Grasshopper Page 23

  Morna came back while I was giving Liv the water. I wiped her face and offered to take the tooth away and dispose of it. She wouldn’t have that, she wanted to keep it, perhaps just because it was part of her. Morna said innocently, ‘Did your tooth just drop out?’

  Most of us lead such violence-free lives, all the violence we ever see is on television or in the cinema, that we’re loath to believe people do kick and punch and hit other people, not at least the ones we know. Healthy young people’s teeth don’t just fall out but Morna would rather have believed Liv’s had than that Jonny had knocked it out. Liv nodded.

  ‘Jonny is out on the roofs. He looks for the money.’ Her laughter set her mouth bleeding again. ‘He is putting his hand down chimney pots, I expect, and lifting the lids off – what do you call them? – water tanks.’

  ‘He won’t find it,’ I said.

  She put her hands on my arms, she looked into my face. ‘He must not, Clo, you are not letting him find it.’

  This was beyond Morna and no one enlightened her. She went home soon after that. After he had seen her downstairs, Silver whispered to me, out of earshot on the landing, that maybe Liv would put the molar under her pillow for the tooth fairy in the hope of getting more money. We sat waiting for Jonny to come back. I suggested taking Liv back to old Mrs Fisherton’s with me and Silver liked the idea but she wouldn’t do it. It meant going down into the street and, although she’d be outside for no more than a few seconds, even that was too much. The fear of encountering James and Claudia was being replaced by a generalized agoraphobia, the opposite of what I had. Yet the roofs were exempt from it – then. She still saw those open spaces as safe.

  I had been brought up to think nobody was all bad; in my mother’s words, ‘there’s some good in all of us’. Human nature wasn’t black or white but halfway between. Of course, I had reached a stage when I had lost faith in most of my parents’ beliefs, but I still clung to that one until I met Jonny. Or, rather, until I came to know Jonny. There was no leaven of goodness in him. He was bad, evil through and through. I tried to make excuses for him on the grounds of his awful childhood, that early life I could barely imagine, those dreadful things happening to a baby, a child of four or five, while his abuser sang nursery rhymes. And I did make those excuses. I told myself that losing his mother so young, losing her love and never receiving love from any other source, he was bound to be unable to give it. I told myself that his greed and meanness came from early poverty, his ill manners from a total lack of instruction in social usage. A lot was still left out. There seemed no accounting for the absence of any sort of empathy in his nature, any thought for others or even of camaraderie with his fellows. Once I had thought he must be in love with Liv to want her so exclusively and feel jealous of her, but he wasn’t in love, he was incapable of love. She was simply his woman, that he had found and intended to keep for his use. She told us that night that sex freely sought and given had ceased between them. Jonny came close to raping her. She gave in to him to save herself being beaten.

  At last, when we’d been waiting for about three hours, she went into the bedroom. As she put it herself, she had nowhere else to go. Silver’s firm, ‘You can go home to Sweden, I’ll call a cab and take you down to it and go to Heathrow with you,’ had no effect. After she had gone I asked him why he liked Jonny. What is it you see in him, was what I said.

  He sighed. He suddenly looked much older. That extreme fairness fades early, the skin reddening, the shining blond hair turning to straw. I put my arms round him and hugged him tight. After a while he said, ‘You know that money I’ve got, that came to me from my grandmother, it’s a capital sum that yields 10,000 a year. It’s not really very much, it’s a starting salary for lots of people, but it’s a hell of a lot when you’re seventeen and you don’t have to work for it. Getting it is like having a door opened for you on to unlimited freedom. And having this flat handed over to me, that’s another freedom opener.’

  In the silence I asked him what that had to do with Jonny.

  ‘It made me able to know people like Jonny. I mean, I had my own place and I had my money. I’m a fool, Clo, but my excuse is that I was young, I am young. When I met Jonny coming out of that flat, up on the roofs, I mean, I just thought what an experience it would be to know a burglar. A real-life burglar. It had been the same with Wim, a strange person, a sort of human spider, who treated the roofs of London the way other people treat mountains. The difference was that Wim’s OK but Jonny isn’t. If I hadn’t been able to afford him, if I hadn’t had this place and I wasn’t able to afford to let him live here when he wants to rent-free, if I couldn’t afford to buy wine and food and have his girlfriend here, if I couldn’t do those things, he’d have come once, I expect, but never again. And now I’m stuck with him. Aren’t I? If there’s a way out, I’d like to know what it is.’

