“She’s gone down our Doreen’s shop for a lettuce.”
“When will she be back?”
“Dunno.”
“Look, Tracey, are you sure you can’t come?” Colin took his schoolteacher’s tone, full of aching reasonableness. “You see, it’s letting us down rather badly. This was an important evening for us, and it’s too short notice to get anyone else, so it does put us in difficulties. Now you did promise, Tracey. Did you explain that to your mother?”
“No point.”
“Surely she’d understand that a promise is a promise.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Anyway, Tracey, look at it this way, you want your pocket money, don’t you?”
“Well, it’s only one fifty, isn’t it, and if Grandad sees me he gives me a fiver.”
“Oh, I see,” Colin said. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to engage in an auction for your presence, Tracey, that wouldn’t be right at all. So we’ll just have to manage without you.”
“Tough life, innit?” Tracey said. “Bye.”
Colin bellowed up the stairs, and Sylvia came out of the bedroom in her bra and half-slip. She had powdered her face and lips very white, preparatory to painting them back in again, and she smelled of Coty’s
“What’s up? Who was it?”
“It was some half-witted child called Tracey who it seems you’ve engaged as babysitter. She’s not coming.”
“Oh, no!”
“Her grandfather’s coming over, and will probably give her a fiver, so she’s not going to put herself out for one fifty.”
“Oh, dammit,” Sylvia said venomously. She began to scramble down the stairs, her stockinged feet large and flat. “Give me the phone.”
“Don’t you offer her any more money,” Colin said. “It’s blackmail. We can’t have that.”
Colin went into the bedroom and contemplated the clean shirt laid out on the bed. He heard Sylvia’s voice raised in expostulation. Shortly she came back into the bedroom, slamming the door.
“She won’t come. Honestly. It’s not often, is it, it’s not often, that I get a night out? You wouldn’t think one night was too much to ask.”
“Well, it’s no good taking it out on me,” Colin said.
“I’m not taking it out on you. What on earth are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, but honestly, Sylvia, that girl sounded half-witted. When I picked up the phone she said, ‘Is that Mrs. Sidney?’”
“How could she be expected to know who picked the phone up?”
“Because I spoke, didn’t I? I said ‘59428,’ I don’t just pick the phone up and breathe into it, for Christ’s sake.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting yourself worked up for.”
“I’m getting myself worked up because we’re due at Frank’s in forty-five minutes, and we haven’t got a babysitter, because you make arrangements with some half-witted child that doesn’t turn up. Do you really think it’s safe, leaving them with somebody as clueless as that? How old is she?”
“She sounded pretty sharp to me,” Sylvia said. “She’s fourteen. I know her mother. Anyway, they’re not going to be left with her, are they, so what are you talking about?”
“We’ll have to ring Florence,” Colin said.
“Florence never babysits for us. She doesn’t know how to manage them.”
“Are they as bad as that? What do they need, qualified nannies or policemen?”
“There’s no need to get nasty. It’s not the kiddies’ fault, Colin.”
“Have you got a better suggestion?”
“Ask her if she’ll have them for the night, then. Go on. Phone her.”
“You phone her,” Colin said. “You got us into this mess.”
“I’d like to know why it’s always my problem to fix up a babysitter. You always leave it to me and then you criticise. It’s you that wants to go to this dinner, not me.”
“All right,” Colin said, “all right. Then I’ll just phone up Frank and say we can’t make it, shall I? Frank goes to a lot of trouble over his dinner parties. He’s very interested in cooking and he goes to a lot of trouble, trying to select the right guests.”
“And I go to trouble every night of the week. You don’t think about that.”
“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Sylvia. Are we going or aren’t we?”
“Well, if I phone Florence, you’ll have to go down and get them their sausage and beans. Children have to be fed as well, you know.”
