Missing Joseph

“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.”

“She knows about Nick.”

“Never! Not from me. I never said a word and I never will.”

“Then why does she ask?”

“Because she thinks she knows something. She keeps hoping she can make you say.”

Maggie scrutinised her friend. There wasn’t much light, but in what little shed itself upon Josie’s face from a single street lamp that stood at the drive of the Crofters Inn car park across the road, she looked earnest enough. She looked a little odd as well. The eyeliner hadn’t dried thoroughly when she opened her eyes after having applied it, so her eyelids were streaked in the way ink runs when water pours over it.

“I didn’t tell her about Nick,” Josie said again. “That’s between me and you. Always. I promise.”

Maggie looked down at her shoes. They were scuffed. Above them her navy tights were speckled with mud.

“Maggie. It’s true. Really.”

“He came over last night. We…It happened again. Mummy knows.”

“No!” Josie grasped her arm and led her across the street and into the car park. They side-stepped a glossy silver Bentley and headed down the path that led to the river. “You never said.”

“I wanted to tell you. I was waiting all day to tell you. But she kept hanging about.”

“That Pam,” Josie said as they went through the gate. “She’s just like a bloodhound when it comes to gossip.”

A narrow path angled away from the inn and descended towards the river. Josie led the way. Some thirty yards along, an old ice-house stood, built into the bank where the river plunged sharply through a fall of limestone, sending up a spray that kept the air cool on the hottest days of summer. It was fashioned from the same stone used in the rest of the village, and like the rest of the village its roof was slate. But it had no windows, just a door whose lock Josie had long ago broken, turning the ice-house into her lair.

She shouldered her way inside. “Just a sec,” she said, ducking beneath the lintel. She fumbled about, bumped into something, said, “Holy hell on wheels,” and struck a match. Light flared a moment later. Maggie entered.

A lantern stood atop an old nail barrel, sending out an arc of hissing yellow light. This fell upon a patchwork of carpet — worn through here and there to its straw-coloured backing — two three-legged milking stools, a cot covered by a purple eiderdown, and an up-ended crate overhung by a mirror. This last made do for a dressing table, and into it Josie placed the bottle of eyeliner, new companion to her contraband mascara, blusher, lipstick, nail polish, and assorted hair-goo.

She hustled up a bottle of toilet water and sprayed it liberally on walls and floor like a libation offered to the goddess of cosmetics. It served to mask the odours of must and mildew that hung in the air.

“Want a smoke?” she asked, once she made sure the door was closed snugly upon them.

Maggie shook her head. She shivered. It was clear why the ice-house had been built in this spot.

Josie lit a Gauloise from a packet she took from among her cosmetics. She fl opped onto the cot and said, “What’d your mum say? How’d she fi nd out?”

Maggie pulled one of the two stools closer to the lantern. It gave off a substantial amount of heat. “She just knew. Like before.”

“And?”

“I don’t care what she thinks. I won’t stop. I love him.”

“Well, she can’t follow you everywhere, can she?” Josie lay on her back, one arm behind her head. She raised her bony knees, crossed one leg over the other, and bounced her foot. “God, you’re so lucky.” She sighed. The tip of her cigarette glowed fire-red. “Is he…well, you know…like they say? Does he…fulfi ll you?”

“I don’t know. It goes sort of fast.”

“Oh. But is he…you know what I mean. Like Pam wanted to know.”

“Yes.”

“God. No wonder you don’t want to stop.” She squirmed deeper into the eiderdown and held out her arms to an imaginary lover. “Come ’n’ get me, baby,” she said past the cigarette that bobbed in her lips. “It’s waiting right here and it’s all — for — you.” And then squirming on her side, “You’re taking precautions, aren’t you?”

“Not really.”

Her eyes became saucers. “Maggie! I never! You got to take precautions. Or he does at least. Does he wear a rubber?”

Maggie cocked her head at the oddity of the question. A rubber? What on earth…. “I don’t think so. Where would he…? I mean, he may have one in his pocket from school.”

Josie bit her lip but didn’t quite manage to catch the grin. “Not that kind of rubber.