Peach (4 page)

“Well?” demanded Leonie. “Do you see a slut, Lais? Or maybe a whore? Is Nikolai right then?”

Lais flinched. “No. No Grand-mère, it wasn’t like that …”

“Then why do you look the role? Is this just a game you’re playing?”

“I loved Nikolai, Grand-mère,” she murmured.

Leonie stared at her granddaughter aghast. “Is that the truth?” she whispered.

“You see?” Nikolai, dressed in an immaculate dark suit, was knotting a silk tie over a crisply laundered shirt. “She’s in love with me. I told you so.
She
chased after
me!
She couldn’t live without me. She couldn’t live without what she says only I can do for her …”

Lais stared at Nikolai’s reflection in the mirror and then back at herself. Could it be only three months ago that she had imagined that she held all the cards in the game of life, that she could take any man and discard him at will when he bored her with his possessiveness? And look at her now!

“Please let the maid know where to send your possessions, Nikolai,” she said coldly. “And please never come to this house again.”

The little maid dodged quickly back along the corridor as Nikolai pushed open the door. “My dear Lais,” he said, his glance raking her from head to foot, “there is nothing more I need to see you for.”

Leonie and Lais waited in silence until they heard the great double doors slam and Lais sank trembling on to the chaise-longue.

“Oh Grand-mère, Grand-mère,” she wailed, “what have I done? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it to get like this … somehow it just got crazier and crazier …”

Putting her arms around her granddaughter, Leonie stroked back her straggling blonde hair with gentle fingers, the way she had when Lais was a child.

“It was a mistake, just a foolish mistake,” she murmured soothingly.

“But what will I do now, Grand-mère?” whispered Lais, like a biddable child.

“I’m taking you home to Florida, darling, to your mother and father,” said Leonie firmly. “And to Peach. Perhaps your little sister will be just what you need to bring you back to reality.”

Noel Maddox was small for a seven-year-old—much smaller than his best friend, Luke Robinson. Of course Luke was quite old—he was ten. Luke had a shock of red hair and round blue eyes whose innocent expression never failed to bring a smile to anyone’s face. Luke could get away with
anything
. He could get an extra slice of bread when he was hungry and once, by looking extra wistful at the governors when they came to visit, even a large piece of angel cake—pink, white and yellow with creamy bits in between. Of course Luke had shared it with him—not exactly half-and-half, but Noel didn’t expect that. It had tasted better than all the cake in the world, partly because the children in the Maddox Charity Orphanage didn’t get much cake but mostly because
Luke
had given it to him.

Noel sat on the hard wooden bench outside Mrs Grenfell’s office, waiting for Luke. His thick black hair had been cropped close to his skull, Matron’s answer to the everpresent threat of head-lice, and it emphasised his jutting raw-boned face, making his ears seem unusually prominent. Somehow there was nothing remotely childish about Noel’s seven-year-old face. His deeply set grey eyes appeared colourless and his lips were chapped and cracked from the wind that gathered force across the endless flat plains, whistling around the squat, square buildings of the Orphanage. Noel’s underfleshed little body appeared shrunken under the faded blue overalls and as he sat on the bench, his feet swung above the glossy linoleum floor. Of course,
Luke’s
feet would touch the floor. And
Luke’s
hair hadn’t been cut because Matron said that Luke had never, ever, had lice. She didn’t know how he’d managed it, but she just guessed the angels were on his side! Noel guessed so, too.

He shifted impatiently on the bench. He’d been there almost half an hour and if Matron caught him he’d be in trouble. But he’d promised Luke he’d wait. Luke hadn’t told him why he was going to Mrs Grenfell’s office, but it surely must be important to take so long.

The door opened suddenly and the sound of voices and the high, amused laugh of a woman came from inside. Noel stiffened.
That wasn’t Mrs Grenfell’s laugh
. Slipping from the bench, he half-ran, half-slid along the corridor and around the corner, peering cautiously at the door. As he watched, Luke backed out calling goodbye to someone inside, giving them a cheery wave of the hand. He wore his widest grin as he turned and sauntered down the corridor towards Noel.

