The Italian Girl

by Patricia Hall

  “They said they’d be down in a couple of minutes, madam,” the receptionist said somewhat sniffily.

  “They?”

  “Mr. Blake has his publicist with him. Ms Baum. She took the message when I called up to their suite.”

  Oh, God, Laura thought irritably. The last person she wanted at this initial interview was Blake’s American PR person interposing her view of what she should write between her and her subject. Laura seldom thought about her future career. It was a subject best avoided, she had concluded some time ago. Her personal life, in which she veered between hope and despair over her relationship with Michael Thackeray, and despair and hope about her grandmother’s health, was so uncertain that the tiny flame of ambition which she nurtured at the core of her being occasionally seemed to die away to a mere ember.

  But the feature articles she had been commissioned to write for the Sunday Extra magazine were, she knew, her best hope of escaping from an increasingly frustrating life on a local newspaper. They could, if they went well, just possibly allow her to have the best of both worlds: an entry into national journalism and a means of remaining, for some of the time at least, in Bradfield. So she felt a certain anxiety in the pit of her stomach as she waited to meet John Blake. It was not every day that she had the chance to write about even a slightly faded international film actor. She did not intend to mess it up.

  He stepped out of the lift in a cloud of expensive aftershave, immaculate in a dark blue silk shirt and a beige Armani suit, the jacket slung over his shoulders, perfectly coiffed and, Laura suspected, made up, and every inch the star. He acknowledged the turning of heads in the lobby as no more than his due. In spite of herself Laura was impressed. She had a deep suspicion of anything which could remotely be described as charisma, but she had to admit that was precisely what John Blake had.

  “Miss Ackroyd?” he said, striding towards Laura, closely followed by a stick thin person in mini-skirt and platform shoes whom Laura supposed must be Lorelei Baum. The star’s dark, assessing eyes did a sweep from Laura’s own lace-up boots, taking in her inexpensive black trouser suit and silky shirt with a certain disdain but pausing with just a flicker of admiration when he reached her perfect oval face and fiery hair.

  “I am so pleased to meet you. I am so delighted that you’re doing this piece for the Extra. Absolutely delighted.”

  The voice was deep and slightly husky without a trace of his native Yorkshire, but with just a touch of acquired American, and every word was spoken as if he meant it for her alone.

  “I knew some Ackroyds once when I was a kid,” he said.

  “It’s a common name in these parts,” Laura said, surprised and slightly appalled at the effect Blake’s charm had on her. Blake nodded and dismissed the subject, turning quickly to his companion.

  “This, by the way, is my publicist, Ms Baum, without whom I never, but never, speak to journalists. She is indispensible.” He put an arm round Lorelei’s gaunt shoulders and pulled her into the conversation.

  “Lorelei,” he said in a voice deliberately projected to reach the furthest corners of the Clarendon’s lounge. “Lorelei has never been to Yorkshire before. I intend to show her the delights of my native county.” Lorelei gave the assembled company the benefit of a smile which revealed an acreage of too-perfect white teeth.

  “Shall we take afternoon tea, Miss Ackroyd?” Blake went on. “An English custom I haven’t introduced Lorelei to yet. Shall we take tea and cucumber sandwiches and seed-cake and scones? Can the dear old Clarendon lay that on, do you think?”

  “I’m sure they can,” Laura said quietly, realising that not only was she being patronised but that the whole of Bradfield if not the whole county of Yorkshire was too.

  They took a table in the corner of the lounge and waiters appeared as if by magic to meet John Blake’s every whim. Laura watched him in some fascination as he specified the exact type of tea he required, the thickness of the bread and butter and the precise selection of cakes. Only when all that had been attended to did he finally lower his voice and turn to her with a satisfied smile.

  “And now, Miss Ackroyd, let’s talk about your article. Just exactly what is it you intend to write.”

  “And will we be able to have sight of your copy before you submit it?” Lorelei added sharply, in what Laura tentatively identified as a New York twang. “Those are our usual terms.”

