A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [36]
‘I’m so sorry,’ Fifi said, a little embarrassed. ‘I just assumed a married couple lived on the ground floor as the net curtains are so white.’
‘A man alone doesn’t have to become a slob,’ he said, and smiled. Fifi noticed he had nice eyes, grey with very dark lashes. ‘I like to keep the place proper. My June was very particular, she washed the nets every two weeks without fail. She wouldn’t like it if I let things go.’
Dan came over with their drinks then and she introduced him to Frank. ‘Who lives on the first floor?’ she went on to ask.
‘Miss Diamond,’ Frank replied. ‘She works for the telephone company, and she rules the roost.’
‘She’s an ogre, is she?’ Dan asked with a grin.
Frank chuckled. ‘She can be if she doesn’t like a body. She’s particular, you see, just like my June was. You leave a ring round the bath, make too much noise or don’t take your turn sweeping the stairs, then there’s hell to pay.’
Fifi could see now why the bathroom had been so unexpectedly clean, the only nice surprise of the day. She approved of the pub too, and now meeting Frank cheered her still more as he looked and sounded a decent, rather fatherly type. A comforting person to have as a neighbour.
She made some remark about being glad she hadn’t got to share the bathroom with messy people, and brought the subject round to the house across the street.
‘I saw a little girl coming out of there. She looked sad.’
‘She would be, with folks like them,’ Frank said with a grimace. ‘The Muckles are a disgrace. Filthy ways, lying, cheating curs.’
‘You don’t like them then?’ Dan joked.
‘Like them!’ Frank’s voice rose a couple of octaves. ‘They need exterminating!’
‘I can’t believe anyone is called Muckle,’ Fifi giggled. ‘Maybe they are that way because of their name.’
‘Their name is the only thing you can laugh about,’ Frank said, grimacing with disgust. ‘If I was a Catholic I’d be crossing myself whenever I heard it.’
A Polish man came along then, and Frank introduced him as his friend Stan and said he lived next door but one. Despite Stan’s strong Polish accent he had the manner of an English gentleman, very correct, a little stiff but also rather charming, and his long, mournful face reminded Fifi of a stray dog she’d once taken home.
‘You have such pretty hair,’ he said appreciatively. ‘It is good to see you leave it loose, I do not like this fashion they called the bird’s nest.’
‘Thank you.’ Fifi blushed at the unexpected compliment. ‘But I think the style you mean is called a beehive.’
‘To me it looks like a bird’s nest, and all stuck up with that lacquer,’ he made a grimace, ‘a man would never want to touch such a thing.’
Dan ran his fingers through a lock of Fifi’s hair protectively, giving both Frank and Stan a clear message she could be admired, but not touched by anyone but him. ‘Let me buy you both a drink to celebrate our first night in London together. We’d begun to think we’d never be able to find a flat here.’
Both Frank and Stan said they’d like a pint. ‘I hope London will be good for you,’ Frank said, looking from Fifi to Dan almost fondly. ‘I’m glad to have young people in the house again. When my daughter lived nearby she was in and out all the time with her children. I miss all the laughter and chatter.’
‘Where does she live now?’ Fifi asked, as always wanting to know everything about her new neighbours.
‘In Brisbane in Australia,’ Frank replied sadly. ‘June and I were intending to go out there and join them, but after she died I felt it was too late for me to uproot myself.’
By the time they were on their second drinks, Frank and Stan had pointed out several other neighbours and given Fifi and Dan a potted history of most of them. There were Cecil and Ivy Helass at number 6, solid, reliable folk who had the only phone in the road, and had four children aged from sixteen to twenty-two. John and Vera Bolton lived at number 13, and they were described as flashy. The names of the other neighbours and which houses they lived in went over Fifi’s head, but the one family Frank kept coming back to was