Survivor

by Lesley Pearse

  Mariette fled upstairs at that, afraid of a man who could be so vicious.

  It was over an hour later that Jean-Philippe called Mariette to come downstairs. He had packed a box with some papers, and she could see some velvet jewellery boxes in there too.

  She had spent the last hour pacing her bedroom in floods of angry tears. But she knew she might put herself in real danger if she told him just what she thought of him.

  ‘I’m going now; I’ll call you about the funeral,’ he said. ‘I realize I was a little hasty, so you may stay for two days after the wake. But if, when I return, I find anything missing, I will call the police.’

  She was tempted to tell him where to go, but she bit the words back and just nodded.

  Once he’d gone, she put the chain on the door – she wouldn’t put it past him to sneak back and check what she was doing – then she leaned back against the door and tried to think what she must do.

  But considering her future was impossible when she’d been told something so shocking about her mother. It was five o’clock now, which meant her parents would be ringing in an hour. She couldn’t ask her mother about something like this on the telephone. But she did need to know if it was true.

  How could she find out?

  Noah’s study seemed the most logical place to look.

  She began by looking at the books he’d written, and found one called White Slaves. But after a quick flip through the pages, there didn’t appear to be any real names in the case studies of victims, just details of how they were taken and lots of statistics about how many girls were reported missing and had never been found. There was also a section on foreign girls who had been brought to England, supposedly as servants in private homes, but had been sold into brothels and ruined.

  Leaving that one out to read properly later, she checked his other books, but they were either fiction or about the last war. She went through a filing cabinet that held correspondence from the last five years on a range of subjects, but there was nothing about prostitution.

  Noah kept things very neat and tidy, reference books arranged in alphabetical order by subject, fiction by author. There was no clutter; a few box files on a shelf were all labelled, and a glance into them proved they were full of bills, research material, recent magazine articles and reviews of his books.

  She had just about given up when the telephone rang, and she raced to answer it.

  ‘Mum?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Oh my darling! I can’t even begin to tell you how we all feel at the news. And how are you coping with it?’

  Just the sweetly familiar sound of her mother’s voice brought more tears to her eyes. ‘I’ve been better,’ she said. ‘Jean-Philippe was just here, he’ll do everything that has to be done.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he will, he was always such a good little boy.’

  Mariette gritted her teeth. She couldn’t tell her mother what had been said, not even that she was to get out of the house, because she knew it would make her family frantic.

  ‘Now tell me exactly what happened,’ Belle said. ‘Mog was so upset, she probably didn’t get it right.’

  Mariette explained everything again. ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ she finished up. ‘I’ve got friends who will look after me. I’ll write after the funeral, just now I need to sit quietly and think things through.’

  ‘I was so fond of Lisette and Noah,’ Belle said, and it was clear she was crying. ‘They helped me through some very bad times. And Rose was such a beautiful, placid little girl. It’s so hard to take in that they all went together like that.’

  ‘Look, Mum, I’m finding it really hard to talk. I’m going to sit down and write you a letter. Tell Dad and Mog that I’m alright, just terribly sad. And this call will cost a fortune, so you must go now.’

  ‘We all love you, darling,’ and this time Belle couldn’t control her sobs. ‘I wish I was there to hold you.’

  ‘And I love you all too. I’ll write straight away.’

  Mariette felt she’d just been put through the mangle and everything had been squashed out of her. She sank down on to the sofa and cried again.

  The noise of the telephone ringing roused her again. She braced herself, expecting it to be Jean-Philippe with more orders, but it was Johnny.

  ‘Thank God you are there,’ he burst out, as soon as he heard her voice. ‘I don’t often pray, but I did when I was told just now about the bombing at the Café de Paris. I couldn’t get hold of the casualty list and, as I knew you were going there early, I was afraid I’d lost you. But my prayers were answered. What a relief!’

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell him Lisette, Noah, Rose and Peter were all dead. She knew he would leave his shift and come here. If Jean-Philippe found out, that would give him more ammunition to use against her. So she said that she would be at Greville’s office tomorrow and asked if he could get a few hours off to meet her after work.

  ‘It was all such a shock,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a bath and go to bed now.’

  ‘You sound like all the stuffing’s been knocked out of you,’ he said. ‘I can get off tomorrow, I’ll meet you at five thirty.’

  The siren went off about half past seven that evening. Mariette was tempted to go to bed and take her chances, but she knew that was reckless, so she picked up her pyjamas and her dressing gown, filled up a hot-water bottle as she passed through the kitchen and went down to the cellar.

  Lisette had added some embellishments to the cellar recently – a standard lamp, a rug on the floor – and had tacked a large colourful patchwork quilt to the wall. She said she had begun it when she was expecting Rose and while Noah was away a great deal, during the first war. But when they moved into this house, it didn’t fit in with the decor in the bedrooms.