  Laura took a sharp breath, and a mouthful of tea to give herself time to think.

  “I don’t think that’s what Sunday Extra‘s editor is expecting,” she said. “I’m not at all sure she’ll give you a right of veto on what I write. It’s not usual in this country.”

  “Well, it’s sure as hell usual in LA,” Lorelei came back quickly. “We don’t cooperate with reporters who want to say just anything. Only the gossip papers get away with that and everyone knows they make most of it up.”

  “Well now,” Blake said, flashing Laura his most brilliant smile, revealing perfectly even white teeth which were as much a tribute to his dentist’s art as Lorelei’s were. “Don’t let’s fall out about this. We all know that we have a potentially mutually beneficial arrangement here, don’t we, Miss Ackroyd? May I call you Laura?” Laura gave an infinitesimal nod of acquiescence while Lorelei glowered.

  “You know I want as much publicity as I can get for my Bronte project and I’m sure you are thrilled to pieces to have been asked to write for a national magazine. Am I right?”

  “It’s not the first commission I’ve had from them,” Laura said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  “Oh, we know, we know,” Blake agreed quickly and Laura realised that they had taken the trouble to check and were quite aware that while it was not the first commission it was only the second. “Lorelei showed me the very interesting piece you wrote about young women victims of incest. Very nicely done, I thought. Very powerful. Very sensitive. I was impressed.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said without feeling the slightest trace of gratitude. She was painfully aware now that she was playing with the grown-ups and the feature she envisaged might not be as easy as she had anticipated.

  “What I wanted to do was to take you back to some of the places you remembered from your childhood here,” she said hoping that the suggestion did not sound as tentative as she felt. She could feel Lorelei’s unforgiving eyes watching her every move. “Your school, the places you used to live, that sort of thing. And perhaps talk to anyone you’re still in contact with, family, old friends?” Blake’s smile was as fulsome as ever but he shook his head slowly.

  “It’s not as easy as all that,” he said. “I left Bradfield when I was eighteen to go into the army. National service, you know. Then I went to drama school and never lived here again. My mother moved away too. And I believe the area where I grew up is long gone, pulled down and redeveloped. All those wonderful little Coronation Street terraces, such a warm community…”

  And a bloody good thing too, Laura could almost hear her grandmother saying, having been largely responsible in her political career for those same wholesale demolitions. She did not believe Blake’s sentimental view of Bradfield’s Victorian legacy was deeply felt. Most of the terraces had become slums before they were pulled down and she was sure he knew that.

  “You must still have friends here, surely, some-one from school…?”

  “No-one I kept in touch with, you kow,” Blake said sadly. “I went to the grammar school, of course, and we were the boys who didn’t stay, moved onwards and upwards, I suppose, though I’m not sure many got quite as far as I did. This is the first time I’ve been back to Bradfield for more than thirty years.”

  “And your parents?” Laura persisted.

  “There’s only mother, of course, and she’s in a rest home out in Ilkley: a rather more healthy place than the old song might lead you to believe, I’m told. She used to come out to California to see me every year without fail until about eighteen months ago, but she can’t manage
the flight now. A little bit yonderly, the matron says, not quite remembering as clearly as she did. Do they still use that word?”

  “Other relations, brothers, sisters?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Blake said, shaking his head sadly and passing her the plate of sandwiches.

  “So why come back to Bradfield now, Mr. Blake,” Laura said sharply, ignoring his interest in the survival of Yorkshire dialect and not bothering to conceal her disappointment that his visit seemed to offer so few openings for her.

  “The film, my dear,” Blake said. “This is all about Jane Eyre. A wonderful story. You know it, of course. It’s been my life’s ambition to play Rochester and the chance has come just at the right time. Another four or five years and perhaps I would have been thought too old.” He patted his dark hair carefully, and Lorelei shook her head emphatically and heaved her disproportionate breasts in Blake’s direction.

