Thieving Fear

TWO

'You may call your witness, Miss Lomax.'

Just one, Ellen thought as she pushed back her chair – just one former inmate of the Seabreeze Home had agreed to testify on her behalf. She didn't blame the others for refusing. They'd been through enough, and so many were living on little but memories that she didn't want to make them recollect the bad ones. At least they weren't speaking up for the Cremornes as Peggy appeared to have promised she would, if she wasn't playing one of her wily games. As Ellen opened the door of the committee room she was eager to read her face.

Six straight chairs kept company in the corridor, beneath an interbellum photograph of Southport Pier, but only two were occupied, by Muriel Stiles and a nurse. 'Thanks so much for coming, Muriel,' Ellen said.

The old woman took some moments to tilt her head up, which failed to unwrinkle her neck. Her wide loose faded face was so preoccupied that Ellen had the fleeting fancy that the crowded photograph of sedate revellers, an image of enjoyment curbed by moderation and flanked by wars, could be a childhood memory that Muriel was reliving. It reminded Ellen of a flashback inset in a panel of a comic. She would have scribbled down the image if she'd had a notebook, but Muriel was giving her a shaky smile. 'Don't worry, Muriel,' she said. 'I won't let anyone upset you. Just say what you remember.'

She held the door open as the nurse ushered Muriel into the room. The tribunal was seated at the far end of the long table, on the left side of which the Cremornes guarded their lawyer. To Ellen's and quite possibly to Muriel's dismay, the nurse steered his charge in that direction. 'This side,' Ellen told him in less of a murmur than she would have preferred.

Virginia Cremorne interlaced her fingers and sat forwards with a prayerful expression on her small sharp face as Muriel sank onto the chair opposite. 'How are you keeping, Muriel? You're looking as fit as ever.'

Jack Cremorne pinched his shiny brown moustache between finger and thumb as if he meant to remove a disguise from his large perpetually suffused face, then fell to gripping his chin as he said 'Nice to see you again, Muriel. A pity you felt you had to leave us, but we hope you're managing to settle in where you are now.'

Surely they shouldn't be allowed to speak to her that way. When Ellen sent the tribunal a glance that was rather more than enquiring, the chairman said 'Is Miss Stiles ready to proceed?'

Ellen turned further towards Muriel. 'Can I just ask you –'

Both women on the committee parted their lips – like a ventriloquists' contest, Ellen might have noted – but it was the chairman who said 'Miss Stiles will need to take the oath.'

'You'd think someone didn't want people telling the truth,' Jack Cremorne suggested to his wife.

Ellen would have expected the chairman to issue a rebuke, but he only held a Bible out to her. She handed the diminutive book to Muriel, who extracted the card that bore the oath and performed it with such force that Ellen was reminded how she'd often told tales of her days in amateur dramatics. Muriel carried on pressing the Bible to her bosom until the chairman had to ask for the book. 'By all means proceed,' he said.

'I'm just going to ask you a few questions about things Mr and Mrs Cremorne have been saying about me, Muriel. Did –'

'We aren't the only ones that say them,' Virginia Cremorne said.

'They were said to us,' her husband amplified.

'That will be addressed,' said their lawyer.

'May I speak now?' When the chairman delivered a weighty nod of his saturnine squarish head, Ellen asked Muriel 'Did you ever see me steal from any of the residents?'

'I certainly never did.'

'Did any of the other residents?'

'Objection,' the lawyer said. 'Hearsay.'

'Now, Mr Bentley, you know that isn't how it's done,' the heavier and more plainly dressed of the committeewomen said. 'You'll have your turn.'

'If I may be allowed to finish my question,' Ellen said, starting to feel like a lawyer, 'did any of the other residents say they had?'

'Had what?' Muriel said and glared at the Cremornes. 'We didn't have much. I didn't get half of what I paid for. Cold in bed and starved at dinner.'

As Virginia Cremorne opened her outraged mouth, Ellen tried to retrieve her theme. 'I was asking if they said they saw me steal.'

'She'll be tying her tongue in a knot if she carries on like that, won't she?' Muriel said to the chairman. 'They said they saw me steal,' she repeated and attempted to do so at speed. 'I used to be able to say those,' she conceded at last. 'The things you miss at my age.'

'Miss Stiles,' the chairman said, 'if you could do your best –'

'Only trying to cheer the show up. You three look as if you could do with it or you'll be as bad as this pathetic pair.' To Ellen she said 'Nobody saw you because you never did.'

'Thank you, Muriel. And as far as you know, was I ever drunk on the job?'

'You had a glass of wine at my eightieth, didn't you? Everyone did except for this pair, who couldn't be bothered to come.'

