The Other Family Part 22

They struggled to their feet and made for the door.

'Oh G.o.d-'

'I'll go first,' Amy said. 'Follow me. Come with me.'

It was quiet on the landing. Amy called, 'Mum?'

There was another thud, more muted. And then a small clatter.

'Mum?'

'I'm here,' Chrissie called.

They started down the stairs.

'Where-'

'Here,' she said. She sounded exhausted.

They reached the first-floor landing. Chrissie's bedroom door was open, and out of it spilled heaps and piles of clothes, still on their hangers, jackets and trousers and suits. Richie's clothes.

The girls stared.

'Mum, what are you doing?'

Chrissie was still in the clothes she had been wearing when she went out with Sue, still in her gold necklaces, still in her high-heeled boots. She had sc.r.a.ped her hair back into a ponytail and there were dark shadows under her eyes.

'What do you think I'm doing?'

'But-'

'I'm moving Dad's clothes out. I'm emptying the cupboards in my bedroom of Dad's clothes.'

'But not now, Mum, not tonight-'

'Why not tonight?'

'Because it's late, because you're tired, because we'll help you-'

Chrissie waved an arm towards the sliding heaps of clothes.

'I've done it. Can't you see? I've done it. You can help me take it all downstairs if you want to, but I've done it.'

They were silent. They stood, Dilly slightly behind Amy, and looked at the chaos of garments and hangers. Amy said brokenly, 'Oh Mum-'

Chrissie turned sharply to look at her.

'Well,' she demanded. 'Well? It's what you wanted, isn't it? It's what you wanted me to do?'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Beside the street-door release b.u.t.ton in Margaret Rossiter's office in Front Street was a small screen which showed, in fish-eye distortion, the face of the person speaking into the intercom. Margaret had had the screen installed to rea.s.sure Glenda, who, in the early days of her employment at the agency, had been convinced that she might, inadvertently, let someone into the premises whom she did not recognize, and who had no business to be there. Even with the screen, Glenda was inclined, when alone in the office, to go down to the street door to let visitors in in person, rather than risk them coming in unsupervised, and failing to secure the door behind them. It also seemed to Glenda that the casualness of buzzing someone into a building electronically from the first floor was rude, especially when, to her considerable alarm, she saw that the face on the screen, his mouth looming cartoon-large, belonged to Bernie Harrison.

'One moment, Mr Harrison,' Glenda said, and fled downstairs to the street door, wis.h.i.+ng that she had, at six-thirty that morning, obeyed a frivolous impulse to put on her new cardigan.

Bernie Harrison was smiling. He looked entirely unsurprised to see Glenda.

'Bet you didn't expect to see me?'

Glenda held the door a little wider. Bernie Harrison wore grey flannels and a soft tweed jacket and a tie. When she left home that morning, Barry was engaged in his usual angry independent battle to get dressed, in tracksuit bottoms and a sweats.h.i.+rt and a fleece gilet, none of them in coordinating colours.

'No, Mr Harrison,' Glenda said.

'May I come in?'

Glenda stood back against the wall of the narrow hallway to let him pa.s.s.

'Mrs Rossiter isn't here-'

Bernie began to climb the stairs with a purposeful tread.

'Glenda, I know Mrs Rossiter isn't here. I know Mrs Rossiter has a meeting in the city this morning. I have come to see you.'

Glenda closed the street door in silence. Then she followed Bernie Harrison up the stairs and into the main office, where he was already standing, and looking about him with an air that Glenda felt was improperly a.s.sessing. She folded her hands in front of her.

'Can I get you anything, Mr Harrison? Tea? Or coffee?'

'Nothing, thank you.' He beamed at her. 'You don't think I should be here, Glenda, do you?'

She raised her chin a little. She said primly, 'I'm not in the habit of doing anything behind Mrs Rossiter's back.'

He laughed. Glenda did not join in. He crossed the room and sat down in the chair by the window that Margaret used when she had papers to read for a meeting, because the light was good.

'Won't you sit down?'

'No, thank you, Mr Harrison.'

'I shan't stay long,' Bernie said. 'I can see you won't let me stay long, anyway.' He leaned forward. 'I think you know pretty much everything that goes on in this office.'

Glenda said nothing. She stood where she had halted, a few feet inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her.

'You will therefore know,' Bernie Harrison said, 'that I made Mrs Rossiter an offer recently.'

Glenda gave the most imperceptible of nods.

'Which she turned down.'

Glenda raised her chin a little further, so that she could look past Bernie Harrison and out through the venetian blinds to parallel slits of cloud-streaked sky above the roofs of the buildings opposite.

'Have you,' Bernie said, 'any idea why she turned me down?'

