A Lesser Evil Part 14

'You'd better go after her, Dad,' Fifi said, sniffing back her tears. 'Or she'll be making your life h.e.l.l too.'

'It's guilt that makes her that way,' he said sadly, bending over to kiss Fifi's forehead. 'She's blaming herself for you losing the baby, but she can't unbend enough to say so.'

'I don't think I care enough about her any more to try and understand,' Fifi said brokenly. 'All I did was marry the man I love. Was that so very terrible?'

Fifi walked slowly up the stairs behind Dan who was carrying her small bag containing the things she'd had brought into the hospital. '

Everything's spotless,' he said, turning to look at her. 'Yvette came over yesterday and removed all signs of the mess I'd made while I was on my own. She even cleaned the cooker.'

Fifi could smell polish and cleaning fluids, and she knew that the flat bore no resemblance to how it was the day they moved in back in May. But she had the same feeling of trepidation she'd experienced that day; she didn't feel glad she was home.

'That was kind of her,' she said stiffly. 'I'm amazed she knows how to clean as she never does her own place.' She knew that was a shabby jibe, but she couldn't help herself.

'Everyone's been very kind,' Dan said with just a hint of reproach in his voice. 'Miss Diamond has made us a beef ca.s.serole for supper, I've only got to heat it up.' Fifi sniffed disdainfully at this, but Dan went on, 'Stan's brought you flowers, and Frank's brought you some magazines to read.'

Fifi said nothing more, just went into the living room and sat down. It was, as Dan had claimed, spotless. The flowers from Stan were beautiful, roses and pink carnations, clearly arranged in the vase by Yvette.

'Cup of tea?' Dan asked. Fifi nodded. She didn't want to be like this, all sullen and hateful, especially to Dan who had been so brave and uncomplaining about his injuries, but she felt so miserable she just couldn't help it.

While Dan was out on the landing putting the kettle on, she glanced out of the window and saw Molly Muckle coming out of her house with Mary, the oldest girl. Molly yelled at the top of her voice to Alan, Joan and Angela who were playing down the end of the street by the coal yard. The stridency of her voice made Fifi wince and she wished she had agreed to go home to her parents' house. How on earth was she going to fill the days here until her plaster came off ? She couldn't use her right hand, and even if she could, what was there to do?

She thought she'd probably go mad with boredom cooped up in the flat. At least at home she could have sunbathed in the garden and gone to see a few old friends. Dale Street looked so dirty and depressing, and she didn't want to see any of her neighbours because she knew they'd all be clucking with sympathy over her. How could she explain to anyone how hopeless she felt?

If she looked back, her whole life seemed to have had no point to it, and she could see nothing ahead but more of the same. A baby would have changed everything, they would have moved from here and had all the excitement of turning the new place into a home. The savings they'd got were going to be eaten up while neither she nor Dan could work, and it would probably be another couple of years before they'd be in a position again to buy a place.

'Here you are,' Dan said, coming in with a cup of tea and a jam doughnut for her. He put them down on the coffee table and sat down on the other armchair. 'It's lovely to have you back home. I hated going to bed without you.'

Fifi began to cry and Dan immediately looked stricken. 'What's wrong?' he asked, coming over and kneeling in front of her. 'Are you feeling ill?'

'I don't know what's wrong,' she sobbed out. That was true; how could she explain that everything which had once been dear to her no longer seemed to matter? She wanted to be alone, but she knew that if she was she'd hate it. She didn't want to be fussed over, but if people didn't fuss, that would hurt her too. Everything was contradictory, except her sorrow at losing the baby. That was the only constant thing.

'Dr Hendry told me you would be weepy for a while,' Dan said gently, trying to cuddle her. 'He said there was no quick cure for it, but to make sure you got rest, good food and a bit of exercise. Why don't you lie down for a bit? I'll make us some soup or something for lunch, then we could go for a walk in the park.'

'I don't want to walk around that scabby park, my insides feel as if they're falling out,' she snapped. That wasn't true. It had felt that way when she first got up in hospital, but the sensation had gone within twenty-four hours. Yet she preferred to have a medical reason for feeling so down, rather than allowing anyone to think she was going a bit crazy.

'Okay,' Dan shrugged, 'we'll stay here. Why don't we both go and lie down? It's a long time since we had a cuddle.'

'I'm not in a fit state for s.e.x,' she roared at him. 'Don't you ever think of anything else?'

