by Maureen Lee
‘I gave him up.’
‘Why?’
Josie squirmed. ‘We didn’t get on.’
‘Liar! You gave him up shortly after I had my stroke. You told him you couldn’t see him again because of me. He was heartbroken, according to Mr Bernstein. He had hoped one day you would get married.’
‘I would never have married Ronald,’ Josie said truthfully. ‘Why are you getting so ratty, anyroad? I’d have thought you’d be pleased about that, too.’
‘Your loyalty and devotion do you credit, Josie, but they are entirely misplaced. I am not worth it.’ She stared at the river. ‘You know, I can hardly see.’
‘You should wear—’
‘I know,’ Louisa interrupted testily. ‘I should wear my long-distance glasses. Or is it the short-distance ones? I can never remember. Any minute now, I’ll need a hearing-aid, too. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to hear. I’m breaking down, Josie. I can scarcely walk. I hardly sleep. The only thing that works perfectly is my brain.’
‘Louisa,’ Josie said gently.
‘Oh, take your sympathy, girl, and stuff it where the monkey stuffed its nuts,’ Louisa said so nastily that Josie flushed. ‘Fetch me my lizard handbag. It’s on the floor beside the bed.’
The large handbag having been brought, Louisa rooted inside and took out a large brown envelope and two small white ones. She handed Josie a white one. ‘I had intended giving you that on your twenty-first birthday, but circumstances have changed.’
It was a letter, addressed to her, written in Louisa’s hardly discernible scrawl. Josie read it with difficulty. Her jaw dropped when she understood the message it contained. ‘You’re giving me a month’s notice!’ she said, completely taken aback.
‘Got it in one,’ Louisa chuckled. She handed Josie the other white envelope. ‘Now read this.’
At first the typed enclosure, full of meaningless figures, was equally difficult to make sense of. ‘It’s a plane ticket to America,’ Josie said after a while. ‘To New York. Louisa, what on earth is this all about?’
Louisa was staring at the river again. Now it was almost dark, the boys had gone and the water shone a greeny-silver. The moon had appeared, not quite full, and there was a sprinkling of early stars. Except for the rustling tide, the silence was total. ‘When I first came to live here, we used to go skinny-dipping in the moonlight. Do you know what that means?’
‘I can guess, but, Louisa, this ticket. And why do I have to leave?’ Her voice trembled.
‘I’ve always been a very selfish person,’ Louisa continued as if Josie hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve used people all my life, men in particular, women if I felt in the mood. I dropped them the minute they’d served their purpose, satisfied my need.’ She shifted irritably on the bench. ‘I shall need a cushion for this. Not now, dear. Some other time will do,’ she said when Josie made to get up. ‘I shall only have you one more month, so sit down and hold my hand.’ Josie did, and the skin on the hand felt soft and shiny, like old silk.
‘I should never have taken you on,’ Louisa sighed. ‘The girls were right, but for all the wrong reasons. They thought you couldn’t cope. I knew you could, but that’s not why I insisted. I wanted you for your bright face, your fresh blood, your young soul. I hoped they might rub off on me.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I’m like a fucking vampire. I should have let the girls show you the door. You would have eventually found something better to do than dance round after an egotistical old woman for three years. No, don’t argue.’ She wagged a gnarled finger.
‘For the first time in my life, I am making a sacrifice, so consider yourself lucky because I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay so much it hurts.’ Josie felt the frail hand tighten on her own. ‘But leave you must,’ Louisa said firmly. ‘It’s time you started to live, my dear. I’ve had you far too long. As for me, I’m dying.’ She laughed a touch bitterly. ‘But I’m a stubborn bitch. I shall put up a fight. I could last for years, getting blinder, deafer, more and more impossible and ill-humoured with each day. There is no way, Josie, that I will allow you to sacrifice yet more years of your young life to watch me die.’
‘But I want to stay, Louisa,’ Josie wailed, and was rewarded with a look of utter contempt.
