Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  They sat outside in the garden for a couple of drinks before eating, and Daisy asked him about his work. He had just been moved on to the Vice Squad, and he was enjoying it immensely.

  She went back into the kitchen and put the pasta on to cook, and reheated the sauce in the microwave. Everything else was ready. Within fifteen minutes they were sitting down to eat.

  ‘Mmm, this is the business,’ Joel said as he tasted the prawn sauce. ‘I’ve been living on those oven-ready meals for so long I’d forgotten what real food looked like, let alone tasted like.’ He speared a piece of avocado in the salad. ‘Ah, what’s this? Something alien.’

  Daisy laughed. When they first met and she began cooking for him, he claimed everything was alien. He’d been brought up in a home where even pasta was considered exotic and weird. In the navy, like in the police force, he’d had ordinary canteen-type food, and when the ship had docked in foreign countries he’d always been too suspicious to try anything he didn’t recognize. He’d overcome this prejudice very quickly after meeting Daisy, but then she had bludgeoned him into trying everything.

  It was so lovely being alone again with him. It was such a warm evening, only the lightest of breezes making the candles flutter. As the daylight gradually slipped away into darkness, the scent of the roses on the table, the good food and the wine made it easy to talk.

  He said that when Daisy shut him out of her life his world had fallen apart. ‘Everything seemed so pointless, getting up in the mornings, cleaning the flat, washing my clothes. I didn’t know until then how attached I’d got to your family or how you’d coloured every aspect of my life. My mates soon got tired of me being miserable, at work they said I was a grouch. I’d always prided myself on being so self-contained too. I suppose I imagined that I was too tough to go to pieces over a woman.’

  Daisy reached out and stroked his cheek tenderly. ‘I’m sorry I put you through that,’ she whispered. ‘Yet it’s nice to find you can be so emotional. That was one of my misgivings about you. I got the idea sometimes that you didn’t feel. You did seem very self-contained.’

  ‘I suppose I got the idea that I had to be masterful and bossy with you, because you seemed to be so dizzy and frothy,’ he admitted.

  ‘Frothy!’ she giggled.

  He smiled and took her hand in his, kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘Yes, frothy. And you still are sometimes, like that day I got to the convalescent home and found you in tears. I thought you’d had some terrible news, that you needed another operation or something. You were only upset because you couldn’t bend to paint your toenails without your head throbbing.’

  ‘A girl’s toenails are important,’ she laughed.

  ‘Am I important to you too?’ he asked, his dark eyes looking right into hers.

  ‘Extraordinarily so,’ she whispered.

  ‘Then let’s go to bed,’ he said, getting up and pulling her up too. ‘Right now, before we have pudding or coffee.’

  ‘I planned to put on some soul music and dance with you,’ she said.

  ‘We can do that later. We’ve got all night.’

  She looked at his face and his brown eyes were pools of mischief, so sexy they made her shiver. His lips were soft and full, pink and moist from the red wine. Then she looked at his hand in hers, so big, so capable, and she remembered how sensitive those fingers could be.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve forgotten what a real one is like.’

  His arms came round her and his lips down on to hers. The kiss began gently, his tongue teasing hers, but his arms tightened around her and all at once it was fierce and passionate, with more fire than she ever remembered before. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed. He stood for just a moment looking down at her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Just thinking how much I want you.’ His voice was husky with emotion.

  It was even better than when they first met, all the raw excitement yet the security of familiarity too. Joel undressed her, kissing her shoulders and arms, unhurried, wanting to make it last.

  As he made gentle love to her, she could feel the last of the tension inside her ebbing away. There was no room in her mind for anything else but him – time, place or tomorrow didn’t exist as he brought her to a fierce climax.

  ‘I love you,’ she heard him murmur at the height of it, and his body and hers seemed to flow into each other in a way she’d never felt before, then suddenly she was crying at the sheer beauty of it.

  ‘No tears,’ he whispered, licking them away. ‘Fred will think I’m hurting you and savage my backside.’

  Daisy glanced to the side of her bed to see Fred sitting there, his head on one side, ears cocked, as if questioning what they were doing. All at once she was laughing.

  ‘The new model Daisy goes from tears to laughter in one point five seconds,’ Joel said, imitating the voice of a man who did car adverts on a local radio station. ‘A smooth ride, with plenty of excitement, that’s what you can expect with the new Daisy.’

  They were still laughing later when they went downstairs again to eat the strawberries and cream and drink more wine. Taking a bottle with them, they went out into the now dark garden and swung on the swing seat, Joel in his boxer shorts and Daisy wearing just her knickers and his polo shirt.

  ‘We could make love again here,’ he said, swinging fast. ‘With the added thrill of not knowing whether the neighbours are watching.’

  Daisy lay back looking up at the stars. ‘We’ve had this swing as long as I can remember,’ she said. ‘Mum would never part with it even though it’s a bit rusty and the cover’s shabby. I wonder if that’s because she and Dad used to frolic around out here when we were little?’

  ‘I expect so.’ Joel smiled, lying down beside her. ‘One of the first things I sensed in this house was the feeling of love. It kind of wraps itself round you. Shame we could never afford to buy it from your dad if he sells up and moves on.’

