I shot up in my seat. Glancing through the Death Announcement section of your local newspaper on a daily basis seems a bizarre habit, but I’m of an age now that I recognise more and more of the names.
One phrase in this one made me smile. Its use in the broadest, innocent sense is afforded many deceaseds but was ironic in the case of this one. Agnes Totteridge was, indeed, ‘loved by all those who knew her’ but in a different sense.
The thought of Agnes made me blush. I was a child growing up in the 1970s and, whatever they say about children becoming more and more streetwise over the ages, a child is still a child – whatever the era. She had spared my feelings at the tender age of eight and for that I look back at her with gratitude.
Life in a provincial town like the one in which I grew up had (and occasionally still has) an intimacy about it and it was not easy to do anything in private, whether you were a child or an adult. The school playground was a hot bed of gossip – some of it without foundation but much of it rooted in the truth. It was there I came to learn about my father’s association with the recently-deceased Agnes Totteridge.
In my school an elite gang of older boys ruled the roost and you ‘crossed’ them at your peril. In many ways they inspired more fear in me than the teachers. I managed to steer clear of them when I could but one morning, I saw two of them advance towards me. My heart lurched. ‘We were talking about you,’ one of them said, prodding my chest. ‘Someone saw your old man going into Agnes Totteridge’s the other day.’
My reply was one of genuine bewilderment
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
They both laughed.
‘Little innocent, aren’t you? Everyone knows who Agnes Totteridge is. His father knows her for a start’. He pointed to a boy in the Group behind him. ‘And his. And his.’
‘My father knows lots of people,’ I said defensively.
They both chuckled.
‘Not like this, he doesn’t.’
‘Perhaps she’s a friend of Mummy’s’ I countered. I was met with howls of ridicule.
They turned on their heels and there the matter might have ended, but my curiosity was piqued. Despite my naivete, an unaccountable intuition made me broach my father alone, rather than both parents, and I was alarmed by his reaction.
He seemed flustered.
‘Now, look here,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anyone of that name and people who say otherwise are spreading malicious lies.’
I wasn’t sure what ‘malicious lies’ were, but they didn’t sound nice and neither did Agnes if knowing her resulted in them spreading.
‘Does Mummy know her?’ I asked.
I thought I heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘No: she doesn’t. Neither of us does, and that’s the last word I have to say on the subject. I don’t want you ever to mention her name again. Not in our house, nor anywhere else. Do you understand?’
It was unusual for a man of his normally placid nature to be so vehement and I was quite startled.
Curiosity gnawed at me. Who was this woman? And where did she live?
I was like a dog with a bone, but my investigations kept leading me up blind alleys and I certainly had to rule out asking pupils in my school for fear of ridicule. Eventually, I hit upon an idea. It was a ‘long shot’ and unnecessarily convoluted, if not crafty, but I tried it anyway. I could have tried any number of less complex methods I realised later on, such as seeing if there was anyone in the local telephone directory with the surname Totteridge, but at the age of eight it didn’t occur to me.
I was a paper boy working for the only shop in the vicinity that undertook deliveries to your door. The owner, a tall, angular lady called Mrs. Marchant, had taken a shine to me from day one.
‘Mrs. Marchant,’ I ventured, returning my empty bag one morning after delivery. ‘I was talking to one of my friends in the playground the other day.’
‘Yes, dear,’ she replied absently, with her mind clearly on something else.
‘He said that you must provide delivery of the papers to every house in the neighbourhood.’
I saw a look of pleasure pass across her face and knew I now had her attention.
‘Well, not quite, dear, even though I’m probably the first choice. Some might even say ‘Hobson’s Choice.’
I didn’t know who Hobson was then, only realising the true meaning of what she was implying some time afterwards.
I found that lying came naturally to me and was surprised. Perhaps it came easily to everybody when they wanted something: in this case, information.
‘Mrs. Marchant’ I said. ‘My friend and I had a bet.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that dear,’ she admonished him. ‘Not a nice young boy like you.’
‘No, no, Mrs. Marchant,’ I protested. ‘Not like when people watch horse racing on the television (I saw her frown). It was just that I said to my friend that I could tell you anybody’s name and you would probably remember their address because of making out their paper bill.’