  “Of course you’re not too old,” she breathed.

  “Come with me tomorrow, Laura,” Blake said pouring himself another cup of Lapsong Soushong. “We’re going on a little recce up the dales to see if we can find a good site for the rectory where Jane discovers her cousins. You remember? She runs away and ends up in this remote village?”

  “I remember,” Laura said. “Do you have an actress in mind to play Jane? She’s only supposed to be about eighteen, isn’t she?” Blake’s irritation was momentary and silent but fierce and Laura, taken aback by the rictus of anger which flashed across his face, realised that John Blake’s emollient facade might be no more than skin-deep.

  “No,” he said at length. “We won’t cast Jane just yet. I’d like a British actress but we’ve no-one in mind. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Laura shook her head and concentrated on her cucumber sandwich. Whoever took on the part of Jane Eyre to Blake’s Rochester could not be too young, whatever the book suggested, or the contrast with Blake would be too absurd and might reawaken the ugly rumours which had blighted his career in the ’70s. She sipped her tea slowly as she digested the difficulties ahead.

  “I’d love to come on your recce,” she said eventually. Given a day with the man, she might catch him with the mask down. In any case Lorelei obviously knew him very well indeed, and might be less discreet than her master if she could get her on her own. Laura smiled faintly to herself. Master was the word Jane Eyre had always used to describe Rochester and it seemed eminently appropriate for Blake and Lorelei.

  As for the other interviews she needed for her profile, with family and friends, she would just have to do a little detective work of her own. She did not believe that there was no-one in Bradfield who could remember John Blake as a boy if he had been anything like as obnoxious as he was now.

  Michael Thackeray had learned to love Laura’s grand-mother, even though he knew she regarded him with extreme suspicion as someone liable to trifle with Laura’s affections. But he forgave her possessiveness. It was, after all, an emotion he shared.

  He parked on the strip of cracked concrete provided outside the Laurels and looked up at the nursing home with a sharp intake of breath. The building was old, but old without any distinction, a between-the-wars, flat-fronted, metal window-framed construction that might once have been two substantial semi-detached residences but which was now linked by a series of slightly ramshackle glazed porches and annexes, all painted a flaking white, like some beached liner long past its cruising days. It could inspire neither affection nor confidence that it was anything more than a fairly spartan dump for the old and unwanted, he thought. Joyce Ackroyd, he could unerringly predict, must hate it.

  A teenaged girl in a green overall answered his ring at the door and led him to a huge ground-floor room, the walls lined with easy chairs in which elderly people were slumped in various attitudes of restless repose. A television fixed high on the wall in one corner blared obtrusively but some of the residents still succeeded in sleeping, snoring gently. Others stared at the TV screen as if transfixed while some merely gazed into space, nodding occasionally or shaking their heads as if conducting silent conversations with people only they could see.

  One old woman, held in her chair by a series of straps like a baby, twitched and muttered to herself, clutching at her neck again and again as if trying to tear off a scarf or something even more restrictive although there was nothing to be seen. Beneath her chair a tell-tale stain on the floor told its story and explained the strong smell of disinfectant in the room, which Thackeray suspected overlay worse smells.

  “Michael. Welcome to the grim reaper’s waiting room.” Thackeray spun round at the sound of Joyce Ackroyd’s voice. Laura had pushed her wheelchair silently into the sitting room through a door behind him. She was closely followed by the teenaged girl in the green overall who scowled at Joyce’s greeting.

  “Could we talk somewhere quieter,” Thackeray asked the girl, glancing at the television and the assembled audience, some of whom had turned bleary eyes in the visitors’ direction.

  “I suppose you could go in the conservatory,” the girl said sulkily. “It’s right parky in there, though. There’s no heating.”

  “It’ll do,” Thackeray said firmly. “We need some privacy.” The girl glanced around at the assembled residents and shrugged.