‘Well, you can’t,’ Louisa snapped. ‘You have just been given your marching orders, and I want you out of this house by the end of June. The plane ticket is a leaving present. You can get a refund if you want, use it as a deposit on a flat. Otherwise, Thumbelina is off on a belated honeymoon early in July, and you can stay in her grand house in New York. You won’t be alone, the staff will be there.’ She chuckled. ‘I promised her you’re not the sort who’ll take off with the silver. There is a heap of American currency somewhere upstairs. I always thought I’d go back one day, but that’s not likely now.’ She removed her hand. ‘I would appreciate a cup of coffee, dear, though inside, I think. It’s getting chilly out here.’
As she helped Louisa to her feet, Josie felt a flood of gratitude mixed with sadness and something else, possibly love, for the impossible, cantankerous, surprisingly kind old woman. ‘But who’ll look after you?’
‘That, dear girl, is no longer any of your business,’ Louisa said brusquely, and refused to discuss the matter further.
‘What’s this?’ Josie picked up the large brown envelope, surprisingly sealed with red wax.
‘Nothing much, just a few notes I’ve made.’ Louisa looked at her enigmatically. ‘You’re not to open it until nineteen seventy-four.’
‘Why then?’ Josie asked, surprised.
‘It will be obvious at the time.’ She grasped the window-sill and began to make her way inside. ‘Do you know, my dear, I can already smell the flowers in my new garden.’
‘There aren’t any yet, just leaves. They need a good watering. I’ll do it in a minute.’ The plants looked rather sad, she thought, as if they realised she would soon be going.
‘Then I can smell the leaves.’ Louisa squeezed her hand.
‘I’ll come and see you the minute I get back,’ Josie promised as they went into the house.
‘You will do no such thing,’ Louisa barked. ‘I don’t want to see or hear from you in a long while. If you must know, it would upset me. Perhaps this time next year.’ She laughed gaily. ‘Yes, this time next year. Come and see how your garden grows, Josie dear.’
3
‘Oh, Jose. I won’t half miss you,’ Lily said sadly. ‘I wish I could come with you, but they’d never let me off work a whole month. Anyroad, I couldn’t afford the fare.’
‘I wish you could come, too, Lil. Still, I’ll only be gone a month, and you’ve made new friends over the last few years. You had to, didn’t you? You haven’t seen much of me.’
‘Yes, but you’re me best friend, Jose.’ They were sitting together on Lily’s bed in the house in Childwall. Josie was spending two days with the Kavanaghs before flying to New York, having left Barefoot House for ever.
Louisa hadn’t even turned round when she went to say goodbye. She was in her rocking chair facing the window, and said gruffly, ‘Bye, dear. Have a nice time.’ Josie wanted to fling her arms around her, have a good cry, but Louisa waved a dismissive arm, which Josie took as a sign she didn’t want an emotional farewell. Closing the door quietly behind her, she cried on the train instead. The new companion, a retired headmistress, seemed very nice, very firm. Louisa would be safe with her, but she didn’t doubt the poor woman would be reduced to a nervous wreck in no time.
Mixed with the sorrow was a feeling of relief, a sense of freedom, the awareness that Louisa had been right to let her go. Somewhere, buried deep within her mind, there’d been a dread of remaining in Barefoot House for years while she watched Louisa die.
Tomorrow, she would leave Lime Street station for London, where she would stay the night – she’d booked into a little hotel right by Euston – then make her way to Heathrow early next morning to catch the plane to New York. Thumbelina was picking her up
from Idelwild airport. Josie had a passport with a horrible photo inside that made her look like a criminal, and over three hundred yellowing American dollars that had been found in an old handbag in Louisa’s wardrobe upstairs. Since Louisa’s second stroke, there hadn’t been much opportunity for Josie to indulge her weakness for new clothes, and she’d managed to save up over fifty pounds. This she was keeping for when she came back from America. She’d have to start again then, find somewhere to live, another job.
A new beginning! It made her feel almost as excited as the holiday.
That afternoon, Marigold and her family were coming for a farewell tea, as well as Daisy and Eunice. Daisy had telephoned earlier with a message from Aunt Ivy. ‘I told her about your trip to America. She’d love to see you, Jose.’
Mrs Kavanagh shook her head when asked for her advice. ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea, luv,’ she said. ‘That part of your life is well behind you. Don’t rake it up.’
