An Awfully Big Adventure Part 12

Lily put the shoes on a piece of newspaper on the table and began to pick the mud from them. She said, 'I wanted Renee to leave Stella with us.'

'She wouldn't countenance it,' Vernon said. 'Then we heard she'd lost her job and was up to her old tricks, going out to dances and things.'

'But we didn't know she was leaving the child on her own,' cried Lily. 'We never thought she'd do that.'

'No,' he agreed. 'We never thought she'd do that.'

That was why it had been such a shock when the neighbours came round to tell Lily the baby was screaming and there was n.o.body answering the door or any lights on in the house. He had to break a window in the bas.e.m.e.nt to get in. The place stank of paraffin and turpentine and dry rot. He wrinkled his nose as if the smell was still in his nostrils. She was in a cot in the back room with a row of night-lights set along the floor. The daft thing was there was a rose on her pillow. It was withered, of course.

O'Hara had risen and gone to stand at the mantelpiece. From time to time he had nodded politely. Now he drummed his fingers on the edge of the shelf; he looked bored.

'There could have been a fire,' said Lily. She came to the hearth, worried lest O'Hara should get his hands dirty. She began to turn the pictures round and flap at the mantelpiece with a duster.

'Life is full of conflagrations,' O'Hara said. 'We can never be sure when we'll be consumed by the past.'

She nodded. He had a lovely way of talking, but then, he was an actor.

When O'Hara had gone Vernon hobbled upstairs to ring Harcourt. 'They've all been round,' he said, after telling Harcourt of his accident. 'That director chap came and a couple of the actors... the leading ones.'

'I thought you weren't going to the match.'

'Ah, well,' said Vernon, 'Stella insisted. I didn't like to let her down. She was very upset when I fell over. She cradled my head, you know.'

'That was decent,' said Harcourt.

'I told this O'Hara fellow about her mother this morning. I had to. Something's cropped up. He's going to keep an eye open.'

'It's nothing serious, I hope.'

'Nothing me and Lily can't handle. She's been telling her fibs again.'

'Like mother, like daughter,' said Harcourt unwisely.

'Renee wasn't all bad,' snapped Vernon. 'She had a spark, if you remember. She won that compet.i.tion to be the speaking clock out of the whole of England.'

'The girl with the golden voice,' said Harcourt, by way of apology.

Vernon told him how he'd been taken home from the football field in a chauffeur-driven car. He said it had smelt like a bar parlour.

O'Hara rode his motor-cycle to the Pier Head and parked it against the granite bollards at the entrance to the Albert Dock. He waited until the policeman disappeared inside his prefabricated hut before dodging under the railings and walking rapidly away across the giant crazy paving towards the blitzed warehouses. He had some notion of hiding in the ruins until it was time to go to the theatre. He wanted to howl like a dog and hear the echoes all around him.

Crossing the swing-bridge above the water he lost his footing on a streak of black oil. Falling, he struck the back of his skull hard on the edge of the bridge. He swung his head from side to side, trying to get rid of that image of the girl he had known as Stella Maris holding a baby in her arms.

There was a crocodile of children winding halfway round the square for the afternoon matinee. George told Stella that St Aloysius's orphanage had a block-booking. The seats had been paid for by the City Corporation. It was a gesture made every year.

She was talking to Prue in the wardrobe it was Geoffrey's turn to call the half hour, when Bunny came running up the stairs. He wanted to know if she had seen O'Hara. 'Why me?' she said.

'Stop playing funny b.u.g.g.e.rs,' he shouted. 'O'Hara isn't in his dressing-room.'

At the quarter hour, when O'Hara still hadn't arrived, Rose called a taxi and sent Bunny up to Percy Street. The biology student opened the door. He hadn't seen O'Hara all morning because he'd slept in. 'His bike's not there,' he said helpfully, having gone up into the street to look.

