Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  Belle grinned at that, and explained about Lisette to Mog and Jimmy. ‘I hope she will come to England, he’s really smitten with her. She deserves a better life, she is a good, kind woman, and very pretty too.’

  She could see Jimmy wanted to know her whole story as well, but she knew she’d have to give him a censored version and that would take a day or two to plan. She was suddenly exhausted too, the travelling and all the excitement had drained her. ‘May I go to bed now?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to stay up and talk some more but I’m just too tired.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jimmy said. ‘Just to know you are safe upstairs is enough for Mog and me. We can talk tomorrow.’

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Sharp-eyed and brown-toothed Police Inspector Todd and his constable were just leaving the Ram’s Head after interviewing Belle when Todd turned to her.

  ‘Thank you for your valuable assistance, Miss Cooper,’ he said brusquely. ‘We shall have both men in custody by this afternoon. We’ve had them under surveillance since Mr Bayliss sent us word you had been found.’

  Belle’s mouth gaped in shocked surprise. The two men had been questioning her for over an hour, but as if she was a criminal, not a victim of crime. She didn’t understand why they hadn’t told her this at the start of the interview.

  Todd had made her explain every last detail of what occurred up in Millie’s room at Annie’s, and kept stopping her with more questions as if trying to trap her in a lie. At one point he even implied she’d hidden under the bed for some reason other than being scared of getting caught upstairs. He clearly didn’t believe she hadn’t really understood what went on there.

  When he got her to tell him about her abduction he wore a cynical expression as if he thought she’d climbed into that carriage with two strangers for an adventure. It was only when she finally got to the part about what happened to her at Madame Sondheim’s, and she started to cry, that he softened a little.

  He had shown her a long list of other girls’ names and asked if she had met any of them or had heard anything about them. Some of the names were ones Noah had mentioned, but Belle knew nothing about any of them. That was something else he hadn’t appeared to believe.

  She was sorely tempted to tell Inspector Todd what she thought of him, but she bit back an angry retort. ‘How clever of you,’ she said, and masked her sarcasm with a brilliant smile.

  ‘We will need you to make a formal identification of the two men once we have them in custody,’ Todd said, clearly immune to sarcasm. ‘And once your statement has been written up we will ask you to read it through and sign it. Meanwhile, may I say I am very glad you were found in Paris and brought back to your family and friends.’

  Belle went back inside, once the policemen had gone, and found Jimmy waiting in the kitchen, an anxious expression on his face.

  ‘Did it go all right?’ he asked.

  ‘I can understand why the majority of people around here don’t want to help the police or even ask for their assistance. They sit on their hands for two years, then when I finally get back, after no help from them, they treat me as if I’m a liar,’ she ranted. ‘That man Todd has about as much sensitivity as a cockroach. But he did finally say they are going to arrest both Kent and Sly today. Let’s hope they actually manage it.’

  Jimmy looked sympathetic. ‘The word around here is that no one will shield Kent now, not even if he tries to bribe them,’ he said. ‘Not just because of Millie or taking you, but for the terrible conditions he forces his tenants to live under, the other missing girls and the violence he metes out to anyone who stands in his way. He’s had his day – even the men who were once his most staunch allies have abandoned him. He’ll hang, I’m sure of that, and if Sly lives up to his nickname he’ll talk to save his own neck.’

  ‘I just hope those other girls can be found and brought home,’ Belle said. ‘But I expect most of them are beyond saving now.’ She slumped down on a chair feeling completely dejected.

  ‘Uncle Garth said I could have the rest of the day off. He thought you’d be a bit down and suggested I took you out somewhere to cheer you up,’ Jimmy said. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘It would be lovely,’ she replied gratefully. She didn’t want to spend the rest of the day indoors mulling over how unfairly the police had treated her, or dwelling on the fate of the other girls.

  ‘It’s such a nice sunny day we could take a boat to Greenwich, or go to Hampstead Heath or even Kew Gardens.’

