51
1921
ARLETTE PULLED OPEN
the box.
Leticia watched her sadly, with her hands knitted together.
‘I think your room came out of it quite well,’ she said softly. ‘Obviously, I don’t know exactly what you had in there, but it does seem there was very little damage. Your wardrobe stood untouched, and luckily the door was closed so there may be a slight whiff of smoke, but …’ She fluttered her fingers together, nervously. ‘Oh, I do hope you’re not too disappointed.’
Leticia had done nothing but apologise for the past three days. She had vowed never to drink another drop of alcohol. And her husband had vowed never to leave her again. Lilian had vowed to relax now that someone was taking responsibility for her mother, and Philip had vowed to take Lilian to stay in his family’s beach-front apartment in Cannes for the whole summer. In many ways the fire had been a blessing. In other ways it had been a tragedy. Family heirlooms turned to ash. Much-loved dresses smoke-damaged beyond repair. All of James’s toys burned to nothing. Photographs gone for ever. And also, intangibly, but overwhelmingly, a loss of the sense of gay innocence that had sat over the house and its inhabitants since the very first moment
Arlette
had set foot there nineteen months earlier. She’d thought it a magical, enchanted place, and now it was a black carcass, and the family who once lived there all robbed of their sense of entitlement and certainty. Now, for a while at least, it was as though they were no different from anyone else.
She reached her hands into the box and pulled out her dressing table set, her hair decorations, a box of jewels, framed photographs of her mother, her father in his uniform, a photo album, bundles of Godfrey’s postcards, some delicate underwear, silk stockings, flyers from nights out at clubs, an old cigar box filled with photographs, all in a good state. She pulled out a tapestry she’d been working on, a half-knitted hat, a dozen or so paperback novels and there, right at the bottom, she pulled out a small scrap of muslin. She stared at it for a moment. It had been in the drawer of her bed-stand, where it had lain since she’d first put it there, the day she’d brought it home from Liberty’s perfumery. Another world. Another life. She brought it to her nose and inhaled. It smelled, mainly, of smoke, but beneath the nutty smoke, it still lingered: vanilla and sandalwood. The smell of Godfrey.
‘Well,’ said Leticia, ‘are you happy? Has it mainly been saved?’
‘Yes,’ said Arlette. ‘Yes. It’s all here. Everything important. Thank you.’
Leticia sat down heavily and brought her hand to her clavicle. ‘Oh thank goodness. Thank
goodness
. Finally, some good news. Finally …’
Arlette had not seen Godfrey for three days. There had been so much to sort out here, with the Millers. She had not felt able to swan off and leave them to it. But tomorrow they would be moving into a suite of rooms attached to Mr Miller’s London office and a firm of builders had been commissioned to start rebuilding the house. Now she felt it would be perfectly acceptable to move on with her life. And so she prettied herself at the
mirror
of the room she was sharing with Lilian at the neighbours’ house, changed into a fresh dress and headed for Bloomsbury, to Minu’s rooms.
‘I saw Gideon last night,’ said Minu, her hand holding her hair up on top of her head while she fixed it in place with grips.
Arlette blanched at the mention of his name.
‘He looked terrible,’ Minu continued.
‘I can’t say that I am terribly unhappy to hear that.’
Minu glanced at her. ‘I wish I could understand,’ she said. ‘You two were once the closest of friends. So easy together. It doesn’t make any sense to me that you are now so indisposed towards each other. I feel as if a large chapter of the book is missing.’
She kept her gaze on Arlette for a second or two, inviting her to confide, but Arlette merely smiled and said, ‘Love follows no rule book. And what of you? Still no dream of a man waiting in the wings to whisk you away?’
Minu laughed wryly. ‘I am afraid not. No. But it serves me well to be a spinster, since my novel is all about a beautiful but lonely girl, looking for love in the city.’ She smiled and adjusted her hair. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now I look divine. And so do you. Let’s go and find this lovely man of yours and tell him to marry you.’
They arrived at the Blue Butterfly half an hour later to find someone’s birthday party in full swing. Judging by the number of diarists in the room and the air of barely contained anticipation, it was clearly the birthday party of someone terribly important. Arlette and Minu leaned conspiratorially towards the receptionist and said, ‘Whose birthday, tell tell!’
