Song of the Skylark

by Erica James

  ‘I couldn’t possibly put you to so much trouble,’ Marjorie replied stiffly.

  ‘Nonsense, it’s no trouble at all. I have nieces and god-daughters aplenty and know what it is to worry about them, so you can sleep real easy knowing Clarissa’s in safe hands.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Clarissa said, taking her cue. ‘And I promise not to stay up too late or disturb you when I go to bed.’

  ‘I should hope not indeed,’ Marjorie replied. ‘Very well, but I shall expect to see you bright and early for breakfast.’

  ‘Of course.’ Watching her tormentor walk away, and waiting until she was out of earshot, Clarissa thanked Betty. ‘You really don’t have to babysit me, you know.’

  ‘I know I don’t, and I don’t intend to. But oh Lord, that woman needs to loosen up. Do you suppose she’s ever known a moment’s fun in her life?’

  ‘If she has, I expect it was fleeting. But never mind, Marjorie, tell me some more about meeting Effie Chase at the captain’s cocktail party. What was she really like? And what do you know about her two companions?’

  Betty laughed. ‘You sly girl, you! You have your eye on one of them, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Clarissa remonstrated.

  ‘Well, I’d steer clear of Ellis Randall if I were you; he’s too handsome for his own good and has been raised with an extremely exaggerated sense of his own cleverness.’

  ‘Is he the one with the unusually green eyes?’ Instinctively Clarissa knew the answer would be yes.

  Betty nodded. ‘He’s the heir to Randalls Paper Products and is exactly the type of young man any mother would warn her daughter to avoid – but of course, that only increases his attractiveness.’

  After a pause, Clarissa said, ‘You mean, Randalls as in “The toilet paper that’s soft and firm, and leaves you fresh and dry”?’

  ‘One and the same.’

  Clarissa laughed at the irony of the heir to the biggest toilet paper company in the US looking like he had a bad smell permanently under his nose.

  ‘What about the other man,’ she asked, ‘the serious-looking one?’

  ‘Ah, now he’s a very different kettle of fish. His name’s Artemis Bloomberg and he’s—’

  ‘Do tell me he’s a writer!’ Clarissa burst out.

  ‘Why, as a matter of fact he is. Or rather he’s an aspiring author. He’s only twenty-one, the same age as Ellis Randall. They were at school together and of the two, he’s by far the brighter.’

  ‘How do you know so much about them?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know so many people,’ she said airily, ‘and I take an interest in those around me. And you, my dear girl, are somebody who interests me greatly. I predict you have a very intriguing life ahead of you.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘You’re strong-minded, independent and searching for adventure, aren’t you? Why else would you be making this journey?’

  Clarissa laughed and suddenly felt a poignant closeness to this friendly woman, a woman she had known for no more than a few hours, but with whom she felt able to talk so freely. ‘I’m so pleased we’ve met,’ she said.

  Betty patted her hand. ‘Me too. And before our voyage is over, we must be sure to exchange addresses, because I’d love to stay in touch. And who knows, you might need my help one day, which I’d gladly offer.’

  Her friendly kindness, so at odds with Marjorie’s coldness, was almost too much, and needing to change the subject, Clarissa said, ‘Why were you surprised to see Effie and her companions having tea together this afternoon?’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘You said “quelle surprise” when they sat down.’

  ‘Oh that!’ Betty said with a smile. You obviously haven’t been keeping up with the gossip magazines, have you? If you had, you’d know that it was hotly rumoured that Effie was about to announce her engagement to the film producer Roddy Campbell.’

  ‘But he’s ancient!’

  ‘More or less the same age as Daddy Chase.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Daddy Chase put a stop to things, claimed she was only involving herself with Roddy Campbell to get at him for marrying somebody so young and so soon after the death of Effie’s mother, whom she adored. And apart from that, Daddy Chase would much rather his daughter married a wealthy heir her own age, somebody like Ellis Randall who she’s known for a year or two now. I suspect Daddy Chase may have ensured they were travelling to Europe at the same time.’

