Jims brought an MP friend to call, “Oh, I do want to see my daddy!”
Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point. “My father hasn’t been to see us for months,” or, quoting the babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, “Mrs. Peacock says my father is an absentee dad.”
The last address Zillah had for him was in Harvist Road, NW10. Sometimes she got out the piece of paper on which he’d written it down and just stared at it, thinking. There was no phone number. At last she phoned Directory Enquiries. Without a name they couldn’t or wouldn’t help her. One afternoon, leaving Mrs. Peacock with the children, she went up to Harvist Road on a Bakerloo Line train to Queen’s Park. The place reminded her of her student days when she and Jerry had shared a room in a house near the station. They’d been very happy for a while. Then she got pregnant and they married, but things were never the same.
“Needles and pins, needles and pins,”
said Jerry, quoting his old granny,
“when a man marries his trouble begins.”
They were on their two-day honeymoon in Brighton. Then he said, “I quite like being married. I may do it a few times more.”
She smacked his face for that but he only laughed. Now she was looking for him to find out if he was willing to stay dead. His name wasn’t on a bell at the street number he’d given her. When she banged the lion head knocker an elderly woman came to the door and said, “I’m not interested in double glazing,” before she’d even spoken.
“And I’m not selling it. I’m looking for Jerry Leach. He used to live here.”
“He called himself Johnny, not Jerry, and he doesn’t live here now. Hasn’t since last year. Months and months. The answer to your next question is no, I don’t know where he’s gone.”
The door was shut in her face. She walked across the road and sat down on a seat in Queen’s Park, gazing at the green expanse. A black girl and a white girl, walking past, looked curiously at her short-skirted linen suit and high heels, put their heads together and giggled. Zillah ignored them. It was evident that Jerry didn’t want his whereabouts known. She must make up her mind he’d gone forever. What would he think when he saw her and Jims’s photograph in the paper? Perhaps he didn’t read them. But he’d be bound to find out sooner or later if this thing Jims called a reshuffle took place before the wedding. Because by then Jims might be a minister and on account of his youth and good looks and
her
youth and good looks, a target for the media. Jerry was a rotten provider and generally hopeless with money, and unfaithful and callous, but not wholly bad. He was the last man to try and rubbish her chances. If he saw she’d made a good marriage and done well for herself, he’d most likely laugh and say, “Good luck, girl, I won’t stand in your way.” Besides, he’d be relieved she wouldn’t nag him any longer for child support. Not that he’d ever given her any, there being no blood in a stone.
That silly joke of his kept running through her head. She hadn’t thought of it for years until Eugenie came out with it the other day.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve
were drownded. Who was saved?
Perhaps he actually
was
dead. But no. She reminded herself that whatever she pretended or told Jims, Jerry was her legally wedded husband. She’d have been the first to be officially informed. He was her husband and she was his wife. Uneasily, she remembered that for some reason, now forgotten, Jerry had required and got the old form of marriage service from the
Book of Common Prayer.
There had been a bit about whom God had joined together let no man put asunder, and keeping only unto him as long as they both lived. Moreover, she was going to have to go through all that again at St. Mary Undercroft, where she didn’t exactly know but could guess that they’d have the same old service. And the
Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point. “My father hasn’t been to see us for months,” or, quoting the babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, “Mrs. Peacock says my father is an absentee dad.”
The last address Zillah had for him was in Harvist Road, NW10. Sometimes she got out the piece of paper on which he’d written it down and just stared at it, thinking. There was no phone number. At last she phoned Directory Enquiries. Without a name they couldn’t or wouldn’t help her. One afternoon, leaving Mrs. Peacock with the children, she went up to Harvist Road on a Bakerloo Line train to Queen’s Park. The place reminded her of her student days when she and Jerry had shared a room in a house near the station. They’d been very happy for a while. Then she got pregnant and they married, but things were never the same.
“Needles and pins, needles and pins,”
said Jerry, quoting his old granny,
“when a man marries his trouble begins.”
They were on their two-day honeymoon in Brighton. Then he said, “I quite like being married. I may do it a few times more.”
She smacked his face for that but he only laughed. Now she was looking for him to find out if he was willing to stay dead. His name wasn’t on a bell at the street number he’d given her. When she banged the lion head knocker an elderly woman came to the door and said, “I’m not interested in double glazing,” before she’d even spoken.
“And I’m not selling it. I’m looking for Jerry Leach. He used to live here.”
“He called himself Johnny, not Jerry, and he doesn’t live here now. Hasn’t since last year. Months and months. The answer to your next question is no, I don’t know where he’s gone.”
The door was shut in her face. She walked across the road and sat down on a seat in Queen’s Park, gazing at the green expanse. A black girl and a white girl, walking past, looked curiously at her short-skirted linen suit and high heels, put their heads together and giggled. Zillah ignored them. It was evident that Jerry didn’t want his whereabouts known. She must make up her mind he’d gone forever. What would he think when he saw her and Jims’s photograph in the paper? Perhaps he didn’t read them. But he’d be bound to find out sooner or later if this thing Jims called a reshuffle took place before the wedding. Because by then Jims might be a minister and on account of his youth and good looks and
her
youth and good looks, a target for the media. Jerry was a rotten provider and generally hopeless with money, and unfaithful and callous, but not wholly bad. He was the last man to try and rubbish her chances. If he saw she’d made a good marriage and done well for herself, he’d most likely laugh and say, “Good luck, girl, I won’t stand in your way.” Besides, he’d be relieved she wouldn’t nag him any longer for child support. Not that he’d ever given her any, there being no blood in a stone.
That silly joke of his kept running through her head. She hadn’t thought of it for years until Eugenie came out with it the other day.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve
were drownded. Who was saved?
Perhaps he actually
was
dead. But no. She reminded herself that whatever she pretended or told Jims, Jerry was her legally wedded husband. She’d have been the first to be officially informed. He was her husband and she was his wife. Uneasily, she remembered that for some reason, now forgotten, Jerry had required and got the old form of marriage service from the
Book of Common Prayer.
There had been a bit about whom God had joined together let no man put asunder, and keeping only unto him as long as they both lived. Moreover, she was going to have to go through all that again at St. Mary Undercroft, where she didn’t exactly know but could guess that they’d have the same old service. And the
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