The Saint Zita Society Read online

  ‘Don’t you see, Henry, that if you lived here with me we could stay in bed all the time? There wouldn’t be any arguing because we’d have nothing to argue about.’

  ‘And don’t you see that your dad would sack me. On two counts,’ said Henry, who had picked up a certain amount of parliamentary language from his employer, ‘to be absolutely clear, like not living at number 11 and like shagging his daughter.’

  ‘You could get another job.’

  ‘How? It took me a year to get this one. Your dad’d give me a reference, would he? I should cocoa.’

  ‘We could get married.’

  If Henry ever thought of marriage it would be when he was about fifty and to someone with money of her own and a big house in the suburbs. ‘No one gets married any more,’ he said, ‘and anyway, I’m outta here. You want to remember I have to be outside number 11 at 7 a.m. in the Beemer waiting for your dad when he chooses to come which may not be till nine, right?’

  ‘Text me,’ said Huguette.

  Henry walked back. An urban fox emerged from the area of number 5, gave him an unpleasant look and crossed the road to plunder Miss Grieves’s dustbin. Upstairs at number 11 a light was still on in Lord and Lady Studley’s bedroom. Henry stood for a while, looking up, hoping their curtains might part and Lady Studley look down, preferably in her black lace nightgown, bestow on him a fond smile and purse her lips in a kiss. But nothing happened. The light went out and Henry let himself in by the area door.

  Instead of opening the door to her bedsit with en suite bathroom (called a studio flat by her employers), Montserrat had led the caller up the basement stairs to the ground floor and then the next flight which swept round in a half-circle to the gallery. The house was silent apart from the soft patter of Rabia’s slippered feet on the nursery floor above. Montserrat tapped on the third door on the right, then opened it and said, ‘Rad’s here, Lucy.’ She left them to it, as she put it to Rabia five minutes later. ‘If they’re all asleep why don’t you come down for a bit? I’ve got a half-bottle of vodka.’

  ‘You know I don’t drink, Montsy.’

  ‘You can have the orange juice I got to go with the vodka.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear Thomas if he cries. He’s teething.’

  ‘He’s been teething for weeks, if not months,’ said Monserrat. ‘If he belonged to me I’d drown him.’

  Rabia said she shouldn’t talk like that, it was wicked, so Montserrat started telling the nanny about Lucy and Rad Sothern. Rabia put her fingers in her ears. She went back to the children, Hero and Matilda fast asleep in the bedroom they shared, baby Thomas restive but silent in his cot in the nursery. Rabia puzzled sometimes about calling a bedroom a nursery because as far as she knew – her father worked in one – a nursery was a place for growing plants. She never asked, she didn’t want to look foolish.

  Montserrat had called out goodbye and left. Time passed very slowly. It was getting late now and Rabia thought seriously of going to bed in her bedroom at the back. But what if Mr Still came up here when he got home? He sometimes did. Thomas began to cry, then to scream. Rabia picked him up and began walking him up and down, the sovereign remedy. The nursery overlooked the street, and from the window, she saw Montserrat letting the man called Rad out by way of the area steps. Rabia shook her head, not at all excited or amused as Montserrat had expected her to be, but profoundly shocked.

  Thomas was quiet now but he began grizzling again when laid down in his cot. Rabia had great reserves of patience and she loved him dearly. She was a widow, and both her children had died very young. This, according to one of the doctors, was due to her having married her first cousin. But Nazir himself hadn’t lived very long either and now she was alone. Rabia sat in the chair beside the cot, talking to Thomas softly. When he began to cry again she picked him up and carried him to the table where the kettle was and the little fridge in the corner and began making him a warm milky drink. She was too far from the window to see or hear the car and the first she knew of Preston Still’s arrival was the sound of his rather heavy feet on the stairs. Instead of stopping on the floor below where his wife lay sleeping, they carried on up. As she had expected. Like Jemima Puddle-Duck, – a book Rabia sometimes read to the children and which, they said, sounded funny in her accent – Preston was an anxious parent. Quite a contrast to his wife, Rabia often thought. He came in, looking tired and harassed. He had been at a conference in Brighton – she knew because Lucy had told her.

