by Jenny Eclair
‘My sister and her husband, Hugo Berrington, have adopted her,’ Benedict explained. ‘It’s official, the paperwork is done – you abandoned her so they didn’t need your approval. She lives in Barnes in a nice house with a garden and has all the toys a little girl could ask for.’
Renee pushed aside her poached eggs. She was hung-over and vulnerable, the photograph had made her cry and she knew it was all her fault. She had done this, she had made this happen, she could pretend to be Renee Culpepper till the cows came home but underneath the fancy hairdo and the new astrakhan-collared coat, she was a runaway daughter and a runaway mother, she was Serena Tipping and she’d screwed everything up.
He didn’t look at her and she didn’t look at him. ‘One question,’ he muttered. ‘Do you believe, deep down, she is mine?’
Renee paused, but only for a split second. ‘Yes,’ she answered, although she couldn’t possibly know.
‘Only it makes things easier, neater. I’m very fond of her.’
‘Could I see her?’
‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t think so. I don’t think Hugo would like it.’
‘What about your sister?’
‘My sister is quite frail, it’s best that nothing upsets her,’ he said. ‘She’s been through a lot, she wanted a baby very badly and you didn’t, so don’t even think about changing your mind because it’s too late. It was your choice, Serena.’ And with that, Benedict extinguished his cigarette in the dregs of his coffee cup and walked out of the café.
After that, Renee stopped sleeping at night. Violet shadows appeared beneath her eyes and Maureen told her to cover them with powder. ‘No one wants a haggard nineteen-year-old,’ she informed Renee, who didn’t dare admit that she was already twenty.
When she did sleep, she had nightmares about closing the drawer with the baby in it and opening it to find the child dead, her marble eyes staring glassily, her lips mauve. Sometimes when she opened the drawer the baby had turned into a black rat and other times she had simply disappeared.
She stayed in bed during the day when she should have been out earning money, but the noises coming from Patty’s boudoir dungeon kept her awake, the muffled cries of men who left their expensive briefcases and rolled umbrellas in the living room and crawled around Patty’s carpet licking her size-nine boots. ‘You fucking piece of shit!’ she heard Patty cry.
One day when she could stand it no more, she picked up the telephone directory and looked up Hugo Berrington. There beside the telephone number, Barnes 7258, was the address where her child now lived: 33 Claverley Avenue, Barnes.
She could visit or she could write.
She decided to write,
Dear Natasha . . .
53
The Letters
July 1963
Hugo Berrington was furious, he had intercepted the letters and read them in private in his office. They were addressed to his wife, but fortunately she hadn’t seen them. The post was his concern and in any case Natasha was too distracted in the mornings to notice what came through the letterbox. After all, she had Annabel to sort out and herself to make look vaguely presentable, a process requiring the positioning of a hairpiece, without which his wife’s head looked slightly too small.
The letters concerned their adopted child. He didn’t recognise the handwriting, which was round and childish with fat letters slanting off the page.
The contents were polite enough, but reeked of trouble.
Dear Natasha,
You don’t know me but I was a friend of your brother’s, I was staying at Kittiwake for a while, my baby girl was born there in January.
I don’t want to take her away, I promise, I can’t give her anything and I know you can, all I want is to see her, just once, just to hold her, you can find me at the above address, please Natasha.
Yours
Serena Tipping
The second letter read,
Dear Natasha,
I haven’t heard back from you, but I think maybe your letters have gone astray because at the moment for reasons which are a bit complicated, I am working under the name Renee Culpepper, so if you address the letter to Miss R. Culpepper then I’m sure it will get to me.
Best wishes
Renee Culpepper
PS Please Natasha, I won’t keep bothering you.
But she did.
There was a third letter.
I am dying here Natasha, you haven’t written and it’s doing my nut in, I only want to see that she’s ok, I could come to where you live, but I don’t want to cause a scene. I know that she’s yours and I can cope with that, but I can’t cope with never holding her just one more time.