'It should be in the records that I wasn't on duty that day,' Ellen said to the tribunal. 'I went in for Muriel's party.'

'Some of the staff that were on had a lot more to drink. Pam was so squiffy she dropped Hilda in the bath.'

'The person concerned is no longer employed by us,' Jack Cremorne informed the panel.

'How about bullying, Muriel? Was I ever guilty of that to your knowledge?'

'You were not. You were the one who cared for us most and that's why you said what you had to. Standing up to people isn't bullying.'

Though Virginia Cremorne uttered less than a word, it was enough to provoke Muriel. 'I'll tell you an example,' she declared and turned from the panel to Ellen. 'What was the blackie's name again?'

Ellen thought it best not to draw attention to the term. 'Daniel, you mean.'

'That's him. A big black buck, that's what they used to call them,' Muriel said with some defiance. 'Doris kept saying he'd sneak into her room at night and do things to her, but he made out she was imagining it and this pair said she must be. If you ask me they were scared he'd sue them because you can't say anything about anyone these days unless they're white.'

'I really must point out,' Virginia Cremorne said, 'that the person referred to –'

'Don't bother telling them you fired him. That wasn't till this girl followed him to Doris's room one night and found him touching her. He got hold of her and tried to throw her out while she was asking Doris about it. I heard it all, and I'll tell you what else, don't talk to me about drinking. That stuff he used to smoke in the back garden and some of the rest of them did, that was worse than any drink.'

'That's entirely news to us,' Jack Cremorne said. 'Isn't it, dear?'

The lawyer held up his skinny hands between the couple and inclined his balding but unruly head towards the chairman. 'In any case the people mentioned aren't the subject of this enquiry.'

'I see that, Mr Bentley. Have you any further questions, Miss Lomax?'

'Would you say I neglected the residents, Muriel?'

'I would not,' Muriel said and squinted at the tribunal. 'She cared so much about us she lost her job reporting the place to the authorities when this pair wouldn't listen.'

'Thanks, Muriel. No further questions.'

Muriel was gripping the edge of the table as an aid to standing up when the lawyer said 'I won't detain you long, Miss Stiles.'

As her wrists continued to tremble once she'd subsided onto the chair he said 'You've told us a number of things you didn't see Miss Lomax do. Can you tell us anything you actually saw besides her enjoying a glass of wine at the party Mr and Mrs Cremorne were kind enough to have the home put on for you?'

'I said how she dealt with that animal in Doris's room.'

'I understood you to say you only overheard what may have happened. I think the incident proves my clients were quite willing to take action whenever there was the need. Was there anything you saw with your own eyes?'

'There was plenty. I saw what was his name, the one with the face like a bloodhound, Billy kicking Anna's legs because she wouldn't go to bed and saying she'd hurt herself falling. And I saw –'

'May I ask you to confine yourself to Miss Lomax? This hearing is about her.'

'I'll say everything I said all over again if you like. And I'll tell you this, she was the only one we trusted out of the lot of them. Even the ones who never did anything to us wouldn't speak up for us.'

'Very well, if that's all. Thank you, Miss Stiles. I can see it's been a strain.'

Muriel seemed as confused by his ending the interrogation as the Cremornes were pretending not to feel. The nurse was helping her up when she leaned towards Ellen. 'Can I wait and see how we did?'

'If you wouldn't mind waiting outside,' the chairman said.

Muriel stared as if she wondered what it had to do with him. 'I will,' she told the nurse.

As the lawyer held the door open for them he called 'We're ready for you, Mrs Nash.'

So Peggy had shown up. A nurse wheeled her forwards as Muriel hobbled out of the room. Did she mean to make a point of not recognising Peggy, or was she taken aback by the wheelchair? Peggy greeted the Cremornes and then peered with her magnified eyes through her glasses at the tribunal. 'Where do you want me sitting?' she said.

'It looks as if you already are, Peggy,' Ellen remarked with a gentle laugh.

'I'm not speaking to you.'

'That could pose a problem,' the chairman said. 'Please sit wherever you're comfortable.'

'I was at the Seabreeze,' Peggy said and stared at Ellen before telling the nurse 'Put me here.'

As she settled at the end of the table facing the tribunal, the lawyer said 'Mrs Nash, can I just establish you're here of your own free will?'

'Don't insult me. My body may have let me down but there's nothing wrong upstairs.'

He handed her the oath to take and followed it by asking 'Is it the case that you're still living at the Seabreeze Home?'

'You know I am.'

'I have to ask you these things for the record. Could you tell us how you came to take up residence there?'

'I met my husband Gerald when he was posted to Nairobi in the fifties. He wasn't like most of them. Most of his troop, they looked down on us and let us know it. The sergeant, he was the worst of the lot. He –'

'Forgive my interrupting,' the chairman said, 'but may we move this forwards? There's another hearing scheduled for this afternoon.'

