The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

  ‘It’s been the most miserable Christmas I can ever remember.’ Lily’s eyes were moist.

  ‘I know, Lil.’ Stanley had stayed in Germany, Robert in London. Daisy and Manos had gone to Greece to spend Christmas with his family. There’d been no sign of Ben. It was as if Mrs Kavanagh had been the thread that had held her children together.

  Now it was New Year’s Eve. Francie had got tickets for a dinner dance, but Josie had felt obliged to spend the evening with Lily, who had been deeply depressed since her mother died. Dinah was in the lounge, watching television with Samantha and Gillian. Neil had gone to the pub, but had promised to be back before Big Ben chimed in the New Year. Francie, being Francie, hadn’t minded being forsaken for the woman he most loathed. There were plenty of parties he could go to.

  ‘I mean,’ Lily was saying, ‘what’s it all for? We’re born, we get married, we have children, we get old, then we die! It hardly seems worth it, Jose.’

  ‘Not if you put it like that. We’re supposed to enjoy ourselves along the way, be happy.’

  ‘Are you happy, Jose?’

  Josie shrugged. ‘Well, yes. I think I am. A bit.’

  ‘I’m not, not the least bit, and it’s not just because of Ma. It’s, it’s …’ Lily searched for words. ‘It’s Neil.’ The name came out like a gasp. ‘Oh, I know he’s a bloke in a million, you said that once, but …’ She seemed lost for words again. ‘Remember that day in Haylands? It was the day after you’d been with that Griff for the first time. Your face, Jose. I often think about your face that day. It was sort of lit up – radiant, I think you’d call it. And your eyes were so bright, almost as if you’d been crying, except they were such happy eyes, shining.’ Lily looked shyly at Josie. ‘My face has never looked like that, Jose. Making love with Neil is a bit of an ordeal nowadays, and it’s never exactly turned me on. Oh,’ she cried, ‘I missed so much, marrying him. I should have waited. Look at our Daisy, madly in love at forty.’

  ‘Lily, you would have been unbearable if you’d had to wait to get married until you were forty. You’d have had all of us nervous wrecks by now.’

  ‘I know.’ Lily sighed. ‘I’m too impatient. I grabbed the first man that asked. Neil’s good and decent, but I should have turned him down. He would have been hurt, but not as much as he’ll be hurt now.’

  Josie looked askance at her friend. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m going to chuck him out, Jose,’ Lily said in a shaky voice. ‘Ask him to leave. I’ll suggest we sell the house, get rid of the mortgage and I’ll buy something smaller for me and the girls. I don’t want the poor bloke on the streets. Then I’ll get a job like you. Anything’s better than being stuck in a dead boring marriage for the rest of me days. I always said our Ben was daft, sticking by Imelda. Well, the same rule applies to me. I’m wasting me life with Neil.’ Lily glared at her friend, her small face knotted in determination. ‘And do you know what else I’m going to do, Jose?’

  ‘What’s that, Lil?’

  ‘I’m going to chase Francie O’Leary like he’s never been chased before. I’ll get him to the altar if it’s the last thing I do. I could never understand you still being in love with Jack, until I realised I’ve been in love with Francie since I was sixteen. I’m going to marry him, Josie, or die in the attempt.’

  There was a significance about 1974, but Josie couldn’t remember what it was. It wasn’t to do with turning forty, which she didn’t regard as significant, but something else. A long while ago, 1974 had been mentioned as a year when something would happen. She had racked her brains every day since the year began, but nothing would come.

  She got ready for work on a crisp, February morning, making up her nearly forty-year-old face in the dressing-table mirror. Now she worked for the accountants from nine till four, with half an hour for lunch, almost full time. She kept promising herself she would leave, but it was convenient and well paid.

  I’m wasting me life, she told herself. Though perhaps I expect too much. There was always a nagging feeling that she was missing out on something.

  ‘Dinah,’ she yelled. ‘It’s half past eight. You should be on your way to school by now, not still in bed.’

  There was an answering thump. Josie went downstairs and made herself a bowl of cornflakes. It was no good putting food out for Dinah, she rarely had time in the mornings to eat. A few minutes later her daughter appeared, looking surprisingly neat in her gymslip, blouse and tie, considering the short time she’d had to get dressed.

