‘I must go, Pierre, really, I must. I mean if it was you, if you knew as little, or as much, as I know of your own story, wouldn’t you go back?’
‘I tell you I never yet heard of a story where “going back” ended up with anything but a slap in the face.’
He blew her a kiss nevertheless, and called through the cab window, ‘I’ll meet you on the station – good old Riviera Express where would we be without it?’
‘Four Porchester Terrace, Notting Hill Gate,’ Ottilie told the cab driver before Pierre could say any more although he sighed when he heard her, and then shrugged his shoulders in a resigned sort of way.
‘You’re not going to like what you find, Ottilie, no-one ever does,’ he called but he waved even so.
Despite her bravura Ottilie was very glad that Pierre was not going with her. Lorcan had said that the girl who was Ottilie’s mother was ‘a pretty little thing with long dark hair’ but he had also said that she ‘died’. But supposing she had not died? Supposing she had simply given the baby away to Ma to adopt and pretended that she had died because her husband had died and she didn’t want to bring the baby up? Could Lorcan’s description of this slender young girl, could it possibly have been a description of Mrs Ballantyne who had long dark hair? Or was it a description of someone else, say the maid?
Ottilie kept asking herself all these questions on the taxi ride, until at last the cab stopped right outside what the taxi driver assured her must be Number Four since it was situated between numbers two and six, but no longer had a discernible number of its own.
The way Ottilie remembered it Porchester Terrace had always been filled with sunshine, and the cars and the buses that had pulled slowly past it had been few, and the people that Ma and she passed, or stopped and talked with, had always been stopping and smiling despite there still being rationing and life not being easy. But now, looking around her as the taxi driver put his ‘For Hire’ sign back up and drove off, it was all too clear to her that not even sunshine could cheer Porchester Terrace. It was also perfectly clear that having, many years ago, fallen on bad times, it had not yet picked itself up from them again. With its blackened Victorian exterior and the traffic edging moodily past its door, Porchester Terrace was probably as dreary as it had always been.
Ottilie looked slowly up and down the street. Opposite her a tramp was staring into a dustbin lodged by a pile of builder’s rubble. On her side of the street people were passing her, their faces marked with despairs of different and desperate kinds. People who had despaired of the world, of finding a job, of finding love, of being able to change themselves, people who hated themselves or other people, people who were indifferent to life, they all seemed to be passing Ottilie at that moment, and it was beginning to rain.
She walked to the entrance of the block of flats and pushed open the handleless, lockless door. The inevitable smell of cooking cabbage hung in the air as she stared up at the names on the old-fashioned Victorian board in the hall. It looked strangely decorous in its surroundings although proclaiming every occupant of the flats to a person to be ‘out’, even a Mrs Burgess.
An old woman stepped slowly and noisily into the dingy hall. She was half-stooped and sighing loudly, her clear plastic hat covered in rain, her flowered umbrella also drenched. She straightened up as she shook out the umbrella and sighed noisily. Following this she removed the pixie hat that had covered her hair. Ottilie stared at the apparition that had finally emerged from under the hat. She was old, her hair was brightly dyed, her eyelids were lined with bright blue and her lips as brightly coloured as her hair.
‘Do you want something? Are you looking for someone, dear?’ she asked Ottilie.
‘I’m not sure . . .’
‘Oh very well then.’ The old woman turned towards what was obviously her front door, her latch key already out, and slowly, very slowly, she turned it in the lock, the sound reverberating in the dulled silence of the dingy hallway.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Ottilie heard herself say, ‘as a matter of fact you might be able to help me, after all, as a matter of fact. I am – looking for a Mrs Burgess.’
‘Mrs Burgess has moved.’
‘You wouldn’t possibly know to where?’
‘Mrs Burgess moved to East Sheen—’
‘East Cheam?’
‘No, East Sheen, the Avenue, number twenty-four. It’s a long way out, dear, you’ll have to tip the taxi driver, they do so hate to cross Putney Bridge. I know because I went to see her at Christmas.’
