Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

Betty put a finger to her lips, touching the spot where John Brightly’s lips had brushed against hers. She was numb from head to toe. First Dom, then Candy, now John. She tried to think of something to say, but failed.

  ‘I’m really sorry, OK?’ said John. ‘Bad timing. I just thought ...’

  ‘What?’ said Betty.

  ‘I don’t know what I thought. But clearly I was wrong.’

  ‘No,’ said Betty. ‘No, it’s just ...’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, ‘go back to bed. Get some sleep.’

  ‘No, I want to ...’

  ‘Seriously, Betty, go to sleep. Forget about it. Please.’

  She stared at him for a moment, at the strong set of him, the shape of him silhouetted through the window, the fall of his shoulders. She had no idea what had just happened and no idea what it meant. But suddenly she was tired. She had nothing left to give to the day.

  ‘Good night, John,’ she said, climbing up her ladder.

  ‘Good night, Betty,’ said John, still staring through the window.

  The following morning, John was gone and so were his meagre possessions. Outside, his stand was empty. Betty sighed and headed for work.

  Monday was Donny’s day at nursery so Betty dropped him off there, and then she took the two girls to a Tumble Tots class in a church hall in Hampstead, and it was there, while she sat with Astrid on her lap, watching Acacia climbing up a mountain of soft multicoloured cubes, that Clara Davies called her.

  ‘Hello,’ said a woman with a strong London accent. ‘Is that Betty?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Betty, ‘it is.’

  ‘Oh, hello, this is Clara. Clara Davies. I got a message, from my brother Derek, to call you?’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Betty. ‘Yes!’ She grabbed Astrid and the phone and took them both to a quiet corner of the hall.

  ‘He said something about an inheritance.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Betty, ‘that’s right. I’ve got some news for you. I wondered if it would be possible to meet up with you?’

  ‘Well, yes, maybe. But I’d need to know more. I mean, who’s it from?’

  ‘It’s from my grandmother,’ said Betty. ‘You didn’t know her. But she knew your father. A long time ago.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Yes, not Edward Minchin. Your real father.’

  ‘Oh, my word. My goodness. How peculiar. My real father.’

  ‘How much do you know, about your real father?’

  There was a small silence on the line and Betty moved Astrid onto her other knee.

  ‘I just know that he was a sailor. From the Caribbean.’

  ‘A sailor?’ said Betty.

  ‘Yes. A “boss-eyed, scurvy-riddled sailor” as my father used to describe him.’ She laughed wryly.

  Betty inhaled. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Listen. Can I meet you? I’ve got so much to tell you. And I’ve also got something to give you. Something my grandmother kept for a very long time.’

  Clara Davies sighed. ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘Although I just got back from holiday, I’ve got so much to do ...’

  ‘It will only take a few minutes,’ Betty said. ‘I can meet you anywhere.’

  Clara sighed again and then she said, ‘Yes. All right then. Come here. What time?’

  ‘I finish work at seven o’clock.’

  ‘Come here at eight then. I’m in Battersea. Do you know it?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Betty, thinking of her visit to Peter Lawler’s widow all those weeks ago, ‘yes, I do.’

  She hung up a minute later and put her hand into her bag, checking for the small ancient book that was now, finally, after seventy-four years, about to be reunited with its intended recipient, and she smiled.

  58

  TELEGRAM

  Arlette STOP Godfrey’s baby born STOP A girl STOP Clara Tatiana STOP Healthy and well STOP That was as much as they would tell me STOP

  Minu

  ARLETTE FOLDED THE telegram and she smiled. Thank God, she thought to herself, thank God. A small chink of light had forced its way through the darkness. The baby was safe. Her mother was safe. A small part of Godfrey remained.

  She thought of the baby constantly over the course of the next few days. She tried to picture her, wondered if she would have the tight dark curls of her father or the smooth brown locks of her mother. She wondered how dark she would be, what colour her eyes were. She passed the children’s clothes shop in St Peter Port every day and eyed the bootees and the mittens, the tiny hats and hand-knitted layettes.

