Another reason for getting away. Bad luck did brush off so, everyone knew that.
‘Do you think he might kill her?’ He’s only a kid, Gabriel thought, for heaven’s sake what are you saying? But she had said it. And not such a kid. Fourteen, wasn’t he?
‘Oh no. It wouldn’t be like that.’ Charley sounded as if he knew.
‘Do you think she might kill him?’
Charley shook his head. ‘Oh no. Not because I think neither are capable of it. Anyone could be – but because there has to be love to kill.’
‘She’s up to something.’ The speaker was a tall sturdy woman with a crest of bright golden hair just turning grey. She was wearing her coat ready to go home. ‘Rose, I’m telling you. Am I your friend or am I not?’ A waft of garlic sped across her employer’s desk.
Rose Hilaire, born Rose Lee, once married, and mother of Steve, whose whole life was hidden, unspoken and out of sight, an underground boy. She firmly believed that he was in no way different, that tucked inside him was a mental giant, but he just WOULD NOT SPEAK. Not to her. Sometimes he wouldn’t even look, only turned his head away to stare at the wall. She knew he understood, though; she could see. Oddly enough he performed well at school even though in an average kind of way. Whatever Steve was he was not average, she told his teacher so. And of course she mentioned that he would not talk to her.
Sometimes, at bad moments, she thought he liked her new motorcar, the Porsche, more than her, and that if anything happened to her, he would find it a good mother substitute. She had caught him sitting at the wheel, playing with the gears. He’d even tried to drive it away.
In anger, she’d hit him, and then was ashamed because you should never hit your child. So she’d promised to give him driving lessons, on the quiet, when no one could see. But the anger was still there between them, this time it had transferred itself to him. It came out in the way he held the wheel, as if the car was his anger and his weapon. This frightened her. So she’d dropped the driving instruction. It was illegal, anyway.
At that moment, the end of her working day, the day after Gabriel’s photo session, her mind was about equally divided between Gabriel, whom she knew to be a problem but did not yet know how big a one, and Steve. Here again, was he a real problem or just a tiny little one that she had let get out of hand?
One day, she thought, he will walk out of this house and I will never see him again. Fourteen years old and already she felt she was writing his obituary. Only underground boys like Steve did not have obituaries, they just wandered off and one day there was a tiny paragraph in the daily paper about a boy being found. Or perhaps not even that. Just silence for evermore. But silence was what she had now.
One day she might find out why he hated her, if that was what it was, and not some family sickness to which she might one day succumb herself. But no, the bad blood was on his father’s side of the family.
At this moment she had a letter in her desk from Steve’s teacher praising his dramatic ability and suggesting he ought to go to theatre school. Rose thought she knew all about his dramatic powers, having been only too often a reluctant witness.
Although he would not talk to her, Steve had no intention of going short of his needs and he could mime. He could get across what he wanted all right and Rose never had any difficulty in being convinced he meant it. She wondered if he really wanted to go to drama school? So far he had made no such signal to her, which probably indicated he had no such intention. On the other hand, sometimes he liked to keep her in the dark until the last possible moment.
Small wonder that with such a training in body language she had no difficulty in reading Gabriel’s mind: she knew that Gabriel was keeping something from her, could make a pretty good guess what it was and did not, in spite of what Gabriel might think, even mind very much. She had a simple philosophy of all being fair … and the rag trade was a kind of war. She even liked Gabriel, but that didn’t mean she would let her get away with anything. Far, far from it.
‘I’ll kill that girl if she really screws me up.’
She was older than Gabriel, but not as much older as Gabriel thought. Nevertheless, in her career she had seen a good many Gabriels come and go. Some had more talent than others and stayed the course better. Character came into it too, you needed toughness in this trade. Gabriel was one of the smartest and the most talented. Perhaps the most talented. Rose respected that talent even while she knew very well that Gabriel would not stay with her for ever, or even for much longer. But while she was under contract, Rose meant her to abide by it.
Unluckily, she herself had no creative talent worth talking of. She had a good head for business combined with an intuitive grasp of what the market wanted. In other words, she understood fashion as interpreter. She needed someone like Gabriel and meant to hang on to her if she could. Usually she was content to let her young designers drift away; few of them were heard of again. Perhaps contact with Rose Hilaire had sucked them dry. But in the case of Gabriel she could foresee a long and profitable relationship, if not a particularly happy one. If Gabriel examined the small print of her contract she could see that Rose had allowed herself a ten-year option on her services.
Now she said: ‘I don’t trust her, Dagmar, but thanks all the same.’
Dagmar Blond buttoned her coat. ‘How long have we known each other?’
Rose did not answer because she knew from experience that Dagmar was about to tell her.
‘I worked for your aunt when she was running the business, and I was with your grandfather before that, God rest his soul.’
Grandfather Hilaire’s soul received frequent benedictions from Dagmar Blond who found him a useful seal of approval, although in life she had been no more than an errand girl in his workshop whose face he barely knew. Still, it proved she went a long way back with Rose.
‘So we inherited each other.’ Rose remained good-humoured. ‘And if I remember right, Gabriel came with an introduction from you.’
‘All right, all right. She came from Paradise Street. That ought to have told you something.’
Paradise Street was a short, crowded street running between Mouncy Street and Rowley Road, near the railway station and hard by the factory. It was famous for the close-knit family groups which lived there. Famous also for living by their own rules, and being well known to the police.
‘So did we once,’ said Rose Hilaire, ‘and we’ve moved away. That girl will be going a long way from Paradise Street.’
But they both knew you never got Paradise Street out of your system, it was there for always, something you were born to, like a crown or an inherited disease.
It said something about you when you said you came from Paradise Street. It had a past and a history, had Paradise Street, and they both projected themselves into the future. Strange violent things had happened there and were suppressed by the inhabitants: it was their business, other people could only guess.
‘I can manage her,’ Rose repeated.
‘And what about Joe?’
‘Joe?’
‘Yes. Joseph Benedict Landau,’ said Dagmar. ‘Can you manage him?’
‘Leave Joe out of it.’ Rose did not like to hear Dagmar talk about Joe; he was private.
She and Gabriel represented opposing poles in fashion but Rose was old enough to know that in the end they might complement each other. Even in looks they were different: Gabriel, beside being still very young, was slight, small-boned like a bird, and with dark eyes and a flow of dark hair, which at the moment, she ironed straight every morning. To those who said she might be bald at forty as a consequence she said either that she did not expect to live that long or else that she would buy a wig. Already she owned two falls of hair which she wore on an Alice band. Rose was tall, full of bust and narrow of waist, with a round face and strong curly blonde hair. Like Gabriel, she had a wardrobe of wigs. On her they