2008 - Recipes for Cherubs

by Babs Horton

  “I think so. She doesn’t get on with her mother. I suppose that’s history repeating itself – you remember how Kizzy and her mother used to fight?”

  “Mother of God, the screams that come from this place! They fighting like dogs and cats!”

  “I suppose Kizzy never had much example, really. Small wonder she turned out the way she did.”

  Nonna said hesitantly, “I know it’s long time ago, but when Alice decides she don’t get married, is something to do with Kizzy?”

  Ella was silent for a while. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Yes, it was.”

  “None of us ever knows what happen, because the next day when we come to Shrimp’s you gone looking for Alice, and when you come back we don’t hardly see you again.”

  “I couldn’t face anyone, Nonna, and I was worried to death about Alice taking off like that on her own.”

  “We don’t understand what happen, because Alice seem so happy to get married and then she don’t turn up to her wedding.”

  “There’s a simple explanation, but not one that I wanted everyone to know about. On the morning of the wedding someone sent Alice some photographs.”

  “She cancel the wedding because of photographs?”

  “They were photographs of Kizzy and Arthur Campbell together. They were obviously taken without their knowledge, and showed them in a very compromising position.”

  Nonna’s hand flew to her mouth. “Poor Alice!”

  “That’s why she bolted while we were at the church, so that no one could stop her.”

  “Who do you think sends her the photographs?”

  “It must have been that bloody Meredith, of course. He’d always had a shine for Alice, and he must have got wind of what Kizzy and Arthur were up to and started following them. He got the evidence he wanted, and the fool made sure that Alice saw it.”

  “Maybe you too hard on Meredith, maybe he think he’s doing the right thing.”

  “Why didn’t he come to me and tell me first?”

  Norma laid her hand on Ella’s. “If you knew, you don’t let her run off like that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But, Ella, maybe she need to go. Maybe she need to do something on her own for once.”

  “I don’t know, Norma. It was so out of character.”

  “What did Kizzy say about the photographs?”

  “I didn’t give her time to say much. I’m afraid I lost my temper and threw her out.”

  “But why she go and do a terrible thing like that? She only a young girl and he an old man to her. She know he going to marry Alice, and Alice always so good to her.”

  “Kizzy was like her mother: any man she set her sights on she had to have.”

  “I always think Kizzy has the hare’s brains but I no think she wicked like that.”

  “She was worse than wicked, Norma. When she left Shrimp’s she was pregnant.”

  “Mamma mia!” Nonna crossed herself. “This child is Arthur Campbell’s?”

  Ella nodded and sighed deeply.

  “And Alice, did she know of this?”

  “Yes. The note that came with the photographs made sure that she did.”

  “Did you ask Kizzy if it is true?”

  “Like I said, I just told her to go. I couldn’t bear even to look at her.”

  “But Kizzy didn’t marry Campbell?”

  “No. She was a scatterbrain and would have driven him mad within a few days. My guess is that he agreed to support her financially, but never acknowledged the child as his.”

  “And Alice? You don’t think Alice would drive him mad if she became his wife?”

  “Exactly. I never could work out why he was interested in Alice, apart from her looks.”

  “Does Catrin know this man is her father?”

  “No. Kizzy told her some nonsense about her father dying when she was a baby.”

  “Who do she think is her father?”

  “God only knows. She’s been told that Campbell is her godfather. She doesn’t know that Alice was going to marry him.”

  “I very sorry, Ella, but she know now.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I just mention I remembers name of man who going to marry her Aunt Alice.”

  “Has she been asking you about him? You see, when she mentioned that he was her godfather I pretended not to know him.”

  “No, she don’t say much. I don’t think she very interested.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “No one ever going to tell this poor child the truth?”

  “Not me, that’s for sure. She doesn’t like him, for starters.”

  “Maybe that why she so sick inside, because there this big secret in her life and deep down she know something not right.”

  “She’s an intelligent girl. I’m surprised that she hasn’t questioned why she has her mother’s surname and not her father’s.”

  “It’s fine bloody mess, eh, Ella?”