  Together they glanced across the dining room to where Effie and her companions were now on their feet and preparing to leave.

  ‘Come on,’ Betty said, taking hold of Clarissa’s hand, ‘I’ll introduce you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I’m sorry my dear, but it looks very much like you’re needed elsewhere.’

  So captivated by the scene Mrs Dallimore had created for her on board the Belle Etoile, Lizzie had to take a moment to think where she was. The woman really was an amazing storyteller. Seeing Jennifer, the matron, on the terrace up at the house gesticulating to her, she grudgingly got to her feet. ‘I suppose I’d better go,’ she said, wishing she didn’t have to. ‘Will you tell me what happened next when I see you again?’

  The old lady smiled. ‘If you’d like me to, yes. But not if it means you’ll get into trouble for spending too much time with me and not enough with the others. Now off you trot before matron sends for reinforcements to drag you away.’

  Thinking she might be lucky and have only a quick task to carry out before being able to escape back to Mrs Dallimore and her story, Lizzie sprinted across the lawn towards the terrace. She was just rounding the largest of the flowerbeds when she suddenly found herself flying through the air before landing flat on her face with a thud. There was a moment, at the point of impact, when the world turned black and she felt every last breath sucked out of her and her body go as limp as a rag doll. When she opened her eyes she saw a face she recognised, but couldn’t place.

  ‘Are you okay?’ the person asked.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve checked in with my body,’ she wheezed, fighting to get her breath back.

  ‘Take it easy, you’re probably a bit winded.’

  Feeling for anything broken, she flexed her jaw, wobbling it from side to side, and ran a finger down her nose. She then rubbed at the grass stains on her knees.

  ‘It was pretty impressive what you did. You took off in fine style.’

  Lizzie looked up at the person talking to her and, with sufficient brain cells now in communication with each other, she said, ‘You’re that bloke from the staff room.’

  He wiggled one of his eyebrows. ‘Depends how many blokes you’ve seen in there. I’d hate for there to be a case of mistaken identity.’

  ‘No chance of that,’ she said, ‘you’re definitely one and the same.’

  He offered her his hand to help pull her up.

  Ignoring it, she hauled herself into an upright position. ‘So is it your fault I hit the deck? What did you do, rugby-tackle me?’

  ‘I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it to yourself.’ He made a play of looking around them, as though checking for eavesdroppers hiding in the bushes. ‘I launched you into orbit using my superpowers,’ he whispered.

  She gave him a long hard look and spontaneously took a step back from him. Ooo-kaaay, so he was a full-on crazy. A full-on crazy gardener, she then thought, noticing the collection of gardening tools on the ground behind him, along with a wheelbarrow. Had he tripped her on purpose? she suddenly wondered. Then remembering that Jennifer had needed her for something, she said, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘See you around,’ he called after her. ‘But remember, no telling anyone what I told you.’

  ‘Why, will you lose your superpowers if I do?’

  Ig
noring her sarcasm, he put a finger to his lips.

  Yeah, I’ll give you Ssh! thought Lizzie, limping up to the terrace. If he had deliberately tripped her, just for the fun of it, there’d be hell to pay.

  She went in search of Jennifer and found her in her office. ‘Sorry I took so long,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ the other woman said. ‘Did Mrs Dallimore not want to part with you? I think she’s enjoying having you around.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that, I – I fell over something in the garden. Who’s the gardener? I haven’t seen him before.’ What she really wanted to ask was whether he was a lunatic, and if so, perhaps he shouldn’t be allowed to be anywhere near the elderly and vulnerable.

  ‘His name’s Jed and it’s his first day. Mr and Mrs Parks are trying out a new contractor because the firm they were using before wasn’t reliable enough. But as one of the residents has pointed out, he’s rather easy on the eye, isn’t he?’ She smiled and turned to look out of her office window to where the subject of their conversation was hard at work in the flowerbed where Lizzie had left him.

