by Paul Gallico
But even as her eyes rested upon the garment which she had once struggled so valiantly to acquire, she knew in her heart that these were other values, and that they simply did not apply to the trouble in which she now found herself. In the dilemma which had arisen at the last moment and which had threatened collapse to the whole adventure of the Dior dress, she had been helped by someone else. In this dilemma which faced her now, whether to turn a child she had grown to love over to a man who was obviously unfit to be his father, or send him back to the horrors of his foster-parents, Mrs Harris knew that no one could help her - not die Schreibers, certainly not Mrs Butterfield, or even Mr Bayswater, or her friend the Marquis. She would have to make the decision herself, it would have to be made quickly, and whichever, she knew she would probably never have another moment’s quiet peace in her own mind. That’s what came of mixing into other people’s lives.
For a moment as she looked down upon the mute and inanimate garment it appeared to her almost shoddy in the light of the work and energy it had cost her to acquire it. It was only she who had felt pain when the nasty little London actress to whom she had lent the gown in a fit of generosity one night, had returned it to her, its beauty destroyed by her own negligence and carelessness. The dress had felt nothing. But whichever she did with little Henry Brown, whether she revealed him to this monstrously boorish and selfish man as his son, or surrendered him to the hateful Gussets, little Henry would be feeling it for the rest of his life - and so would Ada Harris. There were many situations that a canny, bred-in-London char could by native wit and experience be expected to cope with, but this was not one of them. She did not know what to do, and her talisman provided no clue for her.
The dress broadcast superficial aphorisms: ‘Never say die; don’t give up the ship; if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again; it’s a long lane that has no turning; it is always darkest before dawn; the Lord helps those who help themselves.’ None of them brought any real measure of solace, none of them solved the problem of a life that was still to be lived - that of little Henry.
She even saw clearly now that she had over-emphasised - others would have called it over-romanticised - the boy’s position in the Gusset household. Had he actually been too unhappy? Many a boy had survived kicks and cuffs to become a great man, or at least a good man. Henry had had the toughness and the sweetness of nature to survive. Soon he would have grown too big for Mr Gusset to larrup any further, he would have had schooling, vocational perhaps, got a job, and lived happily enough in the environment into which he had been born, as had she and millions of others of her class and situation.
She became overwhelmed suddenly with a sense of her own futility and inadequacy and the enormity of what she had done, and sitting down upon the bed she put her hands before her face and wept. She cried not out of frustration or self-pity, but out of love and other-pity. She cried for a small boy who it seemed, whatever she did, was not to have his chance in the world. The tears seeped through her fingers and fell on to the Dior dress.
THEREAFTER, when she had recovered somewhat, she rejoined Mrs Butterfield and far, far into that night and long after little Henry had gone to sleep blissfully unconscious of the storm clouds gathering over his head, they debated his fate.
All through the twistings and turning of arguments, hopes, fears, alternating hare-brained plans, and down-to-earth common sense, Mrs Butterfield stuck to one theme which she boomed with a gloomy reiteration, like an African drum: ‘But dearie, ’e’s ’is father, after all,’ until Mrs Harris, almost at her wits’ end from the emotional strain brought on by the revelation cried, ‘If you say that once more, Vi, I’ll blow me top!’ Mrs Butterfield subsided, but Mrs Harris could see her small mouth silently forming the sentence, ‘But ’e is, you know.’
Mrs Harris had been involved in many crises in her life, but never one that had so many facets which tugged her in so many different directions, and which imposed such a strain upon the kind of person she was and all her various natures.
Taken as only a minor example of the kind of things that kept cropping up, she had sworn to get even with Kentucky Claiborne for striking little Henry; but now that Mr Claiborne - or rather, Mr Brown - was little Henry’s father, he could hit him as much as he liked.
From the beginning Mrs Harris had set herself stonily against doing what she knew she ought to do, which was to turn little Henry over to his blood and legal father and wash her hands of the affair. The Schreibers had given her the way out. By not telling Claiborne and leaving the matter to her they had indicated their sympathy and that they would not talk - only they, she, and Mrs Butterfield would ever know the truth.