  “It is, and I don’t think the truth would necessarily help Catrin at the moment.”

  “Maybe she don’t get well until she know the truth and learns to live with it.”

  “Or maybe knowing the truth would make her worse. You know what I’m like for blurting things out, Norma. I’ll have to keep a firm watch on my tongue while she’s here.”

  “Where did Alice go when she disappear?”

  “That’s the funny thing. I went everywhere I thought she might go but I couldn’t find her, and when she finally came back she refused to say where she’d been.”

  “But surely if she’d gone to friends they would have told you.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I never found out. She was never herself after she came back.”

  “And poor Alice, she don’t live long.”

  “She went downhill fast. The doctor said that she’d been diabetic for some time and her heart was weakened. All the shocks didn’t help her.”

  “That was last time I see you, at Alice funeral. You look so ill and yet you don’t want anyone to be near you. For long time I ring you on telephone, but you don’t reply.”

  “I’m sorry, Norma. I wasn’t even there for you when Luigi died.”

  “My poor Luigi go so suddenly,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap.

  “No good looking at the past and wishing, eh? That thing they call hindsight is a bastard nuisance. I just wish I’d never let Alice get involved with Campbell.”

  “Ella! She a grown woman. Okay, she not like a proper grown-up but you can’t be stopping her find herself a man.”

  “I suppose not, but I don’t feel as if I protected her properly. There was something not right about Campbell from the start.”

  “How you mean?”

  “Well, the first time he and his sister came, they did nothing but complain. The food wasn’t to their taste and the rooms were too warm. We were glad to see the back of them, and yet they kept returning time after time.”

  “He come back second time to see Alice?”

  “No. When I think back it was really odd the way he settled on Alice. He’d never given her a second glance. I mean, he looked her up and down – all men looked at Alice, but once they realised she was slow-witted it put them all off, apart from Meredith. Dr Campbell was the same as the rest of them.”

  “When he start noticing Alice?”

  “Well, out of the blue, on one of his visits he started paying her compliments, then he pursued her relentlessly. When he went back to London he telephoned every day, sent flowers and wrote her soppy letters. It was all very odd.”

  “And she is flattered?”

  “Absolutely. She worshipped the ground he walked on. She was forever sending him silly little gifts and walking about like she was on cloud nine. She even gave him one of her daft things from her dowry box. God, she must have been in pieces when she saw those photographs.”

  “Did she ever speak of him when she come back?”

  “Not a word – that is,
not until the day she died.”

  “What did she say?” Norma leant forward, consumed with interest.

  “She said something very strange: “Arthur Campbell must never ever find out about the children.””

  “What children?”

  “God knows. She was rambling, slipping in and out of consciousness most of the time. It was just the fever talking, I daresay. She died a few hours later.”

  Suddenly the rooks set up their squawking above the trees of Gwartney’s Wood, and far off on Duffy’s Farm the old donkey brayed in answer.

  There was silence for a while. Then Ella said, “It’s a shame your Tony has never met a nice girl.”

  “There no one here in Kilvenny he take a fancy for. I think at one time he have little shine for Kizzy.”

  Ella looked up in surprise. “You did?”

  “They was always whispering together and sending notes that last summer.”

  “You don’t think they…”

  “No, Kizzy don’t have no interest in him, only like a brother. I worry about him, though, because he not happy.”

  “He seems okay to me.”

  “The Café Romana is in bad way. Not many customers, and I don’t think he can keep on much longer, but he worrying about what will happen to me,” Nonna said wearily.

  “What do you think he’ll do?”

  “The Good God only knows,” Nonna said. “It’s time I go back now, but tell Catrin that Antonio find the old icecream maker in the cellar – she say she want to make ice cream.”

  “I don’t know about making ice cream, she could do with eating it to fatten herself up.” Ella said. “She likes to make food, Nonna, it’s eating it that’s the problem.”

  “Is not food that is the problem. Something deep inside is troubling her. She only using the food as a weapon.”

  “A weapon?”

