Songs from the Violet Cafe

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘The war was a relief. My husband went away and I was free in a sense. Caroline had her grandparents, and I started to go to London more and more often, on the pretext of helping with the war effort. It’s hard to explain what it was like, the nights in the shelters, and everyone close together while the bombs went off. Not romantic, like some people have painted it, but terrifying and bleak. I met a young man who was so different from my husband, and Hugo for that matter. Or perhaps I was influenced by the knowledge that Hugo had mended his heart quickly after I left New Zealand too, with Ming, the woman from China. I’d been intrigued by this news. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t stop looking at this young man who had come to London from China to study, and hadn’t been able to return when the war broke out. He was staying with relatives over a fruit shop in Clapham Common. His body had a smell about it that I find hard to describe. I think of lilies or lemons or truffles, although it was not any of those, but something tart and sweet and altogether mysterious.

  ‘Of course, the inevitable happened. We made love — in bomb shelters, in the room that I had taken, close to where he lived, everywhere. We went off into the countryside when the summer came. I’m ashamed to say this, but it was as if Caroline didn’t exist, perhaps because she was part of my husband’s family, whom I’d come to detest.

  ‘Had I forgotten Hugo? I suppose so. I can’t really remember now, my mind’s clouded about this. Hugo had set me on a path, and this was where it had taken me.’

  ‘I can’t help asking, but do you think you were really in love with Hugo?’ asked Jessie curiously.

  Violet stiffened opposite her. ‘I beg your pardon. I loved Hugo all my life. What makes you ask?’

  ‘I met him. It just seems surprising.’

  ‘You met him the night he died.’

  ‘All the same, there’s a difference, isn’t there,’ Jessie persisted, ‘between loving someone and being in love with them? Even though you can do both. I can see I’ve offended you. But you’re a woman used to getting what you want. In some ways I’ve modelled my life on what I saw in you. Headstrong and independent. I think if you’d wanted him so badly, you would have stayed behind.’

  ‘You’re talking about you and John, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I am. Perhaps I’d have come back. But I thought he was dead, that’s the difference. Lots of us carry round romantic images of what might have been, but they’re hardly ever true, don’t you think?’

  Violet plucked in an agitated way at the rug that covered her knees. ‘You couldn’t possibly have modelled your life on mine.’

  ‘What did you expect when you began the job of changing us? Whose image were you offering us?’

  ‘I wanted you to look in the mirror and see yourselves, that’s all. That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jessie truthfully. Because what Violet said did make sense. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what happened next?’

  Violet sighed and fidgeted again. Jessie saw how exhausted she had become, as if age washed over her in waves.

  ‘I became pregnant again. I wanted this. This is a gift women seek from men who truly intoxicate them, to be filled with their children, to show the world, to be rich with the fact of what they have done together, how deep the man has gone. It’s the ultimate possession. And then, of course, they don’t want it, don’t need it, have to give it away because it was never theirs to have in the first place. I’ve heard stories about Belle Hunter. Well, I believe them. She got what was coming to her, and I don’t hold it against her. She got what she wanted from Lou, the same as I took from my lover. She didn’t need any presents from me.

  ‘But I was in a fix, of course. This was a long time ago. The war was on, I had a husband, and a daughter who somehow I’d mislaid, everyone knew that I hadn’t seen her father for a long time. Time went by and I started living over the shop in Clapham Common with the baby and his father. I wrote a letter to my mother-in-law. I said I’d had to go home to New Zealand because of an illness in my family. Or perhaps she suspected the truth. The last time I’d gone there I was already some months along the way with this pregnancy.

  ‘I wanted my little girl again. I loved the boy, but I couldn’t have them both, I’m sure you can see that. I took him to a children’s home and left him there for a day or two to see whether it would work, but I couldn’t do it.

  ‘I formed a plan in my head, to hide him away somewhere where I could get him back later on. And that’s what I did. I took him to Hugo. Perhaps you’re right, it may have just been his constancy that drew me to him, but it’s hard to let go of one’s illusions at my age, Jessie. Anyway, that’s one side of it, what happened to John. The other is that my husband’s family made sure I never saw Caroline again. My husband had come back while I was away, years had passed, and he had begun divorce proceedings. A scandal for his family, but they had to act quickly, I understand that, punish me for my desertion. I went to the house. They must have seen me coming. They wouldn’t let me in. Caroline’s not here, they said, but I was sure that she was. They said they would call the police if I came back, and I believed them. I felt that I must vanish or this girl of mine would be caught up in an endless tug of war. I worked in the restaurant trade again, this time learning a few cooking skills, doing front-of-house in a smart little French place in Soho, and from there I went to Sydney and ran a place near King’s Cross for a bit. Closing in on my boy, as it were, until the moment was right. Then I came back here, as I often did, and I met this remarkable girl, Hester, who knew it all, a self-taught original. She made it all so easy, she and Hugo. Extraordinary.’

  ‘She’s amazing all right,’ said Jessie, privately reflecting on Hester’s martyrdom. ‘So where’s John now?’

