A Lesser Evil Part 1

A Lesser Evil.

by LESLEY PEa.r.s.e.

To Jo Prosser, for all the laughs, the shared triumphs and disasters over so many years. What would I do without you?

Special thanks to Claire Ledingham at Penguin for her wisdom, tact and patience. And to Emma Draude for her support, interest and friends.h.i.+p above and beyond the call of duty.

Chapter One.

March 1962, Bristol.

'I want to sit down, not eat you!'

At the young man's jocular remark Fifi blushed and quickly shut her gaping mouth. 'I'm sorry, I was miles away. Of course you can share the table.'

She had in fact been dumbstruck because the man was so incredibly good-looking. Men who looked like Red Indians didn't normally frequent Carwardines coffee shop. He might be wearing a donkey jacket, jeans and desert boots, but his face was pure Apache.

'So where were you?' he asked as he sat down. 'In the South of France? Dancing with Fred Astaire or planning a murder?'

Fifi giggled. 'Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. The only thing I need to kill is some time till my friend gets here.'

'Well, you could kill it talking to me,' he said with a wide smile that revealed perfect white teeth. 'Or has your mother warned you about speaking to strange men?'

Fifi knew her mother would throw a fit if she saw her daughter talking to a man like this one. For a start, it was obvious from his clothes and callused hands that he did manual work. His hair was jet-black and a little too long; he had amazing angular cheekbones and a wide mouth that screamed to be kissed. An over-protective mother's worst nightmare!

'I think even she'd imagine I was safe enough in here,' Fifi replied, glancing round at the many middle-aged ladies who were having tea and a cake after a hard day's shopping.

'Got any idea where Gloucester Road is?' he asked. 'I was directed this way from the station and told to ask again.'

'It's sort of over that way,' Fifi replied, pointing in the rough direction. 'It's a long road, though have you got any landmarks or other street names?'

He pulled a sc.r.a.p of paper from his pocket and looked at it. 'Opposite the junction of Zetland Road,' he said. 'D'you know that?'

Fifi couldn't help but smile at him. His accent might be rough Wilts.h.i.+re, but there was humour in everything he said, and such a wicked sparkle in his dark eyes. 'Yes, it's only a longish walk or a short bus ride. I could draw you a map if you like.'

'Great! I can make out I'm Dr Livingstone going up the Zambesi. Will the people around Zetland Road be cannibals?'

'Why, are you one?' she giggled.

'I could be tempted. You look good enough to eat,' he shot back, his dark eyes sweeping over her with appreciation. 'Anyone ever tell you that you look like Tuesday Weld?'

People often likened Fifi to the blonde American film star and it always made her glow with pleasure, for the actress was very pretty. But as Fifi's entire childhood had been overshadowed by being considered very strange-looking, she was never entirely convinced that she'd changed.

'It has been said by those who need gla.s.ses,' she joked. 'But has anyone told you that you look like a Red Indian?'

'Yeah, now and again. The truth is, I'm the Last of the Mohicans, abandoned as a baby in Swindon,' he said.

The waitress came over at that point and took his order for coffee.

'So you come from Swindon? What brings you to Bristol?' Fifi asked him.

'To seek my fortune,' he smiled. 'I'm starting work at a building site here. I'm a bricklayer. I've got a room to see in Gloucester Road. What's it like around there?'

'Okay. Good shops, pubs, plenty of buses, lots of students live there. It's not rough, but not smart either.'

'I bet you live somewhere smart!' he said, appraising her tailored office suit with a crisp white blouse beneath.

'Suburban. Roses in the gardens and lots of trees,' she said briefly, not inclined to talk about herself and her family. What she wanted was to find out everything about this intriguing man before Carol arrived. 'I'm Felicity Brown. But I'm always called Fifi. So what's your name?'

'Dan Reynolds,' he said. 'And Fifi suits you. Pretty, like a little fluffy poodle.'

'I'm not fluffy,' she said indignantly. Her blonde hair was poker-straight, she was five feet seven, and she didn't go in for fussy clothes. At twenty-two, she also had the distinction of being the youngest legal secretary ever to be taken on at Hodge, Barratt and Soames, one of the best solicitors in Bristol.

'I think the word I should have used was chic,' he said, but he p.r.o.nounced it 'chick'.

Fifi smiled. She liked that description.