Dan got up and walked away. He turned at the door and looked back at her, his face a picture of hurt and sorrow. 'Yes, I do think of other things,' he said. 'Like how sorry I am we lost our baby, that I couldn't bring you home today to a nicer place, and that I can't afford to buy a car so I could drive you somewhere beautiful. I think about how lucky we are that our neighbours have all been so kind. I also think there must be something badly wrong with you if you imagine I'd be after s.e.x when you are so unhappy.'

Chapter nine.

Fifi carried her mug of tea into the living room and switched on the radio to hear the eight o'clock news, then sat down by the window. It was three weeks since her miscarriage, and at long last she seemed to have come out of the depressed and miserable state she'd been in. It was Sat.u.r.day, another beautiful morning, and she thought she would get washed and dressed after her tea, then walk to the shops.

Eva Price, the red-headed woman who lived at number 8, the house next to the coal yard, was on her way to work at the launderette. She was a divorcee and lived alone with her ten-year-old son. She looked very fresh in a pale green dress, with white shoes and handbag, Fifi had noticed she was looking very much smarter lately and wondered if that was because she'd got a new man in her life.

Fifi smiled to herself, remembering how a few days earlier Dan had teased her that she was getting like an old busybody, taking up a grandstand seat to watch the neighbours behind the net curtains.

He was right, she was becoming a first-cla.s.s busybody. Since coming home from hospital she'd done little else but monitor the comings and goings of everyone in the street. And, of course, upset Dan hundreds oftimes with her gloom, sarcasm and plain nastiness.

She was very ashamed of that now. Dan certainly didn't deserve what she'd put him through he washed her, dressed her, cooked and cleaned. And all the time he'd been so comforting and understanding, even when she was impossible and he wasn't a hundred per cent himself. But thankfully now, aside from the limitations of her arm being in plaster, she felt like her old self again.

The doctor had given Dan the all-clear at the end of last week. Apart from the bald patch on the back of his head where they'd shaved it to st.i.tch the wound, and some bruising on his chest, he seemed none the worse for his ordeal, and he'd gone back to work on Monday. Fifi missed him; the days seemed very long and empty without him around. She wished he hadn't agreed to work all day today, but he said they needed the money and she supposed he was only being sensible.

But being alone had forced her to do things herself. She'd even mastered peeling potatoes with her left hand, and writing letters, though they looked as though a child had written them, and cleaning up. She could use the fingers on her right hand to support things, but they were stiff still and her arm ached if she used them for too long.

Despite her mother's gloomy prediction, her job had been kept open for her, in fact she'd had flowers and a very sympathetic letter from her boss. She hoped that she could go back at the beginning of September when the plaster came off.

A child crying somewhere made Fifi lean forward in her seat, but she couldn't see the child outside, or work out which house the crying might be coming from. The milk float came rattling along and drowned it out. She watched the milkman leap out, grab a handful of bottles, then run from door to door depositing them and picking up the empties.

Frank's voice wafted up to her as he called to the milkman to ask if he had any eggs on the float. Then another male voice joined theirs, asking Frank if he had last night's Evening Standard Evening Standard. She guessed it was Mr Hela.s.s, two doors down, but without leaning out of the window she couldn't see her side of the street.

One good thing to come out of both her and Dan ending up in hospital was that they'd got to know so many of their neighbours far better. As Dan had pointed out to her, all of them had been incredibly kind. Miss Diamond had made several meals for them, including the beef ca.s.serole Fifi had been mean enough to mock on her first day home. Stan had got their shopping, and lots of other neighbours had brought them newspapers, magazines, fruit and chocolates. Frank and Miss Diamond had been running up and down stairs constantly for the first few days, wanting to help in any way they could.

Yet it was Yvette Fifi felt most indebted to. She came over every day for the first two weeks. She did whatever she saw needed doing, whether that was changing the sheets on the bed or a bit of washing up or ironing, in a gentle, unpushy way that didn't make them feel awkward. But it was the comfort she gave Fifi when she was at her lowest that helped the most.

Whoever would have thought that a distinctly odd French spinster would be the only person capable of getting her to talk about how she felt? Yvette alone seemed to understand all the conflicting feelings Fifi had experienced when she found she was pregnant. She didn't pooh-pooh Fifi's belief that it was her fault she lost the baby. Instead she talked through these things, making Fifi see that imagining it was a punishment because she hadn't been ecstatic with delight right from conception was ridiculous, but at the same time quite normal, and that most women who miscarried felt much the same.