“Luke.” Noel caught his arm as he went by.

“Oh. Hi.” Luke continued on his way as if not remembering that he’d asked Noel to wait.

“What happened?” demanded Noel. “Did you get into trouble?”

“For what? I haven’t done anything bad.”

Before Luke had answered Mrs Grenfell’s sudden summons the two of them had run hastily through Luke’s possible crimes, and now he had forgotten. Noel hurried alongside his friend, trying to match his easy, loping stride. “Then what?” he asked. “Why did she want to see you?”

Luke shrugged. “Just visitors, wanting to see some of the kids I guess.”

Noel frowned. Visitors were few and far between. Occasionally an older couple would come and they might take away a girl baby, wrapped in soft, new pink blankets. But
folks rarely asked to see growing boys like them. They were just charity orphans. Noel’s steps slowed as he thought about it. He ran to catch Luke’s jaunty figure as he leapt down the worn stone steps.

In the backyard of flattened, grassless earth a score of small boys in rough denim shorts and white vests were playing basketball, watched desultorily by Mr Hill who came in twice a week and on Saturdays to teach them physical training and sports. Noel hated physical exercise. The running on the spot knees bend routines exhausted him and in his shorts and vest he knew he looked bony—all elbows and knees. He was no good at baseball or football either. Instead of giving him a break because he was the youngest, Mr Hill would exhort him to try harder, telling him he should keep up with the others. It was Luke who had protected him from Mr Hill’s vicious pushes into the mêlée around the basketball net and Luke who had run alongside him to come in last—way behind all the others—in the cross-country run. Without Luke, Noel thought he might have just lain down and died after the first half mile. He’d slumped by the side of the stony road, with red shadows fluttering ominously behind his closed lids, his dry throat burning and his heart thudding so hard he could hear it. Luke had spotted him and run back, putting a friendly arm around his shoulders. “Come on, kid,” he’d said kindly, “the first bit’s always the worst and you ran too hard trying to keep up. You’ll be okay now. We’ll just take it easy and get there in our own time.”

Gratitude and admiration had mingled in Noel’s gaze. Because of his youth, Noel had always been lonely. The children entering the orphanage at the same time as Noel had, by chance, all been girls and therefore quickly adopted, depriving him of the companionship of his contemporaries. The other boys were older—many older than Luke—or were the real young ones, still in the infants department. No
one wanted to wait for the youngest, or to choose him for their team or to take him as their friend. With those words Luke cut through the isolation that surrounded Noel. And in return Noel loved him. He went out of his way to be near Luke, he made Luke’s bed for him, he put Luke’s grey flannel trousers under his own thin mattress to press Sunday creases in them, and he shined Luke’s shoes to glittering blackness for Sabbath chapel. His devotion to his friend was complete and Luke, who, although only ten himself, was popular with the older boys because of his size as well as his personality, tolerated Noel with a wide, kind grin, calling him “the kid” when the other boys were around. But when they were alone Luke talked to him. He told Noel what he was going to have when he was a man. Never what he was going
to be
. Just what he would
have
. A house, he would say, as Noel listened wide-eyed, with a big warm kitchen where you could sit and have as much cake as you liked and big cold glasses of milk, and nice bedrooms upstairs with real big beds, soft—not like the orphanage’s narrow, straw mattresses. And the stairs would have thick white carpets and (Noel liked this best of all) in the garage there’d be a big red automobile, shiny, fast and expensive. At this point Luke would grin and nudge Noel. “Course,” he’d say with a wink, “I’d have a good-looking girl next to me in that fancy car.”

