The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Not many people have, luv, only intellectual types. She writes poetry, used to be quite famous in her day. Before the war this house was full of people, parties most weekends. But then poor Lou had a stroke. That’s when I came to work here. She was only sixty-two, but it left her paralysed one side. She’s much better than she used to be, though she never goes out and there’s scarcely been a visitor since, apart from the twins. Lou doesn’t want people knowing the state she’s in.’

  ‘Why does she need a companion if you’re here?’

  Phoebe came and sat beside her on the bed. ‘I’m only the cleaner, luv. I come a few hours a day, make Lou’s meals – she eats like a bird. She wasn’t always so thin. She needs someone to do her typing and live here full time, case she falls, like. She has to sleep downstairs because she can’t manage the stairs.’ She patted Josie’s hand. ‘I hope you decide to take the job, luv. You’re just what she needs, young and full of life. As long as you answer back, stand up for yourself, like, you and Lou will get on fine. She can’t abide what she calls lickspittles or toadies. Her last companion walked out in tears. Marian and Hilary will be here till October, and they need someone to take over then.’ Phoebe made a face. ‘I can’t wait to see the back of them, interfering pair of bitches.’

  ‘What happened to Louisa’s husband?’ Josie enquired. She had, after all, been more or less authorised to ask questions.

  Phoebe winked. ‘Never had one!’

  Josie gasped. ‘But she’s got two daughters!’

  ‘Lou’s never been what you’d call conventional. And she never does things by halves. She didn’t just have one baby on the wrong side of the blanket, she had twins.’ Phoebe shook her head. ‘Lord knows what people said at the time. It must have caused a terrible scandal – she was forty an’ all. Mind you, she’s a Yank. Perhaps they do things different in America.’

  Louisa Chalcott was waiting in the same chair, smoking a fresh cigarette. There was no sign of her daughters. Or, Josie noted with amusement, the woman who’d been expected at three o’clock. ‘Well, young lady,’ she said with a grin. ‘I expect Phoebe has just washed all my dirty linen in front of you. Can I expect you in October or not?’

  ‘Yes.’ She didn’t have much choice. ‘I’ve got a name, you know. It’s Josie Flynn.’

  ‘And I’m Louisa Chalcott. Thrilled to meet you, Josie. You can call me Lou or Louisa. I don’t mind which.’

  The children had gone back to school, and with each week fewer and fewer campers came to Haylands. Once again the camp was almost deserted, the bars hardly used. The ballroom was a miserable place with so few people there, nearly all couples. Staff left, and Josie and Lily bade a tearful goodbye to their room-mates. Rene and Winnie had enjoyed themselves. The break had done them good, they were looking forward to seeing their kids. They took each other’s addresses and promised to write.

  The summer too had ended. September was a cold, blustery month, unsuitable for midnight sojourns on the sands. Half the Wasps had gone, back on the dole or to menial jobs in London where they could keep in touch with their agents and hope for better things. A lucky few had tiny walk-on parts in far-flung theatres throughout the country, which they hoped would lead to something better. They left, praying they wouldn’t meet up again in Haylands, a certain sign of failure.

  Griff had the chalet to himself, so they could make love whenever they pleased. But something was missing – the enchantment, the company, the moonlit beach, the music. Josie knew she had been right to dismiss the idea of them getting married.

  On the final night at Haylands, she and Griff talked for a long time. They said things to each other that they’d never said before. She hadn’t known he’d been a soldier in the war and that he’d hated every minute. She told him she was dreading being stuck in Formby with a horrible old woman.

  They made love for the last time. It was sweet, tender, devoid of passion, like an old married couple who’d done the same thing a thousand times before.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Josie sighed. She detached herself from his arms. ‘We’re catching the ten o’clock bus in the morning, and I haven’t packed a thing.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back.’

  ‘No, ta. I’d sooner go by meself.’ She could feel tears behind her eyes. If he touched her again, she would only cry. She dressed quickly and went to the door. ‘Tara, Griff,’ she whispered. His handsome face was just visible in the faint light that filtered through the curtains from the lamp outside. He looked devastated.

