Georgia

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Take five, Georgia,’ Stephen’s voice came through her headphones from the control room. ‘Max is in a paddy about something.’

  Georgia sighed, taking off her earphones. As she opened the studio door Max lunged forward.

  ‘Max wait. You can’t go in there,’ Stephen shouted behind him, clutching at Max’s arm. He was too slight to create a real barrier between the bull-like man and Georgia, but he did his best.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, her face furrowed with irritation. ‘Can’t we even get on with this without interruptions?’

  ‘Interruption?’ he roared. ‘You’re finished my girl, never mind interrupted.’

  Georgia just stared. She had seen Max fighting mad many a time, but never quite like this. Black stubble on his chin, the shirt under his sweater looked suspiciously like pyjamas and his trousers could have been slept in. But it was his face that really unnerved her.

  It was purple. Veins stood out on his forehead like ropes and he had dried spittle round his lips. Eyes blazing like a man about to kill someone.

  ‘Calm down,’ she gingerly touched his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She was aware all the technicians were at the door of the control room, and behind her she could feel Rod, John and Sam. The silence from the session musicians proved they were all listening, still in their seats, their music open in front of them on stands.

  Max flicked her hand from his arm and pulled a newspaper from his back pocket.

  ‘This,’ he almost slapped her with it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Calm down,’ she snapped back at him. ‘Why didn’t I tell you what?’

  ‘That you were wanted for attempted murder!’

  Ever since her first publicity she had half expected someone to confront her with her past. So many times she had intended to take Max aside to prepare him. But even in her worst nightmares she hadn’t anticipated this.

  The paper felt almost hot in her hands. The face of the man she had learned to forget, staring up at her.

  The studio lights seemed to burn her, the walls buckled and moved.

  ‘Tell me it isn’t true?’ Max’s plea seemed to come from a long way off. ‘It’s some sort of sick joke? It’s made up?’

  There was a roaring sound in her ears. She could feel the handle of the knife in her hand, see blood dripping from the blade and he was lying at her feet, fingers clutching at the wound in his white belly.

  Sam instinctively knew what was in the paper, even before he got a glimpse of the headline.

  Elbowing his way through the crowd in the doorway, he saw the colour drain from her face. She swayed, then crumpled to the floor.

  The air was charged with emotion. Max’s anger. Rod and John’s shock. Stephen’s eyes behind his thick glasses blinking with astonishment. The curiosity of the session men and technicians.

  ‘Out the way,’ Sam reached Georgia in two strides. He knelt down beside her, stroking back her hair from her face. ‘Get some water, damn it,’ he yelled at Max.

  It was Rod who ran for the water. Stephen found some smelling salts and rushed over with them. The rest of the men stood in a semi-circle around them, too shocked to speak.

  ‘All right honey,’ Sam crooned softly, as he saw her eyes flicker open. ‘I’m with you, baby.’ He cradled her head in his arm, holding the glass to her lips.

  ‘I knew there was something about you,’ Max’s voice penetrated the hushed room. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘If you don’t shut your mouth I’ll shut it permanently,’ Sam glowered up at Max. ‘Are you so God damned dense you can’t see the girl’s in shock? Stop thinking about yourself and think of her.’

  He rose, lifting Georgia in his arms as if she weighed nothing more than a few pounds.

  ‘Take me home Sam,’ Georgia said weakly. ‘I’ll tell you everything then.’

  ‘It’s me you should be telling,’ Max barked at her. ‘I’ve looked after you all these years, then you shut me out in favour of him.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Sam’s lips curled back showing his teeth. ‘Call yourself a human being? I’ve known roaches with more sensitivity than you.’

  It was then Sam knew Max was in love with Georgia. It wafted out of him, mixed with jealousy, suspicion and fear.

  ‘You can come with us,’ Sam shot a warning glance at Max, holding Georgia tightly to his chest. ‘But any more outbursts and I’ll wring your neck.’

  It was raining hard. Still holding Georgia in his arms, Sam made a dash for Max’s white Rolls Royce parked outside. He lay her on the back seat, tucking a travel rug round her. A crowd of people making their way to work paused to watch under umbrellas, mouths gaping with surprise.