As she had predicted it took some little while for Ottilie to find a cab that would take her out to East Sheen and when at last she did she realized that she was already pushed for time if she was going to make it back to Paddington in time to catch the Riviera.
At last the taxi drew to a halt outside a small Thirties immaculately maintained cottage. Ottilie could hardly remember what Mrs Burgess looked like until a plump woman in her fifties opened the door and suddenly, all at once, she knew exactly what she looked like. She looked just like Mrs Burgess had always looked only grey-haired now, but she was just as smooth-faced and smiling as she had always been, and still smoking.
‘Mrs Burgess?’
‘Yes.’
It was obvious that she did not recognize Ottilie at all.
‘It’s Ottilie, do you remember – Number Four? Ottilie and her brothers? You took us down to Cornwall?’
Mrs Burgess’s heavily ringed hand flew to her mouth as it always had and she started to laugh.
‘Little Ottilie? I wouldn’t have known you from the Queen, dear! I can hardly believe it, and after all these years.’ Mrs Burgess’s obvious excitement was touching. ‘Come in, come in. It simply does not seem possible, after all these years.’
Ottilie stepped into an immaculately kept hall, oak-floored, grandfather clock, everything just so, and as she did so Mrs Burgess leaned forward and hugged her impulsively.
‘I can’t tell you what this means to me. I always wondered how you all were, but I never was a letter writer. Course Lorcan wrote to me of your poor mother’s saddemise, and after that I just never did get back to Cornwall to see you all. Then I moved here a year ago, and sometimes some of my old friends come out to see me from Porchester Terrace, but not many. Let alone such a person from the past as you. Well, well, darling, sit down while Mrs B gets you a cup of tea and some fruit cake.’
She bustled off to prepare something leaving Ottilie in a sitting room whose shelves, she realized, were completely dominated by dolls of all kinds.
‘What a wonderful collection,’ Ottilie said when Mrs Burgess returned with tea on a tray and biscuits and cake on a plate.
‘Imagine you saying that. Do you know,’ she sat back in her chair and having poured the tea for both of them she lit a cigarette, ‘do you know your own mother helped me to sew some of those very dolls, darling? Cake?’
Not really wanting it Ottilie nevertheless took it. She was surprised that Ma had helped to sew dolls, she had never seen her sew anything.
‘Not Mrs O’Flaherty, dear. I mean, not that mother, your real mother.’ As Ottilie said nothing to this, she went on. ‘Course you know the story now, don’t you? But probably not the whole story. I mean I expect that’s why you’ve come to see old Mrs Burgess, isn’t it?’ She laughed as Ottilie still said nothing. ‘Don’t worry, dear, I would want to know, if it was me. In your shoes I’d have come. So. Yes, poor child, your mother. She arrived from the country like so many of them did in those days, you know, knowing nothing really, not really, and I had to help her in every way I could, because she was that innocent, really she was – but of course as soon as I realized she could sew I roped her in because good out-workers are not easy to find, dear, not at all, and you can imagine in those days trying to get materials for my business – murder, dear, sheer murder. But we managed, but only if the girls were handy, we couldn’t afford a shred of waste.’
Between puffs on her cigarette Mrs Burgess was unstoppable
. It was as if she was telling a story she had told so many times to other people that she knew it off by heart, and Ottilie suddenly had the impression that Mrs Burgess must have told this story many times, to other people, perhaps people in some local pub that she frequented.
‘Yes, so your mother and I we got to know each other really well when I started up my little crinoline doll business and she was as good a seamstress as you’d find anywhere. I have letters from America, from Japan, you’d be surprised where my dolls get to, really surprised. But that’s how come I got to know your mother so well, you see, dear, through the dolls. Seeing that she had been brought up in service, and that, she was not just a dab hand with a needle, but as neat as a pin when it came to arranging their hair and I know not what. And of course, because of being in service, she knew what good taste was. She used to help me choose the kind of faces and the hair and that, and then back they would come and we’d make every stitch of their clothes, by hand, all the embroidery, everything, covered buttons on the shoes. Oh I missed her something terrible when she went like that, poor child, something terrible. She was ever such a sweet little thing. You don’t look like her, I mean I wouldn’t have known you as her daughter until I saw your hair, that rich dark brown hair, that would give me a clue, and your nose, perhaps—’
Mrs Burgess had her head on one side and was inspecting Ottilie for all the world as if she was one of her dolls, underneath a glass dome.