  ‘Don’t want breakfast, Mum.’ She disappeared into the bathroom. Water briefly ran, the lavatory flushed. Dinah reappeared. ‘Where’s me satchel?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, luv. It’s wherever you left it last night.’

  ‘Where did I do me homework?’

  ‘I can’t recall you doing any.’

  ‘I read a book, didn’t I?’ Dinah looked at her defiantly.

  ‘I didn’t realise they set True Confessions as homework these days.’

  ‘I read a chapter of Vanity Fair, if you must know.’

  She must have read it awfully quickly. Josie held back the comment, and found the satchel on the floor beside the settee.

  Dinah swung the bag on to her shoulder. ‘Ta, Mum. I might be late home from school.’

  ‘Where are you going, luv?’ Josie asked anxiously. Dinah was late home most nights. Sometimes it was seven o’clock by the time she put in an appearance.

  ‘Round Charlie Flaherty’s house.’

  ‘A boy! Will there be other girls there, Dinah?’

  ‘Oh, Mum. Get with it. Charlie’s a girl – Charlotte. We’re only going to listen to her record player. Where’s me coat?’

  ‘Behind the door, where it always is.’

  ‘Well, it’s not there now!’

  The navy blue duffel coat was on the floor on the other side of the settee. Dinah picked it up, muttered a curt, ‘Tara,’ and left the house, only half into the coat.

  Josie stood at the window and watched the tall, slim figure of her daughter go running down the path, still struggling with the coat. She sighed. It was a sad fact, but she didn’t get on with Dinah. They never really had, but things had gone from bad to worse since she’d started at the local comprehensive school three years ago. She’d faded the eleven-plus, Josie suspected deliberately, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, because everybody, her mother included, had expected her to pass, or it might have been because she didn’t fancy the long journey each day to the nearest grammar school. Whatever the reason, Dinah had failed, and now they seemed at daggers drawn most of the time.

  She went into the dining room and finished off the cornflakes, then drained the pot of tea. She couldn’t help but wonder what Laura might have been like at fourteen. Josie felt sure she wouldn’t have spoken to her mother the way Dinah did, so impatiently, so rudely. They would have done things together – gone shopping, to the pictures, had little confidential chats. Perhaps Dinah would have been different if she’d had a father. Well, she did have a father, but he’d decided to ignore her existence, which only made it worse. It can’t have done the girl much good.

  ‘Oh, well, it’s no use sitting here thinking about what might have been. I’ll be late for work,’ she said to the empty room.

  She would have missed it if it hadn’t been for Mr Kavanagh, still living with Marigold and bedridden most of the time. He telephoned one Sunday morning in July. ‘Do you get the Sunday Times, dear?’

  ‘No, the News of the World.’

  ‘Well, I should get The Times today if I were you. There’s an article about that writer you used to work for, Louisa Chalcott. It’s very interesting. It’s her centenary, you see. She was born a hundred years ago this month.’

  1974! Louisa had given her a brown envelope sealed with wax which wasn’t to be opened until 1974. Josie thanked Mr Kavanagh, and began to search for the envelope. She couldn’t remember where she’d put it. She ransacked the house, waking up an irritable Dinah who liked to
lie in on Sundays, and found it at the bottom of the wardrobe drawer, underneath the spare blankets. She knelt on the floor and took the envelope out.

  ‘Oh, gosh!’ She recalled the night Louisa had given it to her. She’d just finished the garden, and they were sitting on the bench outside. The sea, the sky, the sand, had looked so beautiful, peaceful.

  The envelope looked remarkably new. Josie broke the wax, and withdrew three shiny red exercise books. She flicked through them. Every page was crammed with Louisa’s scarcely decipherable scribble. It wasn’t poetry. She managed to read a page, thought it might be a highly risqué novel, then realised it was the story of Louisa’s life, her autobiography.

  ‘Oh, gosh!’ she said again. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was probably mild by comparison. She noticed a slip of paper had fallen from one of the books. ‘This book,’ she read, ‘is both dedicated and gifted to my dear friend, Miss Josephine Flynn, to do with whatsoever she may please.’

