never thought of that when we took it. Sometimes I feel we ought to
move.’

‘It would be a job to find anything as cheap.’

‘Yes, well it depends, doesn’t it. It depends what you like to see your mother in. There’s a lovely little semi in Cuthbert Avenue, just down the hill from here. It’s
coming empty because the man who lived there has just died of pernicious anaemia. They say he was like paper before he went; he made no blood at all, and his spleen swelled up. It’s two
reception and a kitchen, three bed and one attic and the usual offices. It would just suit us, wouldn’t it, Lucy?’

This bigger eye of Lucy Nye’s looked at me over the top of her steaming cup but she didn’t say anything.

‘What’s the rent? Is it to rent?’ I asked.

‘I b’lieve so, though we could inquire. Of course it would be more than this, but it gets all the sun, and it’s the neighbourhood. This has gone down since we came. You
remember Keyham, how it went down. But you won’t remember. Lucy remembers, don’t you Lucy?’

‘I ’ad a dream last night,’ Lucy Nye said. ‘I dreamed Marnie was in trouble.’

It’s queer. Being out and about in the world, especially the way I’d lived, was enough to knock the corners off you, to make you grown up. Yet the tone of Lucy’s voice gave me
a twinge just like I used to have when I used to sleep with her when I was twelve and she’d wake me up in the morning and say, ‘I’ve ’ad a bad dream.’ And something
always seemed to happen that day or the next.

‘What d’you mean, trouble?’ Mother said sharply. She had stopped with a piece of scone half-way to her mouth.

‘I don’t know; I didn’t get that far. But I dreamed she came in that door with her coat all torn and she was crying.’

‘Probably fell down playing hopscotch,’ I said.

‘You and your silly dreams,’ Mother said. ‘As if you didn’t ought to know better by your age. Sixty-six next birthday and you talk like a baby. “I had a dream last
night!” Who wants to hear about your old woman’s fancies!’

Lucy’s lip quivered. She was always touchy about her age and to say it out loud was like treading on a corn.

‘I only just said I’d ’ad a
dream
. You can’t help what you see in your sleep. And it isn’t always so silly. Remember I dreamt that last time before Frank
came home—’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said Mother. ‘This is a Christian household and—’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘whatever else I came home for it wasn’t to listen to you two rowing. Can I have another scone?’

The kitchen clock struck five. It was a funny note, loud and toneless, that I’ve never heard from any other clock, and the last note was always flat as if it was running down.

‘But while we’re talking of old times,’ I said, ‘why don’t you throw that thing out?’

‘What thing, dear?’

‘That perishing clock,’ I said, ‘it gives me the creeps every time I hear it.’

‘But why, Marnie, why? It was a wedding present to your grannie. It’s got the date on the bottom, 1898. She was real proud of it.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Give it away. I’ll buy you another. Then maybe Lucy’ll stop dreaming.’

The other girl in the box office of the Roxy Cinema was called Anne Wilson. She was about thirty, tall and skinny, and she was writing a play, hoping I suppose to be another
Shelagh Delaney. We worked overlapping shifts so that there were always two of us in the box office in the busy hours – except Sunday, that was. Only one could take the money but the one not
serving helped behind the scenes.

The box office was a glass and chromium kiosk in the centre of the marble foyer. The manager’s office was to the left just past the entrance to one of the tunnels leading to the stalls. It
was just out of sight of the box office but Mr King, the manager, prowled about between his office and the box office during the busy hours. He kept his eye on the staff; usually he would go up to
the projection-room at least twice in every performance, and he was always at the doors to say good night to his patrons at the end of the show. Three times every day, at four and at eight and at
nine-thirty, he would come to the kiosk, see we were all right for change and take away the money that had come in.

Every morning at ten he came to the cinema, unlocked his Chubb safe and carried last night’s takings in a shabby attaché case two doors down the street to the Midland Bank.

Sometimes, of course, in spite of his care we would run short of change at the wrong moment, and then one of us would go across to his office for more. This happened in October soon after I got
back, because the syndicate made a change in the price of seats and we found we needed a lot more coppers. One day Mr King was at a meeting and we ran short of change.

‘Hang on,’ said Anne Wilson, ‘I’ll go and get some.’

‘You’ll have to go upstairs,’ I said. ‘Mr King’s in the café with the two directors.’

‘I don’t need to bother him,’ Anne said. ‘He keeps a spare key in the top drawer of the filing cabinet.’

Christmas came on. I wrote home and said I couldn’t get home because Mr Pemberton would need me all through the holiday. In the second week of December we had the record-breaking
Santa
Clara
booked and we were following the new fashion and running it for three weeks. It was my day on on the second Sunday.

On the Friday I told my landlady I was going to see my mother in Southport. On the Saturday after I got home from the Roxy I began my usual turn-out, and while I was doing this a strange thing
happened. I was using an old newspaper as an inner wrapping and came across a paragraph about a girl I’d pretty nearly forgotten.

It was an old
Daily Express
, dated as far back as 21 February. ‘Police in Birmingham are looking for pretty, mysterious Marion Holland who vanished without trace from her work and
from her flat last Monday evening. They are also looking for one thousand one hundred pounds in cash which vanished at the same time from the safe of Messrs Crombie & Strutt, Turf Accountants,
of Corporation Street, where Marion was employed as confidential clerk. “We didn’t know much about her,” forty-two-year-old balding branch manager George Pringle, admitted
yesterday, “but she was a shy retiring girl and always most reliable. She came to us with a good character.” “A very quiet one,” is landlady Dyson’s view. “Never
had no friends but always polite and well spoken. Told me it was only her second job. I think she’d come down in the world.” “It’s like a nightmare to me,” confessed
twenty-eight-year-old Ronnie Oliver of PO Telephones, who has been dating Marion. “I can’t help but feel there has been some terrible mistake.”

‘The police are not so sure about the mistake. General description and type of job are similar to those of Peggy Nicholson who disappeared from a position as secretary to a Newcastle
business man last year with over seven hundred pounds in cash. They would like to interview both ladies and would not be at all surprised if they turned out to be one. General description. Age
twenty to twenty-six, height five feet five inches, weight about eight stone, vital statistics to fit and a “taking” way with her. Susceptible personnel managers please note.’

It shook me coming on it like that. It shook me because I hadn’t ever seen details like that before. And living my life in sort of separate compartments the way I do, it jolted me seeing
it just then. Of course there was nothing connecting Marion Holland of Birmingham with Mollie Jeffrey of Manchester, still less with Margaret Elmer who kept a thoroughbred horse at Garrod’s
Farm near Cirencester and had a strict old mother in Torquay. But it was a coincidence. It was a hell of a jarring, nasty little coincidence.

The only thing I liked about it was the bit about having ‘come down in the world’. It just showed what elocution lessons would do.