  ‘Bye, Josie, my darling. Have a nice life.’

  ‘You, too.’ She closed the door. That night, she cried herself to sleep. She was still crying next morning. Lily, who had no one to cry for and was leaving with her virginity still intact, was irritated when her friend cried most of the way home on the bus to Liverpool.

  The Kavanaghs’ new house in Childwall was light and roomy. It had a sunshine lounge, a breakfast room, a large, modern kitchen and four bedrooms. Josie was staying for a few days before going to Barefoot House.

  The first thing Lily did was inspect her room, where she immediately found fault with the wallpaper. The flowers were too big – she’d wanted smaller ones. ‘And couldn’t you have found net curtains with a frillier frill, Ma?’

  ‘Lily, luv. We did the best we could,’ Mrs Kavanagh said in a hurt voice.

  ‘Oh, I suppose it’ll do.’

  Josie knew her friend had been jealous of her relationship with Griff. Now, as if she was trying to get her own back, even things out, over the next few days she felt convinced Lily was doing her utmost to emphasise Josie’s aloneness when compared to her own comfortable place within a large, loving family. As soon as Mr Kavanagh sank into his armchair, Lily would drape herself all over him and demand a cuddle. She apologised to her mother for criticising the room. ‘After you’d gone to so much trouble for your little girl.’

  Perhaps I’m just imagining it, Josie thought. But Lily had always wanted to be on top. It rather spoiled her stay at the Kavanaghs’, which she’d been looking forward to.

  One day she went into Ben’s room. He had a bookcase of his own now, and a desk. She noticed that the books had been placed alphabetically on the shelves, and the desk was bare, a chair neatly placed in front. The only ornaments were the various cups he’d won at school over the years placed neatly on the window-sill. The room had a stark, monk-like air.

  ‘This is the way he left it,’ Mrs Kavanagh said from the door. ‘I never needed to tidy up after our Ben.’

  ‘I suppose you miss him.’

  ‘More than I can say.’ Mrs Kavanagh came into the room. ‘I miss all me kids. Lily’s the only one left. I’ve got two grandchildren and another on the way, but they’re not the same as your own.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘You know, luv, Ben’s still heartbroken. Is it definitely over between you two?’

  Josie nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. I nearly did something awful, though. When I heard Vince Adams was back, I thought about making up with Ben. I was feeling desperate, you see.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘I’m glad I didn’t. It would have been dead unfair. It was the Kavanaghs I wanted to marry, not Ben.’

  ‘I understand, luv.’ The older woman gave her a hug. ‘Anyroad, I’m a realist. Our Ben will make some girl a good husband, but not a very exciting one.’ She picked up one of the cups and tenderly polished it with her sleeve. ‘Children,’ she sighed. She looked at Josie. ‘I’m sorry about Lily, luv, the way she’s behaving. I know she’s me daughter and I love her to death, but always remember this – you’ve got more character in your little finger than our Lily’s got in her whole silly body.’

  Next day, Josie left for Barefoot House. She telephoned first, and Phoebe said to come at five o’clock. ‘Lou’s expecting the doctor around four, and she hates anyone being there.’

  With each portion of the journey, her heart sank lower and lower. By the time she reached Barefoot House and entered the bleak, petrified garden, she felt totally detached from
the real world of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. She had no one: no Mam, no Aunt Ivy, no Kavanaghs just along the street.

  From now on, she was truly on her own.

  Barefoot House

  1951–1954

  1

  It had originally been called Burford House, Louisa said, built for someone called Clarence Burford in 1858. In those days, it had stood entirely alone on the sands. Louisa had lived there for almost thirty years.

  ‘We landed in Liverpool from New York, and decided to spend a few days here, take a look round one of the most famous ports in the world. Chuck managed to borrow a car. He was actually driving the damn thing along the beach when we saw the house. I fell in love with it straight away, though I didn’t spend much time here. I was for ever flitting off to London or New York.’ The twins had called it Barefoot House, and the name had stuck. Phoebe said they were ten years old before their mother sent for them from America.

