The light had grown dusky by the time she reached the street. She could see the changes though, the signs of middle class incursion in the stripped pine doors with brass knockers, the tidy front gardens.
She stopped before pushing open the gate to number thirty-nine. The forsythia was still there, vast now and straggly, but its outer branches laden with golden bloom. She had a memory of herself in the parlour. She was standing by the window, staring out through the net curtains at the burst of gold, as if the shrub might take her off and away, swallow her into itself. She must have been small, perhaps six or seven.
For a moment, Helena had a palpable sensation of her own unhappiness then: an awkward lonely child, an outsider whom no one particularly wanted, thrust into a cramped alien world of loud, hostile voices. She remembered gazing for what seemed like hours at a lady bird who had somehow made its way onto the empty fire grate and chanting over and over in her mind,
Ladybird, ladybird
Fly away home
Yours house is on fire
Your children they will burn
She had felt the flames beginning to envelop her, welcome flames. And then, Mum’s voice, angry, piercing, ‘Barbara’s asked you somethin’, ‘elen. Answer her.’ And then that grumbling whine, ‘We made a mistake. I told ‘arry, it was a mistake. She’s a loony ‘un. Just sits and stares into space. Never cries, mind. Just sits there. Like a cabbage.’
It had been better at school. They left her alone there. And once a week they went to the local children’s library. She couldn’t remember learning to read, only remembered the joy of turning those pages filled with bright pictures, and then the stories. They were allowed to take two books home with them. But Mum didn’t like her reading. ‘Lazy good-for-nothin’,’ she would lash out at her and snatch the book away. But that must have been later.
Helena straightened her shoulders and went to ring the bell. A dog barked angrily. There was a series of muffled cries and then the door opened.
A young woman stood in front of her. A crown of close-curled red hair that had come out of a bottle, bright lips, a hard, pretty face. She was pregnant and her long blue sweater clung closely over her stomach. There was a hand placed assertively on her hip.
‘Ya?’ she looked at Helena brazenly.
‘I’m sorry, I must have come to the wrong place. I was looking for Mrs. Moore.’
‘You found her,’ the young woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘You from the Council or somethin’?’
Helena shook her head. In the background, she could hear a television set, other voices. ‘The Mrs. Moore I’m looking for would be older,’ she murmured.
A toddler came up behind the woman and tugged at her sweater. She lifted him into her arms, but otherwise didn’t budge, the two of them a solid barrier against entry.
‘What d’you want?’
‘I… I used to live here. A long time ago. My name’s Helena. Helena Stevens.’
The woman stared at her, moved the child onto her other hip, then shouted without turning. ‘Mum, there’s a Miss Helena Stevens here for you.’ The Miss was said in a tone of derision.
Helena heard the shuffling of feet. An emaciated woman with frizzed yellow hair appeared at the door and looked up at her warily.
‘Well, well, if it ain’t the Madam herself.’ Her lips curled into a little cunning smile. ‘Come to see the old home, have you?’
‘Hello, Mrs. Moore.’ At a loss, Helena stretched out her hand.
It went unheeded.
‘I told you about her Sarah. She’s the foster girl who found herself a better place. Caused us a right lot of trouble, she did.’ There was that glint of old hostility in her eye, but Sarah was now looking at Helena with open curiosity.’
‘You gonna invite her in?’
‘May as well. Dad’ll wantta lay eyes on her. Always said she’d be a looker.’
‘I’ve brought you something,’ Helena pulled a bottle of wine out of her bag, realising as soon as she did so that a six-pack would have been more appropriate. But Mrs. Moore took it with a nod of the head.
‘So you made something of yourself with that rich headmistress of yours?’ Mrs. Moore was truculent. ‘We weren’t good enough for ya.’
‘I’m a journalist,’ Helena mumbled.
‘A journalist?’ Sarah’s tone had changed. ‘Is that good fun then?’
Helena nodded, smiled.
They were in what had once been the parlour, but a television set now dominated the space and a vast three-piece suite. There was a black child playing with a fire engine on the floor. Sarah put the toddler down beside him. ‘This is Seth, our neighbour’s little ‘un and this here’s my Billy.’
