‘When I showed the boss how it was done,’ murmured Nancy ‘he said I could’ve gone places.’
That was a long time ago, but the same sensation of discovery had settled on Nancy all over again: there was a link between things that didn’t seem to be connected: the death of that barrister, the photograph that arrived in the post and the change in her man’s nightmares.
A couple of weeks back, Nancy had bought a paper. A name on page five caught her eye. Elizabeth Glendinning QC, a well-known barrister, had been found dead at the wheel of a car parked in the East End. She had died of heart failure while trying to call for help. That evening Nancy showed the article to her man.
‘What a coincidence,’ said Nancy ‘She was just up the road from Mile End Park.’
Riley nodded, staring at the paper.
‘Did you see her at the fair?’ asked Nancy.
Riley’s jaw moved as if his gums were itching.
‘They found some old spoons on the seat,’ continued Nancy pensively ‘It’s sad if you ask me.’
During the night Riley moaned like he was being fried on a low heat. His face was hot and wet. And then, a couple of days ago, the letter came. Well, it wasn’t a letter. Riley tore it open and out popped a photograph. The two of them stared at the crimped black and white square on the table. Nancy noticed a booming chest and wide braces, a shirt without a collar.
Riley’s hand slammed onto the smiling face as if it were a wasp.
Nancy jumped. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, shaken.
‘No one.’ His eyes were trained hard on his fingers as if something might crawl out.
Nancy didn’t press her man. She’d learned not to. She could read the signs. He was like hot water in a pan, close to the boil. That night he screamed. In itself, that was no surprise: Riley had suffered nightmares since the trial. (‘Occupational hazard,’ said Mr Wyecliffe, as if he had them too.) They were always the same: he was running for dear life, chased by something like a dog they’d once seen at the races, and then he was falling… but this time it was slightly different.
‘What is it?’ wailed Nancy She’d been listening to his muttering but the cry had come like a brick through the window. To her astonishment he buried his head into her neck.
‘I’m falling’ — Nancy stroked his wet scalp. It was bony like a rock on the beach. His hand covered hers and they stayed like that, as if they were waiting for an ambulance; and then Riley added the bit that was new, the change in the dream — ‘I’m just falling down an endless stairwell.’
A stairwell? Strange things, are dreams.
From that day on, Riley’s nightmares got worse. To make himself tired, he started walking in the middle of the night along Limehouse Cut, the canal that ran through Bow to the Thames. He’d listen to the foxes in the old warehouses. But that was later. On this night, when he’d calmed down, Riley turned his back on Nancy and she felt her own stomach fail, for he was always moving away and she’d never got used to it. And Nancy said to herself, I’m not stupid. This dream, the photo and the death of that barrister are tied up somehow Mr Lawton hadn’t believed her, but in the end she’d been proved right, and he’d said, ‘You could’ve gone places.’
Come to think of it, that was insulting. The boss had let slip what he thought of Nancy: how she’d wasted her life. All she’d done was work for him and marry Graham Riley.
Nancy had gone to the docks when she’d turned sixteen, along with Rose Clarke and Martina Lynch. They’d been together since primary school. They remained a threesome, well known to everyone who worked on Harold Lawton’s quay; and they were seen every Friday night at the same pub just outside the main gates, the Admiral — a hole, really but it was ever so old, and there was this side room made from a ship’s cabin. A big plastic sign said the owners had been serving ‘seadogs since the days of rigging and sails’. Martina got the nickname Babycham from the landlord because she drank nothing else. True, Nancy was the dumpy one, but it didn’t seem to matter when she was jammed between the other two. She dressed nicely and there were always lads wanting to join their table. Thinking of those days, Nancy remembered a small detail about the weekend that followed the night before: more often than not, no one had asked her out. She could admit that now. What did it matter? It wasn’t through her friends that she’d met her man, anyway.
