The Spider-Orchid (10 page)

“
B
UT DADDY
’S
always
here on Sundays!” cried Amelia, staring incredulously. “I’ve
never
got here and not found him!”

Had she been less engrossed in her own disappointment, Amelia would have noticed the fury, quickly controlled, which flickered across Rita’s face at this futile protest. Futile, because how could
Rita
summon Daddy out of thin air—Rita who, if the truth were known, was a hundred times more agitated about Adrian’s
disappearance
than Amelia, utterly confident of her secure and
permanent
place in his heart, could begin to imagine. And had Amelia been older, as well as less self-absorbed, she would have recognised the moment she came into the room that unmistakable look on Rita’s face—the look of a woman who knows, or suspects, that her lover has at last really left her, and that this time he will not come back.

But Amelia, being only thirteen, was oblivious of all this. She was concerned only with the disruption of her own afternoon.

“But where
is
he?” she persisted, unwittingly rubbing salt into a red, raw wound that was beyond the range of her comprehension. “Where did he say he’d gone? When will he be back?”

No woman in Rita’s situation is ever willingly going to admit to it—certainly not to a thirteen-year-old. The sordid truth—that Adrian had simply not come home either last night or the night before; that he had furthermore pretended (Rita had checked this with his secretary) that on Friday he’d been kept late at the office when he hadn’t; and had thereafter stayed away the whole weekend without even bothering to telephone—all this added up to a picture so humiliating, as well as so drearily commonplace, that almost any woman would have tried to keep it secret.

Certainly Rita intended to.

“Your father’s been called away on business, if you want to know,” she snapped. “I expect he forgot all about you.”

Let her have it right between the eyes, the smug little devil! Let
her
have a taste of being unwanted, rejected, let down; of having her love and loyalty slapped back into her face like a wet fish!

While Amelia’s countenance slowly paled, a small flicker of satisfaction came into Rita’s. The two stood staring at each other, in open enmity for the very first time. Suddenly, it was frightening.

Amelia took a step backwards.

“I’ll go and ask Dorothy!” she exclaimed, turning on her heel. “
Dorothy
will know!”—and a moment later she was clattering downstairs at top speed, flight after flight, round the bends of the landings, till she reached the haven of the familiar basement kitchen.

*

“Dorothy will know!” In other words, “Dorothy, not Rita, is the one he’s likely to have confided in!” Alone in the big room, Rita stood quivering, like a well-trained gun-dog waiting for some special signal. She was waiting for her lover, just as she had waited all the weekend, and by now she was feeling quite sick with longing for his return.

Because how can you punish adequately a man who just doesn’t show up?

*

“Let me see; Friday. That’s when I saw your Dad last, the Friday morning,” said Dorothy, burrowing eagerly into his new drama like a rabbit excavating a cosy home for itself in some promising hillside. “Yes, he was just off to work, about nine o’clock it must have been, because that was the morning the builders were here, having a look round the Squatters’ Flat. Four hundred pounds it’s going to cost me, but Mr Hudson thinks we might get the Council to pay some of it. Squatters are their responsibility really, he says, and I might be entitled to some damages.”

It was the ground-floor flat that Dorothy was talking about, the one on street level. Even though it was several weeks now since the squatters had cleared out—speeded on their way by awkward enquiries from Social Security about their entitlement to
Supplementary
Benefit—Dorothy still spoke of the flat—and indeed thought of it—as the Squatters’ Flat, and no doubt would continue to do so until some new incumbent arrived to impregnate the place with his or her new name. So far, this hadn’t happened, because the squatters had left it in such a state, and it had taken weeks of phone calls to get the builders even to come and give an estimate.

