War Baby, page 23
‘My darling,’ the woman said, rising to her feet and lunging forward to envelop Bobbie in a fond embrace. ‘I’d ha’ know’d it was you anywhere. You’re the image of your dad. The spit an’ image. Imagine findin’ you again like this. When that Mrs Fortesque told me I couldn’t believe my ears. And livin’ with Malcolm Tremain I hear. Ain’t you the lucky one.’
Bobbie extricated herself from the woman’s rough grasp, aware of Sorrel’s heavy disapproval behind her. Now that really was too much. Even if she is my mother there’s no call to go on like that. Not after all these years.
‘Perhaps we should sit down and talk,’ she suggested. After all, neither of them could be sure she was the right Halliwell, not yet. It might all be a mistake.
The woman needed no urging to do either. ‘’Course I ain’t called Halliwell,’ she confided. ‘I just sort a’ used the name, you know what I mean. Had to say you was somebody, didn’t I? ’Course in them days it was an awful thing to be an unmarried mum. Not like today, eh? The way they carry on. Get away with murder they do. No, no, my name’s Brazil. I calls meself missus, sorta curtsey title. I ain’t never got wed. Couldn’t see the point. They can leave you just as easy with a ring on your finger, can’t they, when all’s said an’ done. Rotten buggers. So I kept me maiden name. Just like you done with Malcolm Tremain. Like mother like daughter, eh? I said to Mrs Fortesque, I said, imagine her living with Malcolm Tremain! They must be rolling in it. Not that I’m interested in money. I wouldn’t want you ter think that.’
‘No, of course not,’ Bobbie said, thinking it. This wasn’t the sort of mother she’d hoped to find. Not at all the sort. Oh dear. Oh dear.
‘Won’t it be a lark bein’ together again,’ the woman said. She had a habit of sucking her teeth when she’d finished a sentence. It made Bobbie aware of how dirty they were. ‘Your Malcolm’ll be surprised when he hears, I’ll bet.’
Bobbie could just imagine what ‘her’ Malcolm would say. Wasn’t this just what he’d feared? And just what she didn’t want? ‘Perhaps,’ she said cautiously, ‘you could tell me what I was like as a baby. I don’t know anything about myself you see.’
‘Dear little thing you was. Ever so pretty, though I sez it who shouldn’t. Big eyes. Lovely curly hair. And ever so good. Never cried. Well only to be fed. You know the way babies do. You used ter lie in that little crib a’ yours, I ’ad a lovely crib for you, all pink and white with pretty ribbons all over, you used ter lie in that crib an’ sleep like a baby. Oh yes, you was ever so good.’
‘I wonder you could part with her,’ Sorrel said acidly.
‘Couldn’t keep her, Missus. You don’t know the half of it, a nice lady like you. If you wasn’t married, they wouldn’t let you keep a baby. Not if it was ever so. They was horrid to us in them days.’
‘It must have upset you to give her up,’ Sorrel said. Her witch’s face was sharp as a knife, but Miss Brazil didn’t notice.
‘Oh it did,’ she said. ‘I was heartbroken. Torn apart I was. Cried fer days. You’ve no idea.’
‘And then every year afterwards there’s that date on the calendar,’ Sorrel went on. ‘June the thirtieth 1942. Staring you in the face.’
That’s not my birthday, Bobbie thought, looking round at Sorrel in surprise. But Miss Brazil found no fault with it.
‘That’s right,’ she cried. ‘A terrible day. I’ve never forgot it. Well you never do, do yer? I’ve shed a tear fer you, darling, every single year since the day you was born.’
‘June the thirtieth 1942,’ Bobbie said. Just to make sure. Oh thank God. She’s not my mother. She couldn’t be if she’s forgotten the day I was born.
‘June the thirtieth 1942,’ Miss Brazil agreed in tones of infinite sadness.
‘Where was I born?’ Bobbie asked, just to make sure.
‘At home. I ’ad you at home, darling. Wouldn’t go to no hospitals. You’re better at home.’
