Diamonds at the Lost and Found

by Sarah Aspinall

  She was taken aback when Neil, dropping her home after a lovely evening, pulled her towards him and kissed her deeply and hungrily. There was an intensity in the sick boy that fascinated her. Over the following weeks he sent her passionate letters decorated with drawings of how he imagined her, her naked curves made less obviously erotic by the angel wings he added to the images.

  She agreed to see him again over Christmas, and he asked her if she would spend New Year’s Eve with him. She said that she had to be back down south, as Perry had invited her to a party at a country house that night. Neil asked her the name of the house and if he could come at midnight just to kiss her once and go away again. She thought he was joking and laughed it off.

  It snowed heavily on the New Year’s Eve of 1956. Audrey was getting ready for the big party and was feeling great anticipation about the coming year. It was certainly a coup, to have won the heart of Perry Guinness, an eligible man, and their married life would be the one of glamour and luxury she had always imagined. She may not have been deeply in love with Perry, but they had fun together; and the life they shared, with its social whirl of parties, dancing and theatres, kept at bay any other longings. They hadn’t made love yet, but she assumed that he was being a gentleman and waiting till they were married and that side of things would work out. The last few years had been shadowed by her wretchedness over James, her lost love, but now she believed that she was finally headed for happiness.

  That same day Neil sat on a bus for nine hours as it made its way down from Southport to Oxfordshire and towards the house where Audrey was partying. He got off, and walked down the long drive just before midnight. The party was in full swing, with everyone in evening dress, as the young man in his duffel coat waited by the door trying to get a note to Audrey. Finally she was interrupted on the dance floor and handed the note which said, ‘Just one kiss at midnight? I’ll be at the front door, Neil.’

  As the dance music stopped, someone turned on the radio and announced that the midnight chimes were beginning. The first chime rang out, signalling the end of that year and the beginning of a new chapter. Audrey looked over at Perry, who was carousing with his friends, and then rushed off to find Neil waiting by the door.

  He lit up at the sight of her.

  ‘You idiot! Come in, it’s freezing!’ She tried to pull him into the party.

  ‘No, just one kiss is all I need, to warm me up for 1957!’ He closed his eyes.

  Audrey laughed and gave him the kiss that he had come so far to taste.

  She begged him once more to come in and get warm, but he just sloped off into the night, pink lipstick on his shirt, with a grin and a wave. Perry soon drew her back into the crowd with his ‘Happy New Year, my sweetie pie’ and a warm hug, then she danced with him till dawn.

  A few weeks later she made her regular visit to Southport to see her mother. She found her bedroom filled with red roses, and propped on the mantelpiece was a note from Neil. He was asking her to come to his flat that weekend, just for a small party with some of his friends. He was keen for her to meet them, and wanted to show her his photographs and short films and the furniture he had made for the flat, as carpentry was his other love. It was hard to refuse, particularly knowing that he was so ill, and she agreed to go.

  After an entertaining evening around the dinner table, she was determined to deliver the speech she had prepared about ‘just being friends’ before she went home. She had to wait till everyone was gone, and then she began to explain. He ignored her carefully chosen words and simply pulled her towards him and kissed her.

  Ava broke off the story here, remembering that she was telling a child, although she was quite aware that I was a child who knew a lot more about adult matters than most other children.

  ‘Your mother is quite a passionate woman, and I think she and Perry were more chummy. So with Neil being so carried away, they ended up going to bed together.’

  She said that Audrey knew immediately that it had been a terrible mistake. She liked Neil, and deeply sympathized with his situation. He was only still in his twenties, and it all seemed so unfair, but it had been wrong to lead him on. His romanticism had swept her along, and she had given in to the moment, but the last thing she needed was some poor ill boyfriend who wasn’t James Leadsom. Nor was he wealthy or well connected; nor, most importantly of all, was she in love with him. Poor Neil; he looked white-faced with misery as she told him that she still intended to marry Perry that spring. She went back down to London to be with Perry, and knew that it was the right decision.

  Three weeks later Neil’s phone calls from Southport had become pressing. He needed to see her, and she too couldn’t put off talking to him any longer. She went back to Southport to stay at her mother’s, and met Neil in a coffee bar. She told him that there was something they had to discuss, as her period was late. He was quiet. He had his own news, which was that the latest prognosis from the hospital had been a shock; it had now been made clear to him that he would never be well again, he would at some point begin to deteriorate, and that his condition was almost certainly terminal.

  He realized as a poor trainee accountant, who may soon be unable to work, he was now in no position to support a wife and child. He knew he was not what Audrey had been dreaming of. He knew he had been carried away the other night, and was distraught that he had made her pregnant in the face of this news. But she was the girl he had always wanted, from the first time he set eyes on her.

  OVER THE FOLLOWING WEEKS she returned several times to the unremarkable terraced house, too terrified to go in and suffer the brutality of a backstreet abortion, but at the same time inconsolable at the thought of being stuck with a baby and a marriage she had never wanted, and to a dying man. She believed her life was practically over.

  So, I was born.

