by Marie Joseph
Leaving the letter and the medallion with Bart, she went back to her own chair.
‘You see, if you’ve been part of a normal family, if you’ve known from the beginning who your parents were, even if you haven’t lived with them, there’s an invisible mark on your forehead which spells “security”. If you have red hair, it’s because your mother had red hair. If you like to paint, it’s likely that your father did too. Even if they died when you were very young, there are those who can tell you things. That your mother was clever and kind – or selfish and stupid. They existed. And because of them, you exist. They’re your heritage, I suppose.’
‘And you feel this …’ Bart held up the medallion again ‘… this Captain Foley could be your father?’
‘My real father, you mean?’ Clara smiled. ‘I had a father, Bart. No one can ever take his place, but, oh, I don’t know … I have to believe that it was meant for me to receive this letter and the medallion. And sometimes –’ her head drooped a little –‘there is a need in me to know my own.’
‘Because your husband has failed to wipe out that need,’ Bart added silently to himself, turning away so that she could not read the expression on his face. ‘Do you want me to follow this up, my dear?’
His eyes were so concerned when he turned back to her, Clara felt the tears prick behind her own eyelids. She had told him so much, given away her unhappiness, she felt, and he had listened for hours, just as if there weren’t a thousand and one things he had to do now he was back in town. She knew his divorce was through, but there was sure to be someone else. Maybe he’d met someone in America? Bart wasn’t the kind of man to be too much alone. And yet he was a man’s man.
She knew all these things, and yet there was so much more she didn’t know. And so much she wanted to know, she realized suddenly.
When the telephone rang she started violently. Immediately Bart got up, collected his things and walked to the door, his coat over his arm.
‘Hallo? Yes, John.’ Clara held her hand over the earpiece. Bart held up the medallion, an unspoken question in his eyes.
When she nodded, he dropped the slender chain into his pocket then went out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Seventeen
BY THE TIME spring came Clara had worked out, quietly and without bitterness, her own philosophy. This was an acceptance that all life was a compromise in some way or other. Her father had said that true happiness only came with a positive acceptance of the will of God, but there were days when her spirit rebelled and she wanted to cry out against what seemed to her to be impossible odds.
John now came and went as he pleased, sleeping in Dora’s old room. Clara had stuck to her guns about that. He had to be sexually faithful to her or she would not have him in her bed. At first he’d refused to believe she meant it, but after fierce and angry scenes he now bowed ungraciously to the inevitable.
Sex, Clara persuaded herself, meant little to her. It was, she decided, a disappointing pastime, and for the life of her she couldn’t imagine why such a fuss was made of it. It never once occurred to her that for all his promiscuity her husband was an inadequate and selfish lover.
In the meantime she had her career; she had money; she had friends, Bart in particular. She was a free spirit, in charge of her own destiny, and how many married women in the twenties could say that?
Bart was planning a new revue to open as a tryout in Birmingham in September. It was to be called Lovin’ You, and the title song, a catchy number, had been written specially for Clara by an unknown young man from Wales. Waltz time – a plaintive little melody, it suited her voice to perfection:
‘The meaning of life is clear to me,
Lovin’ you, lovin’ you …’
Clara hummed the song over to herself that spring-lit day as she walked down Bond Street on her way to the theatre from a dress fitting. She was taking dancing lessons, and already was able to move gracefully through the opening number, although the lead dancer would be the real star of the show.
‘Lovin’ you, just lovin’ you …’
Maybe the Prince of Wales would come to the show when they moved back to London; maybe the brilliant Noel Coward would look in, be so impressed that he’d offer to write the book, lyrics and music for Bart’s next show. Maybe … maybe … Clara walked on, her little Cuban heels tapping on the pavement, so filled with youthful optimism that more than one man stopped in his tracks, wheeling round just to watch her walk by.