My goodness, what a business it had all been, one way and another! It still gave Dorothy a funny feeling when she thought about it, and especially when she recalled the way in which it had
all come about. When the squatters had first arrived—in ones and twos, with rosy, guileless young faces and no luggage, she had taken for granted that they were visitors for one or other of the existing tenants. She hadn’t at first given it a moment’s thought, for was this not Liberty Hall, as she had so often boasted? People were in and out all the time, often staying the night as well, and Dorothy prided herself on asking no questions and making no fuss about such goings-on. And so thus it came about that only when the newcomers had established themselves eleven strong in the ground-floor flat, had changed the locks and had started cheeking her through the back windows when she went out to hang up the washing—only then did Dorothy begin to realise exactly what she was up against, and also how little, within the limits of the law, she could do about it. Her friends, naturally, had been highly indignant on her behalf—Adrian, in particular, volunteering to beat up the lot of them with his own hands. But that, of course, would have, been “assault”, and Dorothy naturally didn’t want her only reliable tenant dragged off to prison at such a time.

And in fact, it gradually became clear to the onlookers that no such drastic knight-errantry was called for. Before long, Dorothy was referring to “My Squatters” with a note of pride in her voice, positively boasting about them among the neighbours as if they were a sort of status symbol, an authentic hallmark of the sort of trendy, telly-based with-it-ness to which she had always so wistfully aspired.

“Well, Dorothy, I hope it’s taught you a lesson!” Adrian had said severely, after the thing had finally spluttered to its ignominious end. “I’ve always
said
you were crazy to keep that back door
unlocked
at all hours so that just anybody can walk in whenever they like! It’s
asking
for trouble—didn’t I always tell you so?”

And Dorothy, gazing at him respectfully, hadn’t really known what to reply. Because, of course, it
had
taught her a lesson: it had taught her that even at sixty-seven, life can still be full of adventures and surprises: and if they could sometimes cost you four hundred pounds—well, so could a holiday in the South of France, and this way you escaped all that oily food and picking up stomach-bugs.

It was difficult to put into words, though; you could never explain it to someone as clever as Mr Summers, and so Dorothy didn’t try. She just went on leaving the back door unlocked just as she’d always done. It was easier on her feet, for one thing. People could
just come in and dump the laundry or the groceries or whatever on to the kitchen table without her having to stir from her chair: nor did she have to drag herself out of bed late at night to let in people who’d forgotten their keys.

*

“And you’re
sure
that was the last time Daddy was here?” Amelia was asking anxiously. “On the Friday morning? And he didn’t seem —you know—as if anything had happened? He didn’t say
anything
about going away, or anything? Because that’s what I can’t understand. Rita says he suddenly had to go on a business trip—but then, why didn’t he ring up? He
always
rings us up—me or Mummy—if anything like that happens!”

Dorothy shook her head enigmatically. She was torn between a real desire to comfort the child and a bounding hope that something exciting might have gone wrong.

“Yes, well, dear, it is a bit of a puzzle, I grant you,” she said. “I wish I could tell you that I knew the answer, but I don’t. He didn’t say anything to
me
about any business trip! And he would, you know, if he knew he had anything like that coming up. He always does. He’s very considerate, is your Pa—well, in those sort of ways, anyway. No, dear, I’ll tell you what
I
think—” —here Dorothy leaned closer, lowering her voice to a confidential murmur —“
I
think they’ve had a quarrel! Your Pa, I mean, and
Her
! A real, dreadful row I reckon they’ve had—in fact, I
know
they have! I heard them, the Thursday night—broken glass and all sorts! She’s not right for him, dear, that Rita isn’t. Not for a clever gentleman like your Pa, she’s just not in his class, I’ve always said so. Right from the start, when I first set eyes on her, I said …”

“Oh, Dorothy,
please
…!” begged Amelia, jigging about in her impatience. “
Please
help me decide what I’d better do! You see, even if it
was
a quarrel and all that, like you say, I still don’t see why he couldn’t have told
me
about it! I can see why he mightn’t want Mummy to know, but he could still have told
me
! Or left me a note, or
something
! He must have
known
how worried I’d be, coming here like this and finding him just not there!”

