Diamonds at the Lost and Found

by Sarah Aspinall

  I knew Mummy’s friend, who became my Auntie Jean, was pretty and clever; she later travelled the world playing international bridge tournaments, and the friendship had lasted years with Christmas cards always exchanged. Back then Jean had loved Audrey’s reckless spirit and energy, and Audrey was fascinated by Jean’s gentle manners. A boy at school had called Audrey ‘a bog-Irish minx’ and now, when she looked in the mirror at her dark red hair and her lively, shrewd face, she doubted for the first time that she was really as beautiful as Sadie and her mother had told her she was.

  She found herself envying Jean’s soft angelic features as much as the lavish bedroom, with its swagged curtains, in the big villa. Jean’s parents were as kind as she was, and made Audrey feel welcome. Later she told me that this had opened her eyes to something she thought was really important: that it was much easier to be good and kind if you had everything, and she advised me to ‘make friends with girls who are rich and beautiful, as they won’t be jealous or mean. They can afford to be nice.’

  This was simply a pragmatic idea, not something fed by envy and self-doubt, which weren’t generally part of her nature. There was a natural confidence that would bubble back up in her as soon as life offered her a break. If any door opened an inch she would immediately push it as hard as she could, and once open she would dash through it, certain of something marvellous on the other side. Now a door opened, as she told Jean’s parents about the Grimshaw’s unfriendliness and the illegal work that her father had forced her into and they offered to help. They took Audrey in to live with them until she was on her feet, and Jean’s father, who worked in newspapers, found her a job helping on the local paper, the Southport Visitor. She was taken on to answer the phone and make tea, but stayed after work each night, teaching herself to type.

  Mum, dressed for success.

  ‘I’d seen the Hollywood film His Girl Friday, with Rosalind Russell as the glamorous newspaper reporter. So I pinned up a picture of her sitting at her typewriter, wearing a sexy pinstripe suit, to inspire me to work harder.’ ‘Always dress for the role you aspire to, remember that!’ was one of her tips.

  She had also read about the Hollywood gossip columns of Hedda Hopper, a society journalist famous for her extraordinary hats. She would sometimes balance silly things on her head to make me laugh – a colander with a saucepan on top, or my teddy – and sing a song, ‘A Hat for Hedda Hopper’, and do a comical dance.

  My mother went to the cinema once or twice a week if she could, and not only did she know every star, but their private lives and paths to success that she had pored over in her favourite Picturegoer magazine. It depicted the unimaginably glamorous lives of the actors who had left Britain for Hollywood, such as Vivien Leigh, who had scooped the lead role of the century as the Irish American Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

  The Civil War epic was the biggest film of that era, and Scarlett was my mother’s heroine, who brushed aside any setbacks with a ‘fiddle-de-dee’. The image of Scarlett kneeling amongst the war-ravaged ruins of her plantation home, holding up a handful of soil and passionately declaring, ‘As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again,’ became Audrey’s talisman: a girl who did whatever she had to do to get what she needed.

  At sixteen Audrey now believed she might escape the Liverpool slums for ever and find a way of bringing her mother to the safety of Southport. She longed to be a part of Jean’s social set, but knew she was still an outsider from a different class. She might copy their voices and manners, but it was not enough. Jean and her friends had all been to the same private school, and went together to smart dances and parties to which Audrey wasn’t invited. The new job then gave her an idea. Inspired by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and the magazines she loved, she worked hard to learn how to write in their style. Her schooling had been poor, and writing didn’t come easily to her, until she learnt to say something out loud and then get it down. She also studied the language of the gossip magazines and copied their sentence structure and at last was able to offer the editor of the Southport Visitor his own social column. She handed him her sample draft, called ‘Talk of Many Things with Audrey Miller’, which she had decorated with little drawings copied from magazine adverts of champagne bottles and bubbles, and high-heeled shoes.