But what then would become of the boy? Bring him back to the Gussets? But how? Mrs Harris had lived too long in a world of identity cards, ration cards, passports, permits, licences, a world that in effect said you did not exist unless you had a piece of paper that said you did. Little Henry existed officially in a photostat of the American Air Force records, a London birth certificate, and nowhere else. He had been illegally removed from Britain, and had even more illegally entered the United States. She felt it in her bones that if they tried to get him back the same way they had brought him over they would get caught. She would not have cared for herself, but she could not do it to her already sorely tried friend Violet Butterfield.
Keep little Henry to themselves secretly? Even should they with Mr Schreiber’s help succeed in getting him back to England - not very likely - the unspeakable Gussets were but one wall removed from them. True, they had not kicked up a fuss over the kidnapping. Obviously there had not been a peep out of them, or Mrs Harris would have heard via the police. But with little Henry back they would most certainly claim him, for he had his uses as a drudge.
She saw likewise how fatally wrong her fantasy had been about little Henry’s parents. It was not Pansy Cott who was to blame, but George Brown - mean, ignorant, vengeful, and intrinsically bad. Pansy had simply used her nut and done the child a good turn when she refused to accompany her husband to America. Unquestionably Brown had just not sent her any money for the support of the child.
Yet a decision would have to be made and she, Ada Harris, must accept the responsibility of making it.
Most deeply painful and overriding every other consideration was the love - feminine, human, all-embracing - that she felt for the boy, and her deep-seated wish to see him happy. She had let her life become inextricably entangled with that of the child, and now there was no escaping from it. Like all people who play with fire, she knew that she was in the process of getting herself badly burned.
And through all her arguments, deliberations, and meditations, Mrs Butterfield boomed her theme: ‘But love, after all, ’e is the father. You said how ’appy ’e’d be to ’ave ’is little son back, and ’ow ’e’d soon enough take ’im away from the Gussets. ’E’s entitled to ’ave ’im, ain’t ’e?’
This was the bald, staring, naked, unavoidable truth whichever way one twisted, squirmed or turned, and the documents in Mr Schreiber’s hands put the seal on to it. George Brown and Henry Brown were united by the ties of blood. So now at four o’clock in the morning Mrs Harris gave in. She breathed a great sigh and said with a kind of humility that touched the other woman more than anything in their long friendship, ‘I guess you’re right, Vi. You’ve been more right through all of this all along than I have. ’E’s got to go to ’is father. We’ll tell Mr Schreiber in the morning’.
And now Mrs Harris’s battered, tired, and sorely tried mind played her a dirty trick, as so often minds will that have been driven to the limit of endurance. It held out a chimera to her, a wholly acceptable solace to one who was badly in need of it. Now that the decision was made, how did they not know that under the softening influence of a little child, George Brown–Kentucky Claiborne would not become another person? Immediately and before she was aware of it, Mrs Harris was back again in that fantasy land from which practically all her troubles had sprung.
Everything suddenly resolved itself: Claiborne–Brown had cuffed little Henry when he had thought him an interfering little beggar, but his own son he would take to his bosom. True, he had bellowed his scorn of Limeys - the boy was only half a Limey, the other at least fifty per cent of one hundred per cent American Brown.
All the old day-dreams returned - the grateful father overjoyed at being reunited with his long-lost son, and little Henry brought to a better life than he had ever known before, and certainly this would be true from a financial standpoint; he would never again be hungry, or ragged, or cold; he would be for ever out of the clutches of the unspeakable Gussets; he would be educated in this wonderful and glorious country, and would have his chance in life.
As for George Brown, he needed the softening influence of little Henry as much as the boy needed a father. He would succumb to the charm of the boy, give up his drinking, reform his ways in order to set his son a good example, and thus become twice the idol of American youth he already was.
The conviction grew upon Mrs Harris that she had fulfilled the role of fairy godmother after all. She had done what she had set out to do. She had said, ‘If I could only get to America I would find little Henry’s father.’ Well, she had got to America, she had found the child’s father - or at least had been instrumental in his finding - the father was a millionaire as she had always known he would be. ‘Then dry your tears, Ada Harris, and still your worries, and write at the bottom of the page, “Mission accomplished”, smile, and go to bed.’