  Nelson Road hadn’t existed when Louisa had bought her house, and she loathed the new properties. ‘Moronic,’ she called them. ‘Moronic little houses for moronic little people.’ Fortunately, they were only visible from the back, and then from the upstairs rooms which were only used when Marian and Hilary came to stay. It was still easy to believe that Barefoot House, surrounded as it was on three sides by ten-foot-high walls, and only sand and the river visible from the front, stood entirely alone.

  The doctor was just leaving the day Josie arrived. He tipped his hat. ‘If you’re the new companion, then you have my every sympathy, young lady. Her ladyship’s in a foul mood.’

  Josie went inside, deposited her suitcase at the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘Hello, it’s me.’ There was no reply.

  There was a rattling sound coming from somewhere at the back. Josie found Louisa Chalcott, clad in tweed slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, her black hair wild and uncombed, in the kitchen trying to support herself with her stick. At the same time she was struggling with a strange metal contraption, a sort of pan, trying to get the top off.

  ‘Hello,’ Josie said again.

  Louisa, startled, dropped the metal contraption on the floor. ‘Fuck!’ she spat. She glared at Josie. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a creeper. I can’t stand fucking creepers. I had someone once, Miss Twizzlewit or something, who crept around like a fucking mouse.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I walked in quite normally, and I shouted, too.’

  Louisa ignored her. ‘That stupid doctor’s just told me there’s something wrong with my heart. A creepy-crawly companion is the last thing I need. Since you’re here, you can make some coffee. I like it black and very strong, no sugar.’ She kicked the pan. ‘The percolator’s on the floor.’

  Josie picked up the contraption. She’d never seen the likes of it before. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

  ‘Make coffee, stupid. You’ll find it in the cupboard, and you’ll find water in the tap. The coffee goes there.’ She pointed to a round part with holes that seemed to fit on top. ‘Fill the bottom with water and put it on the stove. I’ll tell you when it should be ready.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll be in my room, and when you bring it, don’t creep.’

  ‘I didn’t creep,’ Josie said pleasantly. ‘And another thing, if you ever call me stupid again, I shall leave on the spot.’ She thought this might evoke an apology, but Louisa merely gave a contemptuous snort and limped heavily away.

  I’ll start getting the Echo again, look for another job, a shaken Josie vowed as she watched the pot boil and the delicious aroma of coffee filled the small, old-fashioned kitchen, with its stone floor and deep brown sink. The stove and boiler looked as if they’d come out of the ark. A grille over the small window made the room very dark. And there were draughts. It would be freezing in winter.

  Her bottom lip trembled. This time last week she’d been at Haylands, but the camp, and everything that had happened there, was already beginning to feel like a lovely dream that she’d woken up from a long, long while ago.

  There was a bang and a shout. ‘It should be ready now.’

  Louisa’s room appeared to have been a study. There was a large desk and the shelves on the walls were crammed with books. A double bed was dumped uncompromisingly in the middle. She was sitting in a rocking chair, smoking, and staring out of the window at the river. She didn’t look round when Josie went in.

  ‘Getting old’s a bitch,’ she said gruffly. ‘You’ll find that out for yourself one day. When I first came here, I used to imagine myself striding along the beach at eighty. I was always very fit, you see, used to swim every morning.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Now I can’t even manage the stairs. The doctor comes once a month, and always finds something new wrong with me. If it’s not my ears, then it’s my joints or my eyes. This time it was my heart. It’s beating too fast, or too slow. I can’t remember which. I try not to listen. I don’t want to know. If I think about it too much, I get upset, and I can’t abide people who feel sorry for themselves.’ She turned round and regarded Josie with her large, brilliant eyes. ‘Are you a virgin?’

  The question was so unexpected that Josie nearly dropped the coffee. She put it on the window seat beside her strange new employer. ‘Mind your own business,’ she gasped.