'So, Fifi, are you meeting a boyfriend?' he asked.

The waitress came back with Dan's coffee.

'No, just a girlfriend,' Fifi said, watching him stir in four spoonfuls of sugar. 'I usually meet her after work on Thursdays and we go to the pictures.' She was already hoping that Carol wouldn't turn up or at least that she'd be late.

'Have you got a boyfriend?'

'No,' Fifi said truthfully. 'What about you?'

'No boyfriend,' he said, and laughed. 'I'm not that way inclined. I did have a girl a while back but she left me for a rich bloke.'

'And were you heartbroken?'

'My pride was bruised, but it wasn't going anywhere, just habit really.'

They chatted easily for some time after Dan had finished his coffee. He didn't use any of the normal chat-up lines, not asking her about what music she liked, films she'd seen or even what she did for a living. He didn't talk about himself either, instead he made observations about people around them and told her little fict.i.tious stories about them to make her laugh.

Fifi's mother, Clara, was always saying that the most outstanding thing about her eldest child was her nosiness. She claimed that as soon as Fifi could talk she was asking questions about people, and it had caused her much embarra.s.sment. Fifi was still every bit as nosy, but she had learned to phrase her questions in a way that sounded caring rather than prying. It was lovely to be with someone who appeared just as fascinated by others as herself.

When the waitress came back to clear their table and rather pointedly put down the bills, Dan said he would have to go or he might lose the room.

'Could you do that map for me?' he asked, casually picking up her bill and paying it along with his own.

Fifi thought fast. 'I could show you the way,' she said. 'It's on my way home.' It wasn't, but he wouldn't know that.

'But what about your friend?' he asked.

Fifi shrugged. 'She'd have been here by now if she was coming.'

That wasn't true either. Carol was often kept late at work, and she'd be disappointed when she got here and found Fifi had gone. And if she were to find out she'd been stood up for a complete stranger, Fifi doubted she'd ever speak to her again. But there was something so compelling about Dan that she was quite prepared to take that risk.

'If you're sure,' he said. 'I've only got to take a look at the room and grab it if it's okay. If you like, I could take you for a drink after?'

Fifi didn't want to look too keen, so she shrugged nonchalantly, but she had her coat on, and whisked Dan and his small duffel bag, which appeared to hold his entire worldly goods, swiftly out of the door before Carol could get there and prevent her.

'I'll wait for you over here,' Fifi said, sheltering from the rain in a haberdashery shop doorway. The guest house Dan was looking for was across the busy road, above a scruffy-looking newsagent's. The paint on the front door was peeling off, and the sign 'Avondale' looked as if the lettering had been done by a drunk. Judging by the dingy nets at the windows, it was not going to be a home from home.

'You can't wait here, it's too cold and wet,' Dan said, and looked around and spotted a pub further down the road. 'Go in there.'

'I can't go into a pub on my own,' Fifi said in horror. 'I'll be fine here.'

He faltered for a moment, as if thinking she might disappear while he was gone. 'I won't be more than five minutes,' he said, and darted across the road.

Fifi got only the briefest glimpse of a gaunt woman in a flowery overall opening the door to Dan, then the door closed behind him and she turned to look at the window display.

The theme was 'Spring', with white-painted branches festooned with b.a.l.l.s of knitting wool in pastel colours. There were samples of crochet work, knitted lambs and rabbits, and various embroidery kits. As always when Fifi saw such displays, she felt a little tremor of nervousness. Her mother was always saying that knitting and sewing, along with cooking, were skills needed to be a wife and mother, and Fifi was terrible at all three.

All her friends were desperate to get married, and every new man they went out with had them mooning over engagement rings and bridal magazines. Fifi didn't share her friends' desperation, but whether this was because she really liked being single, or because her mother was always pointing out her failings, she didn't know.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

It was Dan, and when he saw how startled she was, he laughed. 'Sorry. Were you off on planet knitting wool?' he asked.

'Hardly,' she giggled. 'I'm hopeless at knitting. You were quick! Did you get the room? What was it like?'

'A damp, cold cell, with mushrooms growing on the wallpaper,' he grinned, 'but I bit off the woman's arm to have it, just so I could get back to take you for a drink.'

'Is the room really that bad?' Fifi asked as they walked down to the pub.