She was equally wise about the rift between Fifi and her mother, and suggested that the causes were almost certainly based on something in Fifi's childhood.

'If she always had to worry about you and protect you as a leetle girl, she cannot just stop because you are big now,' Yvette said. 'She is frightened you will be hurt. It is hard for any mother to let go.'

As Fifi continued to gaze out of the window, she remembered how awful she thought this street was when they first came here, and how that feeling came back after she came out of hospital. It looked okay again now. It would be nice of course if there were a few trees, or the coal yard closed down, but if she and Dan left, and he'd been saying they should when her arm was better, she was going to miss the friends she'd made here.

Granted, the Muckles were still over the road, 'ze worm in ze apple', as Yvette humorously described them, but they had been quieter lately. They still had their regular Friday night card parties, but last night Fifi hadn't heard anything much because she and Dan had gone to bed early.

She wondered if maybe Alfie had got nervous when the police questioned him about Dan's attack. Or could it be that they'd finally grown tired of everyone loathing them?

If only the police could find out who attacked Dan! She didn't like things left in the air. But there were no fingerprints on the iron bar he was. .h.i.t with. No one living in the houses and flats along the alley where it happened had seen anyone behaving suspiciously. The police hadn't officially closed the case as far as she knew, but it didn't look as if they were doing anything else about it.

Dan had always been convinced that he was merely mistaken for someone else. As he pointed out, the time he left work varied from day to day.

Being realistic, Fifi doubted Alfie was really capable of planning such an elaborate revenge anyway. She was even inclined to believe she'd imagined him standing on the garden wall that night of the storm too. She was distraught, after all. Would anyone, even a weirdo like Alfie, attempt prowling around on garden walls in such weather?

'Fifi! Are you up and about?'

At the sound of Frank calling her, Fifi got up from her chair and went out on to the landing. Frank was standing down on the stairs, her pint of milk in his hands.

'You look smart,' Fifi said. He was wearing a navy blue suit and a white shirt and tie. 'Where are you off to?'

'To visit June's grave, then on to see my sister,' he said, coming further up the stairs and putting the milk bottle down. 'I'll be gone all day and I wondered if you'd like to sit out in my garden in the sun.'

'I'd love to,' she said, smiling down at him. 'You are sweet, Frank!'

Frank had made this offer before, saying he didn't like the thought of her and Dan being cooped up in the flat. But they'd never taken him up on it as while Dan was home they could go to the park together. Fifi wasn't that keen on going alone to the park, and besides, it wasn't very comfortable sitting on the gra.s.s reading. Frank had a nice padded chair, and in the privacy of his garden she could wear shorts or even a swimsuit.

'Well, you just go on out there when you're ready,' he said, turning to go back downstairs. 'It's going to be a scorcher today. Make yourself drinks in the kitchen, you don't want to be running up and down the stairs. But when you come back in, remember to lock the kitchen door.'

'I'll do some weeding for you,' she said. 'That's one thing I can do with my left hand.'

'Pull up any flowers and I'll clip you round the ear when I get home,' he laughed.

Fifi washed herself and put on a pair of white shorts and a sun top, then made herself a boiled egg and some toast. It was infuriating how long it took to do the simplest tasks one-handed. Doing up her bra had been impossible at first, as was spreading b.u.t.ter on toast, and striking matches to light the gas. Dan had got round this by buying a battery-operated gadget, and as time went on she found ways round the other problem areas, especially when her broken wrist became stronger and she found she could use the fingers enough to support things.

She had just got her breakfast on to the table when she heard Alfie Muckle's voice out in the road. It was only nine o'clock, extraordinarily early for him to surface, especially after a card party, so Fifi went to the window to see what he was up to.

Alfie was dressed amazingly smartly for him in a shirt and grey trousers instead of his usual grubby vest with braces over it. With him were the three older children, Alan, the sulky-looking teenager, equally tidy, Mary and Joan in clean dresses and white socks. All of them were carrying bags full of what looked like towels and picnic things.

'Come on,' Alfie shouted back to Molly who was dithering in the doorway. 'You wanted the b.l.o.o.d.y day out. If we don't get out now it won't be worth going.'

Molly seemed to be arguing with him about something. She kept looking back in to the hall, but her voice was too indistinct to make out what she was saying.