When she got to the theatre, she went straight to her dressing room, took off her outdoor clothes and put on the silk wrap-over robe hanging behind the door. She was very early for the matinée that afternoon. Her fitting in Bond Street had been over and done with quickly, and it was a strange feeling sitting alone in her dressing room with no footsteps echoing down the long narrow corridor outside, no sense of anticipation which grew stronger as the time for curtain-up drew closer.
Switching on the lights round the oblong stretch of mirror, she sat staring at her illuminated reflection; at the conglomeration of pots of cream, different sized brushes, sticks of greasepaint, all juggling for position with a battered electric kettle. The brick walls were painted in a bilious shade of yellow, and the lead dancer’s dressing table was jammed against the far wall. Clara smiled to herself. Even Lily West would have tut-tutted through her protruding teeth at the shabby untidiness of the little room.
Joe … Clara thought. Where was he now? She unscrewed the top of a massive jar of cold cream. Like the proverbial bad penny, Joe always turned up again. She applied a blob of the cream to the end of her nose. One day the door behind her would open and he’d walk in, grinning, bursting to tell her of some wild scheme or other, laughing off the days when he’d been down and out. Living not for yesterday, or even today, but always for tomorrow. Clara wiped the cream off again with a wad of cotton wool. Time meant nothing to Joe. He’d knock and walk in, then be surprised because she was surprised.
When the knock came at the door, she spun round, flustered, clutching the silk robe closer round her throat.
‘Yes, she’s here. Mind if we come in, Clara?’
Before she could speak Bart walked in, followed by a man in late middle age, a man of average height wearing heavy horn-rimmed spectacles and carrying a leather briefcase.
Almost immediately he took off the glasses, blinking owlishly, and as he did so Clara was struck by his handsomeness. He didn’t have John’s looks with regular features and a smooth fair skin; in fact the stranger’s nose was a little crooked, and there were deep clefts running down cheeks showing the aftermath of a youthful acne. His hair was thick and greying, speckled, like the ashes of a dead fire. A gentleman, Clara decided in that first startled moment. A country squire sort of gentleman.
‘Clara.’ Before she could rise from her chair, Bart came and laid a hand gently on her arm. ‘It’s better that you sit down.’ He turned. ‘Captain Foley. This is Clara.’ His grip tightened. ‘My dear. It’s taken a long time to trace him, and I never thought he would just turn up like this … but I believe this is your father.’
The immediate shock was so great that Clara stared at the stranger through dazed eyes. She could actually feel the blood draining from her cheeks, and swayed where she sat.
‘I had no choice but to do this my way.’ The stranger’s voice was baritone, alien, as he spoke to Bart, ignoring her. ‘To announce my arrival would have meant …’ He shrugged his shoulders without finishing the sentence.
When Clara’s vision cleared, she saw the acute embarrassment on his face and felt the anger emanating from Bart.
The captain’s glance slid away. ‘I’ve made some trumped-up excuse to come down for the day. It hasn’t been easy. I’m due back this evening. Back home,’ he added.
‘There’s a chair there. You’d better sit down.’ Bart kept his hold on Clara, making no attempt to be polite. ‘You could have written. Or telephoned. Anything rather than this.’
‘No!’ The captai
n looked no more at ease sitting down than he had standing up. ‘No more letters. Do you realize the damage you could have done, writing openly to my house like that?’ He glared at Bart. ‘It was just fortunate I happened to be alone when the post came. Letters are shared in my family.’
‘Do you mind leaving us alone, Bart?’ Clara heard her voice, high with a kind of hysteria, but her heartbeats were steadying now.
‘If that’s what you want.’ With a squeeze of her hand, Bart nodded curtly to the man perching on the very edge of the hard chair, then left the room, closing the door sharply behind him.
‘I’m sorry.’ The man put on his glasses again. ‘It hasn’t been easy for me to get away, not at this time of the year. I’ve had to lie.’ He frowned. ‘Mr Boland’s letter was a terrible shock. Terrible. I’d no idea …’
‘That I even existed?’