  ‘Is he all right?’ Preston picked up Thomas and squeezed him too hard for the child’s comfort. Playing with Thomas or even talking to him were rare occurrences. His care was concentrated in concern for his health. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? If there’s the slightest thing we should call Dr Jefferson. He’s a good friend, I know he’d come like a shot.’

  ‘He’s very all right, Mr Still.’ The use of given names to Rabia’s employer did not extend to the master of the house. ‘He doesn’t want to sleep, that’s all.’

  ‘How peculiar,’ Preston said dismally. The idea of anyone not wanting to sleep, especially someone of his own blood, was alien to him. ‘And the girls? I thought Matilda had a bit of a cough when I saw her yesterday.’

  Rabia said that Matilda and Hero were sound asleep in the adjoining room. There was nothing wrong with any of the children and if Mr Preston would just lay Thomas down gently he would certainly settle. Knowing what would please him, get rid of him and let her go back to her own bed, she said, ‘He was just missing his daddy and now you are here he will be fine.’

  No paediatrician then, no more disturbance. She could go to bed. She could sleep for maybe five hours. What she had said to Mr Still about Thomas missing his daddy wasn’t true. It was a lie told to please him. Secretly, Rabia believed that none of the children would miss either of their parents for a moment. They seldom saw them. She put her lips to Thomas’s cheek and whispered, ‘My sweetheart.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the tray was a small tub of the kind of yogurt that claims to regulate the consumer’s bowel movements, a fig and a slice of buttered toast, marmalade and a pot of coffee. The Princess was halfway through her yogurt phase. June knew she was halfway through because her phases always lasted about four months and two had elapsed. She fished out the tray-on-legs – neither of them knew its name – and set it up on top of the duvet. The Princess always put her hair in rollers at bedtime and now proceeded to take them out, shedding dandruff on to the toast.

  ‘Sleep well, dear?’

  ‘Not so bad, madam. How about yourself?’

  ‘I had a most peculiar dream.’ The Princess often had peculiar dreams and now began to recount this one.

  June didn’t listen. She pulled back the curtains and stood in the window, looking down at Hexam Place below. Lord Studley’s black BMW stood outside number 11 on the opposite side, poor Henry at the wheel. June knew for a fact he would have been there for two hours. He looked as if he had fallen asleep and no wonder. It was a pity really that the Saint Zita’s Society wasn’t a union but perhaps it could take on some of the prerogatives of a union and put its spoke in at such heartless treatment of an employee. June wondered if Henry’s human rights might be infringed.

  The classy school bus, silver with a blue stripe along its side, came round the corner from Lower Sloane Street. Hero and Matilda Still were already waiting outside number 7, each holding one of Rabia’s hands. She saw them on to the bus and it bore them off to their very expensive school in Westminster. Now why couldn’t their mother have done that? Still in bed, thought June. Still by name and still by nature. What a world! Damian and Roland had emerged from number 8 whose front door June couldn’t see from where she stood. Those two always went everywhere together. If they had been of opposite sexes they would have held hands and June, an ardent progressive, thought it a crying shame that this was a development in the fight against prejudice and bigotry not yet attained. Mr Still had just come out of number 7 when the Princess wound up h
er dream story. June had an instinct, born of years of experience, as to when this point was reached.

  ‘…and it wasn’t my mother at all but that girl with the red hair that cleans for those queers, and then I woke up.’

  ‘Fascinating, madam, but we don’t say “queers”, do we? We say “gay couple”.’

  ‘Oh, all right. If you insist. I’m sure Lady Studley doesn’t allow Sondra to talk to her like that.’

  ‘Probably not, madam,’ said June. ‘Is there anything else you’d like me to bring you?’

  There wasn’t. The Princess would sulk for a while and then get up. June had heard Zinnia arrive. She went downstairs, happy to have won that round and prepared, once she had persuaded the cleaner to wash the paint in the dining room, to get on with the agenda of the next Saint Zita meeting.

