“Who was she?” Wendy asked.
“When we ran up to her I stared. It was me. She looked exactly how I would look when I was older. I was sure. That stunning, stunting aviatrix looked exactly as I look now. I am sure of that.”
She led Wendy back through the cool halls of the Tate.
“I suppose you were right,” Serena said. “That exhibit of heads was ghastly. What are those people thinking of?”
“I like paintings,” said Wendy. “I suppose that’s old-fashioned.”
“No, I adore paintings too. Joshua does watercolours sometimes, you know. Perhaps he’ll show you one day, when we eventually get to see him. Now come on, let’s get back home before your aunt arrives. I have dinner to prepare.”
Aunty Anne was due that evening. It was the later train from Darlington. She had left her Buddha, her fat man in the council house. Last night she had phoned and declared herself free of his pious encumbrance (as Serena gladly put it). And… Aunty Anne had news—thrilling news—for Wendy.
As ever, Wendy took news from her aunty with care.
“There’s something in this, though,” Serena said, as they walked along the river towards Pimlico tube station. “I’ve never heard Anne so agitated. She could barely contain herself.”
She came to the door in a taxi, which wasn’t in itself surprising, since she hated the tube. Once she said that when she was underground, her nerves went jangly and made her legs jump up and tremble. The escalators were so much more perilous than those in department stores. Wendy and Serena stood on the doorstep, staring past the leafy garden and what did startle them was the ten pound tip Anne flourished in the air, in the sherbert-coloured street light, before pushing it into the driver’s hand.
She had brought a whole load of bags, which they had to help her with. She pulled Wendy into a stiff, cold embrace. That same old yellow coat seemed strange here in London. “Hey, I’m freezing. I thought London was meant to be a few degrees warmer?”
“Are you all right, then?” Wendy asked. “Serena said about… you arguing with your man.”
“No argument. I took one look at the old slob and thought: I’m not having my life dictated to me by the likes of him. The big pig.”
“That’s not how you talked about him before.”
“Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder, or something. I’d forgotten the reasons I was so glad to leave and go to Blackpool in the first place. So that’s that.”
She struggled into Serena’s living room and flung herself down on the William Morris sofa. “You’ve been making a few changes in here, Serena.” She kicked off her shoes and examined her feet for signs of travel-damage. Her hair was blonde again.
“Yes,” said Serena thoughtfully. “Let’s have a drink.”
“God, yes. Do you know, he had a whole posse of these devout, fawning, bored women around him. They were tending to his every need, apparently, and now he never leaves the house at all. He doesn’t need to. Hasn’t tried for months. Doesn’t even think he could manage it. I looked at him and thought, I don’t need the likes of you.”
“Hear, hear!” said Serena, passing her a Pimm’s.
“I never liked all the god business anyway,” said Anne. “And he had the nerve to ask me if I’d been faithful all the time I’d been away. Not a word about poor old Pat! Not a dicky bird!” She took a long slurp.
“You’re here now, anyway,” said Serena, sitting herself carefully opposite. Wendy took her own glass and sat down too.
“And I’m staying,” said Anne firmly.
“Here?”
“For now, if you’ll have me. But I’m buying my own place. In London. You’re always telling me this is the place where it’s all happening. That I have to get with it. So here I am. I want in, now.”
“Right,” said Serena, her mouth going up at one side. Wendy knew enough about her by now to know it wasn’t wry amusement, it was nervousness.
“So you’ve got a full house now,” laughed Anne.
“So I have.”
“Just wait till she,” Anne nodded at Wendy, “starts inviting all her pals. You’ll have women with no legs, fat mad women, blacks and allsorts on your doorstep.”
Wendy realised that Anne had already been drinking.
“She’ll turn this house of yours into the same as Pat’s place. A home for freaks and skivers.”
“Oh…” said Serena mildly, as if about to say that she wouldn’t mind, but then she decided that she rather would.
“No, I won’t,” said Wendy. “And don’t call them freaks. It includes you too, Aunty Anne.”
“Of course!” she grinned, raising her glass in a toast. “And I’m the Queen of the Freaks. I’m the Queen of the frigging Freaks.” Then she burst into loud, wet sobs.
Serena, who couldn’t deal with tears, ducked into the kitchen to check on dinner. She was doing something complicated in parcels of pastry, she said, and had spent an age twisting them into just the right shape. Wendy was left to comfort her aunty, which she did awkwardly.
“I’m rich, now,” Aunty Anne said, and blew her nose. “Look! Black snot. I’ve only been here for half an hour.” She looked at Wendy, gauging her reaction. “I’ve come into what they used to call a fortune.”
“Uncle Pat?” asked Wendy, and her aunty nodded.
Serena was back in the room as if called. “So you really are going to move to London?”
“A nice big house,” said Anne. “Of my own. At last.” She smiled blearily at Serena. “I’ll need help.”
“And you’ll get it. So this was your news! Wonderful!”
“Colin’s still abroad with that friend of his.”
“David,” said Wendy.
“He doesn’t know about the will yet. He gets enough, and the flat in the Royal Circus, of course.”
“Bless him,” said Serena. “I can help you shop for furniture, fabrics, things… you must have a garden, of course, and…”
“It’s not
