The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Really!’ Josie muttered. How fortunate for Tyler and Jessie Mae to have had the benefit of a father all these years, she thought cynically, when his real daughter had been deprived.

  She seemed to have lost the thread of the conversation. ‘You mean Coral, your wife, opened my letter, but didn’t show it to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘But it was marked “Strictly Confidential”.’ She could actually remember writing the words on the envelope.

  ‘All the more reason for her to open it. She would have guessed it was from you, and was worried it might say something that would stop us getting married. She gave it to Jessie Mae, said to let me have it when she thought the time was right.’ He put the cup and saucer on the floor, which seemed to require much frowning concentration, then took Josie’s hands in his. ‘Coral was dying, sweetheart, she wanted a father for her kids. We met on the set of this movie we were making. She was the continuity girl, divorced. Her ex was a bastard, she was terrified he’d get his hands on Jessie Mae and Tyler when she died. We weren’t in love, but I was prepared to take on the kids.’ His mouth twisted wryly. ‘You can guess why.’

  She guessed straight away. ‘Because of Laura?’

  He nodded. ‘I wanted to give something back for what I’d taken away.’

  It had been a supremely kind, very noble thing to do, but Josie felt herself withdrawing slightly from him. She felt resentment for the woman who had kept her letter, and even more for Jack for understanding why. She’d been the victim of an underhand trick, conned out of the husband she loved. Then she remembered that five years had passed before he had met Coral, five years during which he hadn’t thought to get in touch, see how she was. She was about to ask why, tell him she’d tried to contact him in Bingham Mews and he’d already left. But what was the point of raking over the past? She’d told him she never wanted to see him again, and he’d taken her at her word.

  ‘Where is Dinah?’ he asked.

  ‘She works in London. I’ll ring soon, tell her you’re here.’

  He gave a nervous grin. ‘How is she likely to take it? It’s a bit of a bombshell.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Josie said truthfully. ‘I’ve never been able to guess how Dinah will react. She’s a law unto herself.’ She picked up the cups. ‘I’ll get more tea.’

  In the kitchen, she leaned on the sink and took several deep breaths. It was hotter than ever, and the afternoon air felt sticky and humid. Her head was whirling. She almost wished that Jack hadn’t come, that she was downstairs in her office dealing with the mundane affairs of Barefoot House.

  ‘I’m getting too old for this sort of trauma,’ she muttered.

  But then she took in the tea, and there was Jack Coltrane sitting on her settee, and she felt a wave of love that took her breath away. He looked up. ‘Have you been happy, sweetheart?’

  She paused before answering. ‘I haven’t been unhappy not for most of the time,’ she said seriously. ‘How about you?’

  He shrugged tiredly. ‘It’s been difficult. Tyler’s always been a sweet, laid-back kid, but Jessie Mae was badly damaged by the divorce and Coral’s death. She had problems at school.’ He shrugged again. ‘Poor Jessie Mae, she’s had problems more or less every damn where.’

  It hardly seemed fair that Jessie Mae’s problems should be his. ‘You said you were working on a film?’

  ‘I’m a script editor. It’s reasonably well paid. We’ve got a neat little house in Venice with a pool. You must come and stay some time, Josie.’

  She almost dropped the tea. ‘That would be nice.’ She put both cups on the coffee-table and went over to the window, where she clutched the curtains to steady herself. What on earth had possessed her to assume he had come back for good? How long did he plan to stay, she wondered, a few days, a week, a month?

  ‘Where’s the bathroom, sweetheart?’ He stood, holding himself determinedly erect. ‘I need to freshen up.’

  ‘On the floor above, at the back.’

  He glanced around the room. ‘I had a bag when I came.’

  ‘I’ll go and look.’ She found the leather holdall at the top of the stairs. Bottles clinked when she picked it up. Aftershave, perhaps? Mouthwash?

  Josie returned to the sanctuary of the curtains, and watched a sharp black shadow creep across the street. Soon the house would be in the shade. She wished, more than she had wished anything in her life before that she had never met Jack Coltrane. I ruined his life, she thought bleakly, and he ruined mine. I thought we were meant for each other, but we weren’t. And now I’m lost, because I still love him. I’ll love him till the day I die.

