Authors: Monica Dickens
‘My dear, no one would want my Club. The place has gone terribly downhill. I don’t see that I’m doing any harm,’ said Rodney pathetically. It said a lot for his amiability that when she ranted at him like this, he never reminded her that she had once been glad to be Joy Stretton and share his life. She would be glad of it again when she left the factory. She was too adaptable, that was the trouble. She merged into her surroundings like a camouflaged gun. She was merging into the factory now, and she would have to be got out before Archie came home, so that she could re-adapt herself to becoming the future Lady Drake of Astwick, for Archie was sure to get knighted before he was done. He was just the type.
The future Lady Drake of Astwick had her midnight supper of meat pie, mashed swedes, and castle pudding in the canteen, glued to Mrs Traill’s
Daily Mirror,
which she passed on to Joy every day, since Rodney would not have it delivered to the flat.
It was Saturday night, always the busiest of the week, to clear up work before Sunday. From one to three, the meat pie and castle pudding kept Joy going. At three, she took to cigarettes
to keep herself awake, and by four when the tea trolley came round, her throat was a desert, her head aching, and the dial of the spring-testing machine shifting focus. Her curving spine, as she sat hunched on her stool with her cold feet tucked round its legs would have horrified the lady who had once taught her deportment.
She did not take her tea over to talk to the girls at the bench. She sat more hunched than ever, cuddling her mug and nibbling at a square of paving stone shortbread, musing on the old days. At times like this when she was physically low, she began to think there was a lot to be said for them, in spite of what she ranted to Rodney. In theory it might be wrong, but in practice she could think of nothing lovelier than to swoon between apricot sheets knowing that you could sleep for ever, or until you could summon the strength to ring for Alexander to bring you tea.
Life had been like that once. It never would be again, whatever Rodney said, so there was no harm in a few regrets. Then, if you were too tired after a party to set your hair at night, you had only to ring up the hairdressers from your bed and say you were coming in. Then, if you had fallen into bed without removing your make-up, there was plenty of time to cream and slap and astringe your face while you had your morning bath, and if there was lipstick on your pillowcase, Alexander would give you a clean one.
Then, if you looked through a cupboardful of clothes and still felt you had nothing to wear, you could go out and buy something. Nothing to hurry for except perhaps a lunch date, and you could be late for that without having it shamefully recorded on your clock card. Then, if you were still tired in the afternoon, you could always go to bed again before you had to embark on the evening. Then, there was never this nightmare which assailed her in the machine shop just before dawn; the fret of all the things to be done before she could go to bed, the short time in bed, and the leaden ache to which she would rise and go on piling tiredness on top of tiredness until there was no hope any more of ever catching up your sleep.
Not to-day anyway, for oh Lord, it was Sunday. Rodney had
to have a later, more elaborate breakfast. Mrs Traill did not come, so there would be housework and last night’s washing up, and Rollo had been to dinner, which meant a lot of glasses and the drawing-room littered with foul ashtrays. She could never grumble about having too much to do, for Rodney would gladly try to get another maid, and Joy in her present casuistic phase felt that her only justification for living in a luxury May fair flat was to work herself half silly in it.
When the bell rang, she poured the dregs of her tea through a grating in the floor, hung up her mug, and started with a sigh on the nearest tray of springs. They were piling up all round her; she was slow to-night. Oh, but she was tired, tired. When a girl brought up two more trays, Joy said crossly: ‘There’s nowhere to put them. I’m up to the eyes in it. I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing them, Aggie, when you can see there’s no room.’
‘Now then, Lady Muck,’ said Aggie, ‘don’t you try and come it over me.’
The last thing Joy wanted was to come it over anyone, but she had not the energy to make amends, and Aggie had gone away to fetch two more trays, for she was tired too, and felt like annoying someone.
At seven o’clock, when Joy had washed her hands and brightened her wan face with lipstick, she thought she had just enough energy to ride home. Each morning, nearly dying in Kensington High Street, which no one who had not pedalled it would suspect of being a slope blasted by a permanent East-West wind, she swore she would not bring the bicycle again. Each evening, her vigour slightly refreshed, she rode away on it once more.
When she stepped out of the machine shop, the day hit her in the face. The early sun came at her over the boiler house like a dagger. Pink and gold clouds stood motionless, high in a lilac sky. It was going to be fine. Unchaining her bicycle, she planned how she would send Rodney out to the Park after breakfast, so that she could tidy up enough to make him think the housework done. Then bed, and sleep, ah sleep, the certain knot of peace … Turn the key softly in the oiled ward and seal – the hushed casket – of my soul.