  I said thoughtfully, ‘It’s wrong for young people to have money come to them too soon, isn’t it?’

  ‘I expect it’s all right for people with very strong characters.’

  ‘But you are like that.’

  ’No, I’m not. It’s just the impression I give. Not worrying or telling other people not to worry, being calm and steady, it’s all a front. I could seem to be that way because I had money. And money that’ll never stop, that’ll always keep coming whatever happens and whatever I do. Look at it like this, I need never work. I wouldn’t do very well, I’d just rub along, but I’d have the life thousands have on just that amount, only they have to work for it. I can lead a life of leisure. Ambition needn’t be in it nor much hope. And I’ve got this place too. I pay my parents, but let’s face it, it’s a nominal rent I pay.

  ‘There’s only one way out of it. Give it away. I can do that. I can make it over to anyone or any charity, say, I choose. I haven’t the nerve. That’s the truth of it, Clo. I know it would be better for me to do that, better in every way, but I haven’t the strength of will. Not yet. I will one day.’

  Did I believe him? Probably. I was starry-eyed and idealistic in those days. And if I believed him my faith wouldn’t have been misplaced, for he did give that income of his away, or most of it, and he did give up the flat. We had come a long way from why he let Jonny live there. I kissed Silver and held him for a while but we didn’t make love that night. I went home, creeping down the iron staircase at three in the morning, having no premonition, of course, of the strange events that were to take place the next day.

  15

  The sight of Selina gave me a shock. She was sitting in old Mrs Fisherton’s armchair in old Mrs Fisherton’s living room, holding Daniel’s photograph in her hands. I walked in, having been shopping in Clifton Road, and there she was, beautifully dressed as usual, this time in a jade-green silk suit with puffed shoulders and bead embroidery round the skirt hem, her curvy little legs crossed at the knees, her feet in green shoes with stiletto heels. She looked up from studying the photograph with some puzzlement but made no excuses for treating the place as her own. Well, I suppose it was her own.

  ‘There was a cat in here when I first came, darling. I shooed it out. If you leave windows open down here, cats will come in. And you don’t want that, do you? It isn’t as if we had mice.’

  Poor Mabel. Still, she had come to no harm. Selina’s face was painted like a piece of porcelain or one of those concubines you see in Chinese pictures, white and pink and pale green and scarlet and black. Her nails scuttled about like red beetles. She couldn’t keep her hands still. I took the photograph from her, laid it on the table and offered her coffee. She shook her head vehemently.

  ‘I’m not stopping. I don’t know why I came. The thing is, darling –’ she smiled brightly – ‘I’ve so much to say and I’ve no one else to say it to.’ Suddenly, without warning, she launched into an account of her sex life with Max. People of the age I was then never consider the elderly or middle-aged as having sex. It all stops at forty, it must. The alternative would be too grotesque. ‘He isn’t very
marvellous in the bedroom department, darling, but what else really would you expect? I’m not sure if you’ll believe this but he was nearly fifty when we met and he’s never slept with anyone before. Never. I was the first. I can see from your face you don’t believe me but my answer to that is, why would he lie? It’s not exactly something to be proud of, is it? If he says he’s never had a woman till me, he’s not lying. I mean, I know young ones like you and that lovely boy in the photo, whoever he is, you’re having sex at school, twelve or thirteen, that’s normal, and even when I was your age – well, I think I was eighteen. No, seventeen. But forty-eight! Naturally I taught him everything.’

  By this time I really was staring at her, aghast. I didn’t know what to say. I said nothing. Her porcelain face had flushed pink but otherwise she seemed not a bit discomposed.

  ‘I can’t say he was a very apt pupil. Men are so selfish, aren’t they? Let me tell you, they are, whether you’ve learnt that yet or not. If only they’d be patient, if only they’d wait a little, postpone their own pleasure, find out what pleases you, but they won’t. They’re scared. If they don’t do it at once, they’re afraid they won’t do it at all.’ She paused and looked searchingly at me. ’Oh well, I expect it’s different for you. Everything’s different now, everything’s changed. Women rule the world now. But me, I’ve missed the boat. It’s too late.