  ‘Oh, John, he’s around somewhere.’ If Violet knew, she clearly wasn’t going to tell Jessie. Perhaps, Jessie thought, she didn’t want to admit that she didn’t know.

  ‘This isn’t fair,’ Jessie said.

  Violet said then that she’d lost touch with John when she went to America with Felix Adam. She had thought of marrying Shorty Toft, but she was saved from herself. ‘He cut off my account at the shop, you know, when I said I needed time to think about his proposal. It was just an excuse of course. Poor Shorty wasn’t up to all the rumours flying round about the café.’ For a moment, she almost smiled. It was strange, she said, the amount of malice that humorous men sometimes harboured. ‘I was quite grateful to him for that bit of spite. It put some spine in me, when it came to Felix. I’d decided to go for nothing but the best.’

  Jessie closed her eyes, trying to recall the laconic doctor and his waxy-faced wife, and found it hard to be convinced.

  ‘John had his own family,’ Violet said. ‘They cared for him after the accident. I had thought of him as dead, like the others, but he wasn’t. Nobody bothered to tell me for three weeks.’ This was how she put it, that his family had closed around him, kept him hidden and maintained silence. She had supposed that the brothers were sending her a message — that he didn’t belong to her. When asked why they did it, they had told the police that they couldn’t read English and didn’t know that John was missing. ‘It was rubbish, of course. Perhaps I was wrong to try and lay claim to him again. Still, I’d had him for a little while. And now I want you to find Caroline for me. Eh, Jessie? How about it? I think you’re the right person.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I’m not a detective.’

  ‘Oh, you can do it all right, you’re good at asking questions these days. If you would do me that one favour.’

  ‘John might still want to know about you. More than Caroline.’ From where she was sitting, none of it seemed like a good idea.

  Violet sighed, her eyes suddenly tired. ‘John had a mother. It’s best left. Caroline didn’t. I want you to try and find her. You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child.’

  ‘Well, yes I can,’ said Jessie.

  ‘Oh well, then you must tell me about it sometime.’
Violet closed her eyes, her head fell forward and, in the space of a blink, she was gently snoring, her crooked hands clasped across her stomach.

  Marianne rang her one morning. She was back living in London. ‘I’ve heard on the grapevine that Lou’s dead.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Up in north Thailand.’

  Jessie had known that Lou was long gone from Phnom Penh. He’d been robbed too many times to make it worth his staying. ‘He wasn’t all bad,’ she said.

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. You should do something about Bopha.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve rung me? To tell me the coast’s clear.’

  ‘Well, it was never not clear.’

  ‘That’s not what you told me.’

  ‘I just think it will be easier. Anyway, Bopha’s old enough to know what she wants, isn’t she? Hey, I’m taking Alannah to the zoo, do you want to come with us? We could feed the monkeys.’ Alannah was Marianne’s first grandchild.

  ‘I’m not mad about zoos,’ said Jessie, who had had to leave restaurants in Cambodia because of caged sun bears, chained and grieving. Saving sun bears had become one of her causes.

  ‘Well, they’re interesting places. Never mind. So shall we do lunch? Go to a movie? Would you like to be a lady who does lunch with me, Jessie?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Jessie.

  In the end, it was decided that Bopha would go to high school in London, and back to Phnom Penh during the holidays. This was less trouble to arrange than Jessie had expected. As if it might have always been a live possibility. At first, Jessie was designated her guardian. She had decided that the time for a more formal procedure had passed, that possession was not what Bopha would want.

  One Sunday morning, Jessie sat in the apartment, surrounded by the morning’s newspapers. Bopha came out of the shower, her head wrapped in a towel, her face shining with steam. Soon she would be seventeen. She had grown long-legged and slim, and moved with a slow, elegant grace. Like a dancer, Jessie thought. Or a nun. She was trying to decide whether to go back to Cambodia the following year, or to go to university. Privately, Jessie hoped university would win out, that perhaps she could go back later, if that was what she still wanted, but Bopha must decide for herself. I want you to make up your own mind, she had said more than once.

  ‘What’s that you’re reading?’ Bopha asked, coming to read over her shoulder.

  Jessie folded the newspaper over. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Oh, never mind, it’s some frightful story about a Russian adoption gone wrong. These kids who are adopted out of their own countries get into some dreadful difficulties. It’s not as if they can go back.’

  ‘You’ve got a thing about adoption, haven’t you?’ Bopha said.

  ‘Well, I was adopted once myself, and it wasn’t a great success.’

  ‘Is that why you never adopted me?’ Bopha asked.

  Jessie glanced up at her, startled. ‘Partly,’ she said, slowly, ‘and partly because you’ve been raised by the nuns.’ There was another reason, of course, but she didn’t want Bopha to know about Lou, and the way she had sought him out again to find the nuns. The way her knowledge of Lou had dogged her footsteps. ‘Well, you know, I was a single woman too, not necessarily the ideal mother for you. Would you have wanted me to adopt you?’

  Bopha’s eyes were full of tears. ‘I didn’t think you wanted me enough.’

  ‘Bopha, that’s not true.’ Seeing how upset the girl was, she said, ‘It’s not too late, I guess.’

