by Marie Joseph
This man, this boy she knew from her childhood, looked ten years older than his twenty-six years. The dark hair still curled over his forehead, the grin was still there, but the handsome features had coarsened, grown bloated, the dark blue eyes sunk deep in their sockets.
As she stood there staring at him, it seemed as though everything in her was stilled. Her brain, her breathing, her heartbeats, all held as in a vice. Before she could move he was beside her, pulling her into his arms, straining her against him, his mouth searching for her own.
‘Clara. Oh, my little Clara. If you knew the times I’ve longed to do this. Kiss me. Hold me. Oh, love, there’ll be no more going away from now on. This time it’s you and me, the way it’s always been. But for ever.’
At last she came to life. With heart pounding, with limbs trembling, she fought and struggled until he stood away from her, still sure of himself, only faintly puzzled by her reaction.
‘What’s wrong, love? I told you I’d come back. I was the one who said you’d be a success. With your name outside the theatre. I told you that when you were a nothing. Remember?’ For an instant she saw the creeping fear in his eyes, then at the blink of an eyelid it was gone. ‘You’re not angry with me, are you, our kid?’
The sheer nerve of him, the blatant hypocrisy, the taken-for-granted acceptance of her welcome, made her sway and widen her eyes in disbelief.
‘Angry with you? Did you say angry?’ The huge fur collar on the white coat was suddenly choking the life out of her. With shaking fingers she unclasped the heavy fastening and threw the coat over the back of a chintzed settee. ‘Do you think the world stands still when you go away, Joe West?’ Clasping her hands together she was surprised to find they were sweating. ‘You left me in my father’s house without a job, with nothing, and you didn’t care! Because you thought I’d failed the audition at the Palace Theatre you wrote me off! You thought I would never have another chance. So you went away.’ Glancing towards the door leading into Dora’s bedroom she frowned. ‘Whatever you have to say to me, say it quietly, please.’ She walked to the settee and sat down. ‘My … my housekeeper is asleep through there.’
‘Your housekeeper? Bloody hell!’ Joe glanced round the room with its velvet curtains and comfortable chairs. ‘You’ve come a long way, our kid.’ A half-smile still played around his lips. ‘Remember when you chopped three stand-chairs up for the fire because you hadn’t got the money for coal?’
‘I don’t forget anything.’ Clara spoke quietly. ‘How is your mother, Joe? And Alec? Do you care how they are?’
Joe sat down in a wing chair opposite to the settee. He could hardly believe the difference in her, even though he had expected to find her changed. He frowned and bit his lips. There was no man in her life, that much he’d found out, and yet this was no longer his little Clara with adoration in her green eyes ready to follow where he beckoned. Telling him off first, then being ready to forgive. He wished he didn’t feel so ill. It was an hour at least since he’d had a drink. He’d upended a bottle into the gutter outside the house, cursing, but knowing he’d have to stop where he was if he wanted to catch her coming home.
‘You haven’t got a drink, have you, love?’ It was no good, he had to ask, but when her mouth set hard he knew he’d made a mistake. Once a Methodist, always a Methodist. His dry lips twisted into an ugly grimace.
‘No, you don’t care.’ She was speaking again, this stranger with the calm face and the changed accent. ‘I’ve had a long time to think about you, Joe, and I’ve realized you’ve never really given much thought to anyone apart from yourself. And no, I haven’t got a drink. By the look of you you’ve had far too much already.’
It was too much. Anger rose in him like a lick of flame. The sanctimonious little devil! Religion did that to some people. Set them above others who didn’t read their Bible every day. It was there, sure enough, on the mahogany wine table by the fireplace, with a leather marker in, showing her the place. Almost without knowing it, he was by her side on the wide-cushioned settee, gripping her by the arms, forcing her to look him in the eyes.
‘Has’t forgeet ’ow tha used to talk?’ Deliberately he lapsed into broad dialect. ‘Tha’s still little Clara Haydock from t’clogger’s shop. Still her what wet her britches on her fost day at schoo’.’
Before she could twist away, he cupped her chin to bring her mouth round to his own. There was a wild desperation in the way he kissed her, forcing her lips apart, trying to push her backwards to lie beneath him. ‘Clara,’ he muttered thickly. ‘Remember how we were that time? You’re still my girl. Always have been and always will be.’