  ‘The worst part is that he’s using what I taught him on others. You didn’t know that, did you? I can see from your face you didn’t. We’d only been married two years when he got himself a girlfriend. Once they start, even when they’re late starters, there’s no stopping them. Of course, that time I did stop him. I said he couldn’t go on like that when I’d spent everything I had on his home. Beautifying his home. Basically he hadn’t a bean. Twenty thousand, our drawing room cost me, you should have seen it before, a real ratbag. There were moth grubs crawling in the upholstery, I mean worms. I had it all ripped out and burnt. The carpet fitters were here, laying that top-quality Wilton carpet, the “vibrant veridian”, it’s called, and he was off somewhere with that woman.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, all other comments failing me.

  ‘But I stopped it. And he’s been faithful to me ever since, at least I suppose he has. Well, he has, if you don’t count ogling people and sort of half-baked flirting, and you can’t really count that, can you? Until now, that is. Until this one. I didn’t dream till Beryl let it drop she’d seen them. Unintentionally, I mean, in all innocence, she’d no idea I wasn’t fully aware. What am I going to do? That’s what I ask myself. I can’t spend another fortune on his home, I’ve just done the dining room in “ebony” and “papaya leaf”, as you’ll have noticed, and even if I redid the morning room, I expect it would be to no avail.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  ‘So you should be, darling,’ she said inexplicably. ‘Though I’ve no doubt it was as unintentional on your part as it was on Beryl’s.’ She got up and flung out her arms in an actressy gesture that wasn’t very good acting. ‘The trouble is, I love him, fool that I am. I’m his slave.’ I thought of Liv and Jonny, though it wasn’t at all the same thing. ‘I try to make myself lovely for him and the upshot is that he goes overboard for scruffy academics.’ A rueful smile followed this. She was absurd but I really did feel sorry for her. ‘I must go, darling. It’s been a help to me talking. Talking always helps, don’t you think? Like crying.’

  That seemed such a pathetic thing to say that, though I’d never done it before, I put an arm round her shoulder and gave her a kiss. She smiled tremulously. ‘And on top of all this I’m having a dinner party here for him on Saturday. His publisher and a lot of people connected with his wretched book. Well, no, I’m sure it’s a marvellous book, I shouldn’t have said that. But I just don’t feel up to entertaining hordes of people. Not her, though, thank God, there are limits.’

  I couldn’t imagine what she’d meant by saying that I should be sorry, and that it was unintentional on my part. What was? What had I done? I put it down to simple hysteria. In any case, I didn’t want to think about it. I’m afraid I found it deeply distasteful, the very idea of tortoise-necked Max with his bulging cheeks and fluffy tufts of white hair having sex with anyone. I thought of Silver and me and how strong and beautiful we were and I shuddered. Twenty-year-olds think like that, always have, I expect, and always will.

  It amused me and made me a bit cross too that Selina had driven poor Mabel out of her own home. I called to her out of my bedroom window and whistled the special whistle I had for her and she soon came. In a way I couldn’t explain, Selina’s attitude towards her worried me, so when the time came for me to go up to Silver’s I took her with me. I carried her up the four flights and into Silver’s flat. It was rather a chilly day and no one was out on the roofs – Wim may have been but his whereabouts were seldom known – so I closed the windows, not wanting to run the risk of Mabel escaping that way.

  Jonny was at work, Liv asleep on the sofa, as she so often was. Mabel wandered about restlessly, marking all the furniture as if she hadn’t done it before. Then a terrible thing happened. The kitchen door being ajar, she pushed her nose round it, went into the kitchen and caught a mouse.

  I was afraid Liv would wake up, discover what had happened and start screaming the place down, but Silver said Mabel might as well be allowed to eat the mouse once she’d caught it. Quoting someone who wrote a ghost story about a cat, he called her ‘the redoubtable adversary of the genus mus’. Liv slept on. Mabel ate the best part of the mouse and we wrapped up the remains in newspaper and put them in the waste bin. Then we went into Silver’s bedroom and lay on the bed with Mabel sitting on the end of it washing herself, and talked about my future, what I was going to do instead of Psychology and Business Studies and whether Max was really hunting up suitable courses for me in something I might want to do or if he was too busy with his ‘scruffy academic’, whoever she might be.

