Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“All I can say’s I hope you’re taking precautions,” Josie put in quickly, ever Maggie’s friend. “Because if he does it as many times as you said and if he makes you — well, you know — get fulfilled each time, then you’re heading for trouble, Pam Rice.”

Pam’s cigarette stopped midway to her lips. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know. Don’t act like you don’t.”

“I don’t, Jose. Explain it to me.” She took a deep drag, but Maggie could see that she did it mostly to hide her smile.

Josie took the bait. “If you have a— you know—”

“Orgasm?”

“Right.”

“What about it?”

“It helps the swimmy things get up inside you more easy. Which is why lots of women don’t — you know—”

“Have an orgasm?”

“Because they don’t want the swimmy things. Oh, and they can’t relax. That too. I read it in a book.”

Pam hooted. She swung off the bathtub and opened the window through which she shouted, “Josephine Eugene, the brains of a bean,” before dissolving into laughter and sliding down the wall to sit on the fl oor. She took another hit from her cigarette, pausing now and then to give in to the giggles.

Maggie was glad she’d opened the window. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Part of her knew it was just because of the amount of cigarette smoke in the little room. The other part knew it was because of Nick. She wanted to say something to rescue Josie from Pam’s fun-making. But she wasn’t sure what would serve to deflect the ridicule at the same time as it revealed nothing about herself.

“When was the last time you read anything about it?” Josie asked, recapping her bottle of eyeliner and examining in the mirror the fruits of her labour.

“I don’t need to read. I experience,” Pam replied.

“Research is as important as experience, Pam.”

“Really? And exactly what sort have you done?”

“I know things.” Josie was combing her hair. It made no difference. No matter what she did to it, it flopped right back into the same frightful style: fringe high on the forehead, bristles on the neck. She should never have tried to cut it herself.

“You know things from books.”

“And observation. Imperial evidence, that’s called.”

“Provided by?”

“Mum and Mr. Wragg.”

This piece of information seemed to strike Pam’s fancy. She kicked off her shoes and drew her legs beneath her. She fl icked her cigarette into the toilet and made no comment when Maggie took the opportunity of doing the same. “What?” she asked, eyes dancing happily at the potential for gossip. “How?”

“I listen at the door when they’re having relations. He keeps saying, ‘Come on, Dora, come on, come on, come on, baby, come on, love’ and she never makes a sound. Which is also, by the way, how I know for a fact that he isn’t my dad.” When Pam and Maggie greeted this news blankly, she went on with, “Well, he can’t be, can he? Look at the evidence. She’s never once been — you know, fulfilled by him. I’m her only kid. I was born six months after they got married. I found this old letter from a bloke called Paddy Lewis—”

“Where?”

“In the drawer where she keeps her knickers. And I could tell she’d done it with him. And been fulfilled. Lots. Before she married Mr. Wragg.”

“How long before?”

“Two years.”

“So what were you?” Pam asked. “The longest pregnancy on record?”

“I don’t mean they only did it once, Pam Rice. I mean they were doing it regular two years before she married Mr. Wragg. And she kept the letter, didn’t she? She must still love him.”

“But you look exactly like your dad,” Pam said.

“He isn’t—”

“All right, all right. You look like Mr. Wragg.”

“That’s just coincidence,” Josie said. “Paddy Lewis must look like Mr. Wragg as well. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? She’d be looking for someone to remind her of Paddy.”

“So then Maggie’s dad must look like Mr. Shepherd,” Pam announced. “All her mum’s lovers must have looked like him.”

Josie said, “Pam,” in a pained fashion. Fair was only fair. One could speculate indefi nitely about one’s own parents, but it wasn’t proper to do the same about anyone else’s. Not that Pam ever worried much about what was proper before she opened her mouth.

Maggie said softly, “Mummy never had a lover before Mr. Shepherd.”

“She had at least one,” Pam corrected.

“She didn’t.”

“She did. Where else did you come from?”

“From my dad. And Mummy.”

“Right. Her lover.”

“Her husband.”

“Really? What was his name?”

Maggie picked at a loose thread on her jersey. She tried to poke it through the knitting to the other side.

“What was his name?”

Maggie shrugged.

“You don’t know because he didn’t have a name. Or maybe she didn’t know it. Because you’re a bastard.”

“Pam!” Josie took a quick step forward, with the eyeliner bottle closed in her fi st.

“What?”

“Watch your mouth.”

Pam flipped back her hair with a languid movement of her hand. “Oh, stop the drama, Josie. You can’t tell me that you believe all this rot about race car drivers and mummies running off and daddies out looking for their darling little girls for the next thirteen years.”

Maggie felt the room growing larger about her, felt herself shrinking with a hollowness inside. She looked at Josie but couldn’t quite see her because she seemed to be standing in a mist.

“If they were married at all,” Pam was continuing conversationally, “she probably gave him his cards along with some parsnip at dinner one night.”

“Pam!”

Maggie pushed herself against the door and from there to her feet. She said, “I have to be going, I think. Mummy will be wondering— ”

“God knows we wouldn’t want that,” Pam said.

Their coats were in a pile on the fl oor. Maggie pulled hers out but could not make her fingers and hands work well enough to get it on. It didn’t matter. She was feeling rather hot.

She threw open the door and hurried down the stairs. She heard Pam saying with a laugh, “Nick Ware better watch he doesn’t cross Maggie’s mum.”

And Josie responding, “Oh, shove it, won’t you?” before she came clattering down the stairs herself. “Maggie!” she called.

Out on the street it was dark. A cold breeze from the west funnelled down the road from north Yorkshire and turned into a gust at the centre of the village where Crofters Inn and Pam’s house stood. Maggie blinked and wiped the wet from beneath her eyes as she thrust one arm into her coat and started walking.

“Maggie!” Josie caught her up less than ten steps from Pam’s front door. “It’s not what you think. I mean it is, but it isn’t. I didn’t know you good then. Pam and I talked. I told her about your dad, it’s true, but that’s all I ever told her. I swear it.”

“It was wrong of you to tell.”

Josie dragged her to a halt. “It was. Yes, yes. But I didn’t tell her in fun. I wasn’t making fun. I told her ’cause it made us alike, you and me.”

“We aren’t alike. Mr. Wragg’s your father, and you know it, Josie.”

“Oh, maybe he is. That would be my luck, wouldn’t it? Mum running off with Paddy Lewis and me stuck in Winslough with Mr. Wragg. But that’s not what I mean. I mean we dream. We’re different. We think bigger thoughts. We got our sights set on stuff bigger than this village. I used you as a point of illustration, see? I said, I’m not the only one, Pamela Bammela. Maggie has thoughts about her dad too. And she wanted to know what your thoughts were and I told her and I shouldn’t have. But I wasn’t making fun.”