Memories of You (20 page)

Joe trudged back across the crowded beach clutching two ice cream cones in one hand. The Bank Holiday crowd had streamed out of London and it seemed they had all made for Brighton. Joe had to pick his way carefully between the family groups and he earned a few cross glances.

Before he had gone far the ice cream began to melt and drip down on to his hand and wrist. It was hot. People were saying this was a heatwave, and perhaps he should have listened to Myra and stayed in London today, but old Doc Balodis had said that Danny should get away from London as often as he could, that he needed fresh air. And Joe would do anything to make Danny better.

Danny had never really been well since he had arrived in London and Joe had often wondered what would have happened if he had sent his brother off first and he had stayed at Mrs Norris's for an extra hour or two. Then he would have been the one to get caught in the rain, and he might have had more sense than Danny and made for somewhere warm and dry to wait it out.

Well, it was warm and dry here on the beach and Danny could relax on the deckchair while Joe brought him whatever he needed. Not that Danny ever made many demands. It was part of his easy-going nature to accept whatever life brought and he often told Joe how grateful he was for everything he did for him.

‘Here you are,' Joe said when he reached the deckchairs placed side by side, and Danny looked up and grinned.

‘What a mess,' he said. ‘Look at your sleeve.'

‘I know. My new jacket. The first time I've worn it.'

‘You should have taken it off and left it with me. I told you.'

‘You're right. You usually are. Now take this and eat it before I drop it on your head!'

The brothers smiled at each other and Joe settled down to eat his ice cream – or what was left of it. He did this in record time and then fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the mess from his jacket and his arm. Danny's suggestion that he leave his jacket behind had been entirely reasonable but Joe couldn't have risked Danny going to sleep and someone walking off with it.

It wasn't just that the jacket was new; it was the inside pocket stuffed with fivers that Joe was worried about. Joe never left their money in their room at the lodging house. Never. So wherever he went their stash went too. He wasn't sure if Danny knew this. He wasn't even sure if Danny knew how much they were worth. Or how it was that a kennel lad could afford to look after him the way he did.

And if Danny ever did find out about the money and asked where it came from, Joe wondered if he would be able to look his twin brother in the eye while he explained.

After finishing his ice cream Danny wiped his hands fastidiously on his own handkerchief then opened up the newspaper and spread it across his face before lying back and announcing his intention of having forty winks.

‘Wait a minute,' Joe said. ‘Let me have the racing pages. Now shut your eyes for a while and when you feel like it we'll find a decent café and have a good meal before we go back.'

It was habit to look down the list of names to check up on which dogs were racing tonight. Not that Joe ever had a bet himself. Knowing what he did, it would be too dangerous. If he started winning regularly there would be those who would say he had inside information and they might investigate. He couldn't have that. Raymond had made that very clear to him.

At first sight Raymond looked like a harmless little bloke: overweight, pockmarked, a sharp suit and a trilby hat pulled low over his jutting brows. He was always smiling but Joe had noticed long ago that the smile rarely reached his close-set eyes and even the first time they'd met, his sense of self-preservation had kicked in and told him to beware.

The taxi driver had looked at him curiously when he'd picked the cab up at King's Cross that first night in London, but apart from telling Joe that, yes, he knew where to take him he hadn't said much. Joe had had to take a cab even though the fare would eat into the money he had left. He hadn't a clue how to get to his destination otherwise and he wanted to make sure that he was in time to get one of the jobs advertised in the evening paper.

Joe knew they were nearly there when he heard people shouting. The shouts rose to a crescendo and then died away and then started up again. When the cab pulled up the driver said, ‘You after a job, then?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good luck to you. But don't you think you're a bit young to be going to the dogs?' Laughing at his own joke, he pulled away.

Raymond had interviewed him in his glass-sided office that looked down on the track. ‘Any experience with dogs?' he'd asked.

‘Only farm dogs.'

‘Country boy?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Secrets, eh?'

‘No.'

The answer came out too abruptly and Raymond laughed. ‘Well, so long as the rozzers aren't after you.'

Joe scowled and Raymond laughed. ‘I like the look of you,' he said. ‘I'll give you a trial.'

‘The paper said “jobs”,' Joe said. ‘More than one.'

‘So?'

‘I've got a brother.'

‘The pair of you get on?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Brotherly love and all that. No fighting.'

‘We're twins. We're the best of pals.'

‘Where is he?'

‘He'll be arriving in London tomorrow.' Joe had hoped fervently that that was true.

‘OK. I'll take you both on. One pound and fifteen shillings a week each, but all found at Myra's. She's a friend of mine and she keeps a decent lodging house. You won't starve there.'

And they hadn't gone hungry even though it soon became obvious that Danny wasn't strong enough to work. The sawdust and the straw in the kennels and the dust raised at the end of the race when the dogs were fighting over the snare sent Danny off into terrifying coughing fits.

To Joe's surprise Raymond hadn't sacked them. Instead he'd arranged for Danny to see Doctor Balodis and told Joe that there was a way he could make a little extra money, enough money to pay the doctor's bills and for Danny's board and lodging.

If Joe's conscience had ever been bothered by what he was doing he consoled himself by saying that he had never actually hurt a dog; he'd never put a bit of straw under a dog's eyelid as some did. He liked the dogs, their sleek coats, their long, powerfully muscled legs, their trusting eyes. If he had thought for one moment that the capsules he added to the dogs' food had a lasting effect on them he couldn't have done it. Or so he told himself. Then Danny and he would have had to move on, find something else. And where else could he earn an extra five pounds a week just for making sure that the right dog won the race – or lost it?