Her mouth felt bruised and hot, but she knew instinctively that to fight back would only inflame him further. Tangling her fingers in his thick curly hair she forced his head back. Her green eyes blazed into his.
He began to bluster. ‘Aw, come on now, Clara. Don’t pretend. You’ve not got where you are without going with other men. But I understand. None of that counts with me. I’ve been in this game too long not to know what goes on.’
Still she held him away from her with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed.
‘I was going to have your baby, Joe, but I lost it, and nearly died. You shamed me!’ For a second she loosened her hold on him as the memory of those terrible weeks of fear and uncertainty rose to remind her of the way it had been. Her voice rose and sharpened. ‘No other man has touched me since then. I can do without men, Joe West. So you see how wrong you are!’
He was not all bad. His mother had always maintained that, and the shock of what she had just told him unnerved him, so that he slid from the settee to kneel on the carpet, burying his head in her lap.
‘Aw, Clara,’ he whispered brokenly. ‘I didn’t know. If I had known …’
To her horror he began to cry, rough unmanly tears, with his shoulders shaking and the sobs rasping in his throat. For a moment she was tempted to stroke his hair, but her hand refused to move. As she sat there her heart felt as hard and cold as stone.
‘Where did you go, Joe? After you left me alone? Where did you go?’
She had to bend her head low to catch what he said, and as she listened her heart grew colder still.
‘I went to South Africa. To Cape Town.’ The Irish lilt that always came into his voice when he was troubled was there now. ‘I was living with this girl, well, this woman, really, and she was offered a two-year contract for a tour in a variety show. She wangled me in somehow as an assistant stage manager. Honest to God, Clara, if I’d known about the baby I’d never have gone.’
‘And what would you have done, Joe?’
‘I’d’ve stuck by you. You know that.’
‘Married me? Lived with me in my father’s house? Gone out and got a decent job?’
‘You know I would. I love you, Clara. I always have.’
His words came muffled, choked by sobs, and suddenly she knew she didn’t believe him. With a cold hand still squeezing her heart she pulled his head back, forcing him to meet her eyes. With a finger she made the gesture of wiping away the tears from beneath his eyes, knowing there were none, that there never had been any tears. And the expression on his face told her that he knew she had found him out.
Pushing him away roughly, she stood up. ‘Get up off your knees, Joe. Stop pretending to cry.’ Her voice was weary. ‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’ Walking on unsteady legs she went towards the door and opened it wide. ‘She’s thrown you out, this girl … this woman … hasn’t she? You came back to London and you saw what had been happening to me. You thought you would cash in, Joe, just as you’ve always cashed in on an easy option. Just go. Now, – this minute. I’m waiting, Joe.’
He got to his feet, feeling his stomach muscles contract. This wasn’t the small Clara he’d left behind in Mill Street, tearful, vulnerable, hanging on his every word. But she wasn’t as calm as she appeared to be. He could feel the tenseness in her. As he made to pass her, he caught her to him.
‘You don’t mean it really. This is what you want. Your head may be filled with righteous claptrap, but it’s me your body needs.’
As his mouth covered hers and she smelt the stale drink on him, she managed to free one hand to claw at his face. When he clutched her breast and her mouth was free she screamed.
‘Dora! Oh, Dora! Help me, help me!’
For the rest of his days Joe would never forget the apparition which appeared in a doorway leading off the sitting room. Dora in her voluminous nightgown with her red hair in rags, holding aloft a heavy cut-glass vase, was a sight to make the blood run cold.
Relinquishing his hold on Clara, he managed to duck as the vase crashed into the wall behind his head. Before he could gather his senses the old woman came towards him, picking up a long paperknife from a coffee table as she advanced.
‘Oh, my God!’ Muttering curses, Joe turned and ran, clattering down the narrow stairway, pausing for breath only when he reached the pavement, turning to shake a fist at the upstairs window before making off into the darkness with the rain pelting down on his uncovered head.
Back in the upstairs room Dora lowered herself into a chair, and when Clara dropped on her knees and put her arms about her, she held out her hands and looked down at them. The knife fell from her fingers.