It was thus the treacherous mind lulled her and let her go to sleep without ever so much as dreaming what awaited her on the morrow.
George-Kentucky-Claiborne-Brown was waiting uneasily in Mr Schreiber’s study in the penthouse, whither he had been summoned, the next afternoon after lunch, and this uneasiness increased as Mr and Mrs Schreiber entered the room together, followed by Mrs Harris, Mrs Butterfield, and an eight-going-on-nine-year-old boy known as Little Henry.
Mr Schreiber motioned his own side to sit and said to the performer, ‘Sit down, Kentucky. We have something rather important to talk to you about.’
The too-easily aroused ire began to shine in the singer’s eyes. He knew what the meeting was all about all right, and he wasn’t having any of it. He took up a kind of a defiant stand in a corner of the room and said, ‘If you-all think you’re going to come over me for givin’ that kid a poke, you can guess again. The little bastard was annoyin’ me at mah rehearsin’. I tol’ him to beat it - he got fresh and Ah belted him one. And what’s more, Ah’d do it again. Ah tol’ you Ah didn’t like foreigners any more’n Ah liked negras. All they have to do is keep out of mah way, and then nobody is goin’ to have any trouble.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mr Schreiber testily, ‘we know all that.’ But now that he had Kentucky safely under contract he was no longer compelled to be as patient or put up with as much. ‘But that isn’t what I’ve asked you to come here to talk about today. It’s something quite different. Sit yourself down and let’s get at it.’
Relieved somewhat that the purpose of the get-together was not to chew him out for slapping the child, Kentucky sat on a chair back-to-front and watched them all suspiciously out of his small, mean eyes.
Mr Schreiber said, ‘Your right name is George Brown, and you did your military service in the U.S. Air Force from 1949 to 1952.’
Kentucky set his jaws. ‘What if Ah am and what if Ah did?’
Mr Schreiber, who appeared to be enjoying himself - indeed, he now relinquished the role of detective and was seeing himself as Mr District Attorney - said, ‘On the 14th of April, 1950, you married a Miss Pansy Amelia Cott in Tunbridge Wells, while you were still in the Air Force, and approximately five months or so later a son was born to you, christened Henry Brown.’
‘What?’ shouted Kentucky. ‘Man oh man, are you real crazy? You’re just nothin’ but off. Ah never heard of any of those people.’
Mrs Harris felt as though she were taking part in a television play, and that soon she would be called upon to speak her lines, lines that in anticipation of this scene she had rehearsed to herself and thought rather effective - slightly paraphrased from films and stories she remembered. It was to go something like this: Mr Claiborne, I have a great surprise for you, and one that may cause you some astonishment. In my neighbourhood in London there lived a lonely child, starved, beaten, and abused by cruel foster-parents, unbeknownst to his father in far off America. I - that is to say, we, Mrs Butterfield and I - have rescued this child from the clutches of the unfeeling monsters into whose hands he had fallen and brought him here to you. That child is little Henry here, none other than your own natural son. Henry, go over and give your Dad a great big hug and kiss.
While Mrs Harris was going over this speech and clinging to her fancy to the last, Mr Schreiber uncovered the papers on his desk and Kentucky, attracted by the rustle, looked over and saw the photostatic copy of his Air Force record, plus the photograph of himself. It cooled him off considerably. ‘Your serial number in the Air Force was AF28636794, like it’s tattooed on your wrist,’ said Mr Schreiber, ‘and your record up to the date of your discharge is all here, including your marriage and the birth of your son.’
Kentucky glared at Mr Schreiber and said, ‘So what? What if it is? What business is that of anyone? Ah deevo’ced the woman - she was a no-good slut. It was all done legal and proper in accordance with the laws in the State of Alabama, and Ah got the papers that say so. What’s all this about?’
Mr Schreiber’s interrogation continued as inexorably as his fancy told him it should. ‘And the boy?’ he asked. ‘Have you any idea where he is or what has become of him?’