‘No, I wouldn’t have known you. You probably take more after your father. Course he was such an old man by the time he was married to Mrs Ballantyne.’
‘Did you know him then, I mean did you really know my father?’
‘Your father, no. Bless you, my dear, I only knew your mother. Mrs O’Flaherty, and people like myself, we never would associate with people like the Ballantynes, remember this was 1948, dear, not the Sixties. No, I never knew your father, never would have done in the way of things then, but I knew the whole story. Although none of us knew your mother was having you, and I don’t think she knew in a way, I mean I think she denied it to herself. It transpired afterwards that she’d had this thing they call a dry pregnancy, at least that’s what the midwife thought. There’s no water round the baby – not that I’ve ever had a baby myself, dear, but no water means nothing shows. And not only does the mother not show, but she can lose weight instead of putting it on. Course I noticed her getting thinner, and I was that worried about her looks and her weight after a while, but I never could say anything because she wasn’t a relative of mine. I just thought she might be pining, for the country, for Cornwall or wherever it was that she had come from.
‘She must have known, I suppose, I realized that afterwards, poor little thing, but I don’t think she could bring herself to admit it, that’s all I can think, dear. It does happen. Girls can’t face up to the fact of their pregnancy and then they get theirselves in all sorts of trouble. Mrs Mac, your Ma, she and I we kicked ourselves afterwards, when we realized, but Mrs Mac hardly knew her, only to see her. But she was funny that way, Mrs Mac, very funny. I mean she liked babies and children the way some people like dogs, if you know what I mean? She liked them better than people, if you get my meaning? And there was another thing.’
Mrs Burgess put down her teacup and wiped her mouth very carefully on the back of her hand.
‘She did not approve of my dolls, Mrs Mac didn’t. She hated dolls herself, called them “tart’s toys” if you please!’ Mrs Burgess laughed hugely and suddenly, obviously remembering her friend’s disapproval, and shook her head. ‘Tart’s toys if you please! Oh she was a one all right was Mrs Mac, she really was. Well, I will agree some of the ladies of the night from around here did buy my dolls and they did come here to buy them from me, but what harm did that do? The way Mrs Mac was on about my line of work you’d have thought it was the dolls the men were calling on! Still, we were friends, one of the best she was. Shame she died.’
All the time she had been talking Ottilie had been trying to imagine where she herself came into it, but Mrs Burgess was unstoppable. It seemed rude to interrupt her but it had to be done.
‘Mrs Burgess, can I ask you, did my mother know my father?’
‘Did your father know your mother?’ Mrs Burgess put down her teacup. ‘You mean you really don’t know any of the story? Well bless your socks, and me going on all this time, and there you are wondering how you came to be on this planet.’
Having sat back in her chintz armchair Mrs Burgess began.
‘Listen dear, your father was a gentleman, even if he was old, and I do know that for certain. And your mother, this Kitty Shelborne, she really loved him, even though what she did was wrong, as I understand it, she really loved your father, if only because he was a gentleman. And I mean I do know, she did tell me that this Mrs Ballantyne pushed her into it, that what happened was not of her choosing, it wasn’t voluntary.’
‘Yes, but what? I mean what was not of her choosing?’
Mrs Burgess stood up abruptly, obviously wondering how to put the next bit of the story, and to cover her embarrassment she started to clear away the tea things. Ottilie immediately set to and helped her for she had a feeling that if she was not very careful Mrs Burgess would stop talking and she never would know how she came to be put upon this earth. Carefully and methodically they stacked the tea things in the plastic washing-up bowl and returned to the sitting room, during which time Ottilie found it hard not to take hold of the woman and scream her question at her, ‘What happened? Tell me what happened?’