  ‘Well, I’m not likely to throw it away, am I, Louisa?’ Josie said aloud. ‘All I can do is read it, if I can make sense of your lousy writing, that is.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Dinah, in the skimpiest of nighties, was at the bedroom door.

  ‘Meself. I’m just going to get the Sunday paper.’

  ‘What are those?’ Dinah asked as Josie returned the books and the slip of paper to the envelope.

  ‘Just something written by an old lady I used to work for. She was a poet. Her name was Louisa Chalcott.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘Well,’ Josie said doubtfully, ‘it’s not suitable for young eyes, luv. It’s pretty hot stuff, as they say.’

  Dinah pouted. ‘You don’t mind me reading True Confessions.’

  ‘I do, actually. And this is True Confessions with knobs on. Oh, go on.’ She shoved the envelope at her daughter. ‘You probably won’t be able to make head or tail of her writing. Be careful with it. I’d like to try and read it meself some time.’

  The article in the Sunday Times repeated much that had been in Louisa’s obituary twenty years before. She was before her time, her scandalous lifestyle had caused a furore in turn-of-the-century New York, and even later, in the twenties, when she had given birth to twins but had refused to name the father. The writer went on to say that the twins, Marian Moorcroft and Hilary Mann, now living in Croydon, England, had refused to discuss their mother. Lousia Chalcott’s raw, earthy poetry had seen a renaissance of late. The unsuspected power of her work was only now beginning to be recognised, and would shortly be republished in full. There was, however, one choice piece of work the public would never see. According to her agent, Leonard McGill, Miss Chalcott had written her autobiography, but unfortunately it appeared to have been lost.

  ‘“She assured me, several times, in the years prior to her death, that she was writing her life story,” Mr McGill told me. “But although I and her daughters made a thorough search, the manuscript has never come to light.”’

  ‘Dinah,’ Josie said urgently. ‘Where’s that scrap of paper that fell out the books?’

  ‘Here.’ Dinah was reading a red exercise book, mouth open, eyes shocked. ‘Shit, Mum. This woman was an ogre! A nyphomaniac ogre! She must have been hell to work for.’

  ‘She was, and she wasn’t.’ Josie searched for somewhere safe to put the paper. ‘I might need that if it comes to a battle with the twins. And don’t swear, luv. It’s not very nice.’

  3

  Next day, she rang Directory Enquiries during her dinner break to get Leonard McGill’s telephone number. She could actually remember his address in Holborn.

  ‘He’s at lunch,’ she was told. ‘Would you like to leave a message?’

  ‘Yes, please. It’s about Louisa Chalcott. He’ll probably remember me.’ They’d spoken over the phone often enough. ‘I used to be Josie Flynn. Tell him I’ve got Louisa’s manuscript.’

  ‘Have you really?’ remarked the disembodied voice. ‘He will be pleased. He’ll return your call the minute he gets in. Can I have your number?’

  Josie reeled off the number. ‘I’m going back to work, I’m afraid. I won’t be home till four o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I shall have a very agitated gentleman on my hands for the next three hours,’ laughed the voice.

  The phone was ringing when Josie unlocked the door two minutes after four. The years seemed to fall away when she heard the familiar, cultured tones of Leonard McGill. He courteously asked how she was before mentioning the manuscript, which she could tell he was dying to do. ‘So, madam left it with you, did she? The twins will be thrilled. I’m over the moon. I long to read it, find out what that awful woman got up to.’

  ‘Actually, she left it to me, not just with me. I didn’t realise I had it until yesterday. It was in an envelope which Louisa asked me not to open until nineteen seventy-four.’

  There was silence, followed by a strange noise, like water gurgling down a drain, and she realised Leonard McGill was laughing. ‘The twins will be as sick as dogs, and I’m even further over the moon. What a turn-up for the books, eh? Dreadful pair, those two. I’m not sure who was worse – the mother, or her frightful daughters.’

  ‘Oh, the daughters,’ Josie said promptly. ‘At least Louisa was honest.’

  ‘I’ll let the press know. Offers of publication are bound to come pouring in. Now,’ he said, and she could imagine him mentally rubbing his hands together with glee, ‘I hesitate to abandon something so precious to the tender mercies of the Royal Mail, and I can scarcely ask you to bring it all the way to London. I think it best if I came personally to collect it as soon as possible. If I cancel my appointments, I could come tomorrow. Would that suit you?’