  She stared into perambulators and gasped at the tininess and preciousness of new infants. She thought about the baby so much that she ached with it. And she knew that tied in irrevocably with her obsession with the idea of Godfrey’s baby girl across the Channel were her own unformed feelings about the baby she had carried and lost nine months ago. The tiny blue scrap who she hadn’t been allowed so much as to glance upon. She had been glad at the time, glad to be spared the fate of a loveless, sexless marriage to a man she despised. But although her head had made sense of it all, her heart still yearned for the thing she’d been expecting that had not materialised: the baby in her arms.

  Her obsession grew as the days passed. She caught the eye of a black-faced sailor in a St Peter Port alleyway one evening at dusk and for a moment she was tempted to take him from the street into a room and to make with him a baby just like Clara Tatiana, a baby like Godfrey’s, a beautiful brown baby. The thought passed in and out of her consciousness like a bullet, gone before she’d acknowledged it. But she feared herself growing mad with it, with this need to be involved, to be a part of Clara Tatiana.

  And then one day, a week after Clara’s birth, she walked into a bookshop and she said to the man who sat behind the desk wearing a threadbare suit and broken spectacles, ‘Excuse me, but do you have any stories for children, about a little black girl?’

  The man looked at her aghast and removed his broken spectacles. ‘About what, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘About a little black girl,’ she repeated. ‘A storybook.’

  He replaced his spectacles and huffed and puffed and said, ‘What an odd request. No. I’m sure we don’t. Although, if you’re not fussed about gender, I could offer you this ...’ He pulled a book from a shelf and passed it to her. The book was called The Story of Little Black Sambo and featured on its cover an illustration of a coal-black boy with a mop of matching hair and legs like string, holding a green umbrella and beaming brightly with vivid yellow teeth. Arlette recoiled. The image was alarming and unsettling. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, that’s not right at all. I was hoping for something a little more ... realistic.’

  The bookseller put his hands into the pockets of his old suit jacket and rocked back on his heels. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I mean ...’ she faltered. She didn’t know what she meant. What she wanted, she supposed, was a book about a little girl who looked exactly like the fantasy girl she’d spent all week creating inside her own head. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said eventually. ‘I just want a book for a little girl. A book she could grow to love as she grew up. A book she would like to keep for ever and read to her own daughters.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said the bookseller, ‘you couldn’t go too far wrong with this. It’s one of our bestsellers. Has been for years.’ He put another book into her hands. Pollyanna. The character on the front of the jacket was far from black, but she was lovely to behold, a joyful girl clutching a basket of flowers, swinging through a sun-dappled meadow. It was bright and uplifting, just what a girl born into a grimy Soho almshouse to a father she would never meet might like to own.

  ‘What is the story about?’ she asked, turning it over in her hands.

  ‘It is about,’ he said, ‘a very glad girl.’

  Arlette paid for the book and watched as the dusty man wrapped it and tied it with ribbon. When she got home she wrote carefully on the inside cover and then, before she rewrapped it, a thought occurred to her. Sh
e pulled out the drawer on her dressing table and she put her fingers to the very back. From there she pulled out a tiny square of muslin. She put it to her nose and breathed in deeply, taking in the smell of Godfrey Pickle one last time, before sliding it in between the pages of the book, wrapping it and sending it to the house on St Anne’s Court.

  Dear Miss De La Mare,

  I thank you for this gift. I cannot aksept it. Sandy is gonn and his dorter is now sum one elsis. We won’t tork of him agin in our hows. Please do not bother us agin. You are not welcum.

  Yorse,

  Esther Jones

  59

  1995

  CLARA DAVIES LIVED in a tiny cottage off Battersea High Street. She was tall and elegant, with wiry silver hair, which she wore tied back in a bun, and was dressed in black trousers, a black T-shirt and a turquoise belted cardigan. On her feet were red patent pumps with gold buckles.

  Betty stared at the pumps in surprise, thinking how much Arlette would have liked them.

  ‘Betty?’ she said, in a rough London accent, that didn’t quite match her elegant appearance. ‘Lovely to meet you. Come in.’