  ‘I’d like to go to Greenwich,’ she said.

  His face lit up and he said he’d go upstairs and change his clothes as he’d been working in the cellar earlier.

  Belle stayed in the kitchen and washed up the tea cups. Mog had gone to the market to buy some vegetables, and she could see Garth through the window stacking up barrels and crates of empties for collection in the back yard. Going out with Jimmy for the day was an ideal way of talking things through with him; she knew she hadn’t been very fair to him so far in avoiding doing so.

  Yesterday she hadn’t got up till late, and then Mog had commandeered her for the rest of the day, taking her to a dressmaker to see about getting a dress made for her wedding. Belle could have come home after that and talked to Jimmy, but instead she encouraged Mog to stay out with her for the afternoon shopping in Regent Street. During the evening Jimmy was behind the bar, so they had only had brief, snatched conversations.

  What made it even harder to talk to Jimmy was that both Mog and Garth obviously had high expectations for them. She could see it everywhere. A bedroom on the top floor had been prepared for her with pretty flowery wallpaper, flouncy curtains, and the kind of new double bed with a fancy carved headboard that a newly married couple might choose. The room next to her bedroom was empty of furniture, and Belle was sure this was because it had been earmarked as a living room for her and Jimmy if they did get married.

  While she knew that these types of assumptions and plans were commonplace in families where there were two young people considered ideally suited for each other, she found it oppressive and unrealistic. She really liked Jimmy; he had every quality that any girl would want in a husband. In fact if she hadn’t been snatched away at such a young age, she had no doubt that they would have become sweethearts and might even have been married by now.

  But Mog and Garth weren’t taking into consideration that she wasn’t an ordinary, innocent young girl any longer, and that her experiences had created a huge gulf between herself and Jimmy. She felt Mog and Garth ought to be able to see this for themselves, but because they’d found love, they had this rather sweet but potentially dangerous idea that Jimmy’s devotion to Belle could wipe out her past.

  Belle took Jimmy’s arm as they walked down Villiers Street towards the Thames Embankment to catch a boat a little later that morning.

  ‘Remember that day we came running down here in the snow?’ he said.

  ‘I used to think about it all the time when things were bad,’ she admitted. ‘It’s so strange to find ourselves all grown up now; we’ve both changed so much in two years.’

  ‘I don’t think I have,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘Grown a couple of inches, built up a bit of muscle, but that’s all.’

  ‘No, there’s more than that,’ she said. ‘You are a man now, you’ve developed confidence in yourself. You were still a boy grieving for your mother when I met you.’

  He pulled a face. ‘You make it sound as if I was drippy.’

  Belle laughed. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I was fairly drippy too, I didn’t know anything then, I’d hardly been out of Seven Dials.’

  They continued to chat as they joined the long queue for a boat to Greenwich. Belle’s spirits were rising because Jimmy wasn’t attempting to make her talk about the two missing years. He was telling her stories about neighbours, some of whom she remembered and some she didn’t, but they were all funny. He was a good raconteur, descriptive, yet veering towards cynicism as if he’d studied the people he
was talking about quite closely. She found herself laughing easily, and by the time they got on to a boat and found seats up by the bow, she was feeling very glad that they’d come out, and very comfortable with him.

  There was a big mix of people on the boat: young couples like them, families, old people and quite a few foreigners on holiday in England. The sun was very warm, making the river sparkle, and everyone was jovial and friendly in anticipation of a good day out.

  ‘I always wanted Mog to take me on one of these boats,’ Belle said as the crew cast off and the boat began to chug away downriver. ‘I used to think she was mean because she didn’t, but I suppose Annie never let her have a whole day off.’

  ‘She told me once that she asked Annie if she could take you on a little holiday to the seaside,’ Jimmy said. ‘Annie refused. She said she thought at the time it was because your mother was just being mean-spirited, but later she realized it was because she was jealous of the bond between you.’