  Now she had an open invitation to the elegant dances at Royal Birkdale Golf Club that Jean and her friends went to. She borrowed Jean’s pretty and more ladylike clothes, and was now given a warm welcome at 21st-birthday parties, where she would describe their ‘charming home and wonderful hospitality’. There was always an added smattering of gossip: ‘Those-in-the-know are whispering about a wedding between a certain Miss Bailey and a Mr Howard; there was definitely romance in the air on this occasion. Those watching the dancing were heard to comment, “Oh yes, it’s love all right!”’

  Other weeks the local news was clearly thin on the ground: ‘Have you heard? Party girl Ida Hughes may be settling down at last, having purchased a sewing machine – “Hey, need anything special running up, girls?”’

  This was how she could become the girl that her mother and godmother had dreamt she would be. Suddenly she had invitations to every event in town and, with some cast-off evening dresses of Jean’s and notebook in hand she could go anywhere.

  6

  Goodbyes

  AUNTIE GRACE was standing in the hallway with a hankie, trying not to cry. She and Uncle Phil had come to take me to the cinema to see Flipper, a film about a dolphin, as my birthday treat. I’d been to the Marshall and Snelgrove salon to have a birthday hairdo, a shampoo and set, and had spent the morning happily side by side with my mother under the hairdryers, reading the grown-up magazines. This was supposed to be a special evening, but it now felt at risk of being spoilt.

  Grace had just been in to see my father, and was coming out of his room when my mother appeared from her adjoining bedroom.

  ‘What on earth?’ Grace said sharply. She looked my mother up and down in disgust.

  Audrey was wearing a lovely costume. It had long blue feathers coming out of a sparkly swimsuit to make a tail, and a glittering headdress of even more feathers. I thought she looked wonderful, but Auntie Grace didn’t.

  ‘It’s a fancy-dress gala, over at the Sands Club,’ said my mother.

  ‘And what do you think you are supposed to be?’ said Grace.

  ‘We’re going as Two Lovebirds in a Gilded Cage. My friend Tony made the costumes, aren’t they marvellous?’ She did a twirl, making Grace even crosser.

  Grace was my father’s aunt. A tall, stiff woman with a plain but kindly face, she had lived all her life with her brother, Uncle Phil, in a small house in nearby Crosby. I was the only child in their quiet, modest lives, and they tried to love and protect me as best they could. Their house had tall pampas grasses in a jar on the stairs and horse brasses round the fire. On Sundays my mother would drop me off there, and we had lunch in the bare dining room, or on cold days by the living-room fire on a little table. They always gave me my favourite pink and yellow cake with some tinned peaches.

  Phil was a trim man with military bearing, and he had his hobbies, which were music and motoring. He loved classical music, and went regularly to the Liverpool Philharmonic, and to his local Gramophone Society, carrying his much-loved gramophone records in a special case with a tweedy cover. After lunch he would play these records for me. It was quite boring, but they were both always so pleased to see me, and there was such a cosy feeling about these visits, that I looked forward to them all week.

  Outside our house on my birthday night was a big van, into which my mother disappeared with a wave, but before it could drive off Grace marched up to the passenger seat and that was when there were ‘words’. I had been told to get into the car, where Uncle Phil and I now sat, straining to catch the sound of the angry voices.

  Grace.

  Grace stomped back to the car and got in; I’d never seen her so cross.

  ‘As per usual, of
f gallivanting with one of her chaps. Two Lovebirds in a Gilded Cage – that takes the biscuit. They’ve got it in there, great big thing with a swing inside it, and wheels.’

  ‘What are the swing and wheels for?’ I was dying to know.

  ‘Something about her sitting on the swing, and the whole contraption gets wheeled into the party. I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life,’ Grace said with awful contempt, although I could see that Uncle Phil was quite interested.

  ‘Please can I go and look?’ I begged.

  I was dying to see the cage on wheels, but was told to stay in the car. Grace said crossly that my mother had told her that she was ‘overreacting’.

  She told Phil, in a voice that meant I wasn’t to hear, ‘She said that Tony, the other “lovebird”, is the window dresser at Marshall and Snelgrove department store, so there obviously wasn’t going to be any funny business. As if that made it all right. I suppose she meant he was, you know, one of those!’

