The Keeper of Stories, page 8
Janice turns around, surprised she is asking her opinion. Then it strikes her that Mrs B wants to see her face, that she is checking whether those words about losing a child are striking a chord. The crafty old bat. Janice turns back. She knows Mrs B will see nothing there. But she’s been warned. “Yes, I would agree,” she says briefly.
Mrs B sniffs and continues. “Becky’s parents were poor, ill-educated Parisians, but that was no barrier to their love. They didn’t love the boy less because their lives were hard and they had seen death and destitution walk past their door before. They loved him more because he had, for a brief moment, illuminated their lives with a special kind of glow. It had given them a glimpse of what was golden and good, and cast the rest of their wretched existence into the shadows. Without their beloved son, everything was stripped bare in the shattering, unforgiving light of reality. And everywhere they looked, there was Becky. Very much alive.”
“So what did they do?”
“When they could not stand the sight of her any longer, they sent her away to the nuns. Do you have any experience of the Sisters of Mercy, Janice?”
This time Janice does not turn around to answer. “Enough,” is all she offers.
“Exactly. A bigger bunch of pious, hypocritical old shrews it would be hard to find.”
This does make Janice turn around. She feels she owes it to Sister Bernadette to say, “They’re not all bad.”
Mrs B studies her face for a while. “You are quite right and it is intellectually slovenly to give in to generalisations. But I think for the purposes of our story we can assume that the nuns who were entrusted with Becky’s care were a right bunch of old bitches.”
Mrs B chuckles. “Years later she walked past the building that had housed the convent she had been sent to. It was now a garage. She derived considerable satisfaction from walking in and asking to test drive their largest and most expensive red motor car.”
“How long was she in the convent for?”
“Oh, many years, and during that time the nuns did all they could to make Becky’s life a misery. At every opportunity they reminded the child that she had the blood of her brother on her hands and that she was unworthy to walk this earth. She was a creature beyond redemption. Only hell was waiting for her. It is also true to say that Becky did what she could during those years to make the nuns’ lives a misery in return. We must not forget this is Becky we are talking about after all.
“When her fifteenth birthday came, she was sent packing. As you can imagine, the idea of Becky staying on and taking vows was not one that anyone seriously considered. If the nuns had been women with a sense of humour they would have slapped their thighs and roared at the very idea. As it was, they deposited Becky onto the street and shut the heavy wooden door behind her; then they went into the chapel, dropped to their knees, and offered up a prayer of thanks. I like to think that it was on this spot that the red motor car would later sit in all its vulgar glory. But here, I suspect, I am being fanciful. However, I do believe that from their stations in the chapel, heads bent in prayer, they would have heard Becky’s laughter from the other side of the door.”
“What happened to her then?”
“She entered the home of a wealthy and aristocratic family. And now we have a marvellous example of the stories that Becky was able to weave. I wonder what she actually came to believe herself in the end? Was she a valued member of the family beloved by all, especially by the younger son (in Becky’s stories there was often an infatuated younger son)? Or was she the upstairs maid, emptying the family’s stinking chamber pots? Whichever it was, it did not last long and before much time had passed, our now sixteen-year-old Becky was knocking at her parents’ door.”
“Were they still living in the same place?”
“They were, and at her knock her mother came down and opened the door to her…”
“And?” Janice has now finished sorting but doesn’t want to move. She thinks they must look like an odd couple: a tiny old woman swallowed up by a battered leather chair and a dumpy woman in a faded wrap-around apron sitting expectantly at her feet.
“Her mother took one long look at her, offered up a prayer to Our Lady, and crossed herself.”
“After all that time? Could she not find it in herself to forgive her?”
“What you cannot see is the thing that was immediately obvious to Becky’s mother: that her eldest daughter was heavily pregnant.”
“Aah.”
“Her mother grabbed her daughter by the hand and marched her back to the Sisters of Mercy, but they would not open the door to her. I believe they drowned out the sounds of her knocking with a rousing chorus of ‘Sileat Omnis Caro Mortalis’ which, if your Latin is a little rusty, Janice, translates as, ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence’.”
“Who was the father?”
“I don’t think we will ever know. I do not credit Becky’s suggestion that it was an aristocratic younger son. But I think we must not forget, in our appreciation of the fanciful stories Becky was able to tell, that we are talking about a girl who was little more than a child. Someone who had been abandoned by her family, abused by the nuns, and thrown friendless onto the street. I very much expect Becky had been raped. After all, she had no one to protect her. I suspect, in reality, had we heard the young Becky telling her grandiose stories, we would have felt very little urge to laugh.”
“What did her mother do next?”
“What would any mother do in those circumstances? What would your mother have done had you come home pregnant?”
Janice wonders if her mother would even have noticed. Of course she does not say this to Mrs B. She has no desire to discuss her mother with her. She heaves herself to her feet and decides it is time to throw in a curveball of her own. “How did you and your husband meet?”
Mrs B looks up in surprise, but Janice knows she has her. It is like watching a cat with a ball of string; Mrs B cannot resist it.
“I will never forget the first time I saw Augustus…”
Augustus, Tiberius, Decius – Janice can see a pattern emerging.