  ‘I don’t know why Mog didn’t leave, Annie was so nasty to her sometimes,’ Belle said reflectively.

  ‘Because of you, of course,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I think too she was very attached to Annie. She told me that the woman who owned the place before her was always on her back, but Annie stuck up for her. Mog isn’t the kind to abandon anyone who has been good to her.’

  ‘I don’t think she had much idea of her own worth, even though she was the one who kept everything together,’ Belle said. ‘Tell me about how they came to split up. Didn’t Annie want Mog with her at her guest house?’

  ‘Annie just made her plans for herself,’ Jimmy said. ‘At the time I thought it was shabby of her, she didn’t seem to care about Mog at all, but as it turned out, it was for the best.’

  ‘I wonder when she’ll deign to come and see me. Or do you think she’s expecting me to go to her?’

  Jimmy shrugged. ‘She’s a difficult woman to fathom. I’ve never told anyone this before, but I went to see her at the time Noah discovered you’d been sent to America. Apart from relaying that information, I suppose I just wanted to get to know her better, but she was very curt with me. She said that wherever you were, you surely could have written to her. Well, I pointed out you could very well have done so, but as the old place was burned down the letter wouldn’t have been delivered.’

  ‘I did send a card from New York,’ Belle said. ‘It never crossed my mind that they might not still be there. I used to imagine them in Jake’s Court, Mog hanging out the washing, Mother sitting at the kitchen table over dinner with the girls. And you too of course, running errands for your uncle. I thought about writing a proper letter once I was in New Orleans, but I didn’t because I thought it would be worse for Mog and Annie to know the truth about what had happened to me.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I couldn’t understand Annie’s attitude, she just made me angry. She turned everything around to make out she was the wronged one. I said as much and she told me to get out.’

  Jimmy went on to tell Belle all the different things he’d done to try to trace her. She smiled as he described breaking into Kent’s office and his house down in Charing.

  ‘Didn’t you think that house was strange?’ she said. ‘I only saw the hall and a living room, but it was so pretty and nice, not the kind of house you’d expect a monster like him to live in.’

  ‘I thought just the same. I wonder if we’ll ever find out why it was like that,’ Jimmy said thoughtfully. ‘Could he really have been planning to take Millie there?’

  Belle got a mental picture of Millie locked in an upstairs room and shuddered. ‘Don’t let’s talk about that, it makes me think of Pascal. I think he and Kent were two of a kind.’

  ‘I promise that one day you will wake up and see that you gained something from your experiences, however horrible the past couple of years have been for you,’ he said.

  Belle raised her eyebrows quizzically. ‘That’s as unlikely as me finding out I’m actually King Edward’s love child,’ she said with a giggle.

  Jimmy smiled. ‘Well, it happened to me. I was so upset when you disappeared, you were my only friend, and suddenly you were gone. But miraculously my life got better because of it. Mog came to stay after the fire, my uncle became happier with her around, and trying to find you gave us all new purpose and brought us all together. Even the pub is doing better because of it.’

  ‘Yes, I can see how it improved your life,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I can say I’m glad I was sold into prostitution.’

  ‘No, not that, but out of it came other things. I can only see it for myself when I look back. It was awful seeing Mog’s grief, I was beside myself with worry too. It was a dark, horrible time. Yet without it, would I have come to like and respect my uncle? I don’t think so. I gained Mog whom I adore, and found a first-class friend in Noah. They in turn gave me confidence, and I became good at running the pub. I feel I have a real family now and a future. And it isn’t just me, look how happy Mog is now, and Uncle Garth. Three people whose lives were changed for the better.’

  ‘Then I suppose I shall have to look back and see if I can find something I’ve gained,’ she said.