‘I promised meself I’d never go back to Machin Street again,’ Josie said, relieved. Mrs Kavanagh had promised to look after Louisa’s brown envelope and Mam’s Holy Communion veil and prayer book, because it seemed silly to take them all the way to America.
The front door opened, and a man’s deep voice shouted, ‘It’s only us, Ma. I’ve been showing Imelda the fairy glen.’
Lily made a face. ‘I wonder what she thought of that?’
Imelda was Ben’s fiancée, who’d come for the weekend to meet her prospective in-laws for the first time. They were getting married at Christmas because Imelda had always wanted a winter wedding. She and Ben had just left Cambridge, Imelda with a first class (hons) degree in English, and Ben with the same in physics. He was due in Portsmouth in a few weeks’ time to start his national service in the Navy, and would be made an officer straight away because of his degree.
The Kavanaghs had been expecting to meet a studious-looking girl with glasses, a blue-stocking. Instead, Imelda was dainty, with delicate white skin and china blue eyes. Her hair was black, shiny and very straight, and she wore it parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears, which really did resemble two little pink shells.
It went without saying that Lily couldn’t stand her soon-to-be sister-in-law, who was everything Lily wanted herself to be; thin, with manageable hair and make-up that seemed willing to stay on for ever. ‘And she’s all over our Ben. She keeps kissing him in front of everyone. I’m sure he’s dead embarrassed.’
‘He doesn’t seem embarrassed to me.’ Last night, when Josie had first arrived, also expecting to meet someone plain, possibly with plaits and flat, lace-up shoes – how else would you expect a woman with a degree to look? – she had felt a totally unreasonable stab of jealousy when she saw an exquisite creature wearing strappy, high-heeled sandals and a stiff petticoat under her white sundress, making her look like a fairy off the top of a Christmas tree. Ben didn’t seem to mind at all when she snuggled close, tucking his arm in hers as they sat together on the settee and occasionally nuzzling his ear.
‘Hello, Josie.’ Ben had leapt to his feet when she went in. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He had kissed her cheek, in the friendly way you’d kiss a cousin or an aunt.
‘You’ve changed. Oh, you’ve got a moustache!’ She had to stop herself from reaching up and touching the pale hairs on his upper lip.
‘Imelda persuaded me to grow it.’
‘But he won’t grow a beard,’ Imelda pouted.
Ben grinned. ‘One day.’
Why did I go to Haylands? Josie wondered wildly. Why did I give him up? The moustache made him look dashing and sophisticated – and older, more like twenty-five than twenty-two. He wore khaki cotton trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing tanned, surprisingly muscular arms. The mere fact that someone like Imelda found him attractive only increased his appeal in Josie’s eyes.
It could have been me marrying him at Christmas!
She was relieved when Ben took Imelda out that night to see a play at the Royal Court, because she was worried he would guess how unsettled she felt, full of doubts and uncertainties. Had she made a terrible mistake?
During the night, as she tossed and turned in the uncomfortable camp bed in Lily’s room – naturally, Imelda had been given the spare – she could have sworn she heard someone on the landing. Ben creeping into Imelda’s room, or perhaps it was the other way around.
I’m being stupid, she told herself. If Imelda had been as ugly as sin, I wouldn’t have felt like this – at least, I don’t think so. Anyroad, if Imelda didn’t exist, and Ben asked again if I would marry him, he’d be dead set against me going to New York, and we’d be right back where we started. I’d have to tell him, no.
Phew! Josie snuggled her face in the pillow and fell asleep.
New York
1954–1955
1
She fell in love with him at first sight, something she hadn’t thought possible, not in real life. It was her last night in New York. In Thumbelina’s magnificent house, her case was packed, and Matthew had been alerted to drive her to the airport in time to catch the ten o’clock flight to Heathrow. She had bought him and Estelle a little present each for looking after her so well. She was sorry to be leaving New York, yet looked forward to going home.
Then she met Jack Coltrane and everything changed.
