by David Smith
She continued to work the clubs around the river, like her mother before her, from the age of fifteen onwards. But she was still unsure whether she could make is as a soloist. With the encouragement of the minister, she entered college instead to study for a diploma in pharmacy, but she was soon bored and dropped out after a year. She met an agent who took an unhealthy interest in her. But at least he was good at his job and found her work. She began to pursue her singing career again, touring for a while with a minor Motown group around the Midwest. It was at this time that she made her first professional recordings, initially as a backing singer and then in her own right.
About that time, Pearl also developed a strong desire to find out more about her natural father. Her mother was still completely silent on the subject and refused all pleas for information. But with the money she was now earning, Pearl could afford to hire a private detective. He was only too glad to spend her money trawling the clubs where Esther used to sing, looking for information. Eventually he identified the names of two or three possible candidates. The most promising lead was a well-educated architect, a man of some local renown, who now practised in the suburbs. In his youth, he had spent a few too many evenings with his college friends in the blues clubs where Esther sang along the Detroit River. Apparently he had enjoyed many a dalliance with the singers there and was still remembered less than fondly by them; he had earned the nickname ‘Ninepin’ amongst the girls on account of his multiple conquests and premature lack of hair.
The man the detective had identified, a certain Arthur Hathorne Troyte, had an obedient wife, lived in a nice home in Ann Arbor, ran a classic 1960s Lincoln Continental, and had two beautiful all-American kids at high school. He was to all intents and purposes a pillar of the local community. The detective had also found out that his family had heritage. In fact he was from deep New England roots – the Hathornes who had reputedly crossed with the puritans to Boston. One of his ancestors was the only Salem judge to have never repented of his actions in the famous witch trials; another was the better known Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American novelist, who had added a ‘w’ to his name to escape the embarrassing infamy of his forefathers. Here was the uncanny link to Hawthorne House.
However, now that she had this much information Pearl was no longer satisfied just with an investigation. She felt there was a settling of scores required, but how could she be sure that they had tracked down the right man? She became even more determined not to let this go now she that had a target in sight. However, the detective advised her against a direct approach given Troyte’s senior position in society, her mother’s long silence and the lack of any previous attempt to make contact. So instead, she and the detective devised a strategy to put him off his guard and try and establish through a sting whether he really was her father or not. They found out that Arthur was suffering from a debilitating skin disease as a result of his earlier sexual exploits and to get close to him, the detective would trick him into believing that he was a consultant specialising in such cases.
It worked. After a few sessions, the private detective let slip that he knew something of Troyte’s previous background. Arthur at first reacted with fury and denied knowing anything about Esther and her daughter and even when shown a photograph genuinely did not seem to recognise Esther at all. But the detective was persistent and clever and with the heavy threat of revelations to his family, Arthur finally reluctantly agreed to meet Pearl.
Pearl knew that she needed to get her mother to come along to this meeting as well if she was going to be sure. But she equally knew that if she told Esther who she was about to meet, she would not agree to go. So she made up a story about getting her mother to come with her to meet a potential sponsor for a record deal. The meeting place was a popular lunch stop in Greek Street in downtown Detroit.
As soon as she saw Troyte, Esther recognised him at once and reacted hysterically, starting to abuse and then scream at him across the table. She tore herself away from Pearl’s hold and started to land blows on his shocked face, before storming out of the restaurant cursing. In a state of shock at this violent outburst, but still not being clear himself that he knew who this woman or her daughter was, Troyte continued to deny vehemently to Pearl and the detective that he had anything to do with them. The detective started to argue with him loudly.
To avoid an even bigger scene in front of the amazed and prosperous lunch crowd, Troyte suddenly changed his tune. He blurted out a rash promise to pay them a substantial sum to keep silent and leave him alone, before hurriedly walking out of the restaurant himself. Pearl looked at the detective in amazement; she had not really been after money, it was really about finding her father, but given the turn of events she quickly began to recalculate her next move.
Even after this dramatic meeting, her mother continued to deny that this man was Pearl’s father but equally would not explain her amazing behaviour or how she knew him. After a week or so of arguments, Pearl decided belatedly that she had better drop the whole thing. In any case, she had now decided that she really wanted nothing to do with this man. Despite what her mother said, he had now confirmed in her mind by his actions, if not his words, that he was the love cheat. Still, money was money and with the sum he agreed to pay them for their silence, Pearl was able to move to New York with her mother. She agreed as part of that settlement to make no further attempts to contact him. To her dying day, her mother would never speak about the incident again.