Peggy's mouth drooped open with outrage or because she'd lost her verbal grasp. 'Can I ask what happened after Mr Nash's death?' the lawyer prompted. 'When you decided to seek residential accommodation, and I appreciate that was years later, did you encounter any problems?'

'Half a dozen of them, and that was just here in Southport. Homes that didn't have a vacancy after all when I turned up.'

'And you feel that was because . . .'

'Have you really got to ask that too? Because of what I am.'

'To put it delicately, an ethnic lady.'

'That's not what I see when I look in the mirror. I just see me.'

Having opened her mouth at the hint of an unwelcome memory, Ellen had to find something to say. 'Everybody's ethnic,' she murmured. 'You shouldn't hijack words.'

'Perhaps some people have more of a reason to care about them,' the lawyer said. 'And how were you made to feel at the Seabreeze Home, Mrs Nash?'

'They treated me like anybody else.'

'Which I take it you're saying was excellently.' When Peggy gave several vigorous nods the lawyer said 'But you'll be aware there have been problems recently with the running of the home.'

'Some of the staff weren't up to standard all the time. The night manager should have kept more of an eye on them. You were right to boot her out,' Peggy told the Cremornes. 'Except the worst of the lot was the one that snitched on her workmates. She only did it so people wouldn't notice how bad she was herself.'

'To be clear, the person you have in mind –'

'She knows who I mean. She's trying to bully me now, looking at me how she does.' Peggy fixed Ellen with a gaze she seemed to think was reciprocal. 'I wouldn't be surprised if she's tried to disguise herself,' she said. 'I don't remember her that size.'

Ellen felt as if her face had swollen up with fever, clamping her lips shut, as the lawyer said 'For the record, you're referring to Miss Lomax.'

Peggy's gaze flickered, only to intensify. 'Is that what she's calling herself?'

'And you believe Mr and Mrs Cremorne had reason to fire her.'

'That's opinion, Mr Bentley,' the chairman said. 'Please concern yourself with evidence.'

'What's the basis of your views, Mrs Nash? What are you saying Miss Lomax did?'

'Stole, for a start. When all the money went from Veronica's purse I saw how guilty that one looked. And one night I saw her with a little whisky bottle when she thought I wasn't looking.'

This was enough to activate Ellen's unwieldy face. 'I found it,' she said. 'I was taking it to the night manager.'

'You'll have your chance, Miss Lomax. Any further observations, Mrs Nash?'

'You've seen how she bullies people. She's doing it now.'

'Please don't feel intimidated. You're among friends.' As Ellen looked away from her, only to wonder why she should have, the lawyer said 'Your witness, Miss Lomax.'

Ellen's lips felt thick and not entirely stable as she said 'First of all, Peggy –'

'I've told you, I'm not speaking to you,' Peggy said and stared at the tribunal.

'Excuse me, but you just did, and I have to point out –'

'She's trying to confuse her,' Virginia Cremorne protested. 'She'll have her not knowing what she's saying.'

Ellen turned her awkward face towards the chairman. 'How am I supposed to question her like this?'

'You should have thought of that before,' Jack Cremorne said. 'If you believed you were in the right you'd have bet some money on a lawyer.'

'This is most irregular,' the chairman said. 'If Miss Lomax poses the questions, Mrs Nash, will you give me your answers?'

'We'll see what she has the cheek to ask.'

'Peggy, you said I was trying to divert attention away from some behaviour of my own. What kind? You surely aren't accusing me of sexual abuse.'

'Mrs Nash, you said –'

'I heard her. Couldn't not. I've never known anyone to drone so much. Used to put me to sleep while I was awake and keep me awake when I was trying to sleep.' Having ventilated this, Peggy said 'There are other kinds of abuse.'

'And which are you saying I was guilty of?'

'Miss Lomax would like to know –'

'I can still hear her. It's like hearing a cow moo.' Peggy rested her gaze on the chairman while she added 'Here's the truth and she won't like it. She made up that tale about Daniel to get him kicked out.'

'Why would she have done that?'

'Because she didn't want him there any more than she wanted me.'

'The previous witness agreed with Miss Lomax's version of events.'

'Are you talking about Muriel Stiles?'

Ellen hoped Peggy's tone had antagonised the chairman more than he made audible. 'That was the lady, yes.'

'She didn't see anything. She only heard Doris making a fuss, and everyone knew poor old Doris dreamed up half of what she said. We'd be sitting in the day room and she'd say the man on television wanted her to get undressed.'