  “Something wrong in her life and she can’t mend it. She don’t know, maybe, what it is that troubles her. She only in charge of one bit of her life – what she eat and what she don’t eat.”

  “You’re a wise old bird, Norma. I just hope she’ll get over this.”

  “Tutto e possibile,” Norma said, nodding sagely.

  “Your Luigi always used to say that but I never thought to ask him what it meant,” Ella said.

  “In English it is ‘Everything is possible.’”

  35

  Catrin was too startled to speak and her heart was threatening to burst out through her T-shirt as she stared up into the face of Meredith Evans, who stared unflinchingly back at her.

  He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again.

  “You fool! I could have had a heart attack!” she said angrily.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Well, you did. What were you doing in there, anyway? The hotel is private property.”

  “I was just checking the place was okay, and it seemed such a shame that no one plays the piano any more, so I had a go. It used to be so lovely up here.”

  “How did you get in?” she asked frostily.

  “There’s a door at the back near the servants’ staircase that’s never locked. I always go in that way.”

  Catrin glared at him.

  “You mean you go in there without Aunt Ella knowing?”

  He smiled sheepishly.

  “Was it you hiding in the wardrobe the other day?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe him.

  He rummaged in his trouser pocket and pulled out a crumpled, yellowing leaflet which he handed to her. On the front cover was a picture of Shrimp’s Hotel as it had once looked. Catrin looked in amazement at the mown lawns and the neat flowerbeds bursting with blooms. There were tables set out and a smiling maid in a black and white uniform was carrying a tray laden with cakes.

  She opened the leaflet and saw a photograph of two women, Alice and Ella Grieve. She drew in her breath with a whistle.

  Ella looked utterly different; her hair was cut in a curly bob and she was dressed in a pair of trousers and a fisherman’s sweater, and was smiling widely as she held up an enormous fish.

  Beside her Alice was dressed in a flowery frock, her shoulder-length hair held in place with two clips. She was smiling sweetly but her eyes had a vacant, dreamy look as though she were somewhere far away. Norma was right about Alice and Ella; they might be twins but they were like chalk and cheese.

  “She was so pretty,” Meredith said, looking over Catrin’s shoulder. “Anyway, I’m sorry I frightened you.”

  She regarded him warily.

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention to Ella that I’ve been inside Shrimp’s. It’s for her own good, you know. I’ve kept an eye on her for years now on the quiet. In an isolated old place like this, anything could happen.”

  Once again she didn’t believe him.

  Meredith ran his long fingers through his lank hair, then turned on his heel and lumbered away towards Kilvenny. Catrin decided she wouldn’t say anything to Ella, but she’d keep her eye on Meredith Evans. When she was sure he had gone, she let herself into Shrimp’s and wandered through the gloomy rooms, every creak of the floorboards and rattle of the windows making her nervous. She trailed her fingers across the piano keys, listening to the echo of the notes hanging on the air.

  She found the visitors’ book in the kitchen and took it up to Alice’s room, where she made herself comfortable in a chair, lighting a candle for the day had grown darker.

  She was looking for signs of Arthur Campbell and his sister staying here. There was definitely something fishy about him wanting to marry Alice and something mysterious about what had gone on the summer of Alice’s wedding. And it had something to do with her mother. Kizzy had done something terrible to Aunt Alice and Ella had never forgiven her and she’d never come back. Sure as eggs is eggs, Aunt Ella wasn’t going to tell Catrin what had happened, but she was determined to find out.

  Maybe her mother was a thief. Or a murderer. Catrin shivered.

  She turned back to the book and came across an entry in July 1944 for a Dr Arthur Campbell and a Miss Deirdre Campbell. The address given was the house where he still lived, where Catrin went to visit him in the holidays. Alongside the entry, in Arthur Campbell’s familiar handwriting, were the words: Food rather rich. Rooms overheated. Water in the swimming pool too cold.

  That was typical of him; he was so fussy that nothing was ever good enough for him.

  She turned the pages until she came across another entry for the Campbells. It was strange that he’d come to a place like this because he hardly ever went on holiday – he said holidays were a waste of time and took him away from his important work.