  He returned to the room, having combed his hair and changed the T-shirt for a black one, looking reinvigorated.

  ‘What happened to your plays?’ she asked.

  ‘The last time I saw them, they were on the floor of the study in Bingham Mews where you’d thrown them.’ His eyes twinkled at her. ‘Then you kicked them.’ He held out his arms. ‘Sweetheart, come here.’

  She ran across the room and buried her face in his shoulder. ‘Have you written any more?’

  ‘No.’ He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Been too busy, too uninspired, had too many burdens, needed to earn a crust.’

  ‘It’s not too late to start again.’ She gave him a little shake.

  ‘I might, one day.’

  Later, she went down to her office so she could phone Dinah in private. ‘Are you sitting down? More importantly, are you alone?’

  ‘I’m sitting down, entirely alone. Evelyn went home early. The heat and the menopause were getting her down, and it didn’t help when I handed in me notice this morning. That job came up, the one I told you about with the much bigger agency. I was going to ring you later. Anyroad, what’s up?’

  Josie told her that her father was there, and about the complications with the letter she had sent all those years ago, finishing with, ‘He’s dying to see you.’

  There was a long pause, then Dinah said, ‘I feel as if I should come rushing home, but I don’t want to.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  Another pause. ‘This Coral sounds a selfish bitch, if you ask me,’ she cried passionately. ‘I don’t care if she is dead. And Jessie Mae, stupid name, seems just as bad. It’s not fair, Mum.’ Dinah was close to tears. ‘He would have come to see me if it weren’t for them.’ The voice became plaintive. ‘He would have, wouldn’t he, Mum?’

  ‘Like a shot, luv.’

  ‘I might come, I dunno. How long will he be there?’

  ‘I haven’t got round to asking yet.’

  That night they went to dinner, and she showed him the house where she had been born and had lived with Mam. ‘In the attic. I never told you before, but she was – what do you say in the States? – a hooker.’

  He placed an arm around her shoulders and squeezed hard. ‘You’ve come a long way, sweetheart.’

  ‘Only four doors,’ she said drily.

  They strolled into town, and ate in a little dark pub in North John Street. ‘You know,’ Jack said when they had finished, ‘I never dreamed it would be so easy, us being together, talking naturally, like old times. I thought I’d be straining to think of things to say, then saying the wrong thing, and there’d be all sorts of awkward silences. I always got on with you better than anyone. We were best friends as well as lovers.’

  He was looking back through rose-coloured glasses. They hadn’t got on all that well in Bingham Mews, where he’d been frustrated by success he hadn’t wanted. She realised, sadly, that something in him had died. This was the old, easygoing Jack, the charming, twinkling Jack she’d married in New York, but now resigned to the fact he would never be a successful playwright. The need to survive – earn a crust, as he’d put it – had killed any ambition he used to have. It was the way of the world, no doubt full of middle-aged men and women who’d long ago given up their dreams of becoming famous at something or other.

  ‘I think another bott
le of vino is called for.’ He went over to the bar. It was the fourth bottle he’d ordered. Josie had had two glasses and was toying with her third. His brain seemed surprisingly unaffected by the amount he’d drunk. He was lucid, witty, clear-headed. There was merely that slight stiffness in the way he walked. She decided to say nothing. Criticising his drinking, mild in comparison to now, had caused tension when they’d lived in Bingham Mews.

  It was almost dark when they came out of the pub, and they wandered, arm in arm, down to the Pier Head, then caught the bus back to Huskisson Street.

  She showed him round the offices downstairs. ‘We have only six staff, and one of them’s part time, though I’ll have to take on some new people soon. Production’s increased, everybody’s working their socks off at the moment.’

  ‘You’ve done incredibly well.’ He eyed the rows of Barefoot House books in their bright red covers. ‘Strange,’ he said in an odd voice. ‘It was me who wanted to be someone, not you. You once said all you wanted was a family. Now look at us! I’m a third-rate script editor on third-rate movies, and you’re a successful businesswoman.’