Noel’s heart would skip a beat. He’d wait every time for Luke to say that of course
he
would be beside him in the front seat of that fancy red car—that it would be the two of them together. Why Luke could possibly want some dumb girl with him was a mystery that worried him in the middle of the night, undermining his new security. Why didn’t Luke want
him?
Why some silly girl! It was unfathomable.

Noel watched as Luke ran the length of the yard and hurled himself at the topmost bar of the climbing frame,
swinging for a moment and then levering himself up until he was parallel with the bar. Murmurs of admiration came from the watching boys as Luke, in perfect control, swung his muscular body over the bar in a deft loop, landing neatly. Dusting his hands on his overalls he ran across the basketball court, flicked the ball from beneath the nose of the waiting boys and tossed it in a perfect arc through the net.

Noel’s grey eyes widened with admiration. He forgot Luke’s visit to Mrs Grenfell’s office, the mysterious feminine laughter, Luke’s dismissal of his questions and the fact that Luke had not remembered that he’d asked him to wait. Noel felt proud to be Luke’s friend.

The girls of the Maddox Charity Orphanage were kept apart as much as possible from the boys. Wearing blue print dresses that were droopy and too long in the summer, and harsh dark blue wool that scratched their tender skin in the winter, they learned to read and to write with round uniform letters looped together, and they learned arithmetic so that they might shop and deal with housekeeping money, and they learned American history so that they knew to which flag they were pledging allegiance and why. These activities were secondary to those considered necessary for the life that lay ahead of them as young women. Cooking, homecraft, sewing. Maddox girls were snapped up by domestic agencies as good, reliable girls who with training might make good maids, cooks or housekeepers. Of course they were of neat appearance, always modestly dressed, and Maddox insisted on Sundays off for its girls so that they might attend chapel. The Maddox had its standards.

For most of the older boys at the orphanage arithmetic and English were made bearable only by the presence of the girls. Breathless glances locked across stained wooden desks, twisted paper notes skittered dangerously along narrow
benches beneath the bewildered myopic gaze of the teacher, and daring assignations were kept behind the chicken huts in the evening. Things went on at the chicken huts that Noel didn’t understand, though he suspected dimly that they were things that would not be considered “Maddox standards”. Sent to collect eggs, he’d stumbled over a couple clasped in a passionate embrace. The girl had turned her face away so that he didn’t see who she was and the boy, fourteen-year-old Matt Brown, had glared at him and told him to shove off. But not before he’d noticed that the girl’s print dress was unbuttoned down to the waist and that Matt’s hands had been inside. It had made Noel feel odd then, sort of fluttery and excited, but he’d dashed off to get the eggs, whistling loudly to cover his sudden nervousness and scattering the hens. He’d told Luke about it later and Luke had laughed. “Lucky Matt,” was all he’d said, and in answer to Noel’s enquiring stare, “You’re not old enough yet, you’ll understand what it’s all about one day.” Sometimes, Noel had thought admiringly, you’d think Luke was at least twelve.

It was two weeks after Luke’s mysterious visit to Mrs Grenfell’s office that it happened. Luke had been taken from class, watched with a mixture of envy because he was missing maths, and sympathy because he was being summoned to the office for who knew what reason. Luke had returned an hour later, red-faced and smiling. Afterwards the older boys had crowded round, asking questions, laughing and talking loudly. Noel had lingered on the outside of the magic circle, catching snatches of the excited talk. “What’re they like? Are they rich? Where’d they live? What kinda car? Where? When? How soon are you leaving?…”

Noel waited, white-faced, leaning against the wall. He thrust his clenched fists deeper into his pockets, biting his
chapped lips to stop them trembling, tasting the saltiness of blood in his mouth.

“Not only that,” Luke’s voice came clearly from the ring of boys, “they said that it would be unfair to have me leave all my friends. They’ve decided they’d like a ready-made family.” He paused to give weight to what he was going to say next. “And I am to choose who I want to come with me.”

Noel stopped breathing. He waited, listening to the blood pounding in his ears.

“You! Nah!” There were jeers of disbelief.