“I had just arrived in Moscow and I was to meet my contact in a tea room near the river. I had never experienced cold like it and for a while when I entered the café I was just aware of the humid warmth on my face. I could see nothing through the steam from the samovars, except for the glint of their red and gold enamelled surfaces reflected in the gilded mirror behind the counter. And then I saw him. And in that instant, I knew.”
“Straight away?” Janice is temporarily side-tracked from the fact that this woman was actually a spy.
“Yes. Why? Do you not believe in love at first sight, Janice?”
Maybe, possibly. But not for her. What can she say? “I think I must do…” She is about to add that it features often enough in the stories in her collection, but stops herself in time. “What were you doing in Moscow?”
“What do you think, Janice? You are an intelligent woman, despite your best efforts to appear the opposite.”
Bit cruel, Janice thinks, but at least Mrs B doesn’t think she’s a fool.
“I imagine you know my husband became head of MI6. We met when he was my handler in Russia. I had studied French and Russian at Cambridge after the war, and I was recruited to play a minor role in our operation in Moscow. Women, then as now, are often underestimated. But I do like to think that, in a small way, I made a difference.”
She then spoils this dignified but rather pompous speech by adding, gleefully, “And it was exceptionally exciting. I have never felt so alive.”
“How long were you in Moscow for?”
“Five years in all, then Augustus and I married. And that was the end of that; I was no longer allowed to work, not in the way I would have liked. As he progressed in the service, we were posted to many countries around the world and I had certain duties associated with that. Not ones I really relished though. Still, I never regretted marrying him for one single instant. And he said it was the same for him when he saw me emerging out of the steam in that tea room,” Mrs B adds, rather self-consciously. “I was a very different woman back then, Janice. I was never what you would call a beauty, but Augustus always said I had great presence.”
“Well, that hasn’t changed,” Janice says, looking down at her.
Mrs B looks up at her in surprise and says softly, “Thank you, dear.”
Janice turns away to hide her feelings. She is surprised and touched, and it confirms to her once again that it is in people’s stories that you really get to know them. But what is Mrs B’s story? Is it a spy story? A story of a woman who was a frustrated spy for all but five years of her life? Or is Mrs B’s tale a simple love story? She suspects it is the latter. She wonders if, in the intensity of that love, there was much room for Tiberius.
The talk of her husband and spying brings something else to Janice’s mind – all thoughts of Becky temporarily forgotten. “Mrs B, you and your husband must have the most amazing network of contacts. Are you getting proper advice about the college’s plans?”
“I am not an idiot,” Mrs B barks at her, obviously regretting her earlier moment of softness. “Naturally I have sought legal advice, but it is all, ‘on the one hand this, on the other hand that’. The thing is, when you get to my age, most of the friends you could have asked are dead.” She starts to drum her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Of course, there is always Mycroft.”
“Who's Mycroft?”
Mrs B gives a crack of laughter. “It’s what Augustus always called him. His actual name is Fred Spink but Augustus always said he was the brightest man he knew. A small, unremarkable man, but he served for many years as legal counsel within MI5. He’s been retired for years, of course, but I believe he’s still with us. I would have read his obituary in The Times if he’d died. Yes, I might give Mycroft a call.” Mrs B smiles. “I rather think he had a soft spot for me.” She then looks like she wishes she hadn’t shared this, and Janice isn’t surprised when she says, irritably, “Are you just going to stand there, or do you think you might actually do some cleaning?”
There is no further talk of spying or Becky as Janice sets about polishing the wooden floor. When she is just about to leave, Mrs B waylays her. “I’ve been giving this some thought, and it is very useful that the porter, what did you say his name was, Stan? Well, that Stan would confide in you.”
Janice is wondering what’s coming next, and how Mrs B can have lived here for so long and not known Stan’s name – he has worked here as man and boy.
“It occurred to me that you are in a unique position to find out information…”
“As I have been doing,” Janice cannot help pointing out.
“Yes, dear, as you have been doing.”
Janice is not taken in. That was a very considered “dear”, not the impulsive, gentle “dear” of earlier. The old bat wants something.
“It struck me that you clean for Tiberius and might very well overhear or come across – as you are dusting and so forth – information that could be useful.”
“No!” As a bark it is worthy of Mrs B herself. “I have very strict rules about cleaning and I will not spy on your son.” She almost adds, “Shame on you!” But she sees there is no need; Mrs B is blushing quite as much as she did when she shat the bed.
Fourteen
One perfect moment
“Oh, it’s you.”
The words are out there and she cannot put them back in her mouth. She imagines the three individual words hanging above the bus driver’s head, like washing on a line. She thinks of Geordie and wishes, like him, she could pluck them down and peg up something old and worn instead. Anything. “Single to Riverside,” would do. After all, that’s where she wants to go to pick up Decius and meet up with Adam. She just hadn’t been expecting the geography teacher, as she had been thinking of something completely different – a pregnant Becky. For some reason, it seems like this is Mrs B’s fault. It’s not fair. She hadn’t been thinking of him. It’s not his normal route and it’s mid-afternoon.