'Serves 'er b.l.o.o.d.y well right,' Alfie bawled out. 'Now, come on or I'll change me mind about it.'

Molly looked the way she did when she went out alone in the evenings, wearing a pink dress with a full skirt and no curlers. As Fifi watched, Dora and Mike appeared too. Only Angela was missing.

The front door was slammed behind them, and Fifi watched in fascination as the family made their way up the road.

They were a hilarious sight en ma.s.se. Alfie tried to swagger, but it looked more like a waddle; Molly teetered unsteadily on her high heels, and the children were slinking along in the gutter, heads down. Dora was wearing a garish bright yellow dress with a full skirt and a kind of sailor collar trimmed with red. Fifi wondered where on earth she managed to get such a frightful outfit, and had some sympathy with Mike who was trying to distance himself from her as she tried possessively to hold his arm.

They had turned the corner when Fifi remembered about the crying child earlier, and she wondered if it could have been Angela. Had they left her alone in the house as a punishment when they were having a day out somewhere?

As she ate her breakfast Fifi watched the Muckles' house. Angela spent a great deal of time looking out of the top bedroom window, but she wasn't there now. The usual blanket was covering it, and Fifi couldn't hear any crying. It was of course possible she'd been sent to a friend or relative for the day, but Fifi couldn't imagine Alfie and Molly being that well organized.

It was lovely out in Frank's garden, a tiny oasis of beauty and peace. Although Fifi could hear traffic in the distance and the sounds of children playing in the streets and other back gardens, it was possible to forget she was in a big city.

As she lay back on the comfortable chair, the sun burning down reminding her of days she'd spent like this back home in Bristol, her thoughts turned naturally to her parents. Her mother had written a very cold and distant letter a few days after Fifi got home from hospital. It was clear from the stilted tone that she hadn't had any real change of heart. While she agreed a miscarriage was upsetting, she felt they always happened 'for the best'. She said she thought it was churlish of Fifi to refuse the offer of a period of convalescence at home, and she didn't know what more she could do.

The letter couldn't have come at a worse time. Fifi was already so weepy and miserable, and all it had done was push her further into gloom and despair. There were other letters around the same time, a sweet and totally sympathetic one from Patty, a joint one from her brothers, and indeed a very warm one from her father, but her mother's undid all the good the others might have done.

Dan had written back on Fifi's behalf, explaining that she couldn't write herself just then, and that their decision to stay in London was made not out of churlishness at all, but for practical reasons. He pointed out that neither of them had felt up to a long train journey or the pressures of being surrounded by other people. He said that neither of them believed losing a baby was 'for the best', and they both found it upsetting that anyone could view it as such.

Once Fifi had adjusted to writing with her left hand, she'd sent a brief letter saying little more than her job had been kept open for her and Dan was going back to work. But there had been no reply from her mother. Fifi felt now that she just had to accept her mother was never going to change her opinions, and that she should stop hoping she would.

At two o'clock the sun was too hot to stay outside any longer. Fifi locked Frank's back door and went upstairs, thinking she would go to the shops to get something for their evening meal. It was only when she changed into a dress that she thought about Angela again.

There was still no sight of her at the window, and it worried her to think the little girl might be all alone in the house, upset that she'd been left behind and possibly with nothing to eat. She decided to go across to Yvette and ask if she'd seen or heard her.

Fifi rang Yvette's bell and tapped on the front window, but there was no reply. She thought the dressmaker must be out at one of her clients' homes doing a fitting. Only a couple of days earlier she'd said she was close to completing an outfit for a bride's mother.

By the time Fifi had bought some pork chops, vegetables and a few other items, an hour had pa.s.sed. Before taking her shopping indoors she rang Yvette's bell again, but she still hadn't come home. Along by the coal-yard gates, four boys all aged about nine or ten were idly kicking a football around. Recognizing one of them as Matthew, the son of the red-headed woman from the end house, she walked over to him.

'Have you seen Angela Muckle today, Matthew?' she asked him.

'No, she's gone to Southend with the rest of them,' he replied.

'She wasn't with them when they left this morning,' Fifi said. 'I think they left her at home.'

'She said she were going with them yesterday,' Matthew said. 'All excited she were. But she ain't been out here today, leastways not since we come back from the park. But if her mum told her she was to stay in, she wouldn't dare come out.'