  Daisy looked at him questioningly.

  Joel smiled again. ‘I suppose I ought to ask you to marry me before discussing buying houses. Would you marry a poor copper who can’t keep you in the manner you are accustomed to?’

  ‘Is that a proposal or just a fact-finding mission?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a proposal.’

  Daisy giggled. ‘Yes, I would marry a poor copper. I’d even live in his dirty little ex-council flat. That’s if he asks me properly.’

  ‘Not the bended knee bit?’ he said in mock horror.

  ‘Oh yes, the full issue or not at all.’

  Joel rolled off the swing on to the grass and crawled away from her. He selected a rose from a bush and crawled back with it in his teeth.

  ‘Will you marry me, Daisy?’ he said.

  ‘I will,’ she replied, and leaned forward to kiss him. But the swing moved back and she fell off it on top of him on the grass.

  They made love again there, prolonging it even when they’d grown cold and the ground felt damp beneath them. ‘We have to hang on to this memory,’ she whispered. ‘And when our silver wedding comes along, we’ll do it again, just to remind ourselves what it was like.’

  ‘But I’ll be over sixty,’ he whispered back.

  ‘I’ll keep you fit, don’t you worry,’ she laughed. ‘I want your bum to be as firm as it is now, or I’ll trade you in.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A week after her night with Joel, the postman called on Saturday morning with a parcel for Daisy. As it was around eighteen inches long and nine inches thick, she didn’t for one moment think it was Josie’s book. She had expected that to fit in a large envelope.

  But as she tore off the outer brown paper and discovered two box-files inside, her heart began to flutter with excitement. She’d expected a few notebooks filled with scrawl, but this was a neatly typed manuscript.

  There was a covering letter enclosed from the solicitor in Chancery Lane. It stated that he had been asked
to pass the manuscript over to her, and it was hers to do whatever she wished with, but he hoped that if she decided to attempt to get it published, she would come to him first to discuss it. He also added that in the absence of a will, once probate had been settled, and Josie’s flat and business sold, Daisy was likely to be the main beneficiary.

  It was frustrating that she couldn’t sit down and read the manuscript immediately, but her father was due back in time for lunch the following day, and as Joel had stayed almost the whole week, there was very little food left in the house.

  When she returned with the shopping, she hastily put it away, then sat down at the dining-room table to read the manuscript.

  Josie had said that a journalist had helped her with it, but almost immediately Daisy realized that was unlikely. Maybe a journalist had sparked off the idea to write it, and he or she might have wanted to do it as that way they’d make money out of it. But the work was all Josie’s; Daisy could hear her voice on every page.

  Josie had said too that it was badly written, but there she was mistaken. Maybe it was nowhere near publishable standard, but she had a flair for description and characterization.

  She had begun the work in 1980, for the date was at the top of the page, and it was written in the main as if she were Ellen. But Daisy got the impression it wasn’t only because Josie was supposed to be dead, but because she had found that by using Ellen as the narrator she could stand back from herself to recount her story honestly.

  Yet she lapsed in this at times. In parts of the story Ellen couldn’t have known about, or when something had clearly distressed her, she became Josie again.

  The story began when Ellen was eight and discovered that her real mother had flung herself off the cliff with her baby. As Ellen she was able to show that Josie felt hurt too at finding that they were only half-sisters, that her conception was out of wedlock and her parents’ subsequent marriage one of propriety rather than love.

  This early part was hugely overwritten and repetitive, with lengthy descriptions of how close the sisters were, their games together, going to school and life for them both on the farm. It came across as if Ellen had the harder time, being burdened with a great many chores and bullied and humiliated by Violet, yet Josie had her own set of problems even then.

  She wasn’t as clever as Ellen, her father ignored her, and Violet was constantly trying to make her outshine Ellen. The picture she painted of herself was of a bewildered little girl, her loyalties divided between her mother and her sister and unable to satisfy either of them.

  Yet despite continuing and often ruthless attempts from Violet to create animosity between the two girls, Daisy could feel their love for one another. In the descriptions of their games, swimming in the cove, and play-acting in the barn, Daisy could almost hear their laughter, and she didn’t think it was just because they were thrown together and isolated from any other playmates.

  Mavis had told Daisy about how Violet took Josie off to Helston in the summer when she was fourteen, but only by reading Josie’s account of it could she see that this was the start of her rebellion.

  She described in detail her uncle’s luxurious house, the discovery of how good it was to watch television, play tennis, join a drama club, to be bought nice clothes and treated as if she was important. She met her first sweetheart there too, and bitterly resented Violet taking her home. Her account of Ellen falling for Pierre was very moving, and proved that although Josie no longer wanted to be at the farm, she still cared deeply for her sister. Daisy could almost see the two girls huddled down in the cove, confiding their innermost secrets, promising they would always look out for one another, no matter what their parents did.

  In the next section, just before Ellen found the job in Bristol, Josie found it hard to be Ellen narrating the story. She switched from ‘she’ to ‘me’ all the time, trying to show how frightened Ellen was at being pregnant, yet at the same time revealing her own distress because her sister suddenly stopped confiding in her and appeared aloof and indifferent.