  Easy on the eye or not, he was a menace as far as Lizzie was concerned.

  It wasn’t long before the warmth of the afternoon sun took its effect and Clarissa’s eyelids closed and she succumbed to the drowsy sensation of escaping the confines of her tired old body. Happily, and like a feather caught on a breeze, she floated back to where her thoughts had been when Lizzie had been sitting with her.

  What a dreadful woman Marjorie Boyd-Lambert had been, but what a blessing Betty had proved to be, and how much poorer Clarissa’s life might have been had their paths not crossed.

  Funny how sharp and clear most of her reminiscences were, but how others had become faded and worn thin like the threads of an old tapestry. She couldn’t decide if they had lost their clarity through constant use, or had become so tangled in the myriad memories stored away in her head, they were now beyond loosening free.

  But one memory would never be lost to her: the moment Betty had introduced Clarissa to Effie and her companions. ‘I can’t apologise enough for the awfulness of what the woman sitting next to me at dinner said about you,’ she had said to Effie. ‘I’ve only known her a short while, but already I’m plotting her demise, preferably in the most despicable manner possible.’

  ‘Oh, think nothing of it,’ Effie responded with a small shrug, ‘I hear that kind of thing all the time. And usually from Ellis here.’ She laughed and indicated the scowling man next to her. He made no attempt to deny or confirm the comment, just stared intently at Clarissa while putting a lighter to the cigarette in his mouth.

  To her amazement, Betty had been right when she’d said Effie would welcome the company of another girl the same age as herself. ‘You must join us for a drink,’ Effie had urged Clarissa, ‘you cannot imagine how tedious it is having only these two boys to talk to.’ Then turning to the man in horn-rimmed glasses, she’d said, ‘Artie, this couldn’t be more perfect, you now have the most divine partner for when we go dancing later. You do like to dance, don’t you, Clarissa? Please say you do, or I’ll have to divide myself between the two of them and I’m sure I shan’t have the energy for that.’

  ‘Of course she dances,’ Betty had said before Clarissa had a chance to say that, according to her dance teacher at school, she was in possession of two very clumsy left feet. It was one of the reasons she had resisted all her grandmother’s efforts to throw her into the many social dances that she deemed so important for a young woman of her background.

  ‘Good! That’s settled then.’ And linking her arm through Clarissa’s, Effie had sashayed her way towards the staircase of the Salle à Manger. When they’d reached the top, she murmured in the softest of voices in Clarissa’s ear, ‘Now you must turn and look back the way you’ve just come, for a true performer never leaves her audience without giving them one last glimpse. There,’ she’d giggled when they’d passed through the doors with Ellis and Artie following behind. ‘You’re a natural star!’

  Clarissa had always found that memories often had a life of their own; they chose when to surface and when to lie dormant. Just as true was the danger of a muddled memory becoming a truth. Was it a muddled memory now to think that she knew in her heart during those days on board the Belle Etoile that Effie, Ellis and Artie were to become so dear to her? Surely that could not have been the case? Yet now, more than seventy years later, she would swear that it was true.

  At the sound of rustling in the trees to her right, Clarissa opened her eyes. She smiled. ‘Ellis, is that you? Have you come back to correct me on my facts? You always did like to put me right, didn’t you? But you had me all wrong that first night, just as I had you all wrong.’

  It wasn’t Ellis, though; it was Artie, and at the sight of his caring face a familiar aching pain clenched at Clarissa’s heart.

  ‘Hello, Artie,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come and sit with me?’

  But no sooner had she uttered the words than, and at the sound of what could have been something cracking underfoot, he vanished like a puff of smoke. Disappointed, she turned to see what had caused the noise and gave a start. A few yards from her was a stranger staring back at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ the man said, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He narrowed his eyes and peered into the darkness of the trees. Clarissa felt her face flush. Had he heard her speaking to Artie?

  ‘Are you looking for somebody?’ she asked, rattled by his intrusion.

  ‘No, just going about my business.’