‘I think,’ Bobbie said, standing up and walking over to the window, ‘there’s been some mistake.’ Outside in the garden sparrows were chee-cheep-cheeping in the hedge and the lime tree was putting out new leaves, its elderly branches dusted with frail fresh green. Inside, Miss Brazil was sucking her teeth. Oh what a relief to know we’re not related. Sorrel knew she was a phoney. I wonder how she worked it out. Oh dear, and I thought I’d found her at last.
‘I’m not your daughter, Miss Brazil,’ she said. ‘I was born on September the thirtieth 1942, and the one thing I do know about my birth is that it happened in a place called Oster House in St Albans.’ She didn’t look round at the imposter. She couldn’t bear to.
‘But you said…’ Miss Brazil spluttered at Sorrel.
‘Well there you go,’ Sorrel said with great satisfaction. ‘We all make mistakes. I should have said September, but I was thinking of my son. He was born on June the thirtieth.’
‘I came here in good faith,’ Miss Brazil protested.
‘Well, ’course you did.’ Sorrel agreed. ‘Still no harm done. That’s the main thing. You’ll want to be getting along, I daresay. We mustn’t keep you.’
Bobbie didn’t watch her going either. It was bad enough to listen to it. To have come so far and searched for so long only to be subjected to a confidence trick. It was too awful. And to know that she was capable of rejecting her real mother even if she found her was even worse. By the time she heard Sorrel stomping back into the room she was bleak with guilt and distress.
‘I shall have something to say to that Mrs Fortesque,’ Sorrel said fiercely. ‘Stupid woman. This is all her doing, blabbing about you and Malcolm Tremain. She’s a bloody fool.’ She was furious, her brown eyes blazing and her long face almost as dark as Benjamin’s. To have given house room to a fraud was bad enough but to know that this dear girl was wasting her time with a phoney was worse. How could she be living with a man like Malcolm Tremain? It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I shall give her such a piece of my mind, she’ll wish she’d never been born.’
‘She’s not a bad woman,’ Bobbie pleaded. ‘I’m sure she meant well. I mean she wouldn’t… Oh dear, this is awful. What I mean to say is… I wish…’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Sorrel asked, side-stepping her confusion.
‘Go home, I suppose,’ Bobbie said. She couldn’t face knocking on doors, not after this, and there was nothing to stay here for.
‘Back to Mr Tremain?’ Sorrel said. And what massive disapproval she managed to convey in that name.
‘Yes,’ Bobbie admitted. ‘I’m sorry you don’t approve. But he needs me, you see. He’s not a bit like the person you see on the screen.’
‘No need to apologise I’m sure,’ Sorrel said tartly. ‘It’s your life. I just think you’re wasted on him that’s all.’
Her tone put Bobbie on the defensive. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I’m not. And you wouldn’t say that if you knew him.’
You’re worth three of him, Sorrel thought, and we both know it. But for once in her life she bit her tongue and said nothing. Bobbie’s misery was too acute to be increased, and besides she was fond of the girl. It wasn’t her fault that Benjamin was still out in the Middle East, great fool that he was. ‘I’ll make some sandwiches,’ she said. ‘You can’t drive home on an empty stomach.’
But when Bobbie had picked at a sandwich, drunk some coffee, kissed her bleakly and gone, Sorrel’s anger boiled over into action. She put on her woolly hat, her leather gloves and her thick winter coat, wound a woolly muffler round her neck and drove off in the jeep and a temper to find Mrs Fortesque.
That lady was out in her front garden with Bonzo in prancing attendance. She was on the move between one flower bed and the next, and she had a kneeling pad in one hand and a small trowel in the other, but she threw them both down when she saw the jeep and advanced towards her new friend as rapidly as her odd rolling gait would allow.
‘How did it go?’ she called brightly.
‘Go?’ Sorrel thundered, standing up in the jeep and the wind like a wool-wrapped Boadicea. ‘I wonder you can ask! The woman was a fraud. She was after Malcolm Tremain’s money. She’s no more Bobbie’s mother than I am. It’s all your fault, I hope you realise. Fancy telling her about that Malcolm Tremain. You might ha’ know’d what would happen. Well, I wonder at you. I really do!’
Mrs Fortesque’s careful make-up creased into wrinkles of distress. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Come here, Bonzo, there’s a good boy. Your mummy’s been a silly-billy.’