Intoning, she rode out of the factory gates with half-closed eyes and nearly fell off her bicycle as a soldier stepping off the pavement with a shout of ‘Oi!’ made her swerve and curse him for a fool.
It was Norman. Well, she had seen him last night –
and
been nice to him. He wasn’t such a bad boy, greatly improved, but she was not going to go and have a cup of tea with him, if that was what he wanted.
‘I’m fagged out, Norman,’ she said, ‘and there’s Uncle Rodney’s breakfast. I’ve got to get home.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, holding her handlebars to stop her riding away. ‘I want you to meet someone.’ Joy saw that there were two people standing on the pavement a few yards away, looking at her. The night shift of the factory, as they trickled by, looked at these two people, for the man had a little grey goatee beard and the woman had hair like hennaed loofah under an appalling hat. She looked as if she had been up all night, and the man looked fusty, his suit shining green here and there in the sun. They both looked crumpled, stale, a blot on the freshness of the morning. They looked like Joy felt, and she hoped she did not look like that.
Clasping a shabby bag to her stomach, smirking and tossing her head about, the woman waited for Joy to dismount and come towards her. ‘My darling girl, I’d know you anywhere!’ she cried, in the half-shriek that was her normal pitch of speech. When she got excited, she would batter you; when she laughed, her scream would stun you out of all laughter yourself, and if she were to shout – but Heaven forbid that she should, if you valued your eardrums.
Joy recoiled as she cried, loud enough for half the departing night shift to hear: ‘So this is my Kathleen! I knew she’d be a beauty. I knew it, I knew it, and can you be surprised, seeing the stock she springs from?’ She banged her breast with the shabby bag and appealed to the man with the goatee, who wriggled his pale lips about like earthworms, but said nothing.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ frowned Joy, her tired head reeling. ‘My name’s not Kathleen. What’s she talking about, Norm?’
‘Well,’ he said and gulped, ‘quite honestly, Jo, old girl, she thinks she’s your mother.’
‘And my name’s not Jo either – she thinks
what?’
demanded Joy, suddenly realizing what he had said.
’Thinks?’ cried the woman. ‘Mind what you’re saying, young fellow. I don’t think; I know it. Listen, darling.’ Joy stepped back as the woman lunged to clutch her. ‘I’m the girl – at least, girl I was then – who left you, my baby, in the porch of St Joseph’s, may the Holy Father forgive me. Though he has, for Father Munroe told me so when I confessed it at last. It was he put me on your tracks, the good old soul. Never see ninety again, but still has all his faculties, and those nuns so lovely to him.’
‘You must be mad,’ said Joy. ‘Even if you are the person who left that baby outside the church, you’re nothing to do with me. That baby’s dead. I’m the other baby, Sir Rodney Cope’s niece, that was saved in the fire.’ The woman’s noise and excitability made her want to speak lower and quieter than usual. She must think slowly, calmly, too. She must not lose her head, for things like this just did not happen, even to her to whom so much had happened. It would all blow over in a minute and the woman would go away. And the man too, who was still watching her, rooted to one square of pavement like a toy soldier to its stand.
But the woman did not go away. She advanced as Joy receded, waggling something that Joy recognized, that little gold crucifix, the start of all the disruption of her life. Was she never to be left in peace, to be who she was? But who was she?
‘You’re my baby,’ the woman was crowing. ‘Didn’t they find this on you, that I put there myself, my own confirmation cross that was blessed for me by Father Hanrahan in Wicklow all those years ago?’ She had a queer, hybrid accent, part cockney, part genteel, rising in querulous crescendo Irish and breaking out all over the place in a jocularity of old quips and clichés.
‘Oh good heavens,’ said Joy, ‘must we go into that all over again? We’ve had it out once and settled it. That cross,’ she spoke slowly, as if explaining to a simpleton, ‘that cross was taken off
your
baby and put on
me.
My mother did it. Mrs Abinger that is, who was my foster mother.’
