She positioned herself in front of the cottages and realised she was standing in the exact spot that the photographer must have stood in to take the shot. And then she moved forward a few paces and put herself on the precise corner of the precise paving slab that Arlette was standing on looking slightly wistful next to her friends on some unspecified evening back in
1920-something
. She felt an energy as she stood there, a jolt of something amazing and strange. Arlette had stood here, she thought to herself, a girl of her own age, alone in London, just like her.
She stared for a moment at the man in the photograph, a happy man with dark, straggly hair and a scruffy overcoat on. But he looked artfully unkempt; his features were refined, his stature proud and tall. Betty wondered if this man might be G. And as she wondered this she turned to appraise the row of pastel-coloured cottages behind her and saw that the smallest of the six, the one closest to the spot where the picture had been taken, had a blue plaque attached to the front wall. She moved closer and read it:
The painter and photographer
Gideon Worsley
lived and worked in this house
1918–1923
Betty blinked and looked from the plaque to the photo and from the photo to the plaque.
Gideon
. Gideon Worsley. He was G. The scruffy man with the beautiful nose must be G, she thought. He looked like an artist. He had a camera. And he was in a photograph directly outside a house that now bore his name. And if he was G, then Arlette was A, which meant that it must have been Arlette and Gideon who had scratched their initials into the tree at the bottom of the garden in Abingdon Villas, which meant that Arlette must have lived there. But if Gideon Worsley had been Arlette’s lover, then how did he fit into the rest of the story? What did he have to do with Clara Pickle and Soho jazz clubs?
She found a bench and sat down. Then she pulled out the rest of the photographs and flicked through them urgently, looking for any more images of this man, this artist and photographer.
But
she found none. This was the only picture Arlette appeared to have of him.
She took her disposable camera from her bag and took some photos of her own, of the cottage, of the plaque. And then, pulled along by an overwhelming wave of momentum, she opened the garden gate, walked up the lupin-lined path and knocked on the door of the cottage with the plaque. She knocked once, then again, but nobody came to the door. She looked up at the windows on the second floor but saw no signs of life. She sighed. Her day as a private eye had brought itself to a natural close. And anyway, it was nearly four o’clock; it was time to go to work.
Amy Metz got to her feet and fixed Betty with a terrible shark-like stare.
‘Betty, I presume,’ she said in a mockney/California drawl.
Betty gulped and looked at Dom. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello. Er, yes.’
Amy narrowed her eyes and offered Betty a limp-wristed hand to shake.
‘I’m Amy,’ she said, somewhat unnecessarily. She was wearing a short leopard-print tunic with sheer black tights, and her violently red hair was pinned on top of her head with a big diamanté butterfly. On her feet she wore red platform boots and she smelled, overwhelmingly, of Opium. Her pretty face was gaunt and pale, and her thin arms were covered in scratch marks and patches of eczema. She looked, Betty thought, nothing like she did in photos; she had none of the glitter and the mystery.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘first off, I gotta tell you, I am
not happy
that Dom has been leaving my kids with a fricking stranger. OK? And I’m not saying that is your fault. It is
obviously not
your fault. OK? But this is not a situation that I am happy about.
In the least
.’
Betty gulped and let her gaze fall to the floor. Amy Metz was only about five foot tall but had the fearsome aura of a giant.
‘But,’ she said, letting her features soften by an iota, ‘Dom tells
me
you’re great with the kids and Donny tells me you’re the bee’s fricking knees.’ She smiled sardonically. ‘So listen,
Betty
,’ she spat out her name as if she doubted its veracity, ‘what we’re gonna do here is make this official, OK? I’ve got some agency girls coming over the next day or two so I’m gonna get you in for an interview. OK? At my house. I want you to bring a CV, some references. OK? We’re gonna do this
properly
.’ She threw Dom a withering look, then turned back to address Betty. ‘OK?’
‘Er, yes,’ Betty said, adjusting the strap of her shoulder bag, which she had not yet had a chance to put down. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow, eleven a.m. Dom’ll give you the address. Meantimes, I’m happy for you to sit with the kids tonight. Yeah? I’ve got an idea of you now. Well, half an idea, at least.’ She threw Dom another rancid look. ‘If you need
anything
tonight,’ she said, ‘anything at all, you call
me
, OK. Not Dom.