Four weeks previously, just as the sun was setting, Thumbelina, tiny, dazzling, seventy-five years old but looking more like fifty, with improbable golden hair and five-inch heels, had picked Josie up from the airport in a chauffeur-driven car. Josie was introduced to the chauffeur, Matthew, a handsome, grizzled black man, then to Henry Stafford Nightingale the third, known as Chuckles, who was in the back, a mild, tubby man with a bright red face who reminded Josie of a robin. They were leaving early next morning on a round-the-world cruise, Thumbelina explained, a belated honeymoon. ‘Aren’t we, hon?’ She gazed adoringly at her new husband, who gazed adoringly back but didn’t speak.
Josie felt shaken after a bumpy flight. Her legs were like jelly, and she had never felt so hot before. She tried to concentrate while she was bombarded with questions about Louisa, about herself and about Liverpool, which Thumbelina knew well, having stayed many times many years ago at Barefoot House. It was difficult to answer when her brain was still halfway across the Atlantic, and had yet to catch up with her body.
They were driving through an area called Queens, she was told, which had a look of Liverpool about it, but then the car crossed a bridge over a shimmering green river, reaching the other side through a vast arch flanked by colonnades, and Thumbelina said, ‘We’re on the island of Manhattan, hon. This is Chinatown.’
All Josie’s tiredness, her feeling of disorientation, vanished in a flash, and she blinked in disbelief at the brilliantly lit shops, the pagoda-topped telephone boxes, restaurants with the names written in Chinese, tiny cramped arcades hung with banners and bunting. All the shops were open, although it was late, and the pavements were packed. Some people wore genuine Chinese clothes, long, gaudy silk robes with frogging and embroidery.
‘Oh!’ she murmured, and Chuckles glanced at her awe-struck face, smiled and opened the window of the air-conditioned car to allow in hot, spicy smells, mixed with wafts of musky perfume, as well as gentle tinkly music that sounded slightly off key, and the buzz of a hundred voices speaking a hundred different tongues. Or so thought an open-mouthed Josie as she listened to the strange sounds and breathed in the strange smells. The world seemed to have got lighter and brighter, noisier, busier, more colourful, larger than life. She was captivated instantly. New York was undoubtedly the most fascinating, the most exciting city in the world.
Louisa had said the Upper East Side was the poshest place to live in Manhattan. The house in which Josie stayed for the next four weeks was palatial – a double-fronted brownstone off Fifth Avenue, solidly built, with a row of pillars supporting a balcony that ran the width of the front. Josie was impressed, but wouldn�
��t have wanted to live there permanently. It was more like a museum than a place to live. Even the house in Huskisson Street in its glory days couldn’t have looked so grand. ‘I’m not exaggerating, Lil,’ she wrote in the first letter to her friend, ‘but you could live in one of the wardrobes. They’re huge. Downstairs, the floors are marble-tiled, but the carpets upstairs are so thick my feet almost disappear. You should see my room, it’s a parlour as well as a bedroom.’
Her room was about forty feet square, with an oyster silk three-piece, a four-poster bed with matching drapes, a red carpet and lots of heavy black furniture decorated with gold.
When Matthew’s wife, Estelle, the matronly housekeeper, took her upstairs on the first day, insisting on carrying her case – which made Josie feel uncomfortable because she was so much older – she did a little jig when the door closed, because she had rarely felt so happy. She began to unpack her case. ‘If only you could see me now, Mam,’ she crowed.
Dinner was served in a room that reminded Josie of Liverpool Town Hall, where she’d once gone with Lily to hear Mr Kavanagh make a speech. After a five-course meal that was more like a banquet, Thumbelina and Chuckles, who were leaving early in the morning, bade her goodnight and goodbye. She kissed them both, and wished them a lovely holiday, and they kissed her and wished her the same. Thumbelina said she must come back one day and they’d show her a real good time. Josie felt as if she’d known them for years. She went to bed immediately and slept like a log for twelve hours.
‘I looked in earlier,’ Estelle said next morning when she brought in a cup of coffee, ‘but you were sleeping as soundly as the sweet Baby Jesus, so I decided not to wake you. It’s ten o’clock. Now, honey, do you want breakfast in that mausoleum of a dining room or in the kitchen? Me and Matthew have already eaten, but we’ll share a cup of coffee with you.’