Woodiss Wins (eBook)

TWENTY-SIX

I dropped down the hill and turned and drove alomg Briarmains. The rain had eased. As I chugged past the statue, my eye was taken by a young woman who came out of the Co-op Emporium on the far side of the marketplace. She hesitated, looked up at the sky and decided she needed her umbrella up. She then walked round the corner into Lowgate. She was a striking figure, tall and fair-haired and would have had my attention even if she hadn’t looked familiar. As I crawled towards her I confirmed it was Gough’s sister. Apart from a brief word with her on the night she was welcomed back from exile, I hadn’t spoken to her. And before that our acquaintance had been limited to smiling and saying it’s-turned-out-nice-again. This day, I could have driven past and she wouldn’t have noticed me. There was no need to stop, just as there’d been no need to get in the Demon Despatch Rider’s way, but as I drew alongside, I did stop. I leaned across and called out, ‘Jo.’

Momentarily she looked sulky and surprised.

‘It is Joanna, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose you recognize me.’

‘Of course I do,’ she said loud and clear. ‘How are you Henry?’ She pushed her umbrella back and bent her head to talk to me. Her skin, stung by the icy drizzle, glowed pink with health. ‘I was going to have a word with you the other night, but you and Rebecca had got your heads together. Then you left early.’

‘If I’d known I’d have stayed,’ I said. ‘Which way are you going?’

‘I thought there was a teashop round here. I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

‘We don’t have refinements like teashops in Briarmains,’ I said, ‘but I’m going home and you’re welcome to share a pot with me.’

She hesitated. I realized that given The Company’s policy on not mixing the sexes, not to mention Jo’s own history of mixing, the invitation mightn’t be welcome.

‘Will Miriam be there?’ she said in a tone of voice that suggested she’d prefer her not to be.

‘Most likely she’ll be upstairs getting ready for work.’

That reassured her. She shook the bit of rain off her umbrella and got in the car.

As we entered the house, Jo sniffed the air. There was a delicious smell – Belle’s scent, not game stew - and it’d be even more pronounced in my bedroom. There’d be no occasion for Jo to go into my bedroom, but I slyly pulled the door to all the same.

Jo was studying Edith’s murals. ‘They’re good,’ she said, but her tone of voice seemed grudging as if, good or no, she disapproved of them.

I put her parcels on the console table, hung her hat and coat up and ushered her into the drawing room.

Jo stood for a sec, looking round as if she’d lost something, then settled on one of the sofas while I poked some life into the fire. I went off to make the tea.

Miriam was in the kitchen. ‘Ah, you’re home, I thought I heard voices,’ she said.

‘It’s Jo – Gough’s sister. She was looking for a café.’

‘In Briarmains? Was she really?’

‘Are you going to join us?’ I said, getting the cake tin out the cupboard.

‘No thank you.’ This was said in a decisive, not-Pygmalion-likely voice, but she added rater more civilly, ‘I’m going to the MacTurks. I’m sure you can manage another young woman on your own.’

She knew Belle had been here. I should have known I couldn’t keep it from a woman with her powers, so I said in a casual way, ‘Belle was in earlier on. You know, Gilroy’s friend. Just for an hour or so.’

Miriam produced a smile that might have come out of a rhubarb shed. ‘Long enough, I hope.’ Her smile soured even more. ‘Things are looking up, Henry,’ she said and turned away.

I took the tray through to the drawing room and put it on the table between the sofas. Jo was standing at the bookcase, gazing at the row of books about me and Edith. She turned and treated me to a full-scale, shiny white grin. All the Wickses, even Rebecca who wasn’t a Wicks by birth, had praiseworthy teeth, though Rebecca’s didn’t often see the light of day. ‘Shall I be mother?’ Jo said in her schoolteacher’s voice.

For sake of conversation I asked her what’d brought her to Briamains.

She finished pouring the tea before she answered. ‘Baby clothes,’ she said, lifting her cup and twisting her face into a grimace. She blew on her tea and took another exploratory sip. ‘They have a better range at the Emporium than anywhere in Whinbury.’

‘Get away. And Whinbury’s seven or eight times the size of Briarmains. That’s interesting, though not of value to me.’

‘You never know how things turn out,’ Jo said, grinning. ‘Kids grow so quickly you can hardly keep up with them.’

