Maybe you are wondering where I got the funds. Roger discovered the seven large uncut diamonds. They were hidden in the hollow wooden perch fixed in the travelling-box he so disliked. He’d pecked through the wood before I got him home from the Marwood Hotel. So Isabella’s “brother” had them in his possession for a short time, and never knew it. Sorry, Isabella — I’m certain they were meant for me. They were my legacy from Uncle George. Along with Roger, who is sitting on my shoulder as I write these words.
He’s got life running as he wants it, I think.
Passion Killers
The doorbell chimed.
In the kitchen, Gloria looked at the clock. She had to be out of the house by half-past, or she’d certainly be late for choir practice. The tea was too hot, so she added some extra milk to cool it, took a sip and found it didn’t taste like tea any more.
Her mother was letting a few seconds pass before going to the door. She wouldn’t want it known that she’d been behind the net curtain in the front room for the past ten minutes.
Presently Gloria heard the caller being greeted in a refined accent her mother never used normally. “Is it actually raining outside? I must tell my daughter. She’s about to go to choir practice. She’s a soloist with the Surrey Orpheus, you know. Gloria, my dear,” the message came, still impeccably spoken, like a headmistress in school assembly, “it appears to be raining.”
“I know.”
Tonight the choir were rehearsing the Cathedral Christmas Concert. “Sheep May Safely Graze” was open on the kitchen table. Nobody seemed to mind that the piece happened to be secular, from the Hunting Cantata; it was so often played in church. Gloria, who would be singing the part of Diana, supported the League Against Cruel Sports really and hoped people wouldn’t say she was abandoning her principles just to get out of the chorus. She got up and tipped the tea down the sink, ran some water over the cup and saucer and reached automatically for the tea-cloth, but the tea-cloth didn’t come to hand. Instead, of all things, she found that she was about to dry the cup on her mother’s thermal knickers. They had been through the washing machine the day before and Mother must have hung them to dry on the towel rail, long-legged things in a hideous shade of pink described in the mail-order catalogue as peach-coloured. Even her mother laughingly called them her passion killers. Gloria clicked her tongue in annoyance and tossed them over the folding clothes-rack where they should have been.
The visitor was Mr Hibbert, the dapper man from number 31. For the last two Fridays he had called on Gloria’s mother, Mrs Palmer, at precisely this time, just as Gloria was leaving for choir. The pretext for the visits wasn’t mentioned, and Gloria hadn’t asked. Her mother was only forty-one and divorced. She was entitled to invite a male friend to the house if she wished. It wasn’t as if she was getting up to anything shameful. No doubt Mr Hibbert had a perfectly proper reason for calling. True, Mother had put on her slinky black dress and sprayed herself with Tabu, but it was just to make herself presentable. It couldn’t mean anything else. Mr Hibbert had a wife and lived just four doors up the street.
At seventeen, Gloria viewed her mother’s social life with detachment. Sometimes she felt the more mature of the two of them. Gloria worked in a small draper’s shop in the High Street that had somehow survived the competition from department stores and mail order catalogues. It stocked a tasteful range of fabrics, haberdashery and wools. There were foundation garments discreetly folded away in wooden drawers under the glass counter. Nobody under forty ever went in there. Since leaving school Gloria hadn’t kept up with her so-called friends, who had always seemed far too juvenile, obsessed with pop-singers and boyfriends. Even though she was the youngest in the choir by some years, the others talked of her with approval as old-fashioned. The way she plaited her fine, dark hair and pinned it into the shape of a lyre at the back of her head strengthened the perception.
In the hall, she put on her black fitted coat and checked her hair in the mirror. She called out, “I’m off, then. Bye.”
From behind the closed door of the front room, her mother called, “Bye, darling.” It was a pity she chose to add something else, a terrible pity as it turned out, but she did. First she called out, “Gloria.”
“Yes?”
“If you’re not in bed by midnight, you’d better come home.”
The remark was meant to be funny and Mr Hibbert showed that he thought it was — or that he ought to react as if it was — by laughing out loud. Then her mother laughed too.
Gloria was deeply shocked. She gasped and shut her eyes. There was a swishing sound in her ears. The humiliation was unendurable. That her own mother should say such a thing in front of a man — a neighbour — was a betrayal.
And the way they had laughed together meant that Gloria must have been mistaken about them. Mr Hibbert’s visit wasn’t the innocent event she had taken it to be. It couldn’t be. Decent people didn’t laugh at smutty humour. By mocking her, they were affirming their own promiscuity — or at the very least their desire to be promiscuous.
She was disgusted.
To burst into the room and protest would only aggravate the injury. They’d tell her she had no sense of humour. They’d encourage each other to say worse things about her.
She turned towards the mirror again, as if the sight of the outrage on her own features would confirm the injustice of the offence. In the whole of her life she had never given her mother cause to doubt her moral conduct. She’d avoided drugs and smoking and she’d never allowed a boy to take the liberties most other girls yielded blithely. Keeping her standards high had not been easy. She was as prone to temptation as anyone else. She’d had to be strong-willed — and put up with a fair amount of derision from so-called friends who had been less resolute when temptation beckoned. Having to suffer taunts from her own mother was too much.
Mind, she knew that her mother had a streak of irresponsibility. Ninety-nine per cent of the time Mrs Tina Palmer behaved as a mother should. But Gloria could never depend on her. A certain look came over Mother at these times, as if she’d just tossed back a couple of gins (in fact, she didn’t drink). Dimples would appear at the ends of her mouth, her eyes would twinkle, and then she was liable to do anything. Anything. Once, at a school speech day, seated in a privileged place in the front row because Gloria was getting a good conduct prize, Mrs Palmer had winked at Mr Shrubb, the PE teacher, who was up on the stage with all the staff. Most of the teachers had noticed and next day it was mentioned or hinted at in just about every lesson. Another time, bored in a supermarket queue, Mrs Palmer had started juggling with oranges and had swiftly drawn a large crowd. Gloria wasn’t among them. Too embarrassed to watch the display, she’d slipped out through an empty checkout.
At this moment she wasn’t prepared to accept what had been said as yet another example of Mother being skittish again. She was deeply humiliated and ablaze with anger. Her evening was ruined. She was in no frame of mind now to go to choir practice. How could anyone do justice to Bach feeling as she did? She opened the chest in the hall and dropped her music case into it.
She’d go out anyway. Anywhere. She couldn’t bear to remain under the same roof while her feckless mother entertained her fancy-man in the front room.
Her hand was on the door in the act of opening it when she noticed Mr Hibbert’s coat hanging on the antique hallstand that was Mother’s pride and joy. It was one of those elegant navy blue coats with black velvet facing on the collar. Gloria had once thought men who wore such coats were the acme of smartness. Now she was willing to believe that they were all playboys. She was tempted to spit on it, or pull off one of the buttons. Then a far more engaging idea crept into her mind, a wicked, horrid, but deliciously appropriate means of revenge.