  THE STORY THAT was told to me that afternoon by Ava didn’t hurt my feelings, and nor did her guileless repetition of my mother’s horrified reaction to the idea of having a child, her tears and her protestation ‘I don’t want a baby’. After all, at this stage it was just ‘a baby’ and she didn’t know it would turn out to be me, Sally, who she had then got to know and learnt to love. She had at least done what she was supposed to do, and got married to my daddy. I had never seen her be unkind to my father; her attitude was always gentle and her only sin was ‘going out’ a lot. I could see that she was probably doing her best. It was becoming more obvious that love mainly finds you, or is right there beside you when you were looking in all the wrong places. It might be just a sick young man, or a little girl who can’t sing or dance.

  None of this helped me to fathom where her hunt for love might take us next. If anything, she was more desperate than I had ever seen her.

  Whatever had previously been hidden could be out in the open after my father had died. The boot of our Triumph Herald clanked with the boxes of whisky and champagne we delivered to local councillors: those with the power to help her set up more Miller’s Betting Shops in streets where the residents were not pleased. Brown envelopes of cash were almost certainly passed across restaurant tables as a thank you.

  She spent more time at the casino, having ‘meetings’. A friend of Peter Cooper’s had winked at me, with an arm around her: ‘She’s a bit of a gangster, you know, your mum!’ It frightened me, as the gangsters in films had guns and shot people.

  Auntie Grace had whispered to Uncle Phil that the betting shops at least might not be as bad as ‘the other thing’, but they still proved that my mother was ‘cheap as chips’.

  With my father gone, Peter Cooper was now around more than ever and Audrey was always busy arranging ‘fun’ for him and his friends.

  But who were these ‘girls’ and what did they do? It would usually be one of the girls on the phone when my mother would talk in a low voice of ‘arrangements’: parties in Liverpool or Manchester, ‘dates’ with this person or that. I heard names – Jodie, Mandy, Trish, and others who were all in constant orbit around my mothe
r and would go on these dates which she was arranging – and it gave me a funny feeling. The air of hushed tones and mystery around it all only fuelled my curiosity.

  I sensed that these connections and the crowd she mixed with were putting us both beyond the pale. I felt so sad that she was never invited anywhere and she would lie crying on her bed when she couldn’t get an invitation to anniversary parties, golf-club gala dinners or fundraising fashion shows with buffets. She would say crossly, ‘The ladies are all scared that I’ll pinch one of their husbands,’ and I wondered if they were right.

  There was a further problem, which was that she was too good at drawing people out, and too keen to give them advice. Often the men she helped by setting up a ‘date’ would find themselves telling her all the details of their unhappy marriages and darkest secrets, feeling that she wouldn’t judge them. In Southport this trick had given her power, but it also added to her outcast status, as she knew exactly where all the bodies were buried.

  Sometimes she would tell on someone, and whisper to one of the men she knew that ‘Patti’s husband spends a lot of time at Man to Man – if you know what I mean?’ This was the clothes shop which was a hub for Southport’s gay community. The men who worked at the shop were great friends of hers, and great gossips. I would sit on a high velvet stool at the counter listening to the chatter, and one of them always made me hot chocolate with a marshmallow on top. He’d taken me to see Marlene Dietrich at the local theatre and, at the end of the show, he and his friends all ran to throw roses onto the stage. I loved him and their stylish, cosy shop. Our visits there meant that Audrey knew most of the insider information, and there were several gay couples – men who had previously been married to women – whom she had introduced to each other. She would say, with some satisfaction, ‘People should just be who they are and get on with it!’

  Sometimes all this intimate information damned her, though. I overheard her tell Peter Cooper that Auntie Ava’s husband, Anthony, didn’t like her because she knew about his ‘sex problem’ and that he had paid one of her girls to ‘lie naked beside him, but nothing happened’. Perhaps there were others who felt the same about her knowing about any ‘problems’ or particular tastes that they might have.

  She had now made quite enough money to host her own parties and dinners, with her splendid dining room, but who would come? I saw ladies cross to the other side of Lord Street when they saw her walking along. She had been obsessed for years with something called the 51 Club, an exclusive social group of fifty-one of Southport’s smartest ladies, which you could only join when someone left or died and you went up the waiting list. Every now and then my mother would say that some woman had moved away and now it must be her turn. She would telephone the chairwoman hopefully. The phone would go down and she would just sit there for a moment, her eyes glassy with tears; they had given the place to another lady who had been below her on the list, or they had given it to someone who was a new arrival in Southport. So it went on for years, but she refused to give up. It was so unkind when she had been on the list so long, but whatever it was, they just thought she wasn’t good enough. I would watch her as she got up from the telephone, wiping her eyes.

  When we returned from our travels, I had wished and hoped life would become more normal, but I knew that we didn’t fit in. We were somehow not quite right, we were just slightly ‘off’. Worst of all, I was beginning to realize that I was turning into as much an outsider as she was.

