Barbara Vine - The Birthday Present

“London is no place for me, Jane. If I stayed here I'd never have a quiet moment. It's no place for you either. I shall be worried sick till you come. I think we've decided you're coming to live with me, haven't we?”

“I've decided I'm not coming,” I tell her.

That was yesterday. I was regretting that I told her and she was scolding me for worrying her. We had an argument, nothing unusual for her and me, ending in my going out for a walk on my own. I hadn't realized what a nice day it was. I walked up to West End Green, all the way to Child's Hill and up Pattison Road to the edge of the Heath. It was a Saturday, but even so it seemed to me there were more couples about than usual, people holding hands or walking with their arms round each other. I began to feel calmer and more peaceful (the policeman had said he would leave us in peace) than I had for months, since I was turned out of Irving Road, in fact. And when I was on my way back, heading down the Finchley Road, I saw Stu. He was cleaning the ground-floor windows of a house in Weech Road and when he saw me he raised one hand in a sort of salute. It wasn't a bit like me, I don't do things like that, but I waved back and called out, “Hi, Stu.”

He gave me a smile in return and shouted that he would see me on Monday. That is when he is next due to clean my windows. I thought, maybe he sleeps with my name and address under his pillow. People do that sort of thing, or some do. Mummy was packing when I got back to the flat. She folds her clothes like shop assistants do and puts sheets of tissue paper between them, shoes wrapped up in tissue and her toilet bag laid on the top. When she saw me she said she would take me out for dinner “just once more.” Where would I like to go? There isn't all that wide a choice in Kilburn, to say the least, and I reminded her that she had been robbed of all the money she had with her and her credit card. We ended up going to a place in Fortune Green Road with me paying.

“It's the least you can do, Jane, considering I've been practically keeping you for the past year.”

I didn't mind all that much because I kept thinking that by the end of next week I'll be rich. Mummy said her “dreadful experience” of Friday and being “interrogated by the police” had worn her out. She went to bed ten minutes after we got back and fell asleep at once. I sat in the kitchen, planning a draft of a letter for Ivor Tesham. Once I have walked Mummy to the tube station in the morning (and bought her ticket and lent her money), I shall copy out what I shall have written neatly in my best handwriting and take it to the post. There's a post that goes on a Sunday at eleven in the morning and I shall aim to catch it, so he will get the letter on Monday. The hard part was deciding what to say. I thought I could just write baldly to him, tell him I knew exactly what he had done on May 18, 1990, and if he wanted it all kept dark, the way he has been keeping it dark for four years, he will have to pay me. But I had to find the words and every word I thought of sounded so vulgar and low, the kind of words Hebe might have used but I couldn't. Yet my future depended on it. Well, on him or on Stu. Or both of them. I wish I could sometimes have nice dreams and then I do, a waking dream of me living with Stu and telling him I've got a private income. He doesn't even have to go on cleaning windows if he doesn't want to.

I STOPPED THERE and gave myself to the dream, sometimes glancing at Mummy fast asleep. I have just started again. My writing paper and envelopes and a couple of ballpoints I keep in the drawer under the one where all the bills and receipts are. I was getting out a sheet of paper and a pen when my mind rushed back to that day when I went to the Lynches' and it all flashed before my eyes, the way they say it does when you're drowning. I felt like I was drowning, because I have remembered what happened to my gas bill. Stu hadn't taken it. The idea that he might have was stupid from the start—more signs of my mind not being quite right.

I had put the bill in my bag when I went to William Cross Court. That bill and the stuff which came with it were the papers I had taken out of my bag to glance at while I was pretending to be a social worker. Sean Lynch had snatched them out of my hand and thrown them on the floor. Maybe he hadn't looked at them again. They might have ended up in a waste bin. But I couldn't believe that. He would have looked at them and read my name and my address. He had my name and address. It was like one of those anonymous phone calls people get where the caller says, “We know where you live.” Sean Lynch knew where I lived.

I COULD WRITE in the diary but I couldn't write the letter. After staring at the blank paper like they say authors do when they've got writer's block, I went to the window and looked down, expecting to see Sean Lynch standing there under the street lamp, his head lifted and his eyes on the top floor of this house. No one was there but that didn't mean he hadn't been there earlier. Ought I to go to the police about him? If I had known about the gas bill earlier I would have said something about Sean to the officer who came. If I had he might have been arrested by now and locked up and not be out there, thinking up ways to get himself into this flat.

You would think he'd hate Tesham after he caused Dermot to be what he is now, but I don't think he hates him. His mother certainly doesn't. “Mr. Tesham's been very good to us,” is what she said. Tesham must be giving them money. So did Sean attack me because he sees me as Tesham's enemy? Would he protect him? And what does that say about my future once I've written this letter to Tesham and maybe he tells Sean? Another thing I've thought of—Sean didn't need the gas bill. Tesham could have told him where I live.

I don't know what to do. Now, at that moment, the only thing seemed to be to go to bed, not that I thought I would sleep. I did, though, and dreamed I was back in William Cross Court, but this time Sean was reading the name and address on my gas bill and I was trembling in fear. He seized me—as he always does, over and over—and pushed me at the wall, beating my head against the bleeding heart of Jesus. Something in his face tells me he means to rape me and I screamed. I really did scream aloud, waking Mummy, who sat up, put the light on and felt my wet nightdress and took hold of my shaking hands.

“The first thing I'll do when I get you to Ongar,” she said, “is take you to my lovely GP.”

It was better in the morning but I still don't know what to do. I need someone to protect me and I begin to wonder if Stu would protect me. If we were going out together he would look after me and if he heard there was some man intent on doing me harm he would do harm to him before he got the chance. He belongs to the class of people who think that way. When I see him next, which will be tomorrow, I shall be very nice to him and then I'll ask him if that offer of a drink still holds good. He will say it does and soon we shall be going out together; we shall be an item. Thinking like this makes me feel better still and I'm wondering how it will be when I've got a man of my own. Quite different from anything that has ever been, I suppose.

I would really rather not go out at all today but I shall have to take Mummy to West Hampstead tube station. Not Kil-burn, because it's rougher that way and I connect rough areas with Sean Lynch. Mummy and I hug and kiss in the station entrance, something we haven't done for years, and she says we must keep in touch every day and that she will expect me in Ongar in a week's time “at the latest.”

The walk home on my own was rather scary. Everywhere is quiet on a Sunday morning and deserted streets always make you more nervous than when there are a lot of people about. I could hear a single set of footfalls behind me and I crossed the road, but when I looked back it was an old man wearing a hat and carrying an umbrella. Still, it was a relief to reach the house and get inside my flat. Being alone again is all right too.