‘Oh, now, girls, I couldn’t possibly say.’
‘Of course you can!’ they teased. ‘Tell us immediately!’
‘It’s Bertie Langhorn.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ they both cried. ‘And he, just this minute, parted from his lovely wife.’
Arlette smiled at Minu and Minu smiled at her. Bertie Langhorn was a famous actor, very pretty, very rich and recently separated from his childhood sweetheart. Minu had had a terrible crush on him for months. Suddenly the night opened up before them serendipitously, ripe with potential for drama and fun. They took each other by the hand and headed into the club, eyes bright as diamonds, hearts full of mischief, neither of them suspecting for a moment what an unhappy turn the night would take by its closing moments.
There was a girl backstage whom Arlette had never seen before. At first she thought she might be a cleaner, or a stagehand. But then she saw her coat draped over her arm and her hat held in her other hand, and by the way she was scanning the room, it was clear she had just arrived from the street and was looking for someone.
Arlette paid her no more attention for a moment or two until she heard her asking a passing man if Sandy Beach was available.
‘Just finished the encore, love,’ said the man. ‘He’ll be out in a shake or two.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
Arlette stared at the girl. She was young, about the same age as Arlette, possibly younger. She had dark blond hair cut into a bob and was dressed simply in a grey tunic dress and flat shoes. Her face was drawn, her eyes were slightly red. She looked as if she had spent a night crying instead of sleeping. Arlette felt a bubble of something odd and sour rise through her. The girl passed her coat awkwardly from arm to arm. She cleared her throat and peered anxiously towards the aisle that led from the stage to the backstage. She cleared her throat again and then Arlette saw her pass her hand gently around her stomach, first a circular motion, then a cupping motion. The gesture was so fleeting and minute that she almost missed it, but the meaning of it hit Arlette fully in the gullet.
Subconsciously she took a few steps back, so that she was standing in shadow. She heard the final cheers from the raucous, champagne-sodden crowds, then she heard the sound of sprightly, triumphant footsteps as the musicians left the stage. She pushed herself deeper into the dark corner and held her hand to her throat as she watched the next few moments unfold.
‘Esther! Hello! What a pleasant surprise!’ said Godfrey, looking torn between being pleasantly surprised and utterly horrified, his words sounding overly bright.
‘I couldn’t do it!’ she heard the girl called Esther hiss. ‘Here,’ she delved into her bag clumsily and pulled out a handful of crumpled paper notes. ‘Here’s the money. Every last penny of it. But I couldn’t do it, Sandy. I just couldn’t.’
She started to cry and Godfrey pulled her gently into a quieter corner.
‘Ssh, ssh,’ he whispered gently into her ear. He pulled her close to him and held her tenderly inside his embrace. The gesture was sweet, but Arlette could see fear etched onto his face as he stared over her shoulder at some point of neutrality.
Arlette pulled in her breath and held it there.
‘Tell me what happened?’ he said to her. ‘Was it the doctor? Did you not like him?’
Esther shook her head crossly. ‘No! It wasn’t the doctor. He was lovely. It was just …
the baby
. The baby, Sandy. Doctor said I’m seven weeks in, maybe longer. But I mean,
look
, Sandy …’ She pulled down at the fabric of her loose-fitting dress to reveal a slight curve. ‘I’m showing. Already. I reckon I’m further along than that. I just couldn’t, Sandy, I just couldn’t. I’m so sorry! So, so sorry!’
Godfrey stroked her hair and shushed in her ear and Arlette didn’t wait to hear another word.
The future wrote itself out in bold capitals across her consciousness. That girl was carrying Godfrey’s child. Godfrey would stand by her. Probably even marry her. But even if he
didn’t
, that girl’s child, unlike her own blighted foetus, would be born breathing and kicking and ready to live a long and full life. That girl’s child would spend its whole life being Godfrey’s son or daughter, regardless of what happened to its parents. And the life that Arlette had persuaded herself she wanted – the little house in south London, the friendly neighbours, the trip to the Caribbean with the two adorable piccaninnies in tow – all of it turned to ash in her heart, like the contents of the Millers’ house.
She stumbled from the back doors of the club onto a cool, shadowy mews, where her dainty heels scrambled and spluttered against the cobbles. She pulled them off and held them in her hands and she ran then, in stockinged feet, down the mews, around the corner onto Piccadilly and into a waiting taxi.