‘Where was I now? Ah yes. Well, as I understand it,’ said Mrs Burgess, and she crossed thick lisle-stockinged legs comfortably in front of her knowing all too well perhaps that for the next few minutes it was she who held the stage. ‘As I understand it, as it was told to me by this Kitty Shelborne, this Mrs Ballantyne-to-be, she was only a young thing still when her mother remarried suddenly. Well that might have been all right, but she was always being pestered by the stepfather, her mother’s new husband, he was always outside her bedroom waiting for her, or trying to grab her when she passed him in the hall, and so nothing must be, but she and the maid, this Kitty that I knew, they decided that there was only one way out, and that was that she would have to get married if only to get away from this Waldo, this stepfather.’
Mrs Burgess stopped and sighed, her eyes fixed on the middle of the window that overlooked the dreary street outside before turning her attention back to Ottilie.
‘It wouldn’t happen now, of course. But in those days there was no way a girl could get away from home until she was twenty-one, and it soon became clear that this young girl had to get away from him, and fast, you know? Well, at all events, apparently, it so happened that just at that moment this old Mr Ballantyne he’d just returned from abroad, a tea planter or some such I think he was, and he saw this young girl out riding in Richmond Park and fell for her, lock, stock and barrel. Course he was far too old, nearly seventy I think he must have been, but nevertheless he determined on marrying her, and she, to get away from this stepfather, she decided to accept his offer, and you couldn’t blame her, because he was very, very rich, even if he was old. Tons of money for anything she wanted, and of course being young that had great appeal. New Look clothes from Dior, anything and everything she wanted he bought her, he was that besotted about her. Anyway, they married, and your mother, Mrs Ballantyne’s maid, she went with them, on their honeymoon. And of course that’s when all the trouble started.’
Mrs Burgess nodded and sighed once more, first to herself and then to Ottilie.
‘Yes, that was when the trouble started, all right, as it was bound to do. See, girls weren’t like what they are now, they weren’t full of theirselves and knowing everything, and as I understand it this poor young girl, this Mrs Ballantyne, his wife, she was terrified. Night after night went by and she just couldn’t get herself to go through with it, she just was sick, night after night, sick as a dog—’
‘Yes, that was in
the diary, the maid’s diary.’
Mrs Burgess shot Ottilie a sharp look at that but continued after a small pause during which Ottilie understood from the look that if she wanted to hear the whole story there must be no more interruptions.
‘As I was saying, the young girl was as sick as a dog, and on and on it went, all the time they were in Paris on honeymoon, until I suppose the husband, old as he was, became suspicious and after a while I suppose he must have insisted, you know, on his rights—’ Mrs Burgess coloured a little at this. ‘Yes, he must have insisted, and really, as I say, things was very different in 1948, girls didn’t know what happened, they was nearly always terrified for most of their honeymoon, they was really. Some of them never got used to it. I know I never did. But then Mr Burgess was quite the gentleman even though he was in the City.’
Mrs Burgess nodded towards her husband’s photograph in its silver frame and refrained from continuing for a few seconds, perhaps in reverence to his memory.
‘Well, anyway, this Kitty, she told me about it one night when we was having a bit of a jolly together, and by that time I do think she knew that she was expecting you, although I certainly didn’t, and perhaps she wanted me to know? Perhaps she even knew that she might not be going to live, who knows? No-one knows the human heart, do they?
‘See, what happened was that they both, both the young girl and the maid – your mother – they both had this long brown hair and they were both slim and young, the same age practically – to tell you the truth I think that’s why I noticed your hair directly you come into the house, because of knowing this story. Anyway the night came when she couldn’t put the old gent off any more – and well, you can imagine. She was petrified this young girl, this Mrs Ballantyne, so apparently she flew into a right fury and she threatened your mother with dismissal and cried and shouted and became hysterical, and your mother realizing that nothing was going to get her young mistress into bed with the old chap and if she didn’t go through with it they’d both be on the streets – well, she hid behind the screen in the bedroom and slipped into the old gent’s bed, in her mistress’s place.’
Grand Affair Page 44