  Daisy sighed deeply when she got to the part about the misunderstandings created by the girls’ letters to each other when Ellen first left home. She could understand why Ellen didn’t dare write frankly about her condition, and equally well see why Josie came to the conclusion she had been fooled and that Ellen only faked a pregnancy to escape from home and have some fun.

  Looking back at herself at fifteen, Daisy could understand completely, too, why Josie left for London with the two young men. She was just as silly and wilful herself at that age. She ached for Josie being forced to take that awful room in Westbourne Grove, yet she also admired her courage in not running home.

  The account of the glamour photography, the meeting with Mark Kinsale and his subsequent seduction of her, was written so well. Daisy knew that had she been in Josie’s shoes she would have been just as naive, frightened and yet hopeful.

  Josie thought when Mark wanted to make love to her that he must love her. She believed everything would change if he were her lover, that he’d be kinder, gentler. She was also afraid to refuse in case he abandoned her.

  It was never good for her, even in the beginning, he was rough and said crude things, he belittled her and said she wasn’t sexy. So she tried to be what he wanted, allowing him to do whatever he wanted, however perverted, acting as if she loved it. What else could she do? It seemed to be the only way through the doorway to fame and fortune.

  For Daisy that brought back the first time she had sex, and the memory of it made her cry with shame. It couldn’t be called making love, for that boy had forced himself upon her on the couch while his parents were out. She had submitted to it because he was something of a heartthrob at school, and she foolishly imagined he must be in love with her. It was like giving him a present for stooping even to notice her. She recalled the hurt when he didn’t even walk her home later, but hurried her out of the door, saying, ‘See you around.’

  Daisy broke off from reading at five in the afternoon to make herself a snack, then returned to the section about Josie’s meteoric rise to fame. She skipped a great deal of it, because it was all stuff she knew, but began again as Mark Kinsale introduced Josie to speed.

  She needed something to give her a lift, because he kept her working for such long hours. Those little pills seemed so harmless; they made her laugh and chatter, banished weariness. But she didn’t know until it was too late what they were doing to her. Or that by giving her drugs he was gaining complete and utter control over her and the money she earned.

  Josie described that first couple of years of fame as like being in a Technicolor dream, complete with a soundtrack from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was clear to Daisy that while Josie had some nostalgia for being dressed in fabulous clothes, meeting famous people and receiving adulation from the press, she was still very bitter that she’d never been anything more than a money-making scheme to Mark.

  She wrote of her loneliness, for the high life of wild parties and night-clubs was a sham too. Mark would take her to these places, make sure the press noticed her, then whisk her away. In reality she spent most nights alone in her flat. The speed kept her awake, so Mark gave her sleeping pills. Then she needed more speed the following day to wake up.

  Daisy was particularly shocked by one paragraph at this point:

  Josie felt she was like a doll. Taken out of the toy box, dressed up and paraded. Then she would be stripped of her finery and abused by Mark before being flung back naked into the toy box in the dark.

  She had been thrown abruptly into an adult world without any preparation, and there was no one there to help, love or advise her.

  Daisy could see that Mark must have planned his strategy right from his first meeting with Josie. Paying her rent, luring her into a sexual relationship, feeding her drugs and withholding money prevented her even thinking of escape.

  Josie described how she once begged Mark to let her have enough money to buy an armchair or settee, s
ome pictures for the walls and a television, for her flat held only a bed. He laughed at her and said that was all she needed. This theme of wanting to create a real home for herself came in many times later on in the book, and it made sense of the luxury and comfort of her place in Askwith Court.

  Ellen made a surprise visit to Chelsea and was shocked to find her sister living in bare rooms.

  I was scared for her. Josie’s face is in the papers almost every day, I thought she was making a fortune and I expected to find her living like a queen. But the sheets on the bed were filthy, piles of dirty clothes and underwear everywhere. She didn’t even have enough money to take them to the laundrette, and she was so ashamed I had to see it.

  Ellen, it appeared, questioned Josie closely about her earnings, and said that Mark was ripping her off. She even offered to go to him and have it out with him. Yet for some reason, and Josie didn’t explain this, she didn’t allow Ellen to do that.

  It was during the same visit that Ellen had tried to tell her sister about her feelings at giving up her baby. Josie had obviously realized at some later time that she’d hurt her sister very deeply by taking no real interest, for there was a note of deep regret in her statement.

  Josie was too wrapped up in herself, to be concerned at what I’d been through, or how much it had changed me. I made allowances for her then because she was so young, I didn’t know at that time that she was taking drugs, neither did I know anything about them, that came later. But it was so hurtful that she wouldn’t let me talk it out, that she laughed at me for taking a job with handicapped children, for wanting to rebuild my life by doing something worthwhile.

  It was here, in just a few short paragraphs, that Daisy really began to see her birth mother. Josie was frank – at that time she had resented her sister attempting to do what she saw as ‘spoiling her fun’. Yet, perhaps because she written this so long after, and had come to see that Ellen’s warnings were given out of love for her, she had graciously described Ellen’s character and personality.