  ‘Get going,’ Sam leapt into the front seat beside Max.

  The traffic was jammed solid on Oxford Street. Max’s face was grim, he held the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles shone white.

  For ten minutes no one spoke.

  Georgia broke the silence first.

  ‘Can I read what they’ve said about me?’ Her hand came snaking between the front seats to reach for the paper.

  Sam turned in his seat slightly to watch her. She knelt on the car floor, the paper spread out on the seat in front of her. She looked no older than sixteen in her tight little black mini-dress and long boots, hair falling over her face.

  The headline read, ‘Georgia wanted for attempted murder.’

  Sam watched as she read the front page, shaking her head as though in disbelief, then turned the page, shuddering as she saw more pictures.

  ‘Bad, huh?’ Sam said as she sat back on the seat and silently handed him the paper. Tears were welling in her eyes, threatening to spill over and trickle down those pale, drawn cheeks.

  ‘The worst,’ she whispered, her full lips quivering. ‘He’s been watching me all this time.’

  Sam didn’t trust himself to speak. He had to read it. Pretend he knew less than Max. But inside he wanted to hold her, tell her this man was never her father. That he was the man who counted and he would take care of all this.

  ‘Mr Brian Anderson, a sick old man living in slum-like conditions reveals that the famous singer Georgia James is none other than the foster child who tried to stab him to death several years ago.

  ‘Yesterday in the offices of the Mirror, Anderson related a story that makes a lie of everything the public believes of Georgia.

  ‘Brian Anderson and his wife Celia took Georgia from an orphanage when she was nine, to live in their beautiful home in Blackheath. They showered her with love, gave her singing and dancing lessons, bought her all the toys and clothes she’d never had.

  ‘The Andersons were liberal people. On her fifteenth birthday they allowed her to have a teenage party up in her old playroom and it was only when it got out of hand that Mr Anderson went upstairs to intervene.

  ‘He found his daughter in the throes of making love and indications that the party was nothing more than an excuse for wild, promiscuous behaviour. In his anger Mr Anderson, like any irate father, ordered her friends out the house.

  ‘Another girl would have felt shame. But not Georgia, instead she screamed abuse, told him she could do what she liked and then picked up a bread knife left on the party table and stabbed him in the stomach.

  ‘As he lay close to death in hospital and the police were waiting for him to recover consciousness, Georgia ran away rather than face prosecution. She left no apology for the couple who had given her everything, instead she took all the money left in the house, and disappeared without trace. Every effort of the police to find her was unsuccessful. The Andersons spent all their savings trying to trace her which culminated in Celia having a breakdown, and Brian losing his job as a bank manager.

  ‘While her fans have been listening to her songs of love and crediting her with sweetness, purity and sincerity, her father’s life is in ruins. While she amasses great fortunes, he lives in squalor in Ladbroke Grove. Celia’s heart was broken, her c
areer and home lost and finally the long, happy marriage was over too.’

  ‘“I still love her, even after everything she put us through,” Brian Anderson wept as he told his story. “I’ve collected every press clipping of her, every photograph. I always believed one day she would come back to me and say she was sorry.”

  ‘Anderson’s plight is a sad one. He is trapped in a vicious circle of sickness, poverty and appalling housing. He carries a childhood picture of her in his pocket. He watches her television appearances through a shop window as he cannot afford a tv of his own.’

  There were four photographs. Georgia sitting between her foster parents at a Christmas dinner. One of her in a swimsuit taken on holiday. The house in Blackheath, and finally one of the man as he was now, old, broken and sick, standing in front of a dilapidated house.

  Sam felt sick as he read it. It had a ring of truth about it. If he hadn’t heard Sister Mary’s story and got so close to Georgia in the past weeks, he might even have believed it himself. But he wasn’t concerned now with what the public thought, only what it would do to Georgia. A snakepit she would have to go back into, just to clear herself.

  The car stopped at traffic lights. Across the road Sam saw a newspaper stand.