  ‘What are you going to do, come to that?’ I said.

  ‘Have you any suggestions?’

  ‘With you it’d have to be something in social sciences.’

  ‘Would it?’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s no use worrying about it, is it? No use at all. I know worrying’s no good to anyone but I’ve been doing it lately. I found a white hair on my head this morning and I’m only twenty.’

  ‘But all your hairs are white, Silver,’ I said.

  ‘This one was whiter.’

  Liv was awake when we went back into the living room. She’d been lying with her head buried in the cushions and now we saw her face for the first time. It was all over bruises and one of her eyes was black. Jonny had finally come in at half past three. He hadn’t been able to find the money. Liv said that gleefully, though his failure had resulted in a good many blows to her face, and in spite of the fact that he couldn’t possibly have found it no matter where he’d looked since it was all the time in old Mrs Fisherton’s sideboard drawer. He meant to go on looking that night. Liv he had accused of giving the money to Wim for him to hide. And that of course implied that it might be almost anywhere, Wim having access to heights and levels none of us dared scale. It was when she denied this that he had started punching her face.

  Silver looked grim. The bruises and damage to Liv’s eye had finally settled it. He was going to speak to Jonny. And as soon as Jonny appeared, early for him, at around half past five, he took him aside. They went into the third bedroom, and Silver told him that if he hit Liv again he’d have to go. She could stay but he must go. Jonny said he’d been provoked beyond bearing or he’d never have done it. Liv was two-timing him with Wim, he was sure of it, and she had lied and lied to him about the money.

  ‘It’s not your money,’ Silver said.

  Jonny was indignant. ‘It’s not hers either. Look at it this way, I’ve as much right to it as she has. She stole it, mate, you’ve got to admit it, so it’s not hers, is it?’ Evil Jonny might have been but he wasn’t unin
telligent. ‘It belongs to them two she worked for but they don’t even know she nicked it, that’s all a load of bollocks about them looking for it out in the street, that’s crap. So it don’t belong to her and it don’t belong to me but it’s here in this place somewhere or up on top of this place and when I find it I’m going to nick it again. That’s nothing to me, all in the day’s work, you might say. I’ve been a thief since I was a young kid.

  ‘In and out the City Road,

  In and out the Eagle,

  That’s the way the money goes,

  Pop goes the weasel.’

  He had it all worked out. Silver couldn’t gainsay him. The whole business had taken on a kind of metaphysical or ethical slant and it seemed beyond ordinary argument. All Silver could do was repeat what he had said about Jonny having to go if he struck Liv again. Then he suggested he take this bedroom which was seldom used, and leave Liv to the one they had been sharing. Jonny agreed to that, pretended to be delighted at the idea – ‘to have a bit of peace from that bitch whingeing’.

  That evening he behaved impeccably, or as impeccably as he ever could, producing two pizzas he had brought in for our dinner, as well as wine which Silver and I didn’t drink because we were going on the roofs. Jonny never observed Silver’s rule about this. He used to say he managed better up there when he was ‘pissed’ and evidently intended to be an excellent manager that night, for he drank a whole bottle of wine and a fair amount of whisky too and sang an obscene version (his own?) of ‘Three Blind Mice’. Liv, of course, hated any version, especially the bit about cutting off their tails with a carving knife. Of Wim there was no sign.

  Liv had washed and polished her tooth and asked if we thought she could have it mounted to hang from a gold chain round her neck. She seemed delighted with the new bedroom arrangement. I think her pleased acceptance was due more to the increased chances (as she saw it) of entertaining Wim than to getting rid of Jonny. She hadn’t, of course, got rid of him. There were no locks on the doors of any rooms in the flat, Jonny could have got to her any time he wanted to, and he certainly would want to when he was sure the money was nowhere on the roofs. The fact that I had hidden it made me feel very uncomfortable and when I went down to take Mabel home I checked in the sideboard drawer. It was there. Of course it was. But I was dissatisfied with my hiding place and I considered moving it. On Sunday, two days away, I was to wish I had. But that Friday evening it seemed safe enough, as safe as anywhere.