  ‘No,’ Josie said firmly. The manuscript was hers, and she wasn’t prepared to let it out of her possession, not yet. ‘I tell you what – the firm where I work has just got one of them new photocopying machines. I’ll do a copy tomorrow and post it straight away.’

  He was clearly disappointed, but Josie didn’t care. She rang off. She was holding something very important, with which Louisa had said she could do ‘whatsoever she may please’. Knowing Louisa, she’d had publication in mind, and had obviously wanted Josie to have the benefit of the royalties it would earn, which wouldn’t be much, if her previous royalties were anything to go by, but better than nothing. But a principle was involved and, with the twins hovering on the horizon, it seemed important to hold on to the original until an agreement, or a contract, or whatever it was called, was signed.

  She sank into a chair, feeling elated. At last something exciting had happened, and it was all due to Louisa.

  In the nine years she had worked for Terence Dunnet, a small, reserved man with skin like parchment, half-moon spectacles and very little hair, they had never had a proper conversation. She felt slightly nervous when she asked if he would mind if she used his new copying machine. ‘It’s quite a few pages, hundreds, but I’ll pay for the ink and paper. And I wouldn’t do it during working hours, naturally.’ She had told Dinah she might be late home, but Dinah said it didn’t matter, she’d be even later.

  ‘Well …’ He looked from her to the gleaming new machine that stood in the corner of the main office. ‘I don’t suppose it would hurt. I get a discount the more paper that’s used.’

  ‘Ta, very much,’ she said gratefully.

  It was a slow job, and took much longer than expected. She was still hard at work at six o’clock when Terence Dunnet came out of his own office, ready to lock up and go home.

  ‘I’ll have to finish tomorrow.’ She wiped her brow. It was a hot day, and continual use of the photocopier had turned the room into an oven. ‘I’m only two-thirds of the way there.’ There was still another exercise book to copy.

  ‘What is this?’ He looked with interest as a double page of barely legible scribble emerged from the machine and plopped on to the pile already there.

  ‘It’s a book, written by a friend of mine. I’m doing a cop
y for her agent,’ Josie felt bound to explain.

  ‘Has she had anything published before?’

  ‘Yes, but only poetry.’

  ‘Only poetry!’ He smiled his dry-as-dust smile. ‘My wife is something of an amateur poet, Mrs Coltrane. She would be annoyed to hear it referred to that way. What is your friend’s name? If she’s been published, Muriel may have heard of her.’

  ‘Louisa Chalcott.’ Josie herself did her best not to be annoyed. ‘And I said “only” poetry, because this is something different, that’s all. I wasn’t being offensive.’

  Terence Dunnet’s glasses nearly dropped off his nose. ‘This surely cannot be the manuscript that was mentioned in the Sunday Times? Louisa Chalcott is one of Muriel’s favourite writers, and she gave me the article to read.’

  Josie nodded, and explained she’d been Louisa’s secretary, and had only known she held the missing manuscript on Sunday.

  ‘How remarkable.’ He looked dazed. ‘How absolutely remarkable. And it’s actually in my office! Muriel will be knocked for six when I tell her.’ He put his briefcase on the floor, removed his jacket and rolled up his snow-white sleeves. ‘It is obviously important that this reaches Miss Chalcott’s agent with all possible speed. The last post goes from Whitechapel at eight o’clock. You look exhausted, Mrs Coltrane. Make us both a cup of tea while I finish this off. You know where the large envelopes are kept. Why not get one ready? I will make sure the post is caught. And forget about paying for the paper and the ink – a copy of the book when it’s published would suffice.’ He smiled again. ‘Signed by you, of course.’

  The twins consulted a solicitor, but according to Leonard McGill had been advised they hadn’t a leg to stand on. ‘I sent them a copy of Louisa’s note,’ he told Josie on the phone, ‘and they tried to claim it was a forgery. I said if that was the case, the entire book must be a forgery because the writing is identical. By the way, I’ve had another offer – two and a half thousand pounds. The publishing trade are vying with each other for Louisa’s last work. Sex and art.’ He chuckled. ‘A highly volatile combination.’