  ‘Queen of Pop, wanted for attempted murder,’ he read, and once again felt faint.

  ‘My God,’ Max exploded once again as he too saw it. His thick, bull neck flushed purple with rage. He turned his head to Georgia, eyes blazing with renewed anger. ‘I take you on, I feed you, train you and you think so little of me you don’t let on about this.’

  ‘And you think so little of Georgia you prefer to believe this trash?’ Sam snapped at Max with barely disguised disgust. ‘I haven’t known her as long as you have, but I recognize this for what it is.’

  ‘I don’t want to believe it,’ Max wiped his hand across his eyes. ‘But when that plopped down on my mat this morning, I thought the world had ended.’

  The Thames was black. Even the Albert Bridge looked forlorn. Across the river Battersea power station’s four chimneys pumped out sulphurous fumes.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Max exploded again as he drew close to Georgia’s apartment block. ‘Look at that lot!’

  The pavements and the courtyard were blocked with an army of people. Reporters and photographers swarmed in groups despite the rain. Men in raincoats, women in high-heels and smart suits huddled under umbrellas. A television van was parked by the entrance, the doors open and men jumping out with film equipment. Older people paused to watch from the river side of the street. Youngsters took up vantage points on walls and railings.

  ‘We can’t go in,’ Max said. ‘Let’s go to a hotel?’

  ‘No,’ Sam put a restraining hand on the steering wheel. ‘We can’t run from this. Besides, Georgia needs to be in her own home. We’ll just barge on through them.’

  As Max stopped in the middle of the road to make a right turn, so the crowd surged forward.

  ‘Keep down,’ Sam urged Georgia. ‘Put the rug over you.’

  But the white Rolls was too obvious. People were running towards them, regardless of traffic.

  ‘Barge your way in,’ Sam snapped. ‘Go on!’

  Slowly the car inched forward, faces lunged at the windows, hands trying the doors. Max’s breath was rasping as if he was having a seizure, but still he drove on, forcing the people to step aside.

  Sam leapt out like a panther. He flung open the back door and reached for Georgia.

  A roar went up the moment they saw her. They ran across the gardens, leaping over fences. Like hounds after the fox.

  Sam held his ground, tucked his arm firmly around Georgia, brushing away reporters as if they were flies. Striding across the courtyard his face set like a bronze sculpture, almost carrying her. Max came rushing after them, his wheezy breath audible even over the shouting.

  ‘Would you like to comment on the story about you in today’s Mirror?’ A young man with dark hair and an earnest face bounded up, running alongside them, quickly joined by the rest of the pack.

  ‘It’s a fairy story told by a very bitter man,’ Georgia tried to smile, but her mouth refused to co-operate.

  ‘Is that a denial?’ another reporter shouted as cameras flashed all around her.

  ‘Miss James will tell her side of the story when she’s ready,’ Sam snarled. ‘You jackals! Clear off and hassle the sick man who sold you all that shit!’

  They had reached the doors of the foyer. The porter moved forward to unlock the door. One reporter tried to get himself in.

  ‘Out!’ Sam put one hand on the man’s collar and lifted him bodily out of the door.

  Inside the block with the door locked behind them it was suddenly quiet. The wide staircase curving up round the old wrought-iron liftshaft, dark green carpet and polished mahogany doors were serenely comforting.

  ‘They’ll be climbing the drain pipes by tonight,’ Max said as they waited for the lift to come. His eyes darted about as if expecting someone to crawl out of the woodwork. ‘They’ll dig and dig till you can’t fart without them reporting it.’

  ‘I won’t let them inside.’ Johnson the porter smiled at Georgia reassuringly, blocking her view of the doors so she couldn’t see the crowds beyond.

  He had read the story around the time the reporters began to arrive and he didn’t believe a word of it. Hadn’t she always had time for him and his missus? Only last Christmas she’d given him a hamper with fifty pounds tucked in a card. Some of the tenants in this place thought a porter was less than a speck of dirt. He might be close to sixty-five, with little education but he knew a good person when he met one. ‘I told them it was all rubbish. I said you was a real kind girl. That man in the picture has been here before. I saw him two or three times outside. He’s a loony.’