She had taken over. ‘Turn down the telly, Dad, we got a visitor. Look at her. Remember her?’
A pallid man with beetlebrows looked out from the wings of an armchair. His features showed not the slightest interest.
‘She’s your Helen,’ Sarah shouted, whispered to Helena, ‘He’s gettin’ a bit deaf.’
His eyes flickered for a moment. He grunted something like a greeting and then sat back into the chair, his eyes glued to the television..
Looking at him, Helena was suddenly struck by the fact that the terrifying ogre of her memories was in fact a feeble aging man, old before his time, tired out. She couldn’t imagine him raising his fist to hit anyone now, nor perhaps even his voice.
‘It looks nice in here,’ she said, for lack of anything better.
Mrs. Moore’s tone had altered, in tune with her daughter-in-law’s. ‘Yah, there’ve been lots of changes, what with Sarah and the little ‘un here, and Billy earnin well,’ her voice rose in pride.
‘We’re gonna get our own place, soon,’ Sarah interjected huffily. ‘As soon as this next one arrives,’ she patted her stomach comfortably. ‘You got any yet?’
Helena shook her head.
‘Leavin it a bit late, aint ya?’ Mrs. Moore stared at her. ‘You must be twenty-eight or nine, now.’
Helena nodded.
‘Don’t wanna leave it too late. That’s what I did. Never could have more than Billy. That’s why I took on you lot.’
‘Whatever happened to Sandy?’ Helena thought of the frightened little girl whom the Moore’s had taken in some years after her. She had always tried to protect her from the others. With a dizzying clarity, she suddenly remembered, how the two of them would go off and lock themselves in the loo, when Mrs. Moore was out and Billy chased them. She would tell her stories then, to stop her crying. Once they had stayed in the corner shop for hours, pretending to be choosing a comic book, until Mr. Moore had come in and dragged them home. Helena remembered trying to explain to him then that Sandy was afraid when Billy was rough. She must have been about eight, Sandy four.
And then Helena had abandoned her, had gone off with Emily. A pang of remorse suddenly shot through her.
‘Bad lot that one. Even harder than you. You were pretty good up till the year you got…’ Mrs. Moore lifted her hands to her breasts. ‘But Sandy, she went completely wild. Ran away when she was fifteen. Never seen her since. Beverly was better. Remember her. No, no, course not. She came after you’d gone. Grown up now, got a job. But comes to see us, regular. A good girl that. Weren’t she, Dad?’
Mr. Moore grunted, his eyes still fixed on the telly. Then suddenly he turned, ‘Helen were the best. The prettiest. Clever too. Always told ya’ that. A lady,’ his eyes rested on her for a moment, before he turned back to the screen.
‘Dad’s always had an eye for the pretty ones,’ Sarah winked at her suggestively, put some more toys in front of the children who had started to squabble over a red car.
Helena smiled, liking her.
‘Mrs. Moore, I wanted to ask you. Did anyone ever come to see me or ask about me after I’d come to you? A man, perhaps, from the old days?’
Mrs. Moore lit a cigarette and gazed at her cannily. ‘Lookin for your lost parents, are ya? Like that girl we saw on the telly
?’ She sat back in her chair and took a long puff.
‘No, there was no one,’ she said smugly. ‘We were your only family. That Mrs. Latimer, she grilled us about that, too. Didn’t she tell ya?’
The neighbour’s child had started to cry, and Sarah picked him up to comfort him. ‘They’ll be wanting their tea,’ she said, moving into action.
‘I’d better get along then,’ Helena rose. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’ She stretched out her hand to Mrs. Moore, who took it this time with a condescending gesture. Then she did the same to Mr. Moore, who looked at her blankly, before responding with evident discomfort.
‘Bye, then,’ he grunted.
Helena stared at him for a moment, smiled. ‘Bye.’
For the briefest of seconds, she thought she saw his lip curl.