  ‘Perhaps this …’ Josie waved a hand at the books, ‘… is instead of a family. Anyroad, I’ve got Dinah. She’s me family, even if she’s the only one.’

  ‘That’s nice to know,’ a voice said brightly, and Josie turned, startled. Dinah came sauntering into the room. ‘I decided to shut up shop and come home.’ She stared at them defiantly. She must have got changed since she arrived, as Josie recognised the yellow cotton frock as one she’d left behind when she went to London. Her long legs were bare, and she wore Indian sandals, the sort that fitted between the toes, which Josie had never been able to wear because they were so uncomfortable. The long fair hair was slightly damp, brushed away from her slightly flushed face. She looked exquisitely fresh and lovely.

  ‘Hello, luv! What a nice surprise.’ Josie kissed her daughter’s cheek. She stayed, holding her hand, concerned that the defiant look was because she and Jack gave the impression of being a couple, and Dinah felt excluded. ‘This is your dad.’

  Jack didn’t move. Oh, but the look on him! Josie could have wept as myriad emotions chased across his handsome, mobile face: astonishment, followed by admiration for the beautiful young woman who was his daughter; anger for some reason Josie couldn’t define, perhaps because he’d never been told of her existence until now; sadness, possibly for the same reason; then the soft, gentle, fond look that people gave, usually women, when they set eyes on a small baby. ‘Hi, Dinah,’ was all he said.

  ‘Hello,’ Dinah replied. ‘The kettle’s on, Mum. It’ll have boiled by now. Shall I make tea?’

  ‘Please, luv.’

  ‘Like mother, like daughter, the same passion for tea,’ Jack commented as Dinah ran lightly upstairs. Then he turned away, his back to her. It was a while before he spoke, and when he did his voice was thick. ‘Christ, Josie! When I think of what I’ve missed. What we’ve both missed. We could have been together all this time, raised Dinah between us. We could have had more children, the family you’ve always wanted.’

  ‘Don’t think like that, Jack,’ she said softly. ‘It’s too late.’ Or was it? It was too late for children, but not for them to be together. She had plenty of money. She could turn the attic into a study, he could write full time. Twenty years ago she had made the mistake of sending him away. Now she would ask him to come back. ‘Jack,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart?’ He faced her, and her heart ached when she saw the tears in his eyes.

  ‘Why don’t we get married again?’

  He smiled his dear, sweet smile. ‘We can’t, sweetheart. There’s all sorts of reasons why we can’t.’

  ‘I can’t think of a single one.’

  ‘There’s Jessie Mae,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave Jessie Mae. She’d go to pieces without me.’

  ‘Bring her to Liverpool. She can live with you, with us, here.’

  He slid his arms around her waist and shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t work, sweetheart. She’s Hollywood born and bred, and she would never accept another woman in my life. She’d be impossible to live with.’

  They stood in each other’s arms, their chins resting on one another’s shoulders. It felt so comfortable, Josie thought, so natural. This is where God intended me to be! She remembered thinking the same thing the night they’d met.

  ‘You’ve given this girl twenty years of your life, Jack,’ she said reasonably. ‘Isn’t it time you had a life yourself?’

  ‘I promised her mother on her deathbed that I’d always care for Jessie Mae. I can’t go back on that.’

  Not even for me? she almost said, but it would have sounded childish, and she knew that Jack Coltrane would never go back on his word to a dying woman. ‘I suppose I’ll have to wait until Jessie Mae finds a husband. Will you marry me then?’

  She leaned back so that they were face to face, and was cut to the quick when he suddenly pushed her away with a curt, ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, startled.

  ‘Christ, Josie!’ His face was dark with anger. ‘Are you always so persistent? Hasn’t it entered your head that I might not want to get married again?’

  ‘But you said earlier …’

  ‘I was lamenting the years we’d lost, that’s all. I’ve had it with relationships, up to here.’ He held a hand to his chin. ‘When Jessie Mae gets married I want to live alone, in peace.’

  It was too much. It had been such a peculiar day, what with the strange dreams earlier, the heat, Jack coming, being so strangely drunk, having to tell Dinah her father was there, then Dinah herself coming all the way from London and behaving so coolly, upstairs now, making tea. There’d been a brief vision of happiness, imagining living with Jack again, and now the brutal rejection, which wasn’t a bit like the Jack she used to know.