  ‘It’s too soon for that yet. You are still dwelling on your lost innocence, the people who hurt you. But I bet there were people you are glad you met, things you’ve seen that have changed your thinking. One day you will wake up as I did and be glad for that.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. The only person who she was truly glad she met was Etienne, but she couldn’t say that, and changed the subject to something lighter.

  Belle found Greenwich enchanting with its quaint little old houses and pubs close to the river front, and the elegant Georgian houses further back. She thought the Royal Hospital School and Naval College looked splendid with such lush green lawns before them. After pie and mash from a stall by the river front, they climbed up the hill to look at the Observatory and sat on a bench to enjoy the view of the river.

  ‘Henry VIII was born here in the Palace,’ Jimmy said – he always seemed to know about history. ‘It burned down though. And where the Observatory is now was Greenwich Castle where he used to keep his mistresses. It must have been quite a sight when kings and queens sailed upriver in the royal barges. And it’s odd to think this is where time is measured, and longitude so people can sail by it all over the world.’

  ‘Are you happy to carry on running the Ram’s Head, or have you got other plans?’ Belle asked. They had talked about so much. Jimmy had told her about the funeral of King Edward and then the coronation of George V a year later, when he’d stayed up all night to get a good spot to see the royal procession come past. He explained what the suffragettes had been doing in her absence, how many of them were force-fed in prison, and how one was killed when she threw herself under the King’s horse at Epsom race course. He said Mog and Garth had had some very heated arguments about them. Mog admired them but Garth thought they should stay at home and look after their families and leave politics and voting to men.

  They discussed the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage too, which had happened on 15 April while Belle was still recovering in the nursing home in Paris. Noah told her that one thousand, five hundred people were lost when the ship hit an iceberg, but perhaps thinking it would make her upset he didn’t say much more, and she couldn’t read the French newspaper accounts of the tragedy. But Jimmy knew all of the story and related it to her in such detail that anyone would have thought he’d been on the ship.

  Belle noticed that although Jimmy had talked a great deal about current affairs, neighbours and Mog and Garth today, he hadn’t answered her question about his work. So she asked him again about it.

  ‘I think once Uncle Garth and Mog are married, they’ll be very keen to get out of central London,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I suppose I could stay on and run the pub myself, but I don’t really want to. We all went out to Blackheath for the day at Easter, a while bef
ore we heard you’d been found. They talked of nothing else at the time but trying to find a pub there, but that’s been forgotten since you came home.’

  ‘Where is Blackheath?’ Belle asked.

  Jimmy pointed behind them. ‘Just the other side of Greenwich Park. The road down to Dover goes through there, and with so many people getting motorcars now it would be a good place to choose. And they are building lots of new houses out that way too. If Garth found the right pub they could have paying-guest rooms as well. I think it is a brilliant idea. The Heath is lovely, with ponds, and there was a fair on when we were there. They play cricket up there in the summer, and the village is really pretty.’

  ‘Sounds like you really want to go there,’ Belle said. ‘Would it be a good place for a hat shop?’

  She had told Jimmy and Mog that she learned hat-making while she was in America and that she wanted to open a shop, but because of all the excitement of her being back, and the business with the police, they hadn’t reacted to the idea at all.

  ‘It would be ideal,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’s that kind of a village, very middle-class with lots of men who work in the City, and wives who pride themselves on being fashionable and well dressed.’

  Belle felt a surge of excitement at the idea of starting out somewhere where no one knew about her. But almost immediately she felt deflated because as a chief witness in a murder trial, her history would follow her.

  ‘What is it?’ he said when her face fell.

  She explained.

  ‘People don’t keep things like that in their heads for long,’ he said soothingly. ‘They use the old newspaper to light the fire, and that’s it, over and done with. It’s only family and close friends who find it hard to forget. But you could change your name, then no one would connect you with the trial.’

  Belle thought about that for a while. ‘I can’t imagine myself as anything but Belle Cooper,’ she said eventually.

  ‘You could be Belle Reilly if you married me.’