‘Don’t you want to see Billy? He’ll be back soon, if he doesn’t stay for a second pint.’
‘No, no, I’d better go,’ Helena said, realising she was being a coward. ‘Thanks again.’
‘And ta for the wine,’ Sarah winked at her when they got to the door. ‘It’ll all be for me,’ she laughed brazenly and waved her off.
Helena walked quickly towards the bus stop. She was shaking.
An ordinary family, she scolded herself. It was she who was the odd one out. Mrs. Moore had almost said the proverbial lines: giving yourself airs and graces, think you’re better than us, do you? She could hear her scolding tones in her ear; had - it came to her - heard them all those years ago, saying just that as she towered over her, watching her scrub the kitchen floor. But Mr. Moore had stood up for her today. Odd that. She couldn’t remember that ever happening before. But then, what did she know? She had been a mere child who had been sent on from another family who didn’t want her once a fourth of their own had arrived. Emily had found that out.
Yes, she had been a frightened, lonely child who saw the world in her own distorted way. Not even that frightened, perhaps. She had stood up for Sandy.
It was Billy who had been the demon. Billy, whom his mother idolized, Billy who could do no wrong. And the terror of his abuse had gone deep. Too deep. It had made her wilfully blot everything out.
Helena hurried on. The streets were dark now, the lamps casting only their little pools of yellow light. Suddenly, she saw a man illuminated in one of them - a fleshy ruddy man, swaggering towards her. It was Billy, exactly as he had always been, except bigger. For a moment their eyes locked and she saw those moist plump lips shape themselves into a whistle, saw those piggy eyes. Then he was past her.
Helena broke into a run, ran until she reached the bus stop. She was perspiring, as if she had barely eluded a terrible danger. It was with relief that she leapt on to the approaching bus, with even greater relief that she felt it pull away with her safely on it.
She stood looking out the window, her hand taut round the seat handle beside her. How could that nice Sarah bear to be with that man, allow herself to have his children? The very thought made her gag with disgust.
‘Would you like to sit down, dear? You’ve gone very white,’ a hatted old woman looked up at her.
‘No, no, thank you, I’m alright. That’s very kind of you,’ Helena forced a smile to her lips.
‘Here, have this one. My stop’s coming up,’ the man next to her slid out.
Helena murmured her thanks, edged into the seat. She was making a spectacle of herself.
‘These buses do swing around so,’ the old woman smiled at her sweetly, then chuckled, ‘Whenever I offer my seat, the men always remember.’
Helena grinned.
‘Feeling better?’
She nodded.
‘Well, bye now. This one’s mine.’
They were crossing the Vauxhall Bridge, the wide expanse of the Thames separating her from the shadows of her childhood. Helena relaxed into her seat, but her hands were still tightly clasped.
It was ridiculous that seeing Billy after all these years should have so distressed her. She had been prepared to see him after all. Yet she had fled, would have found it hard, she realised, to shake his hand had he been in the house when she arrived. Far harder than the others. Yet that nice, spunky woman had married him, seemed happy enough. Perhaps it was only the powerlessness of childhood that had made her see him as a monster.
Helena sat and tried to be sensible. After all, from one point of view what had Billy been then but an ungainly adolescent taking advantage of a situation which offered him sexual release. It was just too bad that she had been there to provide it, a girl in the next bed who wasn’t even his sister. Mrs. Moore should never have allowed them in the same room. But there hadn’t been another.
Helena consoled herself. She would never have run away, if it hadn’t been for Billy. She would never have found Emily. She should write Billy a thank-you note.
Helena smiled at the thought. The very fact of the smile made her feel suddenly better.
They had arrived at Victoria station. She leapt off the bus and made her way down into the underground.
She felt pleased with herself now. She had done it, had gone to visit that part of her past. The ghosts could be laid to rest.
But she wasn’t any wiser about Max. It was funny how she swung between thinking that her notion of his being her father was a total fantasy and a decided reality. She knew now that she wanted him to be her father, this wonderful saintly man whose vision of the world she so profoundly shared.