Silly-billy! Sorrel thought. What a fatuous thing to say! But then the dog’s behaviour took all her attention.
The animal had lolloped playfully towards his mistress and now he was jumping from side to side, barking and growling as though he was going to attack her.
‘Stop that!’ Sorrel said to him sternly, but she was too far away, and the dog was too excited to pay any attention to her. He was butting his mistress with his great blunt head, alerted and rewarded by her affectionate squeals.
‘No, no, stop it, you silly boy. Get down! You heard what I said. Get down do! How can I talk to this nice lady when you will keep on so? Oh you silly dog! You’ll have me over if you’re not careful.’
It was too late. Her enthusiastic pet had lunged at her so heavily that he knocked her off her feet. She fell backwards on to the lawn still protesting and with his paws still on her chest.
‘God damn it all to hell and back!’ Sorrel roared, jumping out of the jeep and striding across the lawn. ‘What a way to let an animal behave.’ And she hit the dog across his snout with one of her leather gloves.
He was very surprised, but she didn’t give him a chance to do more than blink at her. She already had the fingers of one hand under his collar, lifting him bodily from his mistress, and the moment his paws were on the ground she was pressing him into a sitting posture. ‘Sitttt!’ she said, very firmly.
His obedience was total. Confused, but total. And when she said ‘Goo’dog’ automatically as she always did to obedience, he looked quite pleased with himself. Mrs Fortesque could hardly believe her eyes.
‘Good heavens!’ she said. ‘How did you do that?’
The question was ignored. ‘Are we going into the house?’ Sorrel said. ‘Or do you mean to sit on the grass all afternoon?’
They went into the house, Bonzo followed meekly at Sorrel’s heels, Mrs Fortesque clutching her mat and trowel. The back of her coat was covered in mud and her orange hair was falling over sideways like a toppling haystack.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she apologised, ‘what must you think of me? First that woman and now Bonzo being so naughty.’
‘It’s not you I’m thinking of,’ Sorrel said sternly and truthfully as they walked into the kitchen. ‘It’s that poor gel. Have you got the remotest idea what you done to her?’
‘I meant it for the best,’ Mrs Fortesque said. ‘I did truly. I wouldn’t have hurt her for the world. I like her. When she came here to see me, she was such good company. I wanted to find her mother.’
‘Sit!’ Sorrel said. She was addressing the dog who was dithering beside the table, but Mrs Fortesque obeyed her too, sinking on to one of her kitchen chairs with what looked like relief.
‘I’m so very sorry, Miss Jarrett,’ she said, her blue eyes swimming with distress. ‘Believe me I wouldn’t have hurt her for the world. I really was trying to help. Really and truly. Heigh ho! Nothing I ever do turns out the way I want it to. Look at Bonzo. I thought he’d be such a comfort to me, and you see how he behaves all the time. I don’t understand it. And now this…’ And she sighed so profoundly that Sorrel was suddenly sorry for her.
‘Dogs do what you tell ’em,’ she said. ‘That’s all you need to know about dogs. Tell him. He’ll do it. Don’t keep talking to him all the time. Tell him. Words of one syllable.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Fortesque said doubtfully. ‘But what about poor Bobbie? Was she very upset? Oh, how can I put things right, Miss Jarrett?’
‘I don’t know as you can,’ Sorrel said. ‘Not just at the moment.’ Bobbie was right. There was no harm in this woman. Only foolishness and affection and loneliness. This dismal kitchen fairly yelled how lonely she was. There were no family meals cooked here, no babble of voices, no rush of company. It was a poached egg and tea-cosy kitchen if ever she’d seen one.
‘I’d do anything,’ Mrs Fortesque offered. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. Time on my hands really. There’s only Bonzo, you see, since my poor John passed over.’ And then, encouraged by her visitor’s softening expression, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Yes,’ Sorrel said. ‘Tea would be lovely.’ And when Mrs Fortesque got up at once and eagerly to fill the kettle she added, ‘It’s nice to have company. I live on my own too. My name’s Sorrel by the way. What’s yours?’
‘Suzette.’
‘Suzette and Sorrel. Sounds like a turn from the music halls.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Fortesque said, giggling with relief because she knew there wasn’t going to be a row after all. ‘We do rather, don’t we?’