  It was another reminder of Lisette’s talents. She had been a serene, gentle woman who enjoyed gliding quietly about her home, caring more for other people’s comfort than her own. She never raised her voice, meals were prepared without fuss, and Mariette hardly ever observed her cleaning, doing the laundry or anything else to keep the house clean, polished and tidy. Yet it always was pristine, nothing had changed since Mr and Mrs Andrews left to go and help their farming relatives. She did it all. Even down here, she had to make it homely and pleasant for her family. There were jigsaws, board games and books on the shelves, even some artificial flowers in a vase.

  Mariette put the hot-water bottle in one of the beds, and turned on the electric fire, then sat down in one of the easy chairs. She could hear the soft thud of bombs dropping in the far distance, and she wondered if they were dropping on the East End again or whether some other area of London was getting it tonight.

  Where would she live when she had to leave here? Where could she afford, with only two days’ paid work a week?

  The answer to that was obvious, of course: she’d have to get another job. But doing what? The munitions factory? Clippie on a bus?

  As she sat there, she noticed in the far corner there were three stout cardboard boxes, stacked on top of one another. Noah had said to leave them there as they weren’t in the way. Lisette had teased him about the contents, she said she suspected they were the first articles he wrote when he became a journalist, and he was a sentimental fool not throwing them out. Noah had just laughed, which implied she was right.

  Mariette thought that she might find something about her mother in there. It could be that Jean-Philippe had looked through them, back in the days when he lived here, and that was how he’d got his information.

  The first box was just as Lisette had thought. Newspaper cuttings. Noah had stuck each one on to thin card and written the date and the newspaper in which it appeared. The oldest one she could see was dated 1905, when he had been just twenty. It was about a wedding in Camden Town; he described the bride’s dress, which was cream taffeta with a lace overlay, while the bridesmaids, younger sisters of the bride, were in pink.

  As she looked further, she fou
nd most of the early dates were either weddings or funerals, with the occasional article about a fund-raising lunch or dinner, where he’d noted who had held it, how much was raised for the charity, and any notable people present.

  He was organized even then, and the cuttings were filed in date order. She flicked through them, only stopping to read ones that had a heading that stood out. Seeing one that said ‘Tarantula Terror’, dated January 1910, in The Herald, she read about a porter in Covent Garden who was spotted with a tarantula on his shoulder. Once advised of this, the porter became rigid with terror and it took a young boy with a glass and a sheet of card to remove it and place it in a box for safety. Later, the spider was taken to London Zoo. Beside the cutting Noah had written ‘My first proper story’.

  From that date on, judging by the sheer numbers of cuttings, Noah was obviously getting more work, and being sent to write up more interesting events. But then, in August of 1910, there was a big article in The Herald about young girls who had gone missing from around the Seven Dials area. This one was the first that carried his byline.

  It was a passionate article – Noah was obviously deeply concerned about the plight of these young girls – and it sounded as if he had researched the article thoroughly. All the disappearances had been reported to the police, but none of the girls had been found. He stressed that all of them were pretty, but they were good girls from loving homes, with no reason to run away. All had disappeared while out on an errand or on their way to see a friend, and he believed they could have been taken to work as prostitutes, possibly in France or Belgium. Then, at the bottom, he had listed each of the girls. And one was Belle Cooper.

  Mariette was stunned.

  Shutting that box up, she moved on to the second one. Again, it was full of cuttings, but there was nothing of interest to her. But she did notice that Noah’s star was clearly rising in the world of journalism as many of his stories appeared on the front page of the newspaper, and all carried his name.

  The last box was more of the same. But, just as she was getting close to the bottom of the box, she found what she was looking for. A report on a murder trial at the Old Bailey in 1913. It wasn’t written by Noah, and it wasn’t mounted on card like everything else. It was short and to the point.

  Mr Frank James Waldegrave, also known as Kent, was convicted of the murder of one Millie Simmons, at Jake’s Court, Seven Dials, in January 1910, and sentenced to be hanged. The principal witness, Belle Cooper, gave evidence that she had witnessed the murder when she was fifteen and was subsequently abducted by Waldegrave and an accomplice, and taken to Paris to be sold into prostitution.

  Stunned and horrified, Mariette just sat there holding the newspaper cutting in her hands. She wondered how her mother could be so gentle, caring and so normal after going through something as bad as that.

  She needed to know the whole story: how Noah, Lisette and her papa all fitted into it; and how Mog coped when Belle went missing. Yet, as horrific as it was, it did explain why her parents and Mog had always been so understanding of other people’s frailties.

  Yet if Jean-Philippe had hoped he would crush her with this family history, he was out of luck. If anything, it just made her love and admire her mother still more.

  18

  ‘I’ll find somewhere for you to stay,’ Johnny said, taking Mariette’s hands across the café table and squeezing them. ‘I’d also like to go round and give Jean-Philippe a good hiding. He’s not a man, he’s a snake.’

  The café was close to the office in Baker Street, and she’d just finished telling Johnny the whole story about what had happened at the Café de Paris and how horrible Jean-Philippe had been.

  Mariette managed a weak smile. ‘That won’t help things, he’d have you locked up. And then what would I do?’

  ‘I wish I could do more,’ Johnny said. ‘I can’t believe you went to work today. You must have steel in your spine.’