Me
.’ She passed Betty a small business card and then, after some hurried but intense kisses and cuddles with her three children, she was gone, into a waiting car and towards a gig in Guildford.
The house was silent for a moment after her departure. The three children sat in a row on the sofa looking slightly dazed and Dom sat quietly on the arm of the sofa, chewing the inside of his cheek. After a moment he pulled himself straight, dragged his fingers through his unkempt hair and raised his eyes towards Betty’s.
‘Er, yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t have a chance to warn you. Donny was full of Betty this, Betty that, all day apparently. Amy asked who Betty was …’ He shrugged, rubbed his hair again. ‘I suppose I should have known it would happen.’
‘So …?’ Betty tried to form a question she knew needed asking, but couldn’t quite find the words.
‘I think she’ll give you the job, I really do. I mean, getting the kids to like you is most of the battle, and they already do. And Amy is a big fan of cutting corners financially so if she can get someone without having to pay out an agency whack, she will
see
that as a huge bonus. And if you get the job then, well, we’re talking
big salary
. Travel. Some extra benefits. A car …’
‘A car?’
‘Yeah, our nannies get a car. A little runaround. Paid taxes. Health care.’
Betty sat down heavily on the armchair, her shoulder bag buried in her lap. Her dreams were coming real and the reality was only now hitting her. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘But hard work, yeah?’
He nodded. ‘Really hard work. Long hours. But fun.’ He glanced at Betty and then down at his fingernails. ‘I’d’ve thought. Anyway, even if you don’t get the job, I’ll still need a baby-sitter. I am out, quite a lot.’
‘Yes,’ said Betty, ‘I know.’
He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Do you think I’m a bad father?’ he asked, his eyes cast down towards his feet.
‘What? God, no! Why would I think that?’
‘Well, you know, what Amy just said, leaving my kids with a stranger, going out when I should be hanging out with them, all that, you know …’
‘It’s your job,’ she said. ‘You’re a pop star.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s part of the job description. And as for leaving your kids with me, well, you and I both know the truth about that. You and I both know that I’m a safe pair of hands.’
He looked up and smiled at her gratefully. ‘I haven’t always been the best judge of character,’ he said, alluding silently but heavily to the mother of his children. ‘But I guess that’s one of those things that you get better at, the older you get. Anyway,’ he pulled himself up straight and moved Acacia from his lap onto the sofa, ‘I need to get ready. And these guys,’ he rubbed Acacia’s curls, ‘need some tea. There’s a Bolognese on the hob.’
‘Yummy. Homemade?’
‘Er, yeah, but not by me, Amy brought it with her.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘See. Bad father.’ He stood up and surveyed his children. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘hands up who’s hungry?’
‘Me!’ shouted Donny, waving both short arms in the air. ‘I’m completely and totally
starving
.’
‘Come on then,’ said Betty, getting to her feet and offering Donny her hand. ‘Why don’t you come and help me get tea ready?’
‘Can I eat raw spaghetti?’ he asked, hopefully.
‘Do you
like
raw spaghetti?’
Donny nodded.
‘Well, then, of course you can.’
‘Yes!’ Donny punched the air. ‘Yes!’
After the children were in bed (and this time she managed to settle Astrid on just the third visit to her bedroom), Betty rolled herself a cigarette and took it to the window on the first-floor landing. She felt the same sense of strangeness she’d experienced earlier, standing on the pavement outside Gideon Worsley’s cottage, that sense of echoes and reflections, of being in someone’s shadow. As she pulled open the sash, felt it stick, pushed it again, heard the sound as it reeled itself loose and the window lifted in its frame, she felt like she’d slipped through a mirror to the other side of her life.
She lit the roll-up and perched herself on the ledge, in the same place that she’d first seen Dom, and she looked across the courtyard, through a haze of steam and smoke, to the other side of the mirror, to the fire escape outside her flat. For a moment she saw a ghostly vision of herself: blond and fresh, full of silly dreams. The fresh blond version of herself smiled at her across the courtyard and Betty smiled back. She wasn’t that person any more. She was fatter and darker and older and wiser. It struck her that the changes she could see in herself mirrored the changes she’d seen in Arlette between the photograph outside Gideon Worsley’s cottage and the photograph of her sitting on the floor between the legs of black men. The same face, two completely different women.