I nodded as if I knew about such things and wondered how she managed for money. She didn’t look down-at-heel. Far from it.

‘Where does Miriam live?’ Jo said. The tea now cool enough to drink, she drained the cup. She leaned over the pot. ‘Are you ready for another?’ she said.

I was still sipping cautiously, and shook my head. She refilled her cup.

‘Does she live upstairs?’

‘She’s got a room on the first floor.’ I indicated with my thumb a point in the corner of the ceiling.

‘And these rooms – are they separate? Do they form a discrete flat?’

‘Yes. At great expense I put that screen in, to protect myself.’

‘But you have to go through to the kitchen to cook?’

‘I don’t do much cooking. I’m not greatly interested in food. It’s mainly a matter of making a pot of tea or a stew. That’s the only time I meet my lodgers.’

‘Lodgers?’

‘Just one at the moment – just Miriam.’

‘Just Miriam.’ Jo laughed. ‘It sounds like a children’s book.’

‘She was in the kitchen when I mashed the tea. She sends her apologies. She’s got to go out or she’d have joined us.’

‘Thank God for small mercies,’ Jo said and laughed loudly. I suppose when Mother Wicks cracked a side-splitter they laughed at the top of their voices to show they’d got the joke.

To be honest – and I’m not saying this with hindsight – I thought Jo’s loudness let her down. She might, in Gilroy’s terminology, look like a fullum star, but she laughed like a drunken parrot. And though I’m generally forgiving about anything a beautiful young woman might say, I wasn’t sufficiently taken with her to overlook the slight on Miriam. I didn’t encourage her to linger and after she’d emptied the teapot and eaten her fill of Mrs. Joe’s fairy cakes, she left.

‘See you tomorrow night,’ she said heartily.

Gough, searching for a husband for his sister, should look for somebody who was hard of hearing. I might suggest that to him.

*

Even before he’d got his bicycle clips off, Gough said, ‘You’ve been entertaining our Jo, I hear.’

‘She needed a cup of tea.’

‘She loves tea.’ He was frowning slightly but I couldn’t judge if his frown should be categorized as worried, puzzled or disapproving.

‘I hope I didn’t seem unhospitable,’ I said, ‘but I daren’t encourage her to stay. I was thinking of my reputation.’

‘I doubt you were in danger, Henry.’

‘I didn’t feel I was, Gough. Your sister behaved correctly.’

Gough nodded as if that was to be expected. ‘It does her good to get out. She’s stuck in the house with the little ‘un and mum and dad. Rebecca’s never home, now she’s Chairman of Ways and Means.’ He added without enthusiasm: ‘Jo needs to see more people of our generation.’

I’d dropped a generation, which would put a spring in anybody’s walking stick, though I didn’t really need the stick and kept it more for effect, mainly when I went to Gough’s soirees.

I saw Jo on the Thursday and on Friday evening, then, lo and behold! I saw her one day when I left work. She was pushing a pushchair along the road I took on my way home. I stopped and put the pushchair in the boot. Jo settled comfortably beside me with the baby on her knee. Knowing what Jo looked like, you’ll have formed a picture of the child: a pretty little thing with pink skin and china blue eyes, and blonde curls peeping out from under her bonnet. That’s not how I now saw her: there were a few strands of hair, black and greasy, and her skin was unpinkly sallow. She stared at me steadily through half-open eyes – murky slits filled with watery suspicion. When she’d seen enough to form an opinion, she started to bawl.

‘Oo, sorry. She does cry a lot.’ Jo said.

‘Does she? I found with my little ones that a sharp tap on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper helped – but I daresay the RSPCA would object.’

Jo said she had a regular appointment at this time every week - funny I’d never noticed her before, she said - and I said in future I’d look out for her. And after that I bumped into her nearly every week.

*

Miriam – well wrapped up in her coat with the fur collar, and her fur hat and fur mittens and smelling richly of fur and scent – stood just inside the greenhouse doorway and watched me pricking out.

‘You must keep warm, Henry.’

‘I am warm. I had a good tot of rum before I came out.’

‘It can’t be good for your back, bending over that bench on a cold day.’ She came forward and touched my spine with her mitten. ‘You’ll undo all the elbow grease I’ve put in, trying to keep your parts moving.’ She pointed at the seedlings: ‘I hope they’ll be worth all your effort.’

‘They will when I fill...