She remembered having read somewhere that children whose fathers were violent and abusive often defended them against any accusations. It was as if to keep the terror of the real father at bay they had to block it out completely and construct an ideal figure whom they wholly believed in. Was that what she had done by displacement? Obliterated all the men in her childhood in order to replace them with Max?
Too much navel-gazing, Ms. Helena Latimer, she scolded herself and pushed her way to the tube door. She had almost missed her stop. Another few weeks and everything would be clear. There was really no more need for her to try and excavate her past, either the one she carried within herself or the one whose fossils lay scattered around the signposts of her trajectory.
**********
The next day Helena got to the office early. She had slept more soundly and dreamlessly than she had in weeks. It was as if the visit to the Moores had marked a turning point. She had fretted over it so and now that it was accomplished, she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her. She could settle down to the work at hand and make certain that everything was clear for that week of absence she had promised herself with Max in Berlin.
It was just after ten and she was in the midst of a telephone interview with the manager of a new wind farm, when Lyn placed a piece of paper in front of her.
Helena read it swiftly. ‘Adam Peters, from Germany. Has to speak to you URGENTLY. Do I tell him to hold or ring back?’
‘Ring back,’ Helena scrawled.
Some fifteen minutes later, she confronted Lynn.
‘What does he want?’
‘Who?’ Lynn looked at her with a blank expression.
‘Adam Peters.’
‘Oh,’ Lynn scrambled through the papers on her desk. ‘Here’s the number. You’re to ring him, as soon as poss. It did sound urgent,’ she made a face at Helena. ‘It’s about your Max Bergmann.’
Helena gasped audibly. She picked up the telephone instantly and punched out the number.
‘He’s found the way to your heart this time, has he?’ Lynn was chuckling.
‘Quiet,’ Helena scowled at her.
Adam’s voice when it came frightened her. It was formal, almost punctilious.
‘It’s important that you come. Straight away.’
‘Has he asked for me?’
‘Just come. There’s a plane from Heathrow at 12.20. Another at 4.00. I’ll meet you at Munich if you like.’
‘That won’t be necessary. Where shall I go?’
‘Come here. To Seehafen.’
‘Does he want to speak to me now?’
‘Look, I can’t talk.’
‘This isn’t a ruse, is it?’
‘Don’t be stupid. Just get here.’
He hung up on her.
Helena looked at the dead receiver. Her heart was pounding. And on top of it all, she had managed to be insufferably rude again.
She glanced at her watch and then at Lynn.
‘Book me a ticket on the 12.20 to Munich will you. And then ring Adam Peters and tell him I’ll be catching that plane.’
‘Jawohl mein Fraulein,’ Lynn saluted and grinned at her comically. ‘Got a story about Bergmann up your sleeve?’
‘Perhaps,’ Helena was noncommital.
She had a quick word with Carl, then hurriedly gave Lynn a list of the things which would have to be done in her absence, including a call to Claire about the cats. But her mind was already racing ahead of her, was already in Seehafen and the rush of fearful possibilities that awaited her there.
Chapter Twenty Two
Adam Peters paced the length and width of the freshly-painted room for the hundredth time.
The house was finally in order now. The white sheets had vanished from sofas and chairs. Johannes Bahr’s paintings hung on the walls in a sequence Adam had long debated with himself. The conservatory had acquired tiles and cane chairs. The hall and the vast formal dining room glowed and the kitchen walls were pristine, as were a smattering of the upstairs rooms.
All this in the time since she had last been here. Almost two months now.
It had been wise to hire in the decorators or the business would have gone on interminably. It had perhaps been less wise to bury himself in the Archives in Heidelberg after his return from London. There might have been a faint chance then of preventing all this.
But the memory of her was still too strong in the house, as if they had spent weeks here together. And he had wanted to flee. Particularly now that he knew there wasn’t anyone else. She had made that quite clear. It was simply that she didn’t want him. Fair enough, he had said to himself, but nonetheless he had fluctuated between cursing her as a cold bitch and subsiding into a state of utter incomprehension. That was the worst.
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