  ‘That means you’re not, or you would have said something like, “Of course I am,” in the same outraged voice.’ Louisa stretched her gaunt arms, the backs riddled with bright blue veins. ‘How old are you? Seventeen? I had my first man at thirteen – he was a friend of my father’s. Oh, tell me some gossip, Josie,’ she cried. ‘What is your young man like? What’s his name? Are you still seeing him? Is he likely to come to Barefoot House courting you with flowers?’ She leaned forward and said slyly, ‘Or has there been more than one? Titillate me. What is going on in the world outside these four walls?’

  ‘Have you never heard of newspapers?’

  ‘Reading about it isn’t the same. Oh, I know all about Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rosselini and her two little bastard sons. But I prefer my gossip face to face. It’s juicier that way.’

  ‘Well, you’re not getting anything juicy out of me.’

  Next day, Phoebe showed her the office. It had a desk and chair, a typewriter so old it could have been the first ever made, and a small shelf of books, mainly reference works. The desk drawers were full of curling, yellow paper and odd sheets of well-used carbon. The room was as small, cold and dark as the kitchen opposite, and just as draughty.

  Louisa only needed two or three letters a day to be typed, which was just as well as the keys on the typewriter took all Josie’s strength to press, and then there was no tail on the ‘p’, no top on the ‘b’ and the ‘e’ was hardly visible. She had to fill them in with a pen afterwards. Sometimes the letters were to Louisa’s agents – there was Cy Marks in New York, and Leonard McGill in London – usually to do with one of her poems being used in an anthology or a magazine, or acknowledging a cheque, always very small. All her books were out of print, Phoebe said, though she still received letters from students and admirers, for which there was a standard reply.

  The worst, most nerve-racking times were when she wrote to old friends. She would stand over Josie, breathing heavily and refusing to sit down, and rattle off a stream of lies. She felt fine. She was writing furiously. There’d been a house party last weekend. She’d been to the theatre. ‘Have you brought last night’s paper, Phoebe,’ she would bawl, ‘so I can check what’s on? Where had I got to?’ she would demand of Josie.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve only reached the bit about you writing furiously. You’re dictating much too fast. I can do shorthand, you know. It would be much easier.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be so spontaneous.’

  ‘I don’t see anything spontaneous about having to repeat yourself half a dozen times. The fastest typist in the world couldn’t keep up on this damn thing.’ Josie typed ‘furiously’ ponderously. The ‘y’ seemed to have
disappeared altogether.

  As the weeks passed, Josie gradually got used to Louisa Chalcott’s rude and demanding ways. It was hard sometimes to be rude back. She wasn’t always in the mood, and would have preferred to disappear into her room for a good cry, but it would have been fatal to show any sign of weakness in front of her employer.

  She quickly got into a routine. As soon as she got up, if the weather was even faintly reasonable, she would go for a walk on the shore. On her return, she would make breakfast – Louisa’s a boiled egg with a single round of bread and butter, cornflakes for herself. At around ten, Phoebe arrived with the groceries, and Josie would retreat to the office and attend to that day’s mail. Phoebe made dinner at noon, and all three would eat together in the parlour, the cheeriest time of the day as far as Josie was concerned as Phoebe would regale them with hilarious stories about her family – she had five children, all married, and twelve grandchildren, always getting into scrapes. Louisa would become deeply involved in the rather trivial tales, and ask numerous questions.

  ‘It’s pathetic, really,’ Phoebe said privately. ‘She don’t half miss the outside world. She wouldn’t be seen dead in a wheelchair, else you could’ve taken her for walks. What she needs is a companion who can drive. There’s a car in the garage she used to drive herself. She’d enjoy being taken shopping.’

  Josie investigated the garage behind the house, where high double gates, now firmly padlocked, opened on to Nelson Road. There was indeed a car inside, a dusty little black box on wheels. One of these days, she might suggest to Louisa that she take driving lessons.

  Afternoon and evenings, Josie found herself with little to do, except make sandwiches at teatime and numerous cups of coffee. Louisa spent most of the time in her room, in bed or the rocking chair, lost in thought or scribbling away in her large, wild, execrable writing in a shiny red notebook, which she would close if anyone went near. When Josie took her in a drink, she would talk, usually about her lovers, of which there seemed to have been hundreds – poets, actors, writers, politicians and notorious playboys – or so she claimed.