The Beast by Hugh Fleetwood Page A

her jewels had made her knowledgeable (the news programmes, talks and concerts she listened to on the radio only gave words, definitions, sounds to what she already knew and thought and felt) and ultimately, her jewels had given her faith. Faith in the possibility of perfection . The sort of perfection that she was convinced existed in certain stones—even if she had never actually come across one herself, being only a little jeweller in a little shop in a little town, who dealt mainly in goodish, but not priceless items—and believed existed in Rachel Menon.
    What could be wrong with the girl, she spent the rest of that day wondering, that she should come so near betraying herself because of it?
    What could be wrong with her, she wondered the next day as she saw her walking down the High Street, on the opposite side of the road, looking thoughtful and tense and unhappy.
    What could be wrong with her, she wondered a weekafter that, with the same feeling of depression as had struck her when Rachel had said ‘I’ll sell it to you when she dies,’ as she saw the girl meet an acquaintance in the street and greet him with a silly wave and a high, affected laugh. Oh, she had fought a battle within herself eight days ago in the shop, and had won that time; but clearly the war was still continuing. Would she be strong enough for the final victory? Would she? Daisy prayed as she had prayed before; but she was afraid, very afraid …
    What could be wrong? she wondered.
    If she didn’t really expect ever to receive an answer to this question, she would never have guessed where she would, in fact, get an explanation of sorts from—the very next day.
    She got it from Rachel’s mother.
    It was five in the afternoon and Daisy was just preparing to close, when she saw the slim, dark woman walking rapidly down the street. She muttered a kind of curse on her for the damage she was doing to her daughter—and as she did so Mrs Menon turned, stared at her shop front, and without a moment’s hesitation strode, with her confident boyish walk, across the road and into the shop. Daisy was both appalled and stunned. Appalled to have her in the shop at all, and stunned at the manner of her arrival. It was as if the curse had been a call …
    ‘How are you, Daisy?’
    ‘Quite well, thank you,’ Daisy muttered, looking—in order not to look at the lazy left hand which held an untipped cigarette, and on one of whose fingers shone the great square diamond—at the sleek black hair that Mrs Menon wore like a shiny little cap, and at the bags under her oh-so-weary eyes. ‘I can’t complain.’
    She could and she should, Mrs Menon’s gaze seemed tosay, as she attempted—but it was such an effort—to smile. ‘I have to talk to you.’
    How she hated her. Oh God, how she hated her! She hated her looks, she hated her foreign—French and English, Jewish and Russian, she’d heard—ancestry, she hated her money. She hated her many husbands, and she hated the way she dressed. She hated the way she spoke, and she hated the way she smoked. She hated everything about her; and above all she hated her because she was the only person in the whole world who had ever made her feel that Daisy Jones had, perhaps, missed out on something; and that there was perhaps an alternative to a life spent in a small dark shop, with stones. She had often tried to find out the reason for this; the reason why the woman made her feel so wretched and disturbed, and at times even dead; and if only she had been able to she would have been able to dismiss her from her mind, and throw her out onto the refuse dump where she was sure that she belonged. But she had never, quite, managed it.
    It wasn’t that Mrs Menon had been, and still was, in spite of the bags under her eyes, a very good-looking woman. Many of the women who walked down the High Street were far better looking, and Daisy had never been disturbed by them. It wasn’t that she was rich; in fact she was