‘So she said, so she said. Oh, I’ve seen the lady in question and heard the whole caboosh. I misbelieve every last word of it. I’ve got proof. Yes, my lovely, I’ve got proof. Haven’t I Claude?’ She pronounced it Clode, as if she were trying to speak French. His earthworms writhed again.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Joy Stretton. I’m Joy Stretton,’ she repeated doggedly. ‘Norman why did you have to start all this when I’m so tired? What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’ Norman looked shamefaced and scraped his boot along the kerb. He could not tell her that he had jumped at the chance of helping someone to prove that Jo was not Joy Stretton after all. He had seen himself coming into his rights. He had even blurted out the story of their past association, and the woman had sympathized because she wanted his help, although she had heard about Archie from Matron Tillings, and did not intend to lose
that
chance for her daughter. It had increased her mother-love and spurred her on to seek out Mrs Abinger.
‘Answer me, Norman.’ Joy began to get cross. ‘Where did you find these people? Who are they, anyway?’
‘Sakes!’ came the scream. ‘Fancy not knowing your own mother’s name? It does seem a queer how-d’yemagiffery, doesn’t it? Tissot’s the name – French you know. My old man is from the Channel Islands, and that’s where I’ve been myself till Jerry took over and we just managed to wriggle out the back door. Such a time we’ve had – I could tell you some tales. But there’s plenty of time for that, eh my darling? Cosy chats by the fireside with your Ma …’
‘Teaser?’ repeated Joy stupidly, not listening to the rest of what the woman said.
‘No, no, ducks, Tissot – very oh-la-la – but never mind if you say it wrong. Tissot, Tizzot, Teaser, Tishoo, Cholmondley – Marjoribanks – it gets said all ways, but good luck,
I
don’t care. You’ll have to say it properly though, Kathie, seeing it’s to be your name.’
‘It’s
not
my name, and stop calling me Kathleen.’ Joy stamped her foot and was near tears. She was much too tired to cope with this phantasmagoria. The woman was mad. She was frightened. ‘I’m Joy Stretton, I’m Joy Stretton,’ she kept
saying. ‘It’s all been legalized. You can’t make me anything else.’
‘Oh well then, I’ll have it unlegalized,’ said Mrs Tissot cheerfully. ‘Or illegitimize it or whatever the word is. Your Ma’s a terrible old Mrs Malaprop, I’m afraid you’ll find, my darling. But I’m wise to all the tricks. I’ve got proof about you – p-r-oof. Listen, ducks, I dropped you when you were a tiny baby, bang on the side of your head, wallop. The doctor thought I’d done it on purpose, and maybe I had, for the Saints know I was a wild girl at the time. He said the bone was dented. It will show in an X-ray now, as sure as fate, and don’t you still have headaches? Deny it now – ah, you can’t. Even the stout old party that calls herself Mrs Scavenger or whatever had to admit that.’
‘Yes, but – ’ began Joy, and Norman chimed in: ‘You must admit it, Jo. Right’s right. You do have them heads.’
‘Shut up,’ said Joy, ‘of course I do, but that was where the picture fell on me in the fire. Look, here’s the scar.’ She pushed back the left side of her hair, and smelt stale whisky, cheesy beer, as Mrs Tissot leaned forward to look.
‘Aha!’ she cried, and then ‘aha, aha, aha,’ on a descending scale. ‘Now isn’t that just my point? I dropped my baby on the right side, God forgive me. Come on now, isn’t that the side where you get the pain?’
‘I don’t know. I get it both sides, at least I think I – Oh, leave me alone!’ cried Joy, suddenly shrill. ‘How do I know? How can I tell? I’m tired. I’m going home. I’ve got to get my Uncle Rodney’s breakfast.’
‘Ah, I know,’ said Mrs Tissot. ‘You’re a good girl. He’ll miss you, I’m afraid, but that’s his funeral; your own mother needs you more. Now that we’ve taken over this hotel and can’t get the help to run it, we’re counting on you, Kathie child. We can’t get on without you.’ Her face when serious was more haggard, waxy like a rutted potato in the clear morning light.
‘I’ve got to go,’ muttered Joy, prising Norman’s fingers off the handlebars of her bicycle. ‘My uncle – ’
‘Oh he won’t fuss himself,’ said Mrs Tissot. ‘He knew we were coming to see you. I told him.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘Of course. This jolly young soldier boy of yours took us there, and quite a place it is, upon my word, though never you mind; your Ma will make it up to you in this way and that.’
‘Norman, you didn’t – ? Oh poor Uncle Rodney, what on earth did he say?’