We can meet anywhere, any park in London, any station, any café, you tell me where and when I will be there.
Here’s hoping to hear back soon,
Renee/Serena
Silly bitch! He could have written back, disguised his handwriting to suggest Natasha’s hand was holding the pen, and lured her anywhere. He’d soon send her off with a flea in her ear, never to bother them again. There wasn’t a court in the land that would let that woman back into the child’s life.
But it wasn’t Baby Annabel that was Hugo’s main concern. He’d recognised the girl’s address, 17C Philbeach Gardens, as the location of the top-floor flat he occasionally visited for a little afternoon delight.
Hugo had certain sexual predilections that he knew better than to ask his wife to indulge; Natasha was too well bred and anyway it wasn’t the sort of thing one got up to with one’s wife. A man wouldn’t marry a girl who willingly partook in the kind of acts he was prepared to pay for. Hugo felt himself stiffening at the thought, aware that his briefcase contained several toys which had no place in a reputable lawyer’s office.
Hugo liked threesomes and a little light bondage, he liked to watch girl-on-girl action, he liked watching the black girl fuck the redhead, and then he liked to discipline them both. The black girl had quite a collection of canes, ropes and whips, while the redhead had the biggest tits he had ever got his hands on.
Unfortunately, the trouble with being a sexual deviant, Hugo mused, was that it left one wide open to blackmail – and that was clearly what this little tart had in mind. He didn’t buy the whole ‘guilty mother’ sob story. Girls like Serena Tipping were out for what they could get, and with Natasha’s aristocratic connections and his links with the establishment, she probably thought she could collect a small fortune. He shuddered at the thought of the News of the World getting their hands on the story: ‘Prominent Lawyer in Kinky Sex Romps with Earls Court Slappers’, complete with accompanying pictures of the girls looking like whores in their underwear.
Natasha would leave him and he couldn’t afford a divorce. He needed to shut this girl up before things got messy.
Hugo had no idea what she looked like, and he wasn’t about to ask Benedict. He had heard of the notorious Kittiwake parties but never managed to attend one himself. As for bumping into the girl at Philbeach Gardens, it hadn’t happened so far. He was aware of a third flatmate – once, during a particularly noisy session, Gloria had fallen back on the pillows laughing and said, ‘I hope we didn’t wake Renee!’ and during another visit he’d tripped over a small pair of shoes in the living room and been told they were ‘bloody Renee’s’ – but thankfully they had never set eyes on each other, so she wouldn’t recognise him.
Hugo decided that he needed to ‘accidentally’ bump into this Renee Culpepper and if anyone knew where this encounter might casually occur, it was Maureen Leach, Mo knew all the girls. When he called her, she obligingly let slip that Renee was pretty and blond and worked the occasional lunchtime shift in the Packhorse in Kennington. ‘The regulars love her,’ Maureen added proudly; her girls were like the daughters she’d never had.
Hugo waited until twelve thirty before hailing a cab from outside his office in Holborn and arrived at the Packhorse shortly before one.
His gin and tonic was delivered by the barmaid her
self, complete with ‘ice and a slice, darling’. Hugo settled himself into a green leather banquette in the corner to watch and wait.
She was good with the customers, friendly and flirty but in a slightly tired and distracted sort of way. She looked a little older than he was hoping, less fresh, but as if to compensate she was wearing a suitably low-cut top to show off a proper pair of well-rounded knockers. Why was it, Hugo wondered, that the working classes had such vastly superior tits to the landed gentry?
He caught her eye a couple of times. Possibly she thought he was an MP or maybe even a spy! Lots of girls liked that sort of thing these days, so he played along, casually removing a newspaper from his briefcase. Everyone knew The Times was the newspaper of choice where spies were concerned.
