Troy opened the door. Stan stood in the courtyard towering over his granddaughter, one hand holding her suitcase, the other in the small of her back, shoving her forward like a recalcitrant truant. Jackie looked like the schoolgirl she should have been. Stan had ‘cleaned up her act’. Clover had become Jackie. Little Jackie, with her mop of blonde hair in a ponytail, held in place with a plain brown rubber band. A grey skirt, a blue jacket, a white blouse and what could only be described as ‘sensible’ shoes. She looked as though she could willingly murder Stan. The girl wore not a scrap of make-up: her fingernails were unpainted; her eyes stripped of the strong black lines she usually favoured. Troy could imagine the scene which had preceded this.
‘Get that muck off yer face, girl! You’re going nowhere looking like that!’
Jackie would have said ‘no’. Knowing Stan, he would simply have belted her one, taken her to the kitchen sink and scrubbed the make-up from her face. God knows how he’d got rid of the nail varnish. A blow lamp?
‘Come in,’ said Troy, trying to sound pleased to see them.
Stan prodded the girl into the house, set down the suitcase. Jackie stood sullenly regarding Troy, both hands gripping the shoulder strap of a white PVC handbag. Troy hoped she’d keep up the dumb act. He dreaded whatever it was she might have to say.
‘You remember your Uncle Freddie, don’t you?’ Stan prompted.
‘Of course,’ the lying tart said. ‘You took me into Manchester the day before me dad’s funeral. Bought me an Alice band and a pair of socks.’
Troy could not have said he’d remembered this till she said it, but yes, he had driven a silent child of ten into the city to get her out of her mother’s way. The smile on Jackie’s face had become a smirk. Jackie said the words but it was Clover who looked at him now and silently took the piss. She’d known him from the first at Uphill, and she knew now that the last thing Troy wanted was any mention that they had ever met at Uphill, and she was playing this for all its silent worth.
Troy stuck out his hand for her to shake, but she stepped forward past the hand and kissed his cheek.
‘I’ve missed you, Uncle Freddie,’ she hissed into his ear, and since he could do very little about her, Troy determined to get Onions out of the house as soon as possible.
But Onions showed no inclination to stay. He didn’t take his coat off and he didn’t suggest putting the kettle on. ‘I’ll be off then,’ was all he said, as though he’d done his bit by delivering the human parcel.
‘Fine,’ said Troy, since in a situation where nothing was even tolerable, let alone fine, this was the nearest to it, that Stan should leave before the small scene in a small room blew up in their faces.
‘I’ll phone. Don’t worry, I’ll phone. And as soon as this mess is cleared up I’ll come for her. But I’ll phone.’
‘Fine,’ said Troy.
‘There is one thing,’ Stan said, looking at Jackie. ‘Open your handbag.’
‘Wot? . . . Nah.’
‘Open that handbag, my girl or . . .’
Stan raised his hand. Jackie did not flinch. Stan dropped the fist, snatched the bag from her, and half turned his back so she could not stop him opening it.
He held up the prize. A small black lump of cannabis resin about as big as an Oxo cube, and much the same colour.
‘See! Did you think I didn’t know about your stash?’
The girl sneered. A curling lip Elvis would have envied.
‘Did you think I didn’t know the jargon after forty years a copper? D’ye think I don’t know about pot an’ reefers?’
‘They’re called joints, Grandad.’
Onions hit her so hard with the flat of his hand that his palm print rose upon her cheek in brightest red.
‘It’s not just the illegality. God knows that’s bad enough. It’s the contempt you have for me. Other blokes’ kids can smoke dope and they can turn their back on it. I’m a copper, girl! Doesn’t that mean a damn thing to you?’
‘You’re not my dad!’
‘Jesus Christ, girl. Who do you think I am? I’ve been father and mother to you these last ten years!’
He stuffed the dope in his coat pocket. Headed for the door. Turned as he reached it. Finger upraised, golden with sixty years of nicotine.
‘Behave yourself. Do what yer Uncle Freddie says. D’ye hear me?’
On the doorstep, with the door half closed, barely masking their conversation, Onions said, ‘I’m sorry, Freddie. She’ll be better with you, really she will. It’s her mother, and it’s me – we seem to provoke her. You won’t, I know that. But if you catch her with this filth again, then as far as I’m concerned you can charge her. I’m sorry, really I am. I’ll phone every day. I will.’
And with that he was gone.
The door swung creakily on its hinge and Troy stood in the open doorway, half in, half out. Listening to Stan’s boots resounding down the courtyard, looking at Jackie.
‘He can’t make me cry,’ she said. ‘I won’t. I won’t. I don’t care what he does, I won’t cry.’