Fifi thanked Matthew and gave him sixpence to go and buy himself and his friends ice lollies. But as she walked home she looked back at the Muckles' house. All the windows were shut, and their coverings in place; she could hear no radio playing and it now seemed extremely odd that Angela wasn't looking out watching the children playing as she usually did.

Fifi took her shopping in, put the chops in the fridge and glanced out of the window again, willing Angela to look out so she would know she was all right. But there was still no sign of her, the blanket on the window didn't look as if it had been moved all day, and on an impulse she went back downstairs, crossed over the road and knocked at the door. There was no reply, so Fifi peered through the letterbox. There was a fetid smell, but she could see nothing, as something appeared to be hanging over the inside of the door. 'Angela,' she yelled. 'Can you hear me? It's Mrs Reynolds from across the road.'

No reply, not even a sound of scurrying feet.

Fifi was worried now. Not just the anxious 'what if' kind of worry, but a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach, almost of foreboding. She stood there in the road looking up at the windows of the Muckles' house and thought about what she'd heard Alfie say that morning. 'Serves her b.l.o.o.d.y well right' kept coming back to her. Could he have beaten her, or locked her in the bedroom?

'What's up, Mrs Reynolds?'

Fifi was startled by the question from young Matthew as she hadn't heard him come up to her.

She looked down and smiled at the ten-year-old. He was an attractive child with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and periwinkle eyes. He was licking the lolly he'd bought with the money she gave him and his lips had gone green with the colouring.

'I'm a bit worried Angela might be hurt or ill,' she said. 'If Miss Dupre was in, I'd try to get over her fence to take a look, but she's gone out.'

'You could go along the wall at the back of our place,' he suggested.

Fifi smiled. It was common knowledge that Alfie used that wall all the time to spy on people and as an escape route if necessary. 'I don't think I could manage it with a broken arm,' she said.

'I could go for you,' Matthew volunteered. 'I've been along it loads of times with Alan. It's dead easy from our yard.'

Fifi was tempted. If he could get in the back way and open the front door for her, she could just check on the child, give her something to eat, and put her own mind at rest. But she had a feeling his mother wouldn't like it. She'd either got to do it herself or wait until Dan got home.

'No, your mum wouldn't like it,' she said reluctantly. 'I'll go myself. Can you show me the dead-easy way?'

She didn't even have to go through the boy's flat. There was a gate next to the coal yard that led straight out into his backyard. It was devoid of any plants or trees, just a well-swept s.p.a.ce with a washing line and the brick wall along the back.

'You can climb up on the coal bunker,' Matthew said, and obligingly got a wooden beer crate and stood it beside the bunker.

Fifi had no trouble at all getting on to the wall, and once she looked along it, she understood why Alfie had no difficulty using it as his private route. The wall was at least fifteen inches wide, and though there were trees and shrubs on both sides of it, there were no obstacles between this end of the street and the far end by the corner shop.

'Stay there for a little while, just in case I can't get in through the back door,' she said, looking down at Matthew. 'Is there something in their backyard to climb down on?'

'Loads of stuff,' he said with a wide grin. 'But it's right mucky.'

If Fifi hadn't been worried about Angela, she would've got a childish delight in making her way along the wall because it reminded her of going scrumping for apples as a child. She was hidden from anyone looking out of their windows, yet if she parted the leaves she could see into the back gardens, and even into rooms that had no net curtains. Number 10, next to the Muckles, had a very overgrown garden, full of bramble bushes. The elderly couple who owned the house had been taken away to a nursing home soon after Fifi and Dan moved here. Their son came once a week to check on the house, and he'd told Frank he wasn't going to clear the brambles because it deterred the Muckle children from attempting to break in. Fifi hoped it wasn't the same in the Muckles' garden, because she wasn't keen on getting scratched to pieces.

Luckily, although there were some brambles on both Yvette's and number 10's side, a wide area had been hacked clear in the centre of the Muckles' garden. As Matthew had said, there was plenty to climb down on, almost a staircase of wooden beer crates and planks. She made her way down very cautiously though, for she wasn't certain the structure was safe and all around it were broken bottles, tin cans with jagged tops and other junk.

She reached the ground safely, wrinkled her nose at the smell of rotting rubbish and urine, and gingerly picked her way to the back door, past old car seats and a mattress with the springs coming through. The door was unlocked, but she had to push it hard as there was something behind it.