“Can I help you?” He is smiling at her and she finds it unnerving. How long has she been standing there? She hears a, “Come on, get a move on,” from behind her and the spell is broken. She taps her card against the ticket machine and takes a seat as far back as she can on the bus. Her heart is going like a piston engine.
After the second stop, she moves forward. He cannot see her, she is pretty sure of that, but she can now see his left shoulder. At the next stop she moves another row forward. Still out of sight, but from here she can take in most of his back.
She looks around the bus, suddenly conscious that people might be looking at her. No one is. She thinks of Mrs B emerging through the steam in a Moscow tea room. A spy meeting a spy. That is a story steeped in romance. But this? What’s just happened to her? It’s a dull, cold Thursday afternoon, and she stepped onto a corporation bus and made a fool of herself.
She suddenly remembers one of her stories that always leaves her with a dilemma. She enjoys it – after all, it has a happy ending – but there is always a question mark at the end. Something that threatens to upset her system.
Arthur Leader is a man in his eighties. She occasionally cleans for him when his regular cleaner, Angela, is on holiday. He is a man who likes order and routine; she doesn’t blame him – she does too. One day (as she was ironing his shirts) he told her the story of how he met his wife.
The future Mrs Leader had been out to the cinema with a boyfriend and, on returning to his car, they realised it had been broken into and the boyfriend’s raincoat had been stolen. They debated whether they should go to the police and in the end thought they would call in at the local station. The young policeman on the desk was one Detective Constable Leader. He had looked at the woman in front of him (he barely noticed the man) and liked what he saw – an attractive brunette in a crisp white dress, with blue candy stripes. He started to take down the particulars, explaining to the boyfriend that they would be keeping his car so the forensic team could examine it. As Janice had manoeuvred the shoulder of Arthur’s shirt onto the ironing board she could not help smiling – oh, how things had changed. Arthur then told Janice how he had taken the brunette’s hand in his and helped her as he took her fingerprints – for elimination purposes. As he pressed her inky fingers onto the card, he realised – that was it. A done deal as far as his heart was concerned. When the statements had been faithfully recorded – Detective Constable Leader was always thorough, and though he didn’t know it then, he was going to rise up the ranks until he was Chief Constable – he ordered a car to take the brunette (along with his heart) home. He made sure the PC who was driving the police car made a careful note of where she lived. It was always his claim afterwards that he got the raincoat back, but stole the girl. It was only at his wife’s funeral, many years later, that her sister told him she had come back that evening and said she could not emigrate to Australia with her as planned, as she had just met the man she was going to marry.
And the dilemma that this story leaves Janice with is this: maybe sometimes life is not about having a story; maybe it’s about finding one perfect moment. That moment in a Bournemouth police station. That freezing afternoon in a Russian tea room. She pictures her words hanging in the air – “Oh, it’s you” – and then the smile. He did smile at her. She doesn’t kid herself that it was a perfect moment. But it was a moment nonetheless. It’s only as she’s walking up the path to collect Decius that she remembers to remind herself that she is a married woman.
When she gets to the front door it is ajar and her first thought is that Decius could have got out and onto the road. She steps quickly inside and looks around, then sinks down onto her knees in relief as she hears the tip, tip, tip of his claws on the wooden floor and then spots him emerging from the kitchen. He runs towards her, his small legs flicking forward in his ballerina-style goose-step that never fails to make her smile. He looks at her and then up at the open door behind her, as if to say, “What? You think I’m an idiot?”
As she strokes his curly head and reassures him, she hears voices emanating from the open-plan sitting room.
“Well, I don’t know why you’re blaming me.”
Definitely Mrs YeahYeahYeah.
“It’s not a matter of blaming anyone…” An irritated Tiberius (she wishes she could still think of him as Mr NoNoNotNow but that is a thing of the past). “…It just makes it more complicated.”
“But you said get her some help in the house,” Mrs YeahYeahYeah says, sounding petulant.
“I know I did, but I didn’t think anyone would actually take the job, especially not Mrs P. I mean, she’s such a … well, a quiet nothing. And you know what she’s like. I thought Mummy would chew her up and spit her out.”
Janice is reeling. How dare he! And he calls his mother “Mummy”?!
“But Tibs, do you want her to have help or not?”
Tibs?!
“What I want is to get her out of that house. She’s not safe in there on her own. You know she can barely walk. Those stairs are an accident waiting to happen.”
“We could put in a stair lift, I suppose?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Tiberius barks, and Janice is left in no doubt whose son he is. “It’s a listed building.”
“Well, I just thought—”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve got to think of a way out of this. That space should be used for academic purposes; it’s what Daddy would have wanted. And it’s not about the money. She needn’t think that.”
Janice is past being surprised by the “Daddy”; she’s still too angry about the “quiet nothing”. And what’s with “the money”? She can’t take it all in.
Tiberius is on a roll now. “You have that incredible space and the college can do nothing with it. She’s rattling around on her own in there. I wouldn’t be surprised if one night something got caught in that electric fire of hers and she burnt the whole bloody place down. I know she’s my mother but she’s a fucking nightmare.”