  Uncle Phil nodded, but he wasn’t a man to get involved. I couldn’t resist.

  ‘One of what?’ I pleaded.

  ‘Never mind, Sally, it’s not very nice,’ she said quickly.

  In the car she was still whispering but I could hear from the back ‘every single night’ and ‘where does she go to’ and ‘leaving Sally with total strangers’ and ‘what poor Neil is suffering’.

  I’d seen nothing wrong with my mother going out each night until I realized how upset and angry Grace was, and that my mother’s absence wasn’t what was expected of a woman with a small child and dying husband.

  A sense of unease now hung over the birthday outing, and my excitement of being at the Odeon Cinema at night couldn’t quite overcome it. I can remember standing for the National Anthem and doing the Brownies’ honour salute, which I had learnt from another girl and would do, even though I wasn’t allowed to be a Brownie. I remember the lights dimming and the interval with the usherettes and ice cream and the thrill of being out at night-time mingling with some other anxious feeling I couldn’t name.

  When we went back to the house it felt darker than usual. Grace led me up the stairs to my room and waited while I put on my nightie and dressing gown, then tucked me in. I asked if I could show Daddy my present she had given me, a painting you could make by filling in the numbered shapes on the black velvet with thick glowing paints. It added up to a picture of a rose, and she told me that ‘a red rose means I love you’. Now she said that I’d better not go into Daddy’s room, but I could do the painting for him and he could keep it next to his bed.

  I had been into his room when he was very ill, so didn’t understand why I couldn’t go in now. The next day I carefully painted the rose for him, and that night I sat on his bed and gave it to him. He told me that if there was ever a time when he wasn’t there, I should remember that his love for me was always with me. Even if I couldn’t see it, I could wrap it around me like a big invisible cloak and it would always keep me warm. He said that it would be there for the rest of my life.

  I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD when the afternoon came. I was picked up from school by the mother of a distant cousin, Tracey, which was unusual.

  On most mornings I would be collected by a kindly taxi driver my mother had found called Mr Moore, who would then wait by the school gates to drive me home again at the end of the day. Today there was no Mr Moore, only Tracey and her mother.

  For me at the time it was just another horrid school day: unremarkable in that I found so many of them miserable. At the age of four I had been put into a small private nursery and primary school called Saxenholme, which was run from a Victorian house rather like the one we lived in, and just as gloomy. I wore something called a ‘jibbah’ with a big shield on the front, almost as big as me. I dreaded going, and had a daily nervous tummy ache. Even when we were going to make things out of colourful felt, like a flower-basket pin cushion for Mummy, I would look forward to the event, hoping it would cheer me up and asking her surreptitiously, ‘Mummy, do you ever use pins?’ to which she replied that she did, but when the day came I soon realized that I felt just as unhappy, and things would seem even worse. Then I knew that if I mentioned my tummy ache I could get out of going to school at all. Mr Moore would be standing by his car, dressed smartly in his suit and tie, at half past eight prompt. The housekeeper would appear on the steps and tell him that I was unwell, and, to my enormous relief, he would drive away without me.

  If only it had been Mr Moore who was waiting for me on this afternoon three years later. By now I was at the main schoolhouse, having moved when I was five. It had stained glass that made a pattern on the floors, and a smell of beeswax, chalk and horrible lunches. I dreaded lunch, particularly cheese pie or chocolate sponge, which made me sick. You were allowed to ask for a ‘dolly’s helping’ which I would plead for to the dinner ladies, but the cheesy mush that smelt of vomit was still piled on my plate. I would be left alone in the dining room afterwards with the cold heap in front of me and a teacher looking in to see if I had eaten it yet.

  At playtime we went into a back garden that smelt of privet and mulching horse-chestnut leaves. The girls made dens under the trees and, when no one would let me in, I made a broom of twigs and went around saying that I was a sweeper of dens, and offering to sweep for them. No one seemed to want a sweeper and there was a feeling of panic and being unable to breathe, and I would long for the bell to ring so that the lonely feeling could end.