‘I wanted to kill him,’ she muttered brokenly. ‘It was him, wasn’t it? The one who made a baby with you and went away?’
When she saw the answer in Clara’s eyes, she shuddered and put her face in her hands, swaying backwards and forwards with the rags in her hair standing out like porcupine quills.
‘I know now I could have killed a man,’ she whispered. ‘Aye, and swung for him gladly. I would have stuck that knife in his ribs and enjoyed hearing him squeal. For you,’ she added. ‘For you, little chuck, just for you.’
‘Oh, Dora … Dora …’ Reaching up Clara pressed the fiercely red head against her breast. Then they sat there, without speaking, bound in love, with the rain beating against the window, and the long night slipping by outside.
Eleven
‘IF MR BOLAND’S taking you to the Café Royal for lunch, then it means he thinks you’ve arrived.’
Dora insisted on climbing stiff-legged down the stairway to see Clara off. ‘He’s never taken you anywhere as posh as that before, has he? You ought not to be walking,’ she scolded, panting for breath in the doorway. ‘You should arrive decently in a taxi. And at least ten minutes late. Men know where they stand with a girl if she keeps them waiting.’
With a satisfied nod she looked Clara up and down. That lynx collar in the neck of the short black coat was just right, and with her hair tucked away inside a scarlet cloche hat Clara was a real bobby-dazzler. A bit too plain an outfit for Dora’s own taste, but then the young could get away with anything. Clara’s shoes were all right though, even though hardly suitable for winter pavements covered in a light coating of snow from a recent fall, high-heeled and flimsy and costing the earth from Jack Jacobus’s shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. Dora admitted to herself that her own days for wearing shoes like that had long gone.
‘Stop running!’ she called after Clara’s flying figure. ‘You’ll get there before he does if you’re not careful!’
And there, sure enough, outside the Café Royal, was Mr Boland, getting out of a taxi, bare-headed in the cold January air.
‘Dora told me I ought to keep you waiting.’ Clara smiled up into his eyes as he kissed her briefly on her left cheek. ‘Shall I go away and come back in ten minutes to make you appreciate me more?’
Bart laughed and gave her hands a little squeeze. How lovely she was, with her enormous green eyes crinkling as she teased him. In this mood she was enchanting, sensual in body and gesture, carrying her head as a stalk does a flower, as though she’d danced all her life. In that split second he saw her as she would have looked skimming across the stage in a ballerina’s frothy tutu, light as air, with that proud head held high. Not for the first time he wondered. Billed as a clogger’s child she might be, but surely somewhere in her background someone had danced? She even walked like a dancer, he thought, as he followed her into the restaurant, and yet he knew what her answer would be if he questioned her again.
‘I am the clogger’s child,’ she would say firmly. ‘He was my father, the only father I ever wanted or needed. Don’t try to open Pandora’s box for me, please, Mr Boland.’
The head waiter came forward to show them to a corner table with sofa seats. ‘Good to see you again, Mr Boland,’ he said, eyeing Clara with obvious approval before discreetly summoning a waiter to take their coats.
Bart couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you called me Bart? We’ve known each other for a long time now, Clara.’ Without thinking what he was doing he covered her hand with his own, only to draw it back as her eyes flew wide and a faint blush stained her cheeks.
At that moment the menus arrived, covering an awkward silence. To Clara’s relief he handed them back to the waiter with a smile.
‘Will you mind if I order? I know my way round this menu pretty well.’
‘Oh, yes, please. I can eat anything,’ Clara assured him solemnly, giving an audible sigh of relief.
‘Ah, well, in that case …’ Bart’s blue eyes were twinkling. ‘I think fresh salmon to begin with, and maybe a bottle of chablis, followed by fillet steak with baby carrots and peas, and a bottle of Pommard.’
Clara waited until the waiter had moved away before leaning forward to whisper urgently, ‘Mr Boland. Bart …’ A deep blush stained her cheeks. ‘You know I don’t drink. Have you forgotten? I signed the pledge!’
Bart sighed, drumming with impatient fingers on the starched white tablecloth. ‘What will happen to you, Clara, should you relax those principles of yours for long enough to drink a glass of wine?’