  She held the door open and Betty entered. ‘I’m really sorry I’m late,’ she said, brushing her feet against the doormat, ‘I work as a nanny and my boss was a bit late home.’

  ‘Never mind, never mind, you’re here now.’ She led her into a tiny living room where a tray of tea and biscuits was neatly laid out. Everything in her house was perfect: floral curtains, antique pine furnishings, a smoke-stained fireplace, a vase of yellow tulips and pictures everywhere of children and grandchildren, of holidays and Christmases and good times.

  Clara poured her tea into a chinoiserie cup and passed it to her. She looked like Godfrey, Betty thought, or at least she looked like the portrait of Godfrey that Gideon Worsley’s nephew had shown him in that book in his shop. She had the hooked nose, although much smaller and neater, and the heavy-lidded eyes. She was strikingly, remarkably beautiful even in her seventies and Betty’s eyes then rested upon a studio portrait, in black and white, of Clara in her youth.

  ‘Is that you?’ she asked, pointing at it.

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s me all right. Back in my heyday.’ She laughed warmly. ‘Had that on my Z-card.’

  ‘Z-card?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, my modelling card.’

  ‘You were a model?’

  ‘Yes, well, sort of. Not much call for mixed-race girls in my day. But I did a bit of that, a bit of singing, bit of acting. I was a regular little showgirl, really.’ She chuckled and poured herself a cup of tea.

  Betty smiled at her. ‘You were very beautiful,’ she said. ‘If you were modelling today ...’

  ‘Yeah, I’d probably be on the front of Vogue or something. But that’s that. That’s the way it was. Life moves on. I’ve had a good life so I can’t complain about anything really. Though the money these supermodels make these days, I could have done with a bit of that.’ She laughed out loud and Betty, at the mention of money, pulled out her handbag.

  ‘So, listen, first things first. This inheritance.’

  Clara’s eyes lit up. ‘Well, yes. All very mysterious. Are you sure you’ve got the right Clara Davies?’ She laughed again.

  Betty laughed too. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Quite sure. Although the name on the will is actually Clara Jones. Or Clara Pickle.’

  ‘Clara Pickle!’ She laughed even louder then. ‘What sort of name is that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Betty, gently, ‘that’s the name you’d have had if your father hadn’t died.’

  Clara put her hands to her throat and roared out laughing. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she breathed, ‘Clara Pickle. Can you imagine! Clara Pickle. Well, I had a close escape there then, didn’t I? I always thought Minchin was bad. But Pickle ...’

  ‘Godfrey Pickle. That was his name.’

  Clara stopped laughing and became more serious. She narrowed her eyes at Betty and said, ‘How do you know all this? Who are you?’

  ‘I told you, my grandmother was a friend of Godfrey’s. I think ...’ she paused, passed her hand over the book in her handbag, ‘... I think they were lovers. I don’t know. She never mentioned it while she was alive. But she hired a private eye to find you, when she was alive.’ She shrugged. ‘And also, at some point she put you in her will. So whatever their relationship with each other, it must have been important in some way.’

  Clara nodded, her teacup still held in her hand where it had been suspended for the past minute.

  ‘And anyway,’ Betty continued. ‘At some point, while my grandmother still had her health, she sent this private eye some bits and pieces from her time in London – photos, flyers – but it seems that the investigator died before he ever managed to find anything to lead him to you. His ex-wife had been sitting with all this stuff in a box for years, wondering what to do with it.’

  ‘And then you came along?’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Betty. ‘The will states that you had to be found in a year, and if neither you nor any of your successors were found within that time, then, well, the inheritance would revert to me.’

  Clara’s eyes widened. ‘My God, you daft ha’p’orth, why did you find me?’ she laughed again, loud and rich.

  ‘Legally incumbent and all that,’ she replied. ‘If you’d ever found out that you’d been mentioned in this will and no one had made any effort to find you, you could have sued. Me,’ she finished, with a small laugh. ‘So I came over in April and set out to find you. And eight weeks later, here I am.’

  Clara put down her teacup and smiled at Betty. ‘Maybe a new career for you then. Private investigator.’