Playing up his secret service alter ego, Hugo spent several minutes looking around shiftily before pulling his hat down low and making a pretend visit to the pay phone by the gents. When he returned to his corner, he caught her eye again and she blushed, immediately looking five years younger. Hugo licked his lips, removed his hat and headed for the bar. She wiggled her way over and asked if he fancied a scotch egg or anything else with his drink. Recognising a come-on when he saw one, Hugo looked at her intently and simply asked what time she would be finishing and if he could take her somewhere nice for a late lunch.
She giggled and flushed deeper, he could feel her eyes taking in his driving gloves and overcoat, calculating whether he was worth the punt. ‘The Grosvenor House Hotel has a very nice grill,’ he continued, and with that she nodded her pretty little blond head in agreement.
‘I’d like that very much’ she trilled in her common accent. The temptation to gag her was going to be difficult to resist.
In the taxi up to Park Lane, Renee held ‘Peter’s’ hand. We can all play silly buggers about who we are, thought Hugo, leaning over to kiss her on the neck. Her scent was cloyingly sweet and he could see the pinpricks of much darker hair pushing through the base of her scalp. She wasn’t even a real blonde.
54
The Shadowy Man
This is more like it, thought Renee, snuggling up against the handsome stranger as the cab crossed Vauxhall Bridge. She didn’t feel as if she was in any danger; he was a gentleman, she could tell by the way he carried himself, the lunchtime tipple of gin and tonic rather than the oik’s stout, the imperious flagging down of the taxi, the luxurious feel of his coat, the shine of his shoes.
He was taking her out for lunch too, like a proper date, and for a moment she allowed herself the fantasy that Peter could be the shadowy man who lurked around the edges of her Keddie’s happy-ever-after daydreams.
Maybe this would be the fellow who’d one day wait for her at the end of the aisle? Because if Peter ended up falling in love with her, everything would be all right. They could get engaged and she could go back to Southend with her fancy fiancé wearing a fancy engagement ring with a massive emerald in the middle. And once she was married, she could have other children, because she would have a house with gingham curtains in the kitchen and a Pifco hair dryer in the bedroom. She would be respectable, this man could be her knight in shining armour.
He certainly had lovely manners; he tipped the taxi driver with a note and gently steered her by the elbow up the steps to the hotel where a waistcoated flunkey opened the door into a world Renee never wanted to leave.
Play your cards right, girl, and this could be your future, she silently told herself as her heels began to sink into a cream carpet as soft as a cloud.
After the sour beery stench of the Packhorse, the hotel smelled of polished brass fittings and beeswax. Complicated flower arrangements in huge vases on glass tables added to the aroma and she breathed in with a sigh. ‘This is the life.’
At lunch, thanks to memories of dining with Benedict and his friends at Kittiwake, she knew what a finger bowl was, how to hold her cutlery and which knife buttered her roll. Renee was determined to make a good impression, to enchant him with her charm and sophistication; she would use the word ‘lavatory’ rather than ‘toilet’, she would push her peas against the back of her fork and hold the wine glass by the stem.
He kept filling her glass and his steak arrived very rare, the blood oozing around his green beans and new potatoes. She had the chicken and spilled a tiny bit of gravy on her top. When he went to ‘make a couple of calls’, she frantically tried to dab the stain off with some water and her napkin. It doesn’t matter, she told herself, it barely shows.
When he got back from the phone booth, he asked whether she would like to continue their chat over some brandy somewhere private and she nodded and said, ‘What a delightful idea’, as if they were off to see the Chelsea Flower Show.
Once more he took her by the elbow and this time he steered her to the lobby, where the lift doors silently glided open.
‘I have a room,’ he said. ‘It overlooks Hyde Park, so you can watch the horses.’
Not knowing what else to do, she giggled. Things were moving so fast, maybe he truly liked her. But how much sex should she give him?
She could go as far as she liked, she decided, thanks to Gloria, who’d made her buy a cheap gold ring from Woolworths before marching her down to the local surgery where Renee signed up as Mrs R. Culpepper, and was given a six-month supply of the contraceptive pill. ‘We don’t want you getting in the club,’ laughed Gloria, and Renee had laughed too, ‘As if!’