  ‘D’you mean that? Would you?’

  ‘Are you planning to adopt me?’ Jessie said.

  When Bopha said, ‘Yes, I want you to be my mother,’ Jessie’s heart lifted, as people’s do when they are nearing the end of a journey.

  Jessie looked for Caroline for a long time. After she had been to New Zealand to see Violet, she searched telephone books and electoral rolls, and placed an advertisement in the Times but nothing happened. All of this was intense and time-consuming. At some point, she decided that it was all too much. From then on, she put aside three days a year which she called her Find Caroline days. There had been an accumulation of these days, years and years of them.

  She was shopping with Bopha in Harrod’s for a new evening bag, when something happened that made her stop looking. The Atchesons were holding a retirement party for Brian in their Hyde Park apartment that evening. Brian was taking an early retirement. Jessie sensed a disappointment that he had never made it to ambassador status. There would be more time for their grandchildren, they said gamely.

  Bopha had wandered away from her side, interested in acquiring a new duvet. She was always cold in London at the beginning of each trip, even when it was summer. Jessie picked up a bag that took her eye, looking inside to check the compartments, and glanced up, seeking a saleswoman. Instead, she saw a woman standing beside her, checking the beadwork on another bag. For an instant, Jessie took her to be Violet, the Violet she had first known, or perhaps a little older. Only the hair was different, a stylish ragged bob; otherwise she could have passed for her, a trifle haggard and thin, but beautiful, the kind of woman who would attract attention anywhere. An artist of some kind, Jessie thought, for she wore a bright silky jacket, and her fingernails appeared to have a trace of paint beneath them. ‘Caroline,’ said Jessie. ‘Is it you, Caroline?’

  The woman straightened up, startled, and looked at Jessie with a cool stare in her blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘Are you by any chance Caroline Trench?’ Jessie asked. ‘I mean, was that ever your name?’

  The woman, who had seemed momentarily frozen to the spot, lifted one expressive eyebrow and her shoulder, in a half-shrug, much as Violet would have. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘But you’re Caroline?’

  ‘My name is Caroline May,’ said the woman. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘I’d like to give you my card,’ said Jessie. ‘I’ve been looking for this person for years. Perhaps you could ring me if you ever hear of her.’

  ‘Please go away,’ the woman said, her tone flat and cold. ‘If you don’t, I’ll call store security.’ She walked away from Jessie without taking the card.

  Your daughter is alive, Jessie wrote to Violet. She is an artist and a very beautiful woman, and I’m sure you would be proud of her.

  She didn’t think Violet would hear this letter when it was read to her. From what Hester wrote, Violet didn’t give the impression of hearing anything much any more. Nobody really knows what she hears now, she had said in her last letter. Jessie thought that if she could hear this message, it would be enough.

  PART SEVEN

  THE TRUFFLE GATHERERS

  2002

  It’s hard to believe anyone could have lived that long. As if Violet Trench couldn’t master the art of dying. Yet in the end she has done it, after ninety-five years of living. She went like a lady, the woman at the rest home tells Hester. No complaints. She wasn’t one to complain. Hester says this at the funeral, her cheeks glowing with pride. She is the one who has seen Violet through it. More or less. Hester wishes she had been there when she died, but all of this has been going on a very long time. Goodness, it’s twenty years since she first caught Violet putting washing powder in the peas instead of salt. And they all know how it is, you simply can’t be in the right place every time. Hester is just glad she has been there for Violet. Bless her. She’s been a wonderful woman, who’s played her part in all their lives.

  ‘Sanctimonious claptrap,’ hisses Marianne, seated in the front row beside Jessie. They are in a small chapel attached to a funeral home. The casket in front of them is made of the best dark wood, decorated with a spray of Prince of Wales violets, the big strong variety.

  Hester has rung everyone who she thinks ‘ought to know’ that Violet has died, not that she expects them to come of course, those who are too busy or too far away.

  Jessie rings
Marianne to cancel lunch because she is flying out to New Zealand that evening. Marianne is not one of the people Hester has contacted. ‘You’re crazy,’ Marianne says, because it is only a week since Jessie flew home from Bopha’s wedding in Cambodia. ‘You’re too old to be traipsing all round the world the way you do, you’ll get blood clots.’

  When Jessie says briskly that of course she is going, she might be old, but you’re only as old as you let yourself be, Marianne says, ‘All right, calm down. I’ll meet you at the airport.’

  ‘You’ll do what?’ says Jessie. ‘I don’t believe it. You haven’t been there for nearly forty years.’ Jessie is referring to the town, not the country, because she knows that from time to time Marianne visits Sybil in New Zealand. The whole subject of Sybil is closed to her. Marianne behaves as if she had a perfectly normal childhood; her mother is an engaging and elegant old woman, much loved by her grandchildren.

  ‘I need to make sure the old witch is really buried,’ Marianne says of Violet, ‘besides it would be a bit of a gig, wouldn’t it, you and me, just like old times. We are travelling business class, aren’t we Jessie? If you’re doing any of that crazy economy stuff, I’ll upgrade you when I book.’