Riley used to clock in with all the others at eight in the morning. Back then, everyone had a card that was stamped in a big machine. It was the same at lunchtime. The lads all got one hour off, but they had to stamp their cards again if they’d left the premises, to show they were back on time. It was old-fashioned, but Mr Lawton liked the contraption. He wasn’t one for changing with the times. Funny really that his business should have lasted so long on the Isle of Dogs, while everyone else went under. Anyhow, one day Riley lingered in the office until they were alone. He’d been taken on a couple of months earlier, after being made redundant just down the road. So he was new, and different from the rest — not a Friday-night man, not a drinker. Quiet. Kept himself to himself. Didn’t need friends — didn’t want them. His hair was always ruffled and his eyes couldn’t keep still. They were blue-green and confused, as if he’d been shaken up in the bottle. And he’d noticed Nancy He watched her from the driver’s cabin of a crane. She knew because he once pulled the wrong lever, and all the stevedores went off it when he dropped a crate of bananas. So, on this day Nancy sensed him hanging around, edgy and shy She thought he was about to invite her to that big dance coming up in White City, but he wasn’t. Instead he asked her to risk her job.
‘Do my card for me, will you? I’ve got tenants to see.’
Nancy had been impressed. Here was a man with a bit of property. Hardly common among Lawton’s boys. A nest egg, he’d explained. He was getting other people to pay off the mortgage.
‘I just need about half an hour,’ said Riley looking over his shoulder.
Nancy agreed, and he studied her face like he was looking for spots. Then he said, as if he were handing over something precious, ‘I knew I could trust you.
She waited for him to ask her out, but he didn’t. A week or so later he suggested having tea in a hotel. She said yes, thinking he meant some place on Commercial Road, but he took her to Brighton, which was a double shock, because he paid for the train as well — first class, if you please. They were married within six months. Babycham and Rose were the only witnesses. There was no reception, just a free drink at the town hall and a cheeky kiss from the registrar. Her man didn’t like that. And he didn’t like her pals. She still saw them at Lawton’s, but the threesome had been split. So the Friday-night sessions came to an end. Nancy didn’t altogether mind, because, looking back, she’d never really enjoyed herself.
They moved into Riley’s bungalow and set up home. Nancy had always wanted a herb bed but there was no garden, just flagstones. So she started collecting bricks from the towpath by Limehouse Cut —just one at a time, if she happened to see one in the grass. Slowly as married life got underway the pile of bricks grew bigger, but the bed was never built. She was a few short. And that mirrored their life together. There were some missing pieces. Within weeks of that free drink at the town hall, the man who’d taken her to Brighton went into hiding — in his own home.
But, of course, he had to come out again. They were under one roof. During the day he was sharp and brusque, baring his teeth when he felt he was being crossed. His jaw would creep forward, and his eyes would go wide, staring to one side, as if he daren’t look at you for fear of what he might do. During the evening, he’d sneer at the television: at politicians, soaps, the news, bishops. His bottom lip would warp, and his bitten nails would scratch the rests of his armchair, catching on the nylon covers. In disgust he’d put on a Walt Disney video, slamming it into the machine. Them his face would light up. He’d weep with Bambi or shake his fist at the queen in Snow White. All his feelings crackled and popped, like the cereal. But when the film was over, he became pinched, as if it shouldn’t have ended. (Nancy didn’t like the word ‘unstable’, but she got the impression that her man held himself together, a bit like a barrel with those iron bands, and that if one or two of the screws came loose, he’d just explode. So she learned to keep well back. She didn’t tinker with his ways.) At night he wouldn’t touch her. There was a cold part of the bed, right in the middle. It was like that channel in the sea opened up by Charlton Heston, when he was Moses. Both of them were like walls of water, waiting to collapse from the sheer weight of separation. Only it never happened. Not even after that policewoman came to Lawton’s and arrested her man at the foot of his crane. At the time, Nancy watched him being led away waiting for those iron bands to snap; but they didn’t.