  ‘Thank you Johnson.’ Georgia touched his arm.

  Even though Sam could see she was startled by the porter’s revelation she was sensitive enough to understand he was offering his support. ‘I’il tell you the whole story soon. But until then don’t go talking to anyone will you?’

  ‘You can rely on me miss,’ he said, patting his green serge uniform as proudly as if he was one of the Horse Guards. ‘No one will get beyond that door while I’m here.’

  The three of them sat in a semi-circle. The phone lying off the hook. Three empty brandy glasses and a large pottery ashtray full of Sam and Max’s cigarette butts lay on the glass coffee-table between them. Georgia, putty-faced with traces of mascara staining her cheeks, her fingers picking at an imaginary thread on her dress.

  Sam had to close his eyes as she haltingly whispered the true story. He could feel the agony suppressed for so many years, see the scene played out before him as if he’d been hidden in the playroom.

  The rain outside cast an eerie, dirty light on the vivid yellow walls, the white carpet turned grey. Daffodils in tubs on the balcony bowed their heads just as Georgia was doing. An ugliness had crept uninvited into a room once full of bright, clear colour.

  Sam’s fingers clenched into fists, hatred burning in his gut. She knew all the words now, understood desire and passion and what they could do to men. But what did she know at fifteen?

  He wanted to move closer. To take her in his arms and comfort her as she described her first night in Soho and later her abortion. How could any girl survive that without permanent scars?

  Max sat on the edge of an armchair, still red-faced, tense and angry. He reminded Sam of his sister’s pressure cooker. Shaking, hissing, any moment now he would erupt unless someone could find the right words to cool him off.

  ‘You should have told me before,’ he said. ‘I could have done something.’

  ‘How could she?’ Sam spoke out. ‘How do you tell anyone something like that? “Say Max! I was raped when I was fifteen. I stabbed him and ran away. Make it all right for me?’” He half smiled at Max’s discomfort. ‘Of course you’re mad, hurtin’ because she didn’t confide in you. But I bet there are plenty
of secrets in your life you wouldn’t tell?’

  ‘If you’re so fucking clever tell me what to do now then?’ Max’s voice was rasping and wheezy, he looked older now, tired and frightened and Sam’s slow Southern drawl was making him madder.

  ‘My gut feeling is to go out and find that creep. Beat the shit out of him until he tells the truth,’ Sam said.

  ‘We daren’t touch him,’ Max raised his head in alarm. ‘We need legal advice.’

  ‘A man who could rape a child in his care wants lynching,’ Sam said quietly. ‘You go and get legal advice Max. But if that don’t work, don’t bank on me sitting quietly.’

  Sam wanted to be alone with Georgia. She was holding back the tears. Struggling to keep a grip on herself. He ached to tell her the truth about himself, to take over this situation as a father. But how could he blurt it out now? Another shock might just unhinge her. She was tough, but not indestructible.

  Max could hardly bear to look at Sam. Nothing had been the same since he turned up. He had wormed his way closer in six weeks than he had managed in so many years. He still didn’t know if they were lovers for sure, but if not what was it between them? If it wasn’t for that arrogant shit, Georgia might be clinging to him now.

  He was scared too. A dark terror that this was the end of the road. He knew now why she had frozen on him that night and he also knew she really cared for that boy Peter. How long would it be before he turned up? He wasn’t the type to worry about rejection, not when the girl he loved’s future was at stake! Georgia might forgive a few shady deals, but she wouldn’t overlook tampering with her personal life. A girl who could stick a knife in a rapist could do anything. The best thing he could do was get out of the way, lie low and just hope it would all wash over.

  ‘Even if Georgia tells the press the true story there’s gonna be lots of people who’ll believe him,’ Max wanted Georgia to snap at him, start a row so he could be justified in running out on her. ‘People love stories like these. Maybe it would be best to just shrug it off. Just say it’s rubbish and refuse to comment further?’