‘Some I would, yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Others I’d have to double-check, of course.’ I reeled off some surnames of my schoolfriends’ families and she recited them almost without thinking. I think she was enjoying the game – everyone does when they’re displaying their superiority.
‘Agnes Totteridge.’
She stopped smiling and I saw a look of disdain pass her face.
‘I’m not sure where you’ve heard that name,’ she bridled ‘but, yes, she’s one of my customers: although when she gets the time to read, I don’t really know.’
I left the shop that morning with an address lodged in my little brain.
I found it the following weekend. The house was a little, ‘two up, two down’ just a few streets away from what was over-ambitiously in those days referred to as ‘the town centre.’ I drew a deep breath and knocked on the door. Everyone seems tall when you’re eight years old and she was even taller than Mrs. Marchant – although more curvaceous and much prettier. She had to bend down to greet me.
‘Hello’, I said. ‘Are you Miss Totteridge?’
‘I am,’ she replied. ‘Only it’s Agnes. And you are?’
‘I’m Billy. Billy Williams. I think you know my father.’
If she was at all put out, it didn’t show. She smiled.
‘Well, Master Williams, perhaps you’d better come inside.’
I hesitated.
‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘I won’t bite.’
She ushered me into a little living room, a fraction of the size of ours. It was not tidy like ours, being strewn with endless bric-a-brac, but was, though, homely and inviting in its own way, in a way which ours wasn’t. Nowadays my mother might very well have been labelled with a medical term to account for her cleaning compulsion and fixation for tidying-up, but in those days, it was not remarked upon and maybe not even thought about too deeply as being anything much away from the ‘norm.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Agnes offered. ‘I think you’re a bit young for whiskey or gin and it’s a bit early in the morning anyway, but maybe a soft drink? Even a cup of tea?
I opted for the tea and, in deference to me, I think, she opted for the same.
She sat down at the table, adjusting her skirt and crossing her legs in a manner unlike any grown-up woman I had ever encountered. I found it unsettling, but unaccountably pleasurable at the same time.
I explained why I was there, feeling my face grow ever hotter with embarrassment.
‘No-one will tell me who you are,’ I eventually admitted. ‘And it’s been worrying me.’
I expected peels of laughter, but a look of what I can only describe as compassion passed over her face. She spoke deliberately, as if she was measuring each word she chose.
‘Your father and I have been good friends for some time now,’ she explained. ‘I have other good friends in the town too, apart from him: some with sons just like you.’ She paused. ‘You know, sometimes grown-ups like to keep things secret. It’s often better that way. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘Is Mummy your friend?’
I could see she was thinking very carefully about her reply.
‘No,’ she responded, sipping her tea. ‘Mothers and I generally don’t have much in common, you see.’
‘Why?’ I persisted.
Again, I could see her racking her brains.
‘Because they don’t want to do the things their husbands do. Things that I like doing.’
‘Such as?’
‘Indoor pursuits.’
‘Pursuits?’ I queried, not knowing the word.
‘Games,’ she explained.
Even recounting this after all this time I still shudder at the memory.
‘Like snakes and ladders?’ I said in my silly, piping voice.
I heard her choke on her tea.
‘Something like that, yes.’
We sipped our tea and chatted. She asked me about my school, my friends; even my piano lessons – all without patronage; everything, except unsurprisingly, my parents. In a strange way I felt comfortable with her: much more so than I did with my own mother, who ruled the roost at home and was not one to ever take me into her confidence.
Agnes looked at her watch.
‘I think it’s time for you to go,’ she said gently. ‘I’m expecting a friend in about half an hour.’
Of course, I learned the truth about Agnes pretty quickly – just as soon as I crossed the bridge from childhood to puberty as we all have to. Out of gratitude for her kindness, I never commented on her and refused to join in with any playground gossip. I moved away from the town and moved back again, acquiring a family of my own in the process.
As I sat there, I pondered. I had visited several ‘Agneses’ of my own over the years – some even after I married. If I had been repulsed by her on that Saturday morning many years ago, or she had been less kind and understanding, would have I been so readily willing to do so? I’ll never know.