And then she thought of this job. A full-time nanny. In Primrose Hill. It would be round the clock, unsociable hours, it would be total responsibility for three small children, it would mean obeying orders and following routines. It would give her absolutely no freedom at all. And after today, after her meeting with Alexandra, her visits to the houses in Holland Park and Chelsea, she knew that what she needed more than anything right now was time.
She lit her roll-up and inhaled, and then she remembered that there was one thing she needed more than time. She needed money.
She sighed.
She would go to the interview. If nothing else it would be fascinating to see inside Amy Metz’s Primrose Hill mansion. But as to what happened after that, if Amy offered her the job, she had absolutely no idea, none whatsoever.
34
1920
ONE MONDAY MORNING
in early May, Mrs Stamper invited Arlette into her office behind the curtain at the back of the shop floor. She seemed twitchy and uncomfortable, and had a slightly oily, grey pallor.
‘Miss De La Mare,’ she said, grimacing slightly, ‘please, sit down.’
Arlette smoothed her skirt behind her and sat before Mrs Stamper, rather apprehensively.
‘I have a small announcement to share with you and I would be obliged if you didn’t share this with other members of staff, but I discovered yesterday that I am to be a mother.’
Arlette stared at her in surprise. She had often wondered at Mrs Stamper’s lack of children and had not liked to mention it in case it were to upset her.
‘Yes,’ she said, registering Arlette’s surprise. ‘It was unexpected. After ten years of marriage myself and Mr Stamper had rather thought that it wasn’t to be. But now, well, I am terribly happy to say that it is. I have offered my resignation to the directors and they have accepted, and asked me to work out a four-week notice period.’ She paused and appeared to swallow
down
a wave of nausea inside a large cotton lawn handkerchief that bore her own initials. ‘They have also asked me to put forward a suitable person to take over my position. And I have put you forward, Miss De La Mare.’
‘Oh,’ said Arlette, her eyes widening.
‘Over these last six months I have found you to be both reliable and sensible. You are also bright and have a way with numbers that most of these other girls,’ she gestured beyond the curtains, ‘do not appear to possess. It is a harder job, slightly longer hours and fewer holidays, but you will be recompensed, I feel, more than satisfactorily. I will leave Mr Jones in the accounts office to tell you exactly what that will be. And, of course, a much increased responsibility. But I know you can take it on board. You are so very mature and have such a lovely way with the clientele. So …?’ She stopped and looked at Arlette.
Arlette stared at the table top.
‘Would you consider it?’
Arlette looked up at her and beamed, entirely uncontrollably. ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘Yes. I would like that very much. Very much indeed. And congratulations, Mrs Stamper. I’m delighted for you. I really am.’
Mrs Stamper smiled softly at Arlette and said, ‘Thank you so much, Miss De La Mare. And, please, call me Emily …’
‘Whatever happened to your lovely friend Godfrey?’ asked Minu.
They were lying together on a silk-covered bed in the Mayfair apartment of a man called Badger. Badger was an absurdist who drew cartoons for
Punch
and wrote a rather strange column in the
Illustrated London News
about his social life, which had a cult following. Being referred to, however obliquely, in one of his columns was something of a badge of honour and all the socialites would pore over it religiously every Monday morning to see if they had merited a mention. As a result, Badger had
become
one of the most popular men in town, in spite of being overweight and a rather uncharming drunk, so when he invited everyone back after the Cygnet closed on this Friday night at the tail-end of May, everyone automatically said yes.
‘I believe he is in Manchester,’ Arlette replied, ‘but I can’t be sure.’
She was being disingenuous. She knew exactly where he was, but she did not wish to give the impression that she cared too much either way. Godfrey’s tour of Great Britain had resumed itself shortly after their last sitting at Gideon’s studio and Arlette had not seen him since. He’d taken Arlette’s address and sent postcards every couple of weeks, addressed not to Arlette, but to Arlette and Lilian. The postcards were perfunctory and light-hearted: ‘My dears, I am waving hello to you both from Liverpool. We play here for three more nights and then we take the train to Lancaster. Liverpool is wet and windy and I do not understand a word anyone says to me. I should be in London again in a few weeks. Please pass my regards to Mr Worsley. Your friend, Godfrey Pickle.’