She watched the streets of London through tear-streaked eyes, the golden pinkness of the gaslamps, the glittering façades of nightclubs and bars, the people, so extraordinary in either their finery or their rags, the wide pavements and the shops full of things that nobody really needed.
Everything was bright and clean, nearly every front door and shop front repainted after the war, every light bulb replaced, every paving stone scrubbed white. London was gleaming but Arlette’s heart was dirty.
She thought of her twenty-second birthday, of Gideon’s terrible betrayal and the grey months that had ensued in that house on the river. She thought of her baby, taken away to an incinerator before she’d even seen his face. She thought of the Millers’ house, so perfect, like a picture-postcard dream of a London villa, burned down to a dirty carcass. And then she thought of that girl, just now, with her bitten fingernails and her swollen stomach and Godfrey’s expression of mute terror.
Too much, she thought to herself, too much.
It was over.
Back at Philip’s house on Abingdon Villas, Arlette sealed down the lid of the box Leticia had given her that morning and
she
put it in a trunk. She laid out an outfit suitable for travelling and she wrote three notes: one for Lilian, one for Minu, one for Godfrey. The following morning, while the house still slept, she put on the travelling clothes, she called the houseboy and asked him to call her a carriage to take her to the station and she followed behind him as he pulled her trunk towards the front door. She left the notes, sealed in envelopes, on a circular table in the hallway, and then she climbed into the carriage and let it take her to the station, where she boarded a train for Portsmouth. At Portsmouth she bought a ticket for a ferry to take her back to where her journey had started: to a big, empty house on a cliff, with distant, tantalising views towards the white cliffs of Dover.
52
1995
SOMEONE HAD CALLED
while Betty was talking to the vicar at St Anne’s. She didn’t recognise the number so she called it back and found herself talking to John Brightly.
‘You didn’t die in the night, then?’ she began.
‘Sadly not. No, apparently I am fit for duty. Or, at least, fit to continue with my pointless existence.’
‘Well, that’s brilliant news, then.’
‘I guess so. But listen. Alex gave me your number. She came to see me, tried to talk me into staying at her place.’ He paused. ‘But actually, if it’s OK with you, it would be great if I could bed down at yours. Just for a night or two. While I sort myself out with somewhere new.’
‘Yes!’ The word leaped from her mouth like a rubber ball. ‘Yes. Of course!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘God, yes! Definitely. And I’m out tonight. Doing an overnight babysit at Amy’s place. So you can have my bed.’
‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t want me in your bed. Seriously, I’m sweating like a pig.’
‘Well, maybe not then, but listen, I’m on my way back now. Can you get there soon, because I’ve just found out something about Clara Pickle and I need to get to a library straight away.’
‘I’m packed and ready to go,’ he said. ‘I can be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘You look better,’ she said, greeting him on the landing. ‘How’s the wound?’
He pulled off his hat and showed her a neat row of stitches.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No,’ he said, pulling his hat back on, even though he was indoors and it was about twenty-five degrees outside.
‘So no lasting damage?’
‘Only time will tell,’ he said. ‘But so far I feel every bit my usual curmudgeonly, antisocial self.’ He waved a paper bag at her. ‘Enough antibiotics to keep a small nation in good health. So no boozing for me. And monthly check-ups for a few months, just to make sure everything’s as it should be.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Drama over.’
‘Drama over, and mystery climaxing,’ Betty said, picking up her bag. ‘I’ve got to shoot.’
‘Can I come with?’
‘Don’t you have Ultravox picture discs to sell?’ He smiled drolly. ‘That was an aberration,’ he said.
‘It was an abomination.’
‘That too. I don’t even know how it got there. But no, I think I can probably risk a day off.’
Betty looked at him and smiled. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘because this is going to be a really boring job and I could do with another pair of hands.’
‘Right,’ she said, flopping twenty London phonebooks onto the table in front of John. ‘We are looking for a woman called Clara Minchin. Or CT Minchin. But it’s possible, of course, that she
married
and changed her name. So let’s just look for any Minchins. Rippon Road is in Blackheath, apparently, so let’s start with the south-east, and then we can work our way up and out of London after that.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s two. I’ve got to be at Amy’s at six. Four hours. Should be plenty. Let’s go.’