  Next to this entry he had written, Disappointed not to have our usual rooms, particularly as the rain was incessant throughout our stay.

  If he had disliked the place so much, why did he keep coming back? And why mention the rain? Surely there must have been a roof on the room, unless there was a hole in it? On one of these visits he had met Alice and fallen in love with her. Catrin shook her head in exasperation; that couldn’t be right.

  She put the book down, opened the bureau and looked inside. There wasn’t anything much of interest, a pad of headed notepaper, some blotting paper, a bundle of pens and pencils held together with string. There were a few old postcards with faded writing and a pile of yellowing bills on a spike all stamped PAID IN FULL.

  It was hard to make any sense of the things she’d found out since she’d been here. Alice Grieve had been going to marry Arthur Campbell, but something made her change her mind at the last minute and she’d left him standing at the altar and run away. Aunt Ella and Norma couldn’t have known what Alice was planning, because they were waiting for her in the chapel, expecting the wedding to go ahead.

  Absentmindedly Catrin picked up an old calendar and flicked through the leaves. It was dated 1946, the year before she was born. There was something nagging at her brain, something that did
n’t add up. She dropped the calendar back into the bureau and stood lost in thought. Her mother had been at Alice’s wedding in the summer of 1946. Catrin was born in 1947, so in the summer of 1946 her mother would have already been – she swallowed hard and tried to batten down her unwelcome thoughts – would have already been pregnant. If she was pregnant she must have been married, and her husband would probably have been here for the wedding. It was a warming thought: her father sitting in the chapel next to her mother, waiting for Alice to arrive in her beautiful ivory dress. But of course she hadn’t arrived, and that had something to do with her mother.

  All this thinking was driving her mad, making her temples throb painfully.

  She rummaged about in the drawer of the bureau and found an old letter from a florist’s shop in Swansea agreeing to deliver the flowers for the forthcoming wedding of Miss Alice Grieve on Saturday, 15 July 1946. Another letter, from a school in Kent, told Miss Ella Grieve that Katherine Grieve would be escorted to Paddington station by a Miss Penhaligon and would be arriving at Kilvenny on the midday train on 8 July 1946.

  She slammed the drawer shut and stood absolutely still, anger welling up inside her. Then she made her way up to the attics.

  She stood in the gathering dusk, an orange-red glow creeping into the room, pooling in a palette of merging colours all around her. She picked up the discarded red dress and held it up in front of her. The material was faded, riddled with moth holes, and in the dying light it was almost see-through. She ran the scalloped hem through her fingers and she knew without a doubt that this was the poppy-red dress that Kizzy was wearing in the photograph downstairs, the dress Norma had described her wearing at the wedding.

  Catrin looked at the label in the frock; it was from a dress shop in Knightsbridge where her mother still bought clothes for special occasions. Kizzy would never have left behind an expensive dress like this unless she’d been in a terrific hurry. Had she rushed back here from the chapel, changed as quickly as she could, packed her things and left, never to return? It looked like it: there were rotting stockings hanging over a chair back, a spilt bottle of her mother’s favourite perfume.

  The dress slipped through her fingers to the floor and as if in a trance she crossed the room to the rickety wardrobe and yanked the door open. Old clothes steeped in dust hung on rattling hangers, reeking of mildew. She lifted out a washed-out school blazer, the silver buttons tarnished with rust; a withered nametag on the collar read Katherine Grieve. How strange to think of her mother as a schoolgirl. She put the blazer back and lifted out a blue gingham dress with an ink stain across the bodice. She couldn’t imagine her mother wearing these drab clothes; she was always so glamorous and particular about her appearance. Her mind went back to speech day last year, when Sister Lucy had thought Kizzy was Catrin’s sister because she looked so young. Catrin had a vision of her in the refectory clutching a cup of tea, standing out like an exotic bird, incongruous and awkward in the midst of the other mothers with their perms, muted twin-sets and sensible skirts. Kizzy had been nearly nineteen when she had Catrin, eighteen when she left school in the summer of 1946.