  June Caldwell had been fifteen when her mother, a widow and housekeeper to Caspar Borrington, had got her the job of lady’s maid (well, maid of everything really) to Susan Borrington, his daughter. Within two months of her eighteenth birthday Susan had got herself engaged to Prince Luciano Hapsburg, scion of a dubiously aristocratic Italian family she met while skiing in Switzerland. Perhaps not exactly the scion as he had two older brothers and was a ski instructor. There was no money and the title was inclined to make Italians laugh, for Luciano’s father had changed his name from Angelotti to Hapsburg some years before. He had a couple of lingerie shops in Milan. This, oddly enough, gave them something in common. Caspar Borrington, who had plenty of money and who owned three houses and a flat in Mayfair, had made it out of something not dissimilar but even less dignified. His factories produced sanitary towels. The advent of Tampax ruined that but when Susan met Luciano the family was enormously rich and Susan was an only child.

  They got married and June went to live with them in the apartment Susan’s father paid for in Florence. The city amazed her, the people and their funny talk, the weather, always glorious (Susan got married in May), the buildings, the Arno, the bridges, the churches. She was just getting used to it, learning to say ‘Buon giorno’ and ‘Ciao’, when Susan and Luciano had a more than usually spectacular row, coming to blows, and Susan told June to pack, they were going home.

  They were never divorced, Susan having an idea divorce was impossible in Italy. Caspar Borrington gave Luciano a very large sum of money to shut him up and she never saw him again. Years later he got the marriage annulled. He was not a Serene Highness, there was some doubt if he was a prince at all, but Susan called herself Her Serene Highness the Princess Susan Hapsburg, had this name printed on her cards and entered it on the register of voters in the City of Westminster. Her father bought her number 6 Hexam Place, not quite so smart an address as it later became, and she had lived there ever since, finding herself a circle of friends among the widows of generals, ex-wives of sportsmen and superannuated single daughters of company directors. There had been lovers but not many and not for long.

  Zinnia was another who had a name she had adopted, disliking Karen with which she had been baptised in Antigua. She genuinely had the surname St Charles. Working for a princess in the heart of Knightsbridge brought her a lot of kudos and made it easy for her to get jobs cleaning at number 3, number 7 and number 9. Having got her to agree to washing the dining-room paint, June asked her if she’d like to join the Saint Zita Society.

  ‘What does it cost?’

  ‘Nothing. And the chances are you get a good many free drinks.’

  ‘OK,’ said Zinnia. ‘I don’t mind. Is Henry Copley a member?’

  ‘He is,’ said June. ‘But don’t get your hopes up. He’s got enough on his plate.’

  She went into the study which the Princess never entered, sat down at the desk the Princess never used, began composing the society’s constitution and teaching herself to write minutes.

  All the houses in Hexam Place had gardens, front and rear, and number 3 had a bit more round the side dividing it from the Dugong. The front gardens needed very little attention, consisting of pebbled squares with a tree planted in the middle of each, a Japanese flowering cherry, for instance, in the squares in front of number 4, two monkey puzzles at Simon Jefferson’s. Dex was glad there was little to do in that front garden as the monkey puzzles rather alarmed him. They looked unlike any trees he had ever seen before, more like something you might expect to find growing under the sea near a coral reef. Dex knew about such things from his television viewing. The television went on the moment he entered his room and remained on, irrespective of what might be showing, until he went to bed. Sometimes, if he was frightened or simply wary and Peach wasn’t speaking to him, he left it on all night.

  He liked Dr Jefferson’s back garden because it was big and walled and it had a lawn. He cut that lawn more often than he needed to because the lawnmower was so beautiful and smooth. Dr Jefferson said he could buy plants if he wanted to and got Jimmy to give him the money, so Dex went along to the Belgrave Nursery and bought annuals in May and hebes and lavender in September on the advice of the big tall Asian man called Mr Siddiqui. Dr Jefferson was pleased with his work and recommended him to Mr and Mrs Neville-Smith at number 5. So now Dex had two jobs which he could easily handle.

  He had seen no evil spirits since he came to work in Hexam Place but the fact was that he was not always sure about identifying evil spirits. Sometimes it took him weeks of observing them, often following them, before he could be sure. But he had to remember that he had made a promise to Mr Jefferson’s friend, Dr Mettage, the psychiatrist in the hospital, that he would do nothing to them unless they threatened him. He said that depended on what you meant by ‘threaten’. Women themselves were a threat to him, but he had never told Dr Mettage or Dr Jefferson that. He told his god but Peach had not responded.