“Yes, well, love, I know, it’s a shame, and it’s hard that
you
should be the one to suffer, in your innocence. But that’s life for you; and the truth is that when a man and a woman start quarrelling like those two did that Thursday night—well, I’m afraid that that’s where commonsense flies out of the window, and consideration for
anyone else, too—and they might do
anything
,
either one of them. And you do have to remember that your Pa—I’m sure you won’t mind my saying this, dear—your Pa does have a temper, and there’s no sense denying it. If that woman up there was to have provoked him that little bit too far—and she’s just the type, let me tell you—well, if something like that was to have happened, then I wouldn’t be surprised if your Pa mightn’t have walked right out on her, then and there, slamming the door behind him. And I wouldn’t blame him either, it’d be no more than she deserves, the two-faced, stuck-up little…!

“But don’t you worry, love, he’ll be back. Any minute now, I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d never be letting you down over this Sunday afternoon business, that’s for sure. He thinks the world of you, dear, you know that, and he’d have to be dead and in his grave before he’d …

“There! What was that? I do believe that’s your Dad now, just coming in the front door!”

*

But it wasn’t. A race up the basement stairs revealed to Amelia’s disappointed eyes nothing more exciting than Kathy and the baby, the latter wrapped up in layer after layer of wool and blanketing against the soft spring sunshine, and screwing up its face in small displeasure at each of the bumpety-bumpings that marked the
progress
of the push-chair down the front steps. Amelia hurried to Kathy’s help, less from any very highly developed urge to be obliging than as an excuse for getting into conversation and at the same time having a good look right to the end of the road for signs of her father’s car.

There were none; and turning to her companion, who was at that moment wrapping yet another blanket round her muffled-up charge, ventured to ask if she’d seen anything of Adrian this weekend?

Kathy looked up, with the glazed half-comprehension of one whose mind is far, far away.

“Adrian…? Oh, Mr Summers. Your father. I’m afraid I never noticed, Amelia, I’ve been in such a—well, you know! And while we’re on the subject, well, not exactly, but you know what I mean—I suppose
you
haven’t seen anything of my Brian, have you? On your way here from the bus-stop, I mean? He popped out for some ciggies just after breakfast, and he was going to come straight back
… and it’s gone two now. I just wondered if, when you were
passing
the Shipton Arms, perhaps….?

Amelia shook her head. The two girls stood for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes with a sort of mutual recognition. At this moment, they were both members of the dreariest club in the world, anxiety its badge, and insecurity its membership card.

“Oh, well—thanks,” they both said, and with weak, despondent smiles they parted, Kathy to trundle her baby round the local pubs and hot-spots in
search of Brian, and Amelia to mount guard at the foot of the steps.

There were still no signs of her father’s car; and after twenty minutes or so, cold, bored and disappointed, she wandered back indoors again. As she neared the top of the stairs, she quickened her pace, in the vague and implausible hope that her father might have reappeared in her absence, despite the watch she’d been keeping at the street door.

He hadn’t, of course; but Rita, rather to Amelia’s surprise, seemed to have quite recovered her good humour, so much so that she even suggested another hair-washing session like last week, blow-drier and all. Though slightly taken aback, Amelia acquiesced readily enough; it was at least a way of passing the time until Daddy turned up. And afterwards, brushing out the silky, gleaming locks, Rita was struck by a further brilliant idea.

“Amelia! Listen, I’ve just thought of something! Why don’t you let me do your nails for you? Properly, I mean, with pink
nail-varnish
like I do mine? Or maybe something a bit paler would look better at your age … let me see what colours I’ve got….”

She began rootling in her big, untidy box of make-up, which stood, as usual, spilling its contents on to Adrian’s polished walnut chess-table. Amelia watched open-mouthed, half aghast and half thrilled at the revolutionary proposition. What would they say at school? What would Mr Owen think when he glanced over her shoulder to see how she was getting on with her work, and suddenly noticed …

“But aren’t I too young?” she suggested shyly; and then listened, agog with willing credulity, while Rita assured her that no, of course she wasn’t too young. Lots of girls of thirteen—even twelve—paint their nails nowadays. Naturally, Rita wouldn’t recommend anything too sophisticated, like crimson or orange; but she’d got here a lovely pale rose-colour which would be just exactly right. It
wouldn’t be too noticeable, and yet it was amazing the difference it could make to the whole look of your hands….