O'Hara's bed was made and the dishes washed. Bunny read the unfinished letter on the table: It may be that you think my a.s.sociation with a certain person will prevent me from doing anything about Geoffrey. If this is so, you are mistaken. My concern, as on a previous previous occasion, is for a young man whose life may well be ruined by your attentions. I was approached once before, and have been so again. If the situation continues I will have no other recourse than to set the facts before Rose Lipman. It is... occasion, is for a young man whose life may well be ruined by your attentions. I was approached once before, and have been so again. If the situation continues I will have no other recourse than to set the facts before Rose Lipman. It is...

Bunny burned the letter in the sink and sluiced the ashes under the tap.

The curtain had to be delayed while Meredith made up as Mr Darling. None of the clothes fitted. He was taller than O'Hara, and thinner. Rose made a front-of-curtain speech begging the audience's indulgence.

The police arrived during the beginning of Act Four, set in 'the hole under the ground'. Tigerlily's braves had finished chanting their ugh, ugh, wah, and Wendy, having reminded Peter to change his flannels and left his medicine bottle perched in the fork of a tree, had flown away home. Babs, emerging into the corridor, saw Bunny sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, being spoken to by an officer of the law. Bunny was smiling in a peculiar way, eyebrows raised as though preparing his face to respond to the punch line of a s.m.u.tty joke.

Babs said, 'Bunny, what's happened? Is it bad news?' But he flapped his hand at her in a dismissive gesture as if she had no right to be there.

Stella heard about O'Hara from the child playing Slightly. 'Captain Hook's downed hisself in the river,' he babbled.

Presently, Tinkerbell drank the medicine intended for Peter. It was an affecting moment. 'Why Tink,' cried Peter, 'it was poisoned and you drank it to save my life. Tink, dear, Tink, are you dying?'

Stella's hands were trembling as she held the torch. She could hear Mary Deare droning on: 'Her light is going faint, and if it goes out that means she is dead. Her voice is so low I can scarcely hear what she is saying. She says she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies. Say quickly that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands.' 'Her light is going faint, and if it goes out that means she is dead. Her voice is so low I can scarcely hear what she is saying. She says she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies. Say quickly that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands.'

Stella dropped the torch and let it roll into the wings as the children brought their palms together to save Tinkerbell. The light swished from the back-cloth. For a moment the clapping continued, rose in volume, then died raggedly away, replaced by a tumult of weeping...

0.

A man with a white m.u.f.fler wound about his throat rolled from the black shadows of the Ice Warehouse and the girl stopped and spoke to him. 'I need to make a telephone call,' she said, 'and I haven't any money. Someone's died.'

The man stared at her; he was holding a bouquet of flowers in a twist of paper. 'I wasn't to blame,' the girl said. 'He was happy. He kept saying well done. I'm not old enough to shoulder the blame. Not all of it.'

'Give over,' he said. 'There's no need to make a meal of it.' He gave her five pennies and a farthing and lurched away under the bouncing lime trees, one hand unb.u.t.toning his fly, the other, arm raised fastidiously above his head, clutching that bedraggled fistful of winter daffodils.

She rang the familiar combination of numbers. 'It's been awful,' she said. 'There was a man who seduced me.'

'The time,' mother intoned, 'is 6.45 and 40 seconds precisely.'

'It wasn't my fault,' Stella shouted. 'I'll know how to behave next time. I'm learning. I'm just bending down to tie a shoe-lace. Everyone is just waiting round the corner.'

'The time,' pretty mother said, 'is 6.47 and 20 seconds precisely.'

Also by Beryl Bainbridge

Fiction

An Awfully Big Adventure

Another Part of the Wood

The Birthday Boys

The Bottle Factory Outing

Collected Stories

The Dressmaker

Filthy Lucre

Harriet Said

Injury Time

Mum and Mr Armitage

Northern Stories (ed., with David Pownall)

A Quiet Life

Sweet William

Watson's Apology

A Weekend with Claude

Winter Garden

Young Adolf

Non-fiction

English Journey, or, the road to Milton Keynes

Forever England; North and South

Something Happened Yesterday