  ‘And what business would that be?’

  ‘Gardening business. The sort that involves these.’ He held up a pair of secateurs and a large black bucket, which until then she hadn’t noticed. ‘I thought I’d deadhead the roses on the arbour,’ he said. ‘That’s if you don’t mind. I could come back later if you’d prefer.’

  ‘No, no, that’s quite all right,’ she said, her composure reinstated, ‘so long as I’m not in your way.’

  ‘I’ll work round you. And if you like,’ he added with a wink, ‘I’ll give your hair a trim while I’m about it.’

  She watched him get to work, wondering when was the last time a young man – a well-spoken, handsome young man at that – had winked at her.

  Snip went the gardener’s secateurs.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said abruptly. ‘If you want to continue talking to your friend in the woods, I won’t listen in.’

  Her cheeks flushed again. ‘You frightened him away,’ she blurted out. Immediately she wished she’d kept quiet. He was bound now to think she was gaga.

  ‘It seems to be my day for frightening people off,’ he said. Snip. ‘It must be my ugly mug.’

  She sneaked a look at his face and thought that he was being modest; he was far from ugly.

  ‘Who else have you frightened today, then?’

  ‘Well, not exactly frightened, but I certainly annoyed her. She works here, as a matter of fact. Don’t ask me her name, but she managed to trip over me while I was weeding. She came hurtling round the corner of the flowerbed where I was kneeling, and literally flew right over my back. Then she had the cheek to blame me.’

  Clarissa thought about watching Lizzie running up the lawn in answer to the matron’s summons. ‘I think I know who that might have been,’ she said. ‘Was she about your age with dark hair tied up in a ponytail?’

  ‘Yeah, that sounds like her. Bit of a bolshie madam, between you and me, and zero sense of humour.’

  ‘I expect you’ll find you simply got off on the wrong foot with her,’ Clarissa said. ‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to leap to the wrong conclusion about a person.’

  Once more she was reminded of Ellis, and how she had taken such a strong dislike to him before getting to know the man he really was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  April 1939, SS Belle Etoile
/>
  ‘I’m afraid I’m a terrible dancer.’

  ‘Are you? I hadn’t noticed. You’re doing just fine.’

  Clarissa smiled at Artie’s kindness, at the same time trying not to lose her rhythm – back, back, sidestep, together, back, back, sidestep, together. She had never danced in a bar before, and she dreaded to think what Marjorie and Grandma Ethel would have to say if they could see her here in the glamorous setting of The Rhapsody Bar.

  But at least her chaperone and grandmother needn’t concern themselves with any impropriety when it came to Artie – his behaviour was as perfect as his dancing prowess. ‘Where did you learn to dance so well?’ she asked, as he gently but expertly manoeuvred her to avoid colliding with another couple.

  ‘My brother and I had no choice but to submit to our mother’s desire to turn us out in a manner she perceived as socially well equipped. If nothing else, she believed we’d be able to dance our way out of trouble.’

  ‘And have you put that skill to the test yet?’

  ‘So far I’ve managed to keep out of trouble, but who knows what the future holds.’

  Who indeed, thought Clarissa, casting a glance over to the bar, where Ellis was scowling deep into a glass of whiskey as though searching the bottom of it for something he’d lost. His bow tie untied and drooping around his neck, he looked absurdly dashing. There was no sign of Effie; perhaps she had gone to powder her nose.

  ‘I know I’ve only just met you all,’ she said, ‘but Ellis doesn’t strike me as being a particularly happy man.’

  ‘Don’t be fooled by that morose way of his, it’s a well-honed act.’

  ‘Have you been friends for long?’

  ‘Long enough to know that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him.’

  At the intensity of his words, Clarissa raised her eyes to look at her dancing partner more closely. Beneath thick hair parted to the right and a broad sweep of forehead, dark, sensitive and intelligent eyes stared back at her from behind the lenses of his spectacles. ‘He’s lucky to have you as his friend, in that case,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anyone who would say that about me.’