Glenda took a breath. Margaret would expect her to be discreet, but she would not expect her to be either dumb or insolent.

'I think it didn't suit her, Mr Harrison. I think what she has here suits her very well.'

'And does it suit you?'

Glenda said in a rush, 'I couldn't wish for better.'

'Are you sure?'

Glenda nodded vehemently.

'So you'd turn down more money and better working conditions and more variety and responsibility in your job?'

'I'd turn anything down,' Glenda said fiercely, 'that didn't involve working for Mrs Rossiter.'

Bernie spread his hands and put on an expression of mock amazement.

'Who said anything about not working for Mrs Rossiter?'

'Mr Harrison, you were hinting-'

'Glenda, whatever I was suggesting to you was in the context of still working for Mrs Rossiter.'

Glenda found that her hands had unclasped themselves and were now gripping her elbows, crossed over her body.

'I don't follow you-'

'Mrs Rossiter turned me down,' Bernie said, 'but that doesn't mean I accepted her refusal. I didn't. I don't. It makes every bit of sense for me to buy up this agency, making Mrs Rossiter my partner with you remaining as her a.s.sistant. I'm not giving up. I'm not a man to give up, especially when what I want happens to be good for all concerned into the bargain.'

'So-'

'So I came here to tell you that your job is safe as long as you want it. That your pay would go up something of a rarity in these dark days, wouldn't you say? and you'd work in proper offices in Eldon Square with enough colleagues to give you a better social working life.'

Glenda let go of her elbows.

'Couldn't you say all this in front of Mrs Rossiter?'

Bernie Harrison got to his feet.

'Not at the moment. She won't listen to me at the moment. But I think she will in time I intend she will in time. And when she does-' He stopped and directed another smile right at Glenda, like a spotlight. 'I want you to remember this conversation.'

'Very well, Mr Harrison.'

'I'll see myself out, then.'

'No,' Glenda said, 'I'll see you out. That way, I can make sure the street door is really shut.'

Bernie leaned forward. He gave Glenda a wink.

'Behind me?' he said.

Margaret took the metro back to Tynemouth from Monument station. She had walked from her meeting to Monument through the Central Arcade because she always liked, for professional as well as sentimental reasons, to pause by J. G. Windows to check out the sheet music, and the instruments. The instruments never failed to excite her, never had, since that first day she and Richie had gone in as teenagers and had stood in front of the guitar that he longed for, and couldn't afford, and he'd said daft teenage things like, 'One day, I'll be able to afford all the guitars I want,' and she'd said, 'Course you will,' because when you're fifteen the promise of the future has as much reality as the present. Then there'd been a time when Richie had had his own section there, his own bin of sheet music, his racks of records, then tapes, then CDs. Even now, some of the a.s.sistants still knew her, even if now they knew her more because of her local clients than because of Richie. Going into J. G. Windows always gave Margaret a visceral jolt, as if reminding her of the fundamental reason that she did what she did instead of working, as she had for so many years, for a solicitor whose clients all lived within ten miles of his practice.

On her way out of the instrument department, she pa.s.sed a tall, cylindrical gla.s.s display case. It was a case she had pa.s.sed hundreds of times before but which was noticeable on this occasion because a mother and daughter were having an argument in front of it. The case was full of flutes, displayed upright, on perspex stands, and in the centre was a pink Yamaha flute with a price ticket attached to it which read '469'.

'Then I won't frigging play at all!' The daughter was shouting.

Margaret looked at the mother. She did not appear to be the kind of mother to give in, or to be embarra.s.sed by the ranting going on beside her.

'There's that new Trevor James,' the mother said, 'Three hundred and ninety-nine pounds. Or the Buffet at three hundred and forty-nine pounds. I'm not going above four hundred.'

The daughter collapsed against the display case. She said aggrievedly, 'I want a pink one.'

'Why?' Margaret said.

Neither mother nor daughter seemed at all disconcerted at the intervention. The daughter squirmed slightly.

'I like pink-'

'How old are you?'

'Twelve.'

'What grade?'

The daughter said nothing.

The mother said, 'Answer the lady, Lorraine.'

'Four,' Lorraine said sulkily.

'I've been in the music business,' Margaret said, 'for three times as long as you've been alive. And I can tell you that the Buffet is good value and all you need for grade four.'

'There,' the mother said.

'It's a lovely instrument, the flute,' Margaret said. 'You should be proud to play it. Not everyone can. You need a good sound, not a colour. It isn't a handbag.' She glanced at the mother. 'You stand firm, pet.'

The mother was looking back at the case of flutes.

'It's my life's work, trying to be firm,' she said.