Now thrown into a whole new world of possibility, Pearl soon began to get jobs singing at off-Broadway venues and jazz clubs like the Blue Morocco. Her mother spent her time in contemplation and charitable work with the poor and the lonely of SoHo. Pearl was noticed by Randy Benjamin at the Blue Chord club in Greenwich Village. After a trial period, the club booked Pearl on a semi-permanent basis, singing four nights a week to the post-theatre dinner crowds. At first, the money was not enough to live on and she had to supplement her income by working in a pharmacy during the day. But her reputation spread rapidly and soon she was playing for playwrights and presidents, ambassadors and bankers and further record deals beckoned. She got herself a proper agent. Cool and strong, singer and storyteller, happy black courage in a white man’s world, she rapidly became the darling of every Kubla Khan and pleasure seeker along the entertainment venues that lined 42nd Street. Within a few years, she had made enough money to set her mother up in a nice brownstone apartment overlooking Central Park while she prepared for a grand tour of Europe. Once across the Atlantic, she repeated and built further on her success and quickly gained a new following in the capitals of the old continent, feted as the new Anita Baker, a blues and jazz sensation. There were television appearances on French and German TV, recording several albums of soulful songs. A new transatlantic star was born
*
Now approaching fifty, Pearl is still physically striking and a mature and brilliant singer. She has the face to rival the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men. A mulatto Amazon of weird and haunting beauty, with deep black locks and a powerful body customarily encrusted with scarlet and gold, she is given to wearing flamboyant native African clothing on stage and designer couture off-stage. On her fingers she wears rings of every shape and colour, but the one she still values the most is the simple ring on her middle finger. It is solid gold, with a great scarlet E picked out with rubies in a field of diamonds, in honour of her mother who had died the previous year. Tipped off out of the blue by an informer about Troyte’s planned trip to Europe, she had come up with a scheme, now that her mother was dead, to exact further revenge on him. Importantly, she now has the money and means to make her mother’s former lover suffer a whole lot more for his past sins.
Pearl had to admit that she found The Holly Hotel a little disappointing compared to her normal standard of accommodation at the George V or Claridges – the lodgings were fashionable enough, but rather limited in point of space and conveniences. She spent the afternoon wanderi
ng round the town’s boutique shops and pleasure gardens, which were amusing enough, if provincial in range and ambition. She also sought the assistance of a very knowledgeable young man in the computer store and bought a trunk appropriate for a travelling lady, as well as a number of other specific items on her growing shopping list.
On her tour, she inspected the statue of Queen Victoria, who apparently enjoyed her visit to the town so much that she had granted it the right to use the prefix ‘Royal’. She read on a plaque that the queen’s statue had been moved an inch on its plinth by a German bomb in 1940, but her expression had reportedly remained steadfastly unamused by this indignity. Pearl visited the Pump Rooms and sampled the saline brew ‘rediscovered’ by Benjamin Satchwell in 1784, apparently a mild laxative and cure for rabies, which had made the town’s fortune in the early nineteenth century. In her view, it could hardly now pass for ditch water, let alone spa water. She admired the restored Hammam with its striking red and black tiles, the frigidarium and tepidarium, there were separate facilities of course for ladies and gentlemen.
She asked at the information bureau next to the library about which excursions were available from the town. The agent recommended to her a rather overwritten flyer that described a guided tour over a landscape of ‘smooth undulations, windmills, corn-grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farmyards, hayricks,’ visiting Warwick Castle where ‘grim knights and warriors looked scowling on,’ with further stops at ‘several admired points of view in the neighbourhood,’ to take in the views and then ‘a stroll amongst the haunted ruins of Kenilworth,’ that once hosted the Faerie Queene.
It all sounds very nice, she thought, but perhaps this is all for future, more relaxed visits. Before that she had more urgent business to attend to. The information booklet on the art gallery at Compton Verney was however one that caught her eye and a little more relevant to her own immediate proposed agenda. To finish her afternoon of exploration she took a tourist’s carriage ride to the beacon at Newbold Comyn to admire the views from this local highpoint.
The rule of law or law of the ruler,
Natural harmony or invention
Of man. What is fair is often crueller,
Revenge, sexual orientation,
Colour, gender the pursuit of ration-
ality. Fate or divine providence?
I am she who will bring retribution,
An eye for an eye to maintain balance.
Justice always proper, will regret my absence.
Chapter Eight
Queen Mab – (Allegretto) ‘W.N.’
[Enter Nurse, to the chamber]
Nurse: Madam!
Juliet: Nurse?
Nurse: Your lady mother is coming to your chamber:
The day is broke; be wary, look about.
[Exit]
Juliet: Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
‘MAB, MAB, busy old MAB!’ I heard Winnie crying.
‘Winnie, what is it? Calm down love,’ I shouted at her down the corridor of the nursing home.
‘MAB! MAB, busy old MAB!’
‘OK, OK, Winnie, I’m coming!’ I called.
‘I don’t know what’s come over her – she’s just this minute started screaming her head off,’ shouted the bemused Czech nurse as I ran down the corridor towards Winnie’s bedroom. It was nearly the end of my shift, what had seemed like the longest shift ever and I was looking forward to meeting Penn at my bedsit in less than an hour.