'She could be a little flustered sometimes,' Ellen told the panel, 'but she wasn't that night. I'd remind you that Mr and Mrs Cremorne took the situation seriously enough to send him on his way.'

'Only because she saw her chance and backed Doris up,' Peggy said. 'Maybe she hated him even more than me because she had to work with him.'

'Forgive me, Mrs Nash, but we need to be clear for the record. You mean like you in the sense of . . .'

'Black.' With enough force to capitalise all the letters Peggy repeated 'Black.'

Ellen had to draw a breath as shaky as her mouth to catch her voice. 'That really isn't true.'

'Is she trying to paint me as white as she wants you to think she is?'

'I'm saying I've never said or done anything against her, and this is the first time she's ever said I have.'

'Too frightened to while you were at the Seabreeze,' Virginia Cremorne muttered.

'The light went off in my room one night,' Peggy said, 'and that one told everyone she wouldn't be able to see me in the dark.'

Ellen managed to produce a parched laugh. 'That wasn't how it happened, Peggy. If you remember, I was changing the bulb because nobody else could be bothered, and I simply said I couldn't see you in your chair because you were so far from the door.'

'Were there witnesses?' the chairman said to one or both of them.

'They're some of the ones she got fired.'

'Is this documented, Mr Bentley?' When the lawyer admitted the opposite the chairman said 'Please continue, Miss Lomax.'

'Is there anything else you want to say about me, Peggy?'

'I don't want anything to do with that one at all,' Peggy told everyone apart from Ellen.

'Have you even got a problem with my name?'

Peggy clutched at the wheels of her chair. 'Can I go now?'

All at once Ellen was sure it was crucial to ask 'Seriously, aren't you able to say it?'

'Why should I?' Peggy appealed to the chairman.

'I think perhaps you should just for the record.'

'It's Lomax.'

'That's what you've heard people calling me today. What did they call me at the Seabreeze? You must remember, surely. Like the gentleman told you, it's for the record.'

'Little Miss Innocence. Little Miss Better Than Everyone Else.' To the Cremornes Peggy said 'Do you know what Doris used to call her? Little Saint Whosit. I wouldn't call her little anything.'

Ellen had to shrug the insult off to reach the point. 'Saint what, Peggy? What's my name?'

'That's all Doris said,' Peggy informed the panel. 'I told you she didn't know what was going on or who anyone was half the time.'

'I hope that's enough,' Jack Cremorne said. 'Aren't you ever going to stop bullying our residents, Ellen?'

'And don't anybody run away with the idea I didn't know her name,' Peggy said, 'except I used to call her Lemon and she never knew.'

'Are there any other matters you would like to raise, Miss Lomax?'

'I think I'm finished.'

She was almost certain that the chairman gave her a sympathetic look. 'Thank you, Mrs Nash,' he said. 'We appreciate the effort you've made to speak to us.'

'It's a pity more didn't. Jack and Virginia have enough problems without this.'

The Cremornes seemed less than wholly grateful for her parting comment. They watched the nurse wheel her out and the tribunal murmuring to one another. Ellen tried not to appear too hopeful or the reverse while she gazed out of a high window at a treetop entwined with powerless coloured light bulbs. Eventually Jack Cremorne said 'Any idea how long you're likely to be? Our parking's nearly up.'

Ellen was sure this provoked the chairman to say 'I'm afraid we'll have to defer judgment until it can be put in writing.'

'It isn't only us that wants to hear,' Virginia Cremorne objected. 'You can see Miss Lomax is anxious.'

'I think you'd best be seeing to your car,' the lawyer murmured.

He conducted them out and held the door open for Ellen. Peggy had been wheeled away, but Muriel was keeping her vigil beneath the photograph of quieter times. As the Cremornes marched off with their lawyer, Ellen said 'We have to wait.'

The words made her feel clumsy before Muriel whispered to the nurse 'What have we got to wait for?'

'Sorry, Muriel. I meant me.'

Muriel's whisper was even more piercing. 'Why have we got to wait for her?'

'You haven't. I'm the one who has to wait. Not here, for them to make their minds up. They haven't time today. There are other people they have to see.'

Ellen might have expected those to have arrived, but perhaps they were watching along the corridor. 'I'll tell you the decision when I know,' she said.

She felt weighed down by her mass of words and Muriel's vague patience and the tardiness of the tribunal. 'I'll keep in touch,' she said and turned away, to find that they and the nurse were alone in the corridor.

The impression of a watcher was no more than a lingering smudge on her consciousness. She hurried to the end of the corridor, but the wide stone stairs to the ground floor were deserted too. She was taking the first step down when she faltered with a hand on the chill banister. Muriel's whisper was loud enough to be heard in the committee room. 'Who was the fat girl? Did she think she knew us?'