  Betty smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘So, listen then, here it is ...’ She pulled out the will and passed it to Clara. ‘Proof, that I’m not a nut-job.’

  Clara read the will, slowly and silently. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘St Anne’s Court. Soho?’

  ‘It used to be a home,’ Betty explained, ‘for unwed mothers. I think it’s where you were born.’

  Clara put a hand to her heart, as though finally, the significance of this meeting was making itself felt.

  ‘And who are all these other people?’

  ‘That’s Jolyon, my stepfather, and Alison is my mum.’

  Clara carried on reading and smiled as she read Arlette’s closing line about jazz and dancing at her funeral.

  ‘She sounds like a fun lady, your grandmother.’

  ‘Well, no, she wasn’t. Not really. She was quite proper. Quite stern. Didn’t really like anyone. But she did like me,’ Betty said. ‘She liked me very much. I think ...’ She paused, a thought occurring to her, fresh and new. ‘She always used to say she’d wanted a girl. I think, in her heart, she always felt she should have had you.’

  A small silence fell and Betty sipped her tea.

  ‘So,’ said Clara. ‘The big question ...’

  Betty put down her cup and sat up straight, glad to be pulled out of her reverie and back to the point in question. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, according to my stepfather, the sum of money in the bank account she stipulates is around about ten thousand pounds.’

  Clara gasped. ‘Well, I never,’ she said.

  ‘But there’s also some pension funds and saving schemes and a lot of other stuff that he’s still sorting out from her estate. It could be a lot more than that.’

  Clara gasped again.

  ‘And there’s something else.’ Betty reached back into her bag. ‘I found this, in Arlette’s wardrobe. I realised when I saw the inscription that there was a connection with the girl in the will, so I brought it with me.’

  She passed the book to Clara, who stared at it tenderly.

  ‘Look,’ said Betty, ‘look at the inscription.’

  Clara opened the book and read it. A sheen of tears came to her eyes. ‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘What a lovely, lovely thing.’ She flicked through the book and smiled. ‘It’s so old,’ she said, ‘I’ve never seen such an old bo
ok before.’

  ‘I’ve had it valued. It’s worth only about forty pounds, but could be more now that we know the story behind the inscription. That would add to its value. Because there’s so much to this story, Clara, so much I don’t think you know.’

  ‘Shall I get us a glass of wine?’

  Betty smiled and nodded.

  Clara brought the wine in two small glasses and handed one to Betty. She also put a bowl of salted nuts on the table between them. ‘So,’ she said, ‘tell me what you know.’

  ‘Well, why don’t we start with you telling me what you know, so that I don’t spring anything too shocking on you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Clara, gently running her hand up and down the book on her lap. ‘I really don’t know anything. Just what I said. My mum was taken somewhat against her will by a “dirty black boss-eyed sailor”. That’s what my dad told us. Just the once mind, sat us all down when I was about six, when I asked why I was black and the others weren’t. Sat us all down and told us that. Told us never to mention it to Mum, said she couldn’t talk about it, even now. Said he’d taken pity on Mum, and married her even with the black bastard baby. I mean, you can see why I didn’t want to dwell on it too much, can’t you? You can see why we didn’t talk about it.’ She stopped and looked up at Betty questioningly. ‘So,’ she said, ‘go on ...’

  Betty took a deep breath. The woman sitting in front of her was seventy-three years old, she’d had children and grandchildren, she’d lived a long, full, colourful life and it seemed insolent, in a way, for a stripling like Betty, a girl who’d done nothing and gone nowhere, to be rearranging the entire skeleton of this fine woman’s history.

  ‘Your father,’ she began, ‘was not a sailor. He was a musician. A clarinettist. He played with a world-famous jazz orchestra. Your father played in front of the King of England. He played in every city in this country. He had London at his feet. Your father was not a boss-eyed sailor. Or a rapist. He was a legend.’

  Clara stared at her.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘here are some photocopies that they did for me at the Soho Historical Society, of flyers and stuff. And here’s a photo of the orchestra. Godfrey’s not in that picture, unfortunately; it was taken before he joined.’