When Danny woke up he looked rested and fitter than he had done for months. The hot summer had given him a light tan. Joe had seen the glances from the girls in their bathing suits and he knew that Danny looked older than his years; they had turned sixteen that April. He was also handsome and Joe supposed that meant he was, too.

Although he didn't have a job Danny never seemed to be bored with life. In town he would take a book – he always had a book of some kind – and he would sit in a park, or go further afield to somewhere like Richmond and walk by the river. He knew how to fill his days and always seemed contented.

Now he sat forward in the chair, folded the newspaper, stood up and announced that he was starving.

Joe gave the deckchair tickets to a couple of girls who had been sitting on the sand nearby. They giggled and one of them said, ‘Thanks, I'm sure. A true gent.'

The other asked if they would be coming back and Joe shook his head. He and Danny set off to find fish and chips.

 

‘Your mother is just
too
wonderful, isn't she?'

Elise opened her eyes reluctantly and squinted up to see Ernestine, one hand shading her eyes, gazing intently at the group of women sitting on the terrace. This was a last get-together at Shirley's house before the start of the autumn term. It was supposed to be a tennis party but the summer heat had lingered and it was much too hot to play. The girls had abandoned their game to flop down under the trees at the far end of the court whilst their mothers sat at a table shaded by an awning and chatted idly as they drank something long and cool and pink from glasses full of bits of fruit.

Shirley and Annette, lying prone just a short distance away, had heard Ernestine's remark and giggled. Ernestine was known for the intensity of her attachments, and her attachment to Elise Partington extended to Selma, her mother.

Elise propped herself up on her elbows and looked across at her mother then pretended to look puzzled. ‘Too wonderful for what?' she asked.

Ernestine frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm asking you what
you
mean. You've just said my mother is
too
wonderful. I mean, you can say someone is too fat to wear the latest style, or too clumsy to be a good dancer, but what exactly is it that my mother is
too
wonderful for?'

Ernestine's podgy face began to colour with embarrassment and Shirley, her thin, clever features expressing exasperated impatience, said, ‘Do stop teasing her, Elise. You know very well that she was simply exaggerating – it's her way. She meant that your mother is beautiful and fashionable and so much more fun than all the other mothers. And as for you, sometimes it could be said that you are too clever for your own good.'

‘Are we quarrelling?' Annette asked. She rolled over on to her back and covered her freckled face with one arm. ‘It's too hot to quarrel. Wake me up when you've stopped.'

‘No, we're not quarrelling,' Shirley said. ‘I was merely, in my own officious way, asking Elise to be a little kinder than she is to her faithful devotee.'

Elise knew that some response was called for. ‘Look, Ernestine,' she said, ‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't have teased you. In fact I'm jolly pleased that you admire my mother. And yes, she is wonderful. And it's
too
kind of you to say so.'

Annette smothered a giggle and Ernestine didn't know whether she was still being teased or not, but when she saw the way Elise was looking at her, so kindly and so sincerely, she decided to give her idol the benefit of the doubt. ‘That's all right,' she said. ‘I know I shouldn't gush. It's a bad habit of mine.'

Elise lay back and closed her eyes again. It was pleasant lying here under the trees with a slight breeze nudging the leaves casting dappled shadows on the faces of the four girls. They were friends at school: Shirley Chapman, Annette Saunders, Ernestine Fry and Elise Partington, an elite little clique drawn together not so much by common interests as the fact that their fathers were extremely rich men. Or in Ernestine's case it was she herself who was rich. Her parents were dead and she was heiress to a respectable fortune. She lived with her guardian, a grim old aunt who disapproved of just about everything to do with modern life. It was no wonder she idolised Selma Partington.

My mother, Elise thought, is beautiful, fashionable, witty, energetic, always ready to discover new entertainments, new delights and share them with me. Elise adored her mother and felt sorry for girls who did not have such complete relationships – girls, happy enough, who lived on the margins of their parents' social lives and sometimes did not see their mothers for weeks on end.

And, of course, there was the secret. Or rather the thing that must never be mentioned. Sometimes when she was alone Elise allowed herself to think about it and tears would come to her eyes – tears of gratitude that Selma Partington loved her so much that she had taken her into her house as a daughter and made her life whole again.

Elise must have slept for a while because when she next opened her eyes it was a little cooler. She sat up and saw that Ernestine had moved back far enough to sit propped up against a tree. Shirley and Annette were no longer there.

‘They've gone to the summer house,' Ernestine told her. ‘There are refreshments laid on there. They said not to wake you.'

‘Why ever not?' Elise didn't know whether she should feel excluded. Shirley and Annette were more what you could call ‘best friends', whereas she always made up a threesome or a foursome. Never a twosome.

‘They made some joke about Sleeping Beauty needing her beauty sleep, but I guess they just want to gossip together about boys.' She paused and moved forward to sit next to Elise. ‘It's sickening, isn't it?'

‘Sickening?'

‘The way they go on. As if boys were important.'

‘Aren't they?'

Ernestine looked at Elise in surprise, saw her smile and relaxed. ‘You're teasing again, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I am. Now why don't we go along to the summer house and spoil their little tête-à-tête? I could do with a cool drink, and despite this wretched heat I'm hungry.'

 

Shirley's older brother Tom and his friend Perry Wallace had taken over the court and were playing a desultory game of tennis. Perry paused before serving to wipe his forehead with the back of his wrist and then stared at the girls walking across the lawn.

‘My God, who's that?' he asked.

‘Who? Where?'

Perry smiled his attractive, raffish smile. Tom often wondered if he practised his expressions in front of a mirror each night. Sturdy and muscular in an unromantic way, Tom was confident enough not to envy his friend's lanky elegance and his undoubted good looks.

‘Don't pretend you didn't notice her,' Perry said. ‘I mean that vision of utter delight who has just walked into the summer house.'