As her eyes widened in surprise he felt momentarily ashamed. He studied her intently from beneath well-defined eyebrows. When he spoke it was so quietly she had almost to lipread to catch what he was saying.
‘This fear you have, Clara, of a personal damnation. Methodism is surely more than that? Do you honestly still believe in the punishment of hell?’ He waved a hand. ‘All those perfectly respectable women drinking wine with their lunch – are they condemned to burn in the Lake of Fire?’ His voice rose a little. ‘Jesus turned the water into wine, didn’t He? Doesn’t that salve that puritanical conscience of yours?’
Immediately all the hurting memories came back to her. Joe smelling of the terrible demon drink; the taste of it in her own mouth as he kissed her. Her father’s beloved face, dark with fury the night she drank the rhubarb wine. Sermons from the pulpit in the chapel at the top of the street, with the minister waving his arms about as he pontificated on the evils of alcohol. Joe’s father dying of it, dropping like a stone in the street, smashing his skull on the cobblestones.
Clara bit her lips hard. Her throat felt parched and dry as she looked round the beautiful scarlet and gilt room, at the women lifting their glasses and sipping elegantly. Not one of them behaving badly or rolling in a drunken stupor on the floor.
‘My father …’ Clara’s voice faltered as she fought with her conscience.
‘Your father is dead, Clara.’
Joe had said that, sitting on the edge of the table in that far off little living room, swinging his legs and grinning. He had said those exact words, but in a totally different way. The man saying them now had a strong face gentled by compassion. His eyes were blue also, but they were wide and candid, the blue of a summer sky.
‘I do not wish to make you drunk, my dear.’ Bart nodded for the wine waiter to fill her glass. ‘I would hate to be seen dining with an overebullient girl, however pretty she may be. But you must learn to enjoy a drink in moderation. You can’t be part of the world you live in at present without acquiring a slight sophistication.’ He raised his glass. ‘So much unworldliness scares me, Clara. There are men far more ruthless than I who
would take advantage of your attitude.’ Leaning forward he curled her fingers round the stem of the glass. ‘To you, my dear, and to what I have to tell you.’ The blue eyes brimmed with laughter as Clara, with obvious reluctance, raised the glass to her lips and took a tentative sip.
Long before her glass was empty Clara began to feel happier than she had felt for a long time. The delicate taste of the fresh salmon and the smooth taste of the wine on her tongue brightened her eyes. The ruby red Pommard, drunk with steak as tender as butter, warmed her through and through, so that as the wine waiter moved forward to fill up her glass she stared at Bart in astonishment when he shook his head and motioned the man away.
‘That’s enough,’ Bart said in a tone so stern, so paternal, Clara felt a giggle bubble in her throat. ‘Now, before we have coffee I have something to ask you.’
‘You have?’
Clara was so happy she was actually humming to herself. Oh, Dora had been right. She had been stupid shutting herself away from life. And this was certainly living. The brandy Bart was drinking with his coffee glowed like liquid fire. He was such a gentleman. Married too, so quite safe. Maybe her father’s ideas had been a bit, well, just a little narrow? Clara noticed a man across the room staring at her, and turned her profile swiftly away, still very conscious of him. A small smile played around her mouth. Oh, the lovely things money could buy. She’d never thought of it like that before.
‘How would you like to go to America, Clara?’
Bart was enjoying her reaction. Green eyes opened wide as Clara gave him her full attention.
‘What did you say?’
‘America, my dear. New York. Broadway. You’ve heard of a man called André Chariot?’
‘With Anton Dolin and Jessie Matthews,’ Clara said at once. ‘In rehearsal for the opening at the Prince of Wales Theatre later on this year.’
Bart nodded. ‘He took a revue to New York with Jack Buchanan, Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence, so he’s done the spadework.’ Bart chose a Havana cigar from the box held out to him by the waiter, and didn’t speak again until the small ceremony of trimming and lighting it was over. ‘The Americans are used to spectacle. Loud, glittering spectacle. Girls walking down wide white staircases. But Charlot’s revue opened their eyes to something more subtle, a rapport between the audience and the cast. The rapport you have with them the moment you begin to sing.’