Bobbie drove home to Wimbledon numb with disappointment. It was a brisk April afternoon, the sky heaped with white cloud, a strong wind blowing, golden blooms tumbling and tossing in every garden, but she couldn’t respond to any of it. She was using the journey as a chance to think because thought had never been so necessary, and she knew it would take her a long time to absorb all this. When she’d started her search, she’d been so concerned not to hurt anyone else that it had never occurred to her that somebody else would hurt her, nor that Malcolm’s fame would be a source of distress. How could she have been so naive?
It wasn’t until she was passing Abbott’s Langley that she remembered Mrs Fortesque. I should have gone to see her, she thought. I ought to warn her not to say anything about Malcolm to anyone else, or I shall have a whole stream of con-artists after me. But she didn’t have the energy to turn back then. It’ll have to wait until I get home, she thought. I’ll phone this evening while Malcolm’s at the studio. But I shall have to be very careful too. After all it wasn’t her fault. I did tell her about him. From now on I shall have to keep him right out of it, for my sake as well as his. Wouldn’t he have been cross if he could have seen that woman? And it occurred to her that she’d had a narrow escape, and that it was Sorrel’s cunning that had made it possible.
By this time she was driving through the northern suburbs and had recovered her spirits to a remarkable degree. I’ve certainly learned how to cope with disappointment through all this, she thought. I don’t waste my time weeping. And I don’t give up. In fact the more difficult the search became the more determined she was to go on with it. It was the most important thing in her life, more than just a need to know. It was her campaign, her hope of understanding, a link with the past that would make the future possible. And besides, she’d spent too much time and emotion on it to give it up now.
Home Park Road was deserted and the Tremain house looked empty and withdrawn. At the rear of the house both garages were locked and Mr Tremain’s long drawing room was so clinically tidy it looked as though it had never been occupied, like an illustration from Ideal Home. Bobbie let herself into the flat, relieved to be at home and on her own.
But the minute she closed her front door behind her she was aware of something wrong, her senses prickling. There was someone else in the flat. She knew it. All four doors around their inner hall were closed, but now that she was listening hard, she could hear an odd ticking sound coming from one of the rooms on her left. Something dripping? No. It was too metallic. A clock? No. She’d have recognised a clock. A bomb? Surely not. Who would plant a bomb in Malcolm’s flat? But whatever it was it had to be dealt with, and quickly. If she had to call the police, the phone was in the living room, so that was where she tiptoed first.
It was empty, exactly as she’d left it that morning. And the phone was in working order. But as she stood wondering what to do, the creaking noise intensified, and now she realised that it was coming from the bedroom. She walked across the room, took a deep breath to give herself courage, and pushed the bedroom door open as wide as it would go.
It was the bed that was creaking. But of course. And it was creaking for its usual reason, because Malcolm was in it. He was gruesomely naked and humping vigorously at a peroxide blonde who was lying underneath him with her eyes closed and her face screwed up as though she was chewing lemons.
The anger that rose in Bobbie Chadwick in that moment was unlike anything she’d ever felt in her life, pure, ice-cold, and totally unstoppable. To come home and find him carrying on like this after a day of such exciting hope and such humiliating disappointment was more than she could endure.
‘You bastard!’ she said, and her voice was as cold as her anger. ‘How dare you!’
The blonde opened her eyes and stared with shock and disbelief. ‘Malc!’ she said, trying to struggle away from him. ‘Stop! Stop it! There’s someone here.’
He was still jerking and twitching, groaning to himself the way he did, his buttocks white and flabby in the terrible light of day. The blonde tweaked his shoulder. ‘Malc! Precious!’
Malc Precious turned his head at last.
‘If your fans could see you now,’ Bobbie said scathingly.
The expression on his face was so horrified it would have been comic if he hadn’t already made her angry.
‘Bobbie?’ he asked. ‘Oh Christ!’
She opened the wardrobe and took out her two travelling cases, too angry to talk to him or even look at him. She could hear him standing up, blundering about, stubbing his toe, swearing. But it was all foolishness. It meant nothing to her and neither did he. She began to pack, removing clothes from the wardrobe, linen from the cupboard, brush and comb from the dressing table, working methodically, almost calmly.