‘What’s it to you? And why don’t you mind your own business?’ Kentucky snarled. ‘Ah signed a contract to sing for your lousy network, but that don’t give you no right to be askin’ no personal questions. Anyway, Ah deevo’ced the woman legal and proper and contributed to the support of the child. Last I heard of him he was bein’ looked after by his mother and gittin’ along fine.’
Mr Schreiber put down the papers, looked across his desk and said, ‘Tell him, Mrs Harris.’
Thus taken by surprise and thrown an entrance cue entirely different from the one she had expected, Mrs Harris went completely up in her lines and blurted, ‘It’s a lie! ’E’s ’ere - this is ’im right ’ere sitting next to me.’
Kentucky’s jaw dropped and he stared over at the three, with the child in the middle, and yelled, ‘What? That little bastard?’
Mrs Harris was on her feet in a flash, ready for battle, her blue eyes blazing with anger. ‘ ’E ain’t no little bastard,’ she retorted, ‘ ’e’s your flesh and blood, legally married like it sez in those pypers, and I brought ’im to you all the way over ’ere from London.’
There was one of those silences during which father looked at son, and son looked at father, and between them passed a glance of implacable dislike. ‘Who the hell asked you to?’ Kentucky snarled.
How it happened Mrs Harris never would have known, but there she was, Samaritan and Fairy Godmother Extraordinary, suddenly forced upon the defensive. ‘Nobody asked me,’ she said. ‘I did it on me own. The little tyke was bein’ beaten and starved by them ’orrid Gussets. We could hear ’im through the walls. I said to Mrs Butterfield, “If his dad in America knew about this, ’e wouldn’t stand for it, not for a minute” ’ - Mrs Butterfield here gave a corroborative nod - ‘ “he’d want ’im out of there in a flash.” So here we are. Now what ’ave you got to say to that?’
Before he could reply something that might have been unprintable, from the twist that his mouth had taken, Mrs Schreiber, who saw that Mrs Harris was floundering and things getting out of hand, interpolated quickly, ‘Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield live right next door to these people - the Gussets - there were the foster-parents - that is to say, Henry’s mother boarded the child with them after she remarried, and when the money stopped coming and they couldn’t find her t
hey began to abuse the child. Mrs Harris couldn’t bear it and brought him over here to you. She is a good woman and had the best interests of the child at heart and—’ here she suddenly realised that her explanations were sounding just as lame and flustered as Mrs Harris’s had a moment ago, and she subsided in confusion, looking for help to her husband.
‘That’s about the way of it, Kentucky,’ said Mr Schreiber, stepping into the breach, ‘though I think maybe it could have been better put. When she brought him over here Mrs Harris didn’t know who the father was, except she figured when she located him and he found out how much the kid needed him and what was happening to him, he’d take over.’
Kentucky clucked his tongue and snapped his knuckles in a curious kind of rhythm he sometimes used in a ballad, and when he had finished he said, ‘Oh she did, did she?’ He then looked over at Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield and said, ‘Listen, you two interferin’ old bitches, you know what you can do with that brat? You can take him right back where he come from, wherever that was. Ah didn’t ask you to bring him over here, Ah don’t want him, and Ah ain’t goin’ to have him. Ah’m just a little ol’ country boy, but Ah’m smart enough to know man public don’t want me hooked up with no deevo’ce and no kid, and if you try any funny business about tryin’ to make me take him, Ah’ll call the pack of you a bunch of dirty liars, tear up mah contract and then you can go whistlin’ for Kentucky Claiborne - and Ah got ten million hundred per cent American kids that’ll back me up.’
Having delivered himself of this homily, Claiborne let his glance wander around the little group, where it lingered not so much as a second upon his son, and then said, ‘Well, folks, I guess that’ll be about all. Reckon Ah’ll be seein’ you.’ He got up and shambled out of the room.
Mr Schreiber gave vent to his feelings. ‘That dirty low-life!’ he said.
Mrs Butterfield threw her apron over her head and ran for the kitchen.