  Josie burst into tears, wild, racking tears that tore at her body and made her chest want to burst.

  ‘Sweetheart!’ Jack threw himself in the chair behind the desk and dragged her on to his knee. ‘Oh, my darling girl. I love you so much. I didn’t remember how much until earlier when you came running downstairs. You’re part of me. I love you with all my heart and soul. There is nothing on earth I want more than for us to be married, to spend the rest of our lives in each other’s arms. But it’s not to be, my love.’

  ‘Why not?’ she sobbed. ‘I love you just the same. I always have, Jack. I want what you want. I understand if we can’t have it right this minute, but surely we can have it in the future?’

  His arms tightened around her so that she could hardly breathe. ‘I’m no longer the guy you first met,’ he said savagely. ‘I haven’t been in a long time. I’m a physical and emotional wreck. I get depressed. I have terrible black moods. I’m on pills for my nerves.’

  ‘I don’t care, I love you. Anyroad, you wouldn’t need pills if you were with me. I’d make you better.’

  ‘Josie, I ruined your life once, I don’t want to ruin it a second time.’ He gestured around the office. ‘You’ve got a great business, a lovely daughter, a nice life. The last thing you want is me fucking everything up for a second time.’

  Josie began to cry again. ‘This afternoon was wonderful. Oh, Jack, half of our lives are already over. Why can’t we spend what’s left with each other?’ With all his faults, she would sooner have Jack Coltrane than any other man on earth.

  He stayed for six days, Dinah left after two, by which time they were getting on reasonably well. They talked mainly about films, which seemed to be a cover for things the more wary Dinah would prefer to avoid for now. She left for London on Wednesday morning, having kissed her mother and shaken Jack’s hand. ‘I hope we’ll meet again one day,’ she said politely.

  ‘Well,’ Jack said with a grin after she’d gone, ‘I suppose a kiss and a “Dad” was too much to expect after only two days.’

  ‘A kiss might be on the cards, but I’m afraid “Dad” is most unlikely. She talk
ed to me about it yesterday. “Jack” is the most you can look forward to.’

  ‘That’s better than nothing, which is all I’ve had so far. Oh, I’m not complaining,’ he said hastily, when Josie opened her mouth to say he was expecting too much too soon. ‘I feel privileged that such a stunning, autocratic and supremely confident young woman was so nice to me.’

  ‘She’s not quite as confident as she appears.’ Josie didn’t want him getting the wrong impression of their daughter. ‘She was a very withdrawn little girl. It was my fault. I didn’t want her, Jack. She came too soon after Laura. I think she sensed she wasn’t welcome, even though she was only a tiny baby.’

  ‘Ah, Laura!’ Jack said the name reverently. They had hardly mentioned their other daughter. ‘She would have been twenty-five. I wonder what she would have looked like?’

  ‘I often wonder the same thing,’ Josie said softly. ‘I reckon she would have been a female version of you and driven the boys wild.’

  ‘Why did we call her Laura?’ He looked puzzled. ‘I’ve tried to remember, but I can’t. It drives me crazy sometimes.’

  ‘We saw that film together in a little cinema in New York – Laura, with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. When I was expecting, we decided on Laura for a girl, Patrick if it was a boy.’

  ‘We had a girl, but then we lost her.’ Jack’s face was tight with pain. ‘Since that day I’ve never driven a car. I’m not surprised you never wanted to see me again.’

  ‘I wanted to see you again within a week. But you’d already gone, to California, according to Elsie Forrest. If it had been New York, I would have tried to find you.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that!’ he groaned. ‘I went through hell over the next few years, and it doesn’t help to find I could have been with you – and Dinah.’

  ‘By the way, should Dinah ever bring the subject up, she’s named after Dinah Shore, your favourite singer.’

  He looked taken aback. ‘Did I say I liked Dinah Shore?’

  ‘No, but I couldn’t tell her she was called after the midwife because I couldn’t be bothered to think of a name meself, could I?’