Clara marvelled at her calmness. Her reaction was confusing her. Now the initial shock was over it was as though all her emotions had gone cold on her, leaving her stranded in an empty void of unnatural serenity. Turning, she switched on the kettle, keeping her face averted as she busied herself with the tea things. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea,’ she said in a tight little voice.
How often in her dreams had she imagined this moment? Meeting her real father, being clasped in his arms, seeing her own features reflected in his face … The milk looked a bit off, but it would have to do … And now it had happened. She shuddered. If this man touched her she would scream. He was just a man who had walked in from the street, nothing more.
He was really discomposed, she could sense that. Scared. Running scared. It was funny really, she supposed. Not a bit like a similar situation in a book or a play.
‘The kettle won’t be long,’ she said, sitting down again.
‘You’re very like your mother,’ he said suddenly, and for a horrified moment she thought he was going to lean forward and kiss her. ‘Seeing you like this is upsetting me greatly.’ He took off the glasses again and she saw the panic in his eyes. He stared at her unhappily. ‘I stayed on in the Army for a while after the war. The Boer War.’
She felt acutely sorry for him. He was like a strung wire, she thought. Forcing himself to say what must be said.
The kettle came noisily to the boil and Clara got up to attend to it. As she passed the captain his tea her hand was quite steady, but when he took it from her the cup jittered and rattled in its saucer.
‘Sugar?’ Clara held out a bowl with a spoon embedded in its contents.
‘No, thank you.’ He stared down at the cup for a second or two, then, as if it had defeated him, placed it on the floor by the side of his chair. ‘I could have denied the whole thing, but the medallion …’ Taking a white handkerchief from his top pocket, he mopped and dabbed at his forehead. ‘Your mother was so pleased when I gave it to her, but I never knew she wore it on a chain; that must have been after…’
He looked quickly at Clara, then away again. ‘Oh, God, I’m telling it badly. I’ve rehearsed how to put it into words all the way down on the train, but however I tell it, it doesn’t do me much credit. When the letter came and I heard about her being with that fairground woman … She was so … so …’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You’re the image of her. Knocked me back a bit when I first saw you. Yet at the same time you’re uncommonly like my eldest daughter. Same set of the chin and wide spacing of the eyes … Unbelievable.’
‘Not really, as she’s my half-sister.’ Clara reminded him.
‘Oh, my God! Yes, you’re right.’ He stared at a point somewhere just above Clara’s head. ‘That makes it all the more … Oh, all this has knocked me for six, I can tell you.’
‘Tell me how you met my mother.’
Clara could hear voices and footsteps in the narrow passageway outside the dressing room. Soon the theatre would be coming to life as the cast assembled for the afternoon performance, and once Daisy, the lead dancer, came in setting the kettle screaming again for the cup of tea she swore kept her going through four changes of costume, it would be too late.
There was a little bubble of hysteria in her throat as she waited for the next halting sentence. This had to be one of the most important moments of her life, she reminded herself, and if he didn’t hurry up he would walk away without having told her anything. She clenched her hands tightly to stop their sudden trembling. Because he was going to walk away – there was nothing more certain.
‘I was in London in 1906,’ he said at last. ‘Newly out of the Army, and just kicking my heels really until the deal on the farm came through. My parents were setting me up. Farming’s been in my family for generations. Farming and the Army. In Norfolk.’ He shook his head as if regretting a slip of the tongue.
‘I’ve never been to Norfolk,’ Clara reassured him, sensing that reassurance was necessary. She spoke quickly, trying to hurry him on. ‘So you met my mother in London?’
‘She was seventeen years old,’ he said. ‘A dancer in some crummy show. Living in a two-roomed flat. Out Chelsea way with two other girls.’
In a minute he’ll take out his handkerchief and mop his brow again, Clara thought.
He took the handkerchief from his pocket and touched it to his brow. ‘She was different from the rest. She came from a different background. A better class. What I mean is she wasn’t some tuppenny-’apenny dancer clawing her way to the top of her profession by going with any man who asked her. She was shy …’ He gave a derisory glance round the shabby room. ‘That is as shy as anyone in this kind of job can be shy.’