  ‘What was I going to do all day, if I stayed home? It doesn’t feel like home any more. Jean-Philippe didn’t need to order me to leave – I don’t want to stay there alone, and neither could I afford too. But Lisette will be spinning in her grave at the way her son is behaving. Well, she would if she was in one.’

  ‘What did my uncle say today?’

  ‘He was kind, very shocked, of course. Well, you don’t expect one of your staff to come in and tell you four of the six people she went out with, to celebrate her birthday, are now dead. He said that I should demand to know the contents of Noah’s will. But I can’t do that.’

  ‘But if you find the name of Noah’s solicitor, you could tell him what’s happened,’ Johnny suggested. ‘I expect Jean-Philippe is entitled to everything now his mother and sister are gone. But you never know, Noah might have left you something too – after all, you are his god-daughter. That snake might just tell the solicitor that you’ve disappeared or something. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to ask such a thing. That puts me on the same level as Jean-Philippe.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask if you’ve been left anything, you could just say that you want to give him a forwarding address, just in case he needs to contact you. But, like I said, I’ll find somewhere for you to stay. I know loads of people who might have room for a lodger, and they don’t live in slums either.’

  ‘You are very sweet. Last night, I felt I was being crushed by the weight of it all. But when I woke this morning, I felt a bit better knowing I was going to see you this evening.’

  He didn’t respond for a moment, just looked down at her hands in his on the table.

  When he spoke, it was haltingly, as if struggling to find the right words. ‘When I thought I might have lost you, I wished I’d told you I loved you. I never dared say it before because I was scared you’d back away from me. Then, when you answered the phone yesterday, I was so happy you were alive that I thought I must tell you.

  ‘I was watching you come out of the office this evening, and you looked like you were on your way to be executed. But as soon as you saw me, you switched on a smile. But you know what I thought?’

  ‘No, tell me.’

  ‘That you’d asked to meet me to tell me it was over.’

  In view of everything she’d just told him, Mariette was shocked that he should be thinking of himself, and the thought crossed her mind that he was going to use her tragedy for his own ends.

  ‘Why on earth would you think that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s easy, sweetheart. You’re special, beautiful, clever, got everything going for you. Why would you want to tie yourself up with a fireman, when you could have a rich man who could give you a nice house and all the stuff you’re used to? And why didn’t you tell me yesterday on the phone that all your folks had been killed?’

  ‘Because I knew you’d drop everything and come over,’ she said. ‘I was afraid Jean-Philippe might come back. If he found you there, it would’ve turned ugly.’

  ‘I’d have kicked his teeth in. But I dare say that’s just what you were afraid of.’

  There was the implication in that remark that she was ashamed of him. She resented the fact that he would bring it up now, when she already had enough on her plate. It had been her intention to tell him what Jean-Philippe had said about her mother. But under the circumstances, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

  They went to a pub and had a couple of drinks, but Mariette felt too sad, dejected and worried to talk. She couldn’t help but compare how Edwin had been with her the previous day to the way Johnny was behaving now. Edwin had been really comforting, and he’d only met her for the first time a couple of hours before the disaster. Yet Johnny, who had known her for months, seemed unable to grasp how bad all this was for her.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said, when he offered her a third drink. It was only eight o’clock but she’d had enough for one day. ‘I’m sorry, Johnny, but I feel too miserable to even try to chat.’

  ‘That’s OK, I’ll come wit
h you,’ he said.

  ‘No, Johnny,’ she said. ‘I meant alone.’

  ‘You always said you wished we had a chance to be alone somewhere comfortable,’ he said reproachfully.

  ‘There’s a time and a place for everything,’ she said sharply. ‘But this is not the time. And my uncle’s house, so soon after his death, is not the place. Have some respect, Johnny!’

  ‘I only wanted to take care of you. There’s no pleasing some people,’ he retorted.

  Johnny’s sulky expression played on Mariette’s mind as she walked home. She really did feel he had hoped to take advantage of her when she was vulnerable, and that hurt. But maybe she was overreacting and thinking the worst of him because she had no one else to lash out at?

  But when she arrived home, she was very glad that she hadn’t weakened and allowed Johnny to come back with her, because Jean-Philippe was there. He had a large notepad and pen in his hands and appeared to be making an inventory of valuable items.

  ‘The funeral is arranged for St Mark’s on Friday, at two,’ he said, breaking off from his list to speak to her. ‘Arrange refreshments for twenty people afterwards.’

  She wanted to suggest he use the world ‘please’, but she was more concerned by the number.

  ‘Only twenty?’ she queried. Just off the top of her head she could think of at least fifteen couples who were close friends of Noah and Lisette’s, without including Noah’s fellow journalists and authors, or Rose’s friends and work colleagues.

  ‘I am not providing a bun fight for all and sundry,’ he said loftily. ‘I have left a list in the kitchen of those I have invited back here. A few sandwiches will be quite sufficient, I believe one is allowed to have extra rations for a funeral, but I see no sense in squandering food on people at such a time.’