  If he had no work to do in the front garden of number 3 there was plenty in the front garden of number 5. A hedge grew round the pebble patches on either side of the front steps and there were narrow flower borders round the hedge. Dex knelt to weed these borders, first laying down an old doormat given him by Mrs Neville-Smith to protect his knees from the little stones.

  He liked to watch the people of Hexam Place without wanting to talk to them, the red-headed woman opposite who sat on the steps to smoke a cigarette, the old lady called June taking a fat little dog round the block, the young man who looked as if he ought to be on TV, sitting at the wheel of a big shiny car, doing more sitting and waiting than driving. There were two men who lived in the same house with the red-headed one. They always left together in the morning just after Dex had started work, always wore suits and ties and, on cold days, tight-fitted overcoats.

  He had to go and work in the back and then he saw nothing but clematis and dahlias and roses. Mr Neville-Smith was very fond of roses. Next door at number 7 lived a lot of children, two and a baby, and a girl Jimmy said was an au pair. Dex saw her go up and down the area steps at number 7 and he saw a lady in a long black gown wearing a black headscarf and pushing the baby in a pushchair. But if he had chanced to see any of them away from the places where they lived he wouldn’t have recognised them. Faces meant nothing to him. He saw them as blank featureless masks.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Few of its patrons knew what a dugong was. The hanging sign above its doors showed a picture of an animal halfway between a seal and a dolphin with a woman’s pretty face. This led some to say it was a mermaid and others a manatee. The licensee said to google it but if anyone did the results weren’t known. It didn’t seem important. The Dugong was one of those London pubs which were surviving the recession and the drink-driving laws and the adjurations to everyone to drink less. This was because it had a wealthy and mainly youthful clientele, was tastefully appointed with a garden at the rear and a wide pavement at the front on which to gather, drink Sauvignon and chat.

  When the Saint Zita Society had its first meeting it was round the biggest table in the garden, the evening being fine and warm for mid-September. Jimmy should have been in the chair b
ut, if he didn’t exactly panic, he protested that he had no idea what to do. He’d never actually said he’d be chairman. Let June do it. So June read the rather sparse minutes of the inception meeting and they were agreed as a true record by Jimmy, Beacon, Thea, Montserrat, who hadn’t been there, and Henry. The first item on the agenda was the question of Henry’s human rights.

  June had scarcely begun on the speech she had written describing poor Henry waiting for hours at the wheel of the BMW for Lord Studley to arrive, had in fact not reached the point of uttering Lord Studley’s name, when the subject of her complaint leapt to his feet with a cry of ‘Stop, stop, stop!’

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ The Dugong’s garden was infested with wasps. ‘Have you been stung?’

  ‘You want me to lose my job?’ Henry lowered his voice, in the belief that not only walls but bushes and plants in tubs have ears. ‘It took me a bloody year to get my job – and what about my flat?’ He continued in a sibilant whisper, ‘You want me to lose my flat?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I’m very sorry,’ said June. ‘I meant well. It went to my heart seeing you half asleep at the wheel at that hour of the morning.’

  ‘We’ll change the subject if you don’t mind. Come to that,’ Henry said with a glare at her, ‘even if you do mind.’

  ‘Time for another drink,’ said Beacon. ‘What are we all having?’ He was trying to think up a suitable biblical quotation but there were no cars and not much in the way of human rights in the Bible. ‘What’ll it be, Henry?’

  Henry and Montserrat wanted white wine, June a vodka and tonic and Thea Merlot. Jimmy had lager and Beacon settled for sparkling water ‘with a hint of blackcurrant’ because there was always a chance Mr Still might call him on his mobile for a lift from Victoria Station.

  With nothing more on the agenda but ‘expenditure and income’, as yet a blank page, ‘Any Other Business’ was quickly reached. Monserrat suggested that there should be a recruiting drive to find more members. Even if membership was confined to Hexam Place, they were still lacking Rabia, Richard and Zinnia. Beacon said everyone had been given notice of the meeting and and you couldn’t make people come if they didn’t want to.