But now she found herself worrying about getting undressed in the daylight – what if he noticed the stretch marks on her stomach and guessed she’d had a baby? Serena fretted, she had read an article in a women’s magazine about how men liked you to keep them waiting, how you shouldn’t go all the way on the first date. Mentally, she quickly undressed herself: today’s bra had seen better days and she was wearing a pair of Gloria’s knickers because she was behind with her laundry, but at least they were quite fancy, red with frilly bits. Perhaps she could keep her slip on?
The room was plainer than she’d expected and the view looked over a fire escape at the side of the hotel rather than the park. ‘But it doesn’t matter does it?’ he said as he closed the curtains and turned on a side light. ‘You’re the only view I want,’ and she giggled again as she sat on the bed and wondered what would happen next. The sound of someone knocking on the door nearly had her jumping out of her skin.
Peter looked amused. ‘Room service, I presume,’ he said, then he called, ‘Enter,’ like an actor, and a boy walked in with a tray that held a bottle and two glasses. He looked at the closed curtains and he looked at Renee perched on the bed and she could swear blind he gave a smirk. Right then she made up her mind that if she did marry Peter and he had as much money as she was beginning to hope, she would have her wedding reception right here in this hotel. That would surely wipe the smirk off the snotty git’s face.
They talked like grown-ups for a while over the balloon-shaped brandy glasses. She asked him questions about where he lived and what he liked to do, and he told her ‘London, and all sorts of activities.’
‘Such as?’ she pressed.
‘Such as this,’ he said, and he sidled over to sit next to her on the bed and he kissed her long and deep and hard. It was a good kiss, she only wished she could have cleaned her teeth first.
But the brandy loosened everything and he undressed her slowly and gently, kissing every new bit of flesh as it was revealed. She was glad the curtains were shut, the side lamp had a cream satin pleated shade and the light that emanated from it was as flattering as a candle.
For a moment she believed she was beautiful, she forgot that she had a small daughter who was now living with complete strangers. She was Renee Culpepper and this could be the start of something special, she didn’t even mind if he was a double agent, she wouldn’t mind being a spy’s wife, she could keep secrets, after all not even Patty or Gloria knew about the baby.
She was down to her bra and Gloria’s pants now. Peter was still dressed, she tentatively pulled at
his tie, but she tugged the wrong end and momentarily it tightened around his neck. ‘Now, now, young lady.’ He smiled patiently. And the next thing she knew, he had removed his tie and lashed her wrists together behind her back.
Oh, so he liked it a bit kinky, did he? Renee pouted at him, not sure of the rules, and he smiled and pushed her down on the bed, but oh so gently, and she closed her eyes. It was going to be all right, he kissed like a prince . . .
And then he hit her.
He hit her hard across the face and her eyes flew open. This wasn’t how princes behaved. She sat up, panicked, but he knocked her back down, he punched her twice in the face and the second time her jaw cracked like Nanna Tipping eating toffee on bonfire night and she didn’t move again.
He was standing up now, he was putting on his coat and gathering up his possessions. Perhaps if she lay very still he might not hit her again. And he didn’t. Instead he sat on the end of the bed and in a low reasonable voice, as if he were reading a book to a child, he said, ‘Listen, you silly bitch, if you write one more letter to my wife asking to see your bastard baby, I will hurt you so badly you will wish neither you nor that brat had ever been born. I will cut your face to ribbons and no one will ever look at you again, do you understand?’
She nodded, it hurt, then he left. There was blood on the starched white pillowcase and her teeth felt loose in her head. For a while she lay there, grateful for the quiet, then after wriggling her hands free from his tie she fetched a hand towel from the bathroom and allowed her mouth to bleed into that. When it stopped, she searched in her bag unsuccessfully for a couple of aspirin.
If she were brave she would go to the police, but she wasn’t and anyway she knew what they would think of her. They would recognise her for what she was: a girl who may not have asked for what she got, but deserved it anyway.