  18

  The Young Eve

  DURING THE DAY, I was sent to school, which I loathed. Over the years these establishments blurred into one; first was Saxenholme, then Trinity Hall, then my mother moved me again to St Wyburn’s, all private schools housed in Victorian villas similar to the one we lived in. All had elderly teachers with bad breath and hallways that smelt of rotting cabbage and beeswax. I hated them all. Southport seemed to be full of these dull places, catering for parents whose only ambition for their daughters was that they would speak nicely and not get any big ideas. Girls were to be kept away from the riff-raff at the academically superior high school where they might become rebellious and get their ears pierced or think of going to university.

  After my father’s death my mother had needed to find schools where she could keep me absent for long periods. She seemed to stay under the radar for most of the time, and I got away with absences that would be unthinkable now.

  These schools also had the advantage that she could more easily harass the head teacher over a matter very close to her heart: that I, Sally, was not to be involved in any kind of physical education, or to ever, ever get my hair wet.

  Audrey had an intense dislike of all sports, or for any kind of exercise apart, of course, from dancing. She believed that swimming and having damp hair led to colds or, even worse, dull ratty hair. On the few days that I had failed to escape school altogether she would give me a note excusing me from any such exertions.

  My mother had this idea that saving your energy rather than squandering it on unnecessary activity was obviously sensible. It left you plenty of zest for the important business of getting what you actually wanted, which was hardly a netball trophy.

  My intermittent spells at one school were made more miserable by its unfortunate system of making certain girls into prefects. These chosen girls had a special sitting room with a kettle and armchairs that only they could use at break time. A further privilege offered to prefects was the use of a grassy hedged-in walkway around the top of the gardens called the Lady Walk.

  The sense of being left out that I’d felt at junior school, and which echoed my mother’s own social exclusion, was now perpetuated as I peered into the cosy fug of hot chocolate and chatter in the Prefect Room, only to get a smug look from those inside. Debbie Underwood of the long legs and blonde hair, the lovely parents, fun brother and holidays in Appleby, was usually to be seen handing out the biscuits in this exclusive refuge, or strolling the Lady Walk arm in arm with another popular girl.

  Academically, the whole thing felt like a horrible mistake. It was a mystery to me. I felt so much cleverer than many of the girls around me, and could talk about things in a much more adult and articulate way, and yet I was quite unable to understand most of the teaching. To intensify the humiliation, a league-table list would be read aloud at the end of each term, with my name called out last, always the bottom of the class. Soon I found it impossible to stay in the school building at all.

  At first I would just feign stomach ache. The stomach pains had once been a genuine complaint, almost certainly as a result of life on the road, the strange food and anxiety. I had been admitted to hospital in Liverpool for tests, which found nothing, but this condition became very useful for getting me out of the horror of these schools where I had no friends and I had missed too many classes to ever catch up.

  If I protested in the morning my mother would just send away Mr Moore and his taxi. She would tell him that I was unwell again, and he would nod politely and pass on his best wishes to me before driving off.

  On some days she would remember that this was breaking the law, and I would be bundled into the taxi and simply forced to go. Mr Moore would drive me there solemnly, so as to report back to my mother, and wait to see me going through the school gates. There I would hide behind a hedge until he had driven away, then slip back out to the street and walk quickly off before I was spotted by a teacher.

  This lack of school could then leave a long day yawning empty ahead of me. I was out and about in Southport in all weathers in search of things to do, but it never stopped giving me a thrill of freedom. As an explorer I could go anywhere; I was no longer confined to the Prince Hotel or Marshall and Snelgrove, I now had the whole town as my territory.

  There was no shortage of money, as I had what my mother and I called my ‘magic purse’. I would leave this on my dressing table and it would always be stuffed with banknotes whenever it ran low. I have no sense of how much this was, as it was unending so there
was no need to count it. I simply knew that there was nothing I couldn’t do or buy within the limits of our Southport world.

  I used these funds for my personal ‘projects’ which were to do with a hazy notion of self-improvement that would somehow be far better than school. I knew I didn’t want to be ‘thick’ but only had a vague notion of what not being ‘thick’ involved.

  Books were not popular with my mother, despite her own gift for storytelling and her youthful success with the gossip column of the Southport Visitor. But reading other people’s stories never interested her. She called magazines ‘books’ and only owned two works of fiction, a Georgette Heyer and an Agatha Christie; for some reason, although I was an obsessive reader, I never picked them up and they sat for years undisturbed on the bookshelf beside the telephone directory.

  I hadn’t yet thought of going to a library, but jumble sales yielded a wonderful and inspiringly random mix of fiction and non-fiction. It was at a jumble sale I found a pink cloth-bound book that changed my not-quite-ten-year-old life.

  It had a strong musty library smell, the spine was faded and the front cover embossed with gilded roses below its title: The Young Eve – A Weekend Book for Girls. When I opened the pages, the paper thick and stiff, the writer immediately spoke to me in the voice of the mother that I sometimes longed for. This lady author was Julie Andrews as Maria in The Sound of Music, her voice warm, clear and essentially ‘good’, and she told me that the ideas in this book ‘have you – dear lively, wide-awake young Eve of today – closely in mind … with your mood of looking forward into the exciting future’.