'Worse,' he laughed. 'The landlady is called Mrs Chambers. I wanted to ask if it was a Death Chamber, but she looked and sounded like Olive Oyl, Popeye's girlfriend, and that threw me.' He impersonated the woman's voice, 'No female visitors at any time. No callers or radios after ten. Clean sheets once a fortnight, all breakages must be replaced.'

Fifi giggled. 'It sounds frightful!'

'Not as bad as some places I've stayed in,' he said with a shrug and that delicious impish grin which made Fifi's toes curl up. 'I stayed in a place in Birmingham once where they operated a s.h.i.+ft system. As I got up, another bloke who worked nights came in and got in my bed.'

'I don't believe that.' Fifi laughed. 'You're making it up!'

'It's true,' he insisted. 'We became really good mates in the end he said I was the best bed-warmer he'd ever known.'

Fifi shuddered. 'I couldn't sleep in someone else's sheets,' she said.

'I don't suppose you've ever had to,' he said, looking sideways at her appraisingly. 'You look as if you've been brought up in the lap of luxury.'

The lap of luxury was perhaps an exaggeration, but Fifi was aware that her family's standard of living was much higher than average. Their semi-detached house in Westbury-on-Trym, one of Bristol's most pleasant suburbs, was large and comfortable, and as her father was a lecturer at Bristol University, that placed them firmly in the upper-middle cla.s.ses. Although they were not rich by any means, there had always been month-long holidays in Devon, bicycles, dancing and tennis lessons. Fifi had gone to a private secretarial college after leaving school. But she'd never really thought of herself as particularly fortunate because almost all her friends came from similar backgrounds.

'I don't get on that well with my mother,' she blurted out.

She didn't really know why she told him that, true though it was. Maybe it was a way of distancing herself from her background. 'I really ought to leave home and get a flat of my own.'

In the pub over a drink Fifi told Dan about her younger siblings, Patty, Robin and Peter, and that there were only fourteen to sixteen months between each of them. 'They are all more like Mum and Dad,' she explained. 'They're docile and obedient. I was a disappointment to Mum from the start because I was weird.'

'You don't look weird to me,' Dan said. 'Far from it.'

'You wouldn't say that if you could see the photos of me at five or six.' Fifi giggled. 'I was as thin as a rasher of bacon, my hair was snow-white like an albino's, and I had a huge mouth and bug eyes.'

To ill.u.s.trate this she pulled at her eyes and lips to make herself grotesque, a trick she'd found always made people laugh.

'So the good fairy came along, did she?' Dan chuckled, sounding as if he didn't believe her. 'Or am I looking at you with magic eyes?'

'What's that?' Fifi asked.

'My one talent,' he said. 'I don't ever let myself be disappointed. Looking at things with magic eyes makes me see how they could be when I'd rearranged them, painted, repaired or tweaked them. Take that room up the road. I imagined it with nice wallpaper and a rug on the floor, then it wasn't so bad.'

Fifi thought that was a lovely idea. She wondered if she could apply it to her mother and see how she would be if her critical manner, her sarcasm and suspicion could be removed. 'So do I need tweaking or rearranging?'

Dan shook his head. 'No, you're just perfect. I can't really believe that on my first night in Bristol I've got such a pretty girl with me. Even if you did only come with me out of pity.'

It wasn't pity Fifi felt for him, far from it. It wasn't just that he was so handsome, it was the sparkle in his dark eyes, the fullness of his lips, the sheen on his skin, the lithe animal grace with which he moved. He made her giggle and her heart flutter. She couldn't remember any man having this effect on her before, but then the kind of men she normally dated were usually smooth, besuited office workers.

'Now, what makes you think I came out of pity?' she said archly, raising her eyebrows.

'So what was it then?' he grinned.

'Curiosity. I'm famous as a nosy parker. When I was a kid I used to embarra.s.s my parents by asking total strangers the most personal questions.'

'Go on then, ask me one,' he dared her.

Fifi had a hundred questions she was dying to ask, but if she could only pick one it had to be something that would move things on to a more personal level.

'Have you got a hairy chest?' she asked.

He looked a bit stunned, but grinned and unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt, just enough for her to see smooth, hairless skin, still retaining the remnants of a golden tan. 'Any good?' he asked.

'Perfect,' she laughed. 'I can't bear hairy men.'

'Can I ask one now?' he said.

'As long as it doesn't involve me unb.u.t.toning my blouse.'