  The head teacher, Mrs Jane, was kind and pretty. She would tell us to pull our shoulders back and called us her ‘Saxenholme Smarties’. These days she also argued a lot with my mother, who would not let me go swimming in case my hair got wet. Mrs Jane had even offered to dry my hair herself in her study with her own hairdryer. This happened once, but after that my mother got her way by just not sending me to school on swimming days.

  Mrs Jane saw my misery and also tried to help me find a friend. One was a girl called Lydia Holroyd whose father had died and all her hair had fallen out. There was one heartbreaking afternoon when her mother picked us up and took me home with them. Lydia seemed very upset that her mother had made a pudding called junket that she hated and when some of it fell onto the carpeted floor her mother scraped it up back into the bowl, slapped her and made her eat it, although it was now covered in fluff and Lydia was crying. Afterwards at school she wouldn’t look at me, and we never talked to each other again.

  There was another girl who also didn’t have a friend. Janet Bailey’s father had been blinded during the war and Janet was terribly shy, and was also losing her sight, although my mother thought this was strange as her father’s disability was a war wound. She wore very thick glasses and hardly spoke, but if I gave her ‘lines’ to say, she would say them, and then I could reply and we could play. The awful sad feeling I had at school began to wear off. I dreaded it a little less knowing that I would have my own friend at playtime. But this relief was to be short-lived.

  ON THAT PARTICULAR Tuesday I left the old building under swirling skies and scanned the roadside for Mr Moore. He was nowhere to be seen. Instead beyond the rattling fence stood a vaguely familiar Hillman Minx with its doors wide open like traps. It was Tracey and her mother. Why they should be waiting was a mystery, when Tracey was clearly not interested in having me to her house, or even playing with me. She had always stuck to her best friend Debbie Underwood, the most popular girl in class. Since starting school I’d had a strange feeling towards Debbie Underwood. I wanted to be her, but also hated her. Not only did everyone want to be her friend, but she looked like a sunflower with her yellow hair and coltishly long legs. She had a brother, and nice parents, and once told me that she always spent the summer in Appleby.

  Summers were my worst time, and although I hated school I dreaded the holidays more, as I would be stuck in the gloomy house while everyone else went away. Visions of Debbie would rise before me. Even the lovely name, Appleby, conjured images of orchards, their trees laden with rosy apples
and the long grass studded with daisies. Here golden, long-legged children ran happily in the evening sunshine, a dog at their heels, as they made their way home for a jolly tea.

  But on this day everyone, including Tracey, was being kind to me. And there was something suspicious about Tracey’s mummy putting so much Matey bubble bath into our night-time bath; even Tracey seemed to find it surprising, and was quickly shushed when she asked about so many special treats.

  It was my mother’s arrival the next morning that made me realize something was very wrong. It was time for school, but instead of leaving we all went to sit down in the living room where she said she had something sad to tell me: my daddy had died.

  Everyone seemed to be looking at me. Only minutes before I had stolen an aniseed ball that I found on top of a cupboard in Tracey’s room and popped into my mouth. Now there was an awkward feeling of not knowing what to do with it, or how to spit it out. I remember the taste changing from nice to nasty, as my insides began to fall away. Since then, anything flavoured with aniseed has made me feel sick.

  We travelled to school in a convoy. The stained glass in the hall looked weird, the patterns it made on the wall, and the usual everyday sounds of school seemed echoey and far away. Nothing looked as it had the day before. My mother went to see Mrs Jane. At morning assembly Mrs Jane announced that my father had passed away and we would all say a little prayer. I felt faint and as if I wasn’t there.

  No one took me to the funeral. I had a terrified feeling that I didn’t know where Daddy was, or even when he had died. I realized I hadn’t seen him for a while, and I felt that during that time he had drifted away because I wasn’t there to help him. But surely something so enormous, the end of the world, that changed things for ever, must have been marked by some moment in particular? Instead there were just days that didn’t feel right, and then he had vanished from the house. His room was empty, but that wasn’t when he died. I hadn’t said goodbye. Why hadn’t they told me? How had something so earth-shattering happened without my knowing?