  “They won’t take any notice, any road,” she said dismissively. “Half of them are asleep and the rest are ga-ga.” But she waved them to double doors on the other side of the room, before turning on her heel and stomping off without another glance at the residents.

  Thackeray followed the wheelchair through the doors into a dank and dusty area which boasted a few dried up pot plants and three dilapidated wicker chairs. The chipped tiles were patchy with black mould and drifts of crisp brown fallen leaves. Green streaks of algal growth disfigured the tall windows, dimming the daylight from outside and adding to the overwhelming sense of cheerlessness and neglect.

  “I’ll get this place closed down when I get out,” Joyce hissed with something like her normal spirit.

  “It’s not a council home then?” Thackeray asked.

  “No, it’s not. They’re not running their own homes now, are they, the council? They’ve all been closed! This is some fly-by-night private place they’re paying an arm and a leg for,” she said fiercely, and Thackeray realised why some older councillors and police officers in Bradfield still spoke of the legendary Joyce Ackroyd with as much fear as respect.

  “It’s disgusting,” Laura said furiously, and Thackeray could see the unshed tears in her eyes. “I’ll get you out of here as soon as I can arrange somewhere better, I promise.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Joyce said, gripping the arms of her wheelchair as if she was about to rise up out of it, miraculously restored to full mobility by a paroxysm of righteous indignation. “If this is what these poor souls have to put up with for the rest of their lives then I can put up with it till I get back on my feet. I’ll not have any sort of special treatment. There’s too much of that sort of hypocrisy in t’Party without me adding to it.”

  “Nan,” Laura said, despairingly. Thackeray caught her eye and shook his head slightly. He shared Laura’s distress at Joyce’s situation but felt driven by other imperatives.

  “Can we talk about Mariella Bonetti,” he said quietly. He took a photo-copy of the Gazette‘s faded photograph of the Italian girl out of his wallet, an indistinct reproduction of an already indistinct original, and passed it to Joyce. She took it with trembling hands and was silent, gazing at the pale oval face and dark eyes which still offered a haunting glimpse of beauty across forty years and she sighed.

  “Aye, that was Mariella. I remember the picture in the Gazette. She was a lovely girl. Is the body you’ve found her’s?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility, though we haven’t traced her family yet. That’s why I needed to talk to you so urgently. I want you to tell me everything you can remember about the girl, and her family, and everyone else who lived in Peter Street at th
e time she disappeared.” In a low voice Joyce told him everything that she had told Laura about her short stay in the gaunt terrace with its broad views of the town the the valley below.

  “You’ve got to remember there was still a housing crisis on,” she said. “Another housing crisis, I mean. You’d think after forty years….” But her indignation seemed to have been exhausted and she merely shrugged bitterly at the twists of political fate which evidently tormented her.

  “It was mainly families who’d nowhere else to go,” she said. “Some only stayed a few weeks. A few were stuck there for years. It was totally unsuitable for families with children. The kitchen and bathrooms were shared, the flats didn’t have their own.”

  “And of course the Italians weren’t exactly overwhelmed by Yorkshire hospitality, apparently,” Laura added with a note of bitterness which made Thackeray glance at her sharply, although he did not pursue the point.

  “What I’d like is the names of all the families you can remember,” he said, turning back to Joyce. “Apart from you and the Bonettis, that is.”

  “Well now,” Joyce said. “Let’s think. There was Mrs. Parkinson, of course. Thought she was the cat’s whiskers, she did. Always trying to give the impression she’d come down in the world, but I had my doubts. She had two children, a lad of about seventeen, John, I think he was called, and a daughter quite a bit younger, nine or ten maybe. I’m not sure now what she was called. Pamela maybe. She didn’t play with the lads much. Where Mr. Parkinson had got to was a source of endless gossip around the landings, I do remember. There was no sign of him and she never actually claimed she was a widow. She just never mentioned a husband at all. That was a bit of a scandal in those days, of course. But whoever he was, she insisted she had to keep up appearances, which was just another way of putting the rest of us down.”