‘MAB!’ something in her cry curdled my blood.
*
When I reached Winnie’s room, she was standing at the window, her white nightdress billowing insanely in the wind, as if trapped in a tragic scream. For a second, I marvelled at this vision of innocent sensuality, her creamy white shoulders and svelte figure; her face glowing with the same luminosity that once made her a star. But I quickly began to worry that she might be trying to jump, her hair was entangled in the net curtains, blown about through the half-open frame of the sash window. Luckily, the window had been fitted with blocks as a precaution, so that it could open no higher than six inches. But all the same, in this state anything could happen. Winnie was laughing dementedly, a merry little trilly laugh, while shaking uncontrollably.
‘Please, Winnie – come away from that window, you silly girl…’ She jumped away in surprise at my voice.
*
The initial crisis over, I calmed down and tried to speak more soothingly as I approached her. There were tears streaming down the actress’s cheeks, her eyes fixed intently on something in the street. Her face was aflame with passion.
She turned to me and began to recite as if back on the stage again with the same intensity of delivery and focus as when she was a twenty year old straight out of the National Youth Theatre. Her normally gentle voice was projected with power, both intimate and rapturous. It was somewhat scary.
Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid:
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
‘Sshh Winnie, come on please calm yourself, what’s happened? Has something given you a shock?’
Although I was relatively new to this nursing home I was already terribly fond of this remarkable woman. I looked quickly around the room to see what might have caused this sudden change in Winnie’s temperament. Her room was a real treasure trove, drawers bulging with letters, shelves of diaries and theatrical programmes, piles of crochet lying patient and unworked on the bedside cabinet. There was a mahogany bureau covered with photographs of Winnie with her leading men, captured in scenes from the plays that she had starred in. The walls of peeling plaster were set with yellowing alcoves filled with objects of chintzy cheeriness. It was a mess and I loved it but I couldn’t see anything out of place.
I still couldn’t fathom this sudden change in Winnie’s behaviour; she was normally so sedate and gentle. I scanned the medicine chart on the shelf; nothing unusual there that I could see. Winnie was one of our long-term patients with advanced early-onset dementia. The home was always extra careful with anti-depressants for such patients because of the risk of a fall. The chart showed that she has been given no more than her normal dosage that morning, yet her actions suggested that she was having some sort of paranoid hallucination. Although I was a fully qualified SRN, studying to be an Admiral Nurse, I’d never seen anything like this during my training or care of dementia patients.
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
I searched again, but still I could see nothing out of place in the room. Winnie now began to point resolutely towards the open window again. I walked over and looked out at the road below, and immediately saw the cause of Winnie’s anxiety. There had been some sort of an accident. A motorcyclist lay across the central reservation and another man was on the ground, people gathering around them.
‘Winnie, did you see it happen? Did you see the accident?’
‘MAB,’ Winnie said again, this time much more calmly. ‘All in black.’
‘Come on, come and sit on the bed and let me get you some tea,’ I said, trying to get her away from the window while looking out of it myself. I had no idea what this MAB business meant, however.
Eventually I managed to calm Winnie enough that I could leave her in the care of the Czech nurse while I reported what the actress had seen to the manager of the nursing home. Fortunately, the young policewoman that arrived a few minutes after 9am was none other than my good friend Penny; she was immediately very kind and reassuring with the actress.
‘So what do you think she sa
w, Izzie?’ asked Penny.
‘I can’t be sure, but I suspect she saw whatever hit those poor young lads. Are they going to be OK?’ I asked, but Penny shook her head.
‘No, and they are not so poor or innocent either. We believe they may have committed a murder on Clarendon Square a few minutes before the accident.’
‘A murder on the square? Oh my God, Penny, who was it?’ I replied, quite shocked.
‘Nobody we know. The victim was one of Sir William’s guests. He was stabbed then shot. Do you think Winnie will be able to remember anything else? We had a report of someone getting out of and maybe back into the car that hit them before it raced off.’
I hesitated, truthfully more concerned for Winnie’s welfare than answering Penny’s questions right then, but equally I still had something else on my mind.
‘I don’t know, she’s really behaving quite oddly and is certainly not herself at all. Maybe I can ask her when she’s calmed down a bit more. She is normally so lucid and calm. It’s really sad; she still has a fantastic long-term memory but forgets things that have happened only a few minutes earlier.’
‘Dementia?’
‘Sort of, she was quite famous in her time, you know. She played Ophelia, Lady M and of course Juliet, all the classic roles. Look at all these photographs. She must have been quite a heartthrob, she was even considered for the part of Juliet in the film by Zeffirelli, but she lost out to Olivia Hussey. To think, she used to learn all those lines off by heart and now…’