‘A virgin,’ Clara said, saying the word deliberately to shock.
‘I was the first,’ he said stiffly. ‘Yes, indeed. Both her parents were dead, and the grandmother she lived with in Cornwall cut her off with a shilling when she came to London. She’d had dancing lessons from the age of five, but only for deportment and the like. Certainly not with a view … a view to doing what she did.’
‘So the grandmother, my great-grandmother, never tried to bring my mother back?’
‘She died soon after, but she never forgave your mother for running away. The money went to some distant unheard-of relative in Canada. But your mother told me she didn’t mind that. She was a born dancer. Dancing was all she ever wanted to do.’
‘Was she good?’
A sudden flash of animation changed his face completely. ‘Good? She was wonderful! When she danced across the stage it was like watching a piece of swansdown floating in space. She had the lightness of a bubble. And she could sing, too. She was destined for great things … great things.’ He sighed heavily. ‘She didn’t like going out much with the other girls after the show. Money was tight, but they used to go to clubs with men who would pay just for the privilege of being seen out with a chorus girl. So I would visit your mother in that awful cluttered room.’
‘And make love to her?’
He looked up, startled by Clara’s forthright interruption. ‘We were in love! Deeply in love. All right then, I admit it. I was engaged to be married – to a girl I’d known all my life, but we never … that is, my fiancée wasn’t the type. Not till after the wedding.’ His discomfiture was painful to watch. ‘But what I felt for your mother, I’ve never experienced since.’ The glasses went on again. ‘She was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life. Her hair was just like yours, but maybe a shade darker, and I never thought to see eyes that green again. I tell you, it almost bowled me over when I came in.’
‘And when you found out she was pregnant?’
‘I told her we’d work something out.’ He stared down at his shoes. ‘I had to go back to Norfolk the very day after she told me. Time to forget soldiering and learn to be a farmer. Family commitments, y’know. Old man cracking up and what have you.’
‘And your wedding to plan.’
He didn’t deny it. ‘I told her I’d come down again. Gave her forty pounds. That was a lot of money to me then.’
‘To get rid of the baby?’
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br /> ‘It was common practice!’ He was sweating profusely now. ‘And I did come down, just for the day, but she’d gone. Sloped off on her own without saying where she was going.’ He looked round, anywhere but at Clara, his eyes shifting uneasily from side to side. ‘I assumed she’d done what all the others did, and that she never wanted to see me again. I couldn’t blame her, for God’s sake! What was I supposed to do? I was married by then!’
Behind him the door banged back almost to the plaster. Daisy came in, shedding her coat as she made for her dressing table. ‘Get the kettle on, darling! Late again!’
Catching sight of the stranger sitting in her chair, she clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Whoops! Sorry. I didn’t know you had company.’ She tore off her hat, hurling it with a practised flip of the wrist onto a peg on the wall. ‘Hope your friend isn’t the modest type, darling, but I’ve got to get changed.’ She eyed Clara’s silk robe. ‘And you’d better look sharp if you don’t want to miss curtain-up.’
‘He’s going.’ Clara walked swiftly to the door and held it wide. ‘He has a train to catch.’ Averting her head as the captain scrabbled on the floor for his briefcase, she met his eyes as he passed through the door.
‘Goodbye,’ she said clearly. ‘We won’t meet again. Don’t worry. We will never meet again.’ When he hesitated, she said, ‘Just go away. I don’t exist for you, and you certainly don’t exist for me. Sorry you’ve been bothered.’ Her voice was thin and high. ‘Please go. You found your way in, so you can find your way out.’
Slamming the door shut, she leaned against it, closing her eyes against the emotion flooding through her.
Daisy’s blue eyes were wide and startled in the perfect oval of her vivacious little face. ‘What the hell? Who was that? Been trying to take advantage of you, has he?’ She sat down at her dressing table, reaching for a stick of pancake make-up. ‘A bit old, wasn’t he? For a minute I thought you were going to spit in his eye.’