Troy believed her. This woman-child was carved in granite.
He resorted to the English truce – a nice cup of tea. There was, as the English told him far too often, nothing like a nice cup of tea.
Jackie Clover kicked off the sensible shoes, took the band from her hair and shook it back to the peekaboo look he had first seen at Uphill. When Troy sat down by the fireplace, she took the hint and sat opposite him, legs dangling over the edge of the chair.
‘Wossis? Time for a bit of a chat, Uncle Freddie?’
‘Yes. House rules. We’d better have them clear from the start, Jackie.’
‘The name’s Clover!’
‘And my name’s not Uncle.’
‘What do I call you?’
‘Troy.’
She smiled. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Now – you don’t really want to be here.’
‘Too right.’
‘And I don’t want you here.’
‘Shall I go now?’
‘Hear me out. For Christ’s sake, hear me out.’
‘OK. Shall I be mother?’
She picked up the teapot and began to pour. If the worst she had to offer was to take the piss at every turn, then it might not be so bad after all.
‘We’re stuck with each other, Clover.’
‘Are we?’
‘You know that as well as I. You know the mess we’re in. Or else you’d have ratted on me to your grandfather.’
‘Couldn’t see the point. He thinks Uphill was some sort of brothel. No point in telling him it wasn’t. No point in telling him you were there too. Only make things worse for both of us. Like you said, we’re in it together.’
Troy did not care for her sense of conspiracy, but she was right.
‘Quite. He’s not alone in that view. Most of the nation thinks it was a brothel.’
‘Not true, though. Is it?’
‘No, it’s not. But it’s because the nation, or to be precise, our much respected free press, thinks it was, that you’re here. I’ve no intention of acting as your jailer. You can come and go as you please. But take my advice. The press do not know who you are. They’re looking for you. They’d love to put a name to you, but they don’t know. And you should keep your head down until the trial’s over and the dust has settled. A few days indoors won’t kill you. There’s a gramophone—’
‘What?’
‘Record player to you. And there are plenty of books. Just lie low. You might even like it.’
‘Why? There’s a bob or two to be made. Caro and Tara have been offered hundreds to write their stories for the Sunday papers.’
‘And they’ve neither of them taken it. If they had we’d have seen something of what they had to say by now. Neither of the girls want to see him stitched up. If the press find you, you’ll make a few hundred, but they’ll use you to beat down Fitz and so will the prosecution. Clover, I’ve been to Fitz’s trial. Do Fitz a favour, do yourself a favour, stay in until it’s all over. What did Fitz ever do to you?’
‘Fitz,’ she said, rolling his name around. ‘Fitz? He rescued me from miserable bloody Acton, miserable drunken Mum. Took me to the clubs with ’im, taught me ’ow to cook, ’ow to mix ’im a Martini, ’ow to drive, ’ow to play bleedin’ croquet. Fitz? He taught me ’ow to have fun after ten dreary years at Tablecloth Terrace watchin’ me mealtime manners with an old man who ’asn’t noticed the ark ’as landed yet and a sozzled baggage who thinks the world ended some time in the 1950s when she last got laid. I was just a kid when we met. What did Fitz do to me? He taught me ’ow to grow up. That’s what he did to me.’
It was an impressive little speech. He was not sure he entirely believed her, but it leavened her ostensible selfishness. Though he questioned silently how grown up she could be or would want to be at sixteen – or was it seventeen? His father had taught him, younger by far, at twelve or thirteen, as he had put it all those years ago, ‘how to be’. It was a beginning. That’s all one can ever ask. And in the years that followed he became, with each passing day, more aware of the omissions in his education into being.
‘I’m glad to know you appreciate him. If they find you you’ll make plenty of fairweather friends on the newspapers, but you’ll lose Fitz and you’ll make one enemy you cannot afford to make.’
‘Who?’
‘Your grandfather. And whatever you think of him, he was telling you the truth. He may not be able to teach you how to mix a Martini but he has been father and mother to you since your father died. Believe me. I know your mother.’
‘So do I. She hates you. Absolutely hates you.’
‘Then why has she sent you here?’
‘Simple – we all do what the old man says, don’t we? Isn’t that why you’re having me here?’
It was too true to answer. Troy dearly wished she were in any other house but his, but he could not argue with Stan.
‘And don’t let me catch you smoking pot.’
‘You won’t. He took me stash. Funny to think of my grandad walking round London with half an ounce of shit in his pocket. Hope he doesn’t get nicked. But it’d be bloody funny if he did.’
She giggled. Put down her teacup and rocked with laughter. It wasn’t funny. She reminded him of nothing quite so much as his selfish sisters in demented mood. Really, it wasn’t funny.