by Betty Burton
He picked up a complicated arrangement of black and tobacco-coloured georgette drapes and fly-away panels from the bed. ‘Put it on and let’s have a look.’
She abandoned her stockings and stepped into the georgette sack which immediately became a most elegant gown of the latest French chic.
He came and stood beside her, viewing their reflection with satisfaction. ‘We two are OK, Connie. Still not a woman in the county to touch you for class, Connie. We’ll show ’em tonight. Last fling before the lights go out.’
‘We are not giving Eve her Coming of Age purposely to show them, Freddy.’
‘Well no, Connie, but we shall just the same, shan’t we?’
He flashed his white teeth at her as he often flashed them at his secretary when getting her to work overtime for no extra pay, or at a bunch of old aldermen who were being difficult with their votes.
‘Don’t get into any arguments about council business.’
‘So long as nobody gets into arguments with me.’
‘That’s just what I mean, Freddy. It is for you to see to it this evening – it is not their daughter’s party, it’s our daughter’s.’
‘I know.’
‘Then don’t go within twenty feet of Councillor Greenaway.’
Councillor Greenaway was the first and, so far, the only Labour man ever to be elected to the town council. He had set out to disrupt the cosy club that up till then had ruled the town and, although his one dissenting vote on matters such as how the rates were spent did not count for much, the pertinent – or impertinent, if the colour of your politics was blue – questions he asked in Council received a disproportionate amount of reportage, and created more discussion in the Tory Club lounge than was good for its Alderman and Councillor members.
Connie was ready now and sat smoking a cigarette and watching Freddy as he glossed back his hair and ran his fingertips over his Ronald Colman moustache. ‘The man keeps a damn sweet-shop. If I don’t want to argue with him, then I don’t.’
‘He’s also one man who doesn’t rely on you for his living, so it’s no skin off his nose if you lose your temper at your daughter’s party.’
‘I could take him if I set my mind to it… buy up his lease or something. But he’s all right. He’s good for me, none of the kiss-my-backside attitude like the rest of them. If he wasn’t a damn Red, I could quite get on with him – funny enough, we do get on in our own way.’
‘Well, for tonight, you forget he’s a damn Red.’
‘All right, all right, you don’t have to go on, I want it to be right for Evie just as much as you do… In fact… look,’ he paused and felt in his jacket pocket. ‘I went to Winchester today, for a special little present I had made, just from me to Eve.’
‘Won’t the car be enough?’
‘That’s our official present, look good in the Clarion, this is just from me – father to daughter.’
Connie Hardy opened the box and said an unambiguous ‘Oh, yes’ at its contents. A pair of ornate, sparkling dress-clips in the shape of letter Es, and in a kind of style that was most popular amongst girls who shopped for their jewellery at Woolworth’s – in fact Woolworth’s sold a very good copy of these very clips. It was the current fashion for girls to give one as a token of fidelity. They cost only sixpence, cheap enough for a girl to bestow her fidelity quite frequently.
Although he had the aforementioned health, money, power, etc., he unfortunately did not have any innate sense of style, and having found it very difficult to acquire, he had married it instead. Connie’s own present to Eve was a slender art-nouveau statuette.
‘Oh Freddy… they’re… they’re…’Oh my dear Lord! she thought, what can I say? ‘…they’re real diamonds.’
‘Of course they’re real – wouldn’t be much point if they weren’t.’
* * *
In Pompey that same night, Able Seaman Greenaway and his two mates mingled with the shoppers in Lake Road. He had made up his mind that he would apply for transfer to where promotion was going to be fast. He was no fool: he knew that he had no serious chance of getting Freddy Hardy’s consent.
‘Let’s all apply,’ suggested David Greenaway. ‘We should probably all go.’
‘Och noo, Greeny, you’ll not get me in a sardine can.’
‘But think of the promotion, man,’ David Greenaway said. ‘We could be petty officers within a year.’
David Greenaway was of unremarkable height and breadth, made more noticeable when he was with the two Glaswegians with whom he had palled up on their first day – big, broad lads, one with flaming red hair, the other gypsy black with pock-marks of virility pitting his chin. With their little round caps and tight jerseys that showed off their physique, the young sailors swung along abreast through the market, turning the heads of Portsmouth girls done up and ready for a night out.
‘Ye know, Greeny, these Pompey lassies are a bit of all right. I should’ne mind going to a hop.’
‘Not for me, I’d rather just have a quiet pint. You two go, I’ll see you back on board.’
‘Come on, we’ll find a dance-hall with a bar,’ said the red-haired one.
‘We’ll toss ye for it,’ suggested his pock-marked mate.
The Glaswegians lost, cheerfully.
‘Come on, Greeny, cheer up. You look like a wet week in Dunoon.’
David Greenaway looked into his beer. ‘It’s my girl’s twenty-first birthday.’
‘Aw, and she’ll be living it up without ye. Let’s chip in and have a wee tot or two.’
The Scotch whisky loosened David Greenaway’s normally tight tongue.
‘She’s the reason why I need to go on the subs.’
‘You’ve no cause to bother your head about promotion, Greeny,’ said the red-haired sailor. ‘An educated chap like yoursel’, with your old man owning a shop of his own, why, you’ll be in a peaked cap soon enough.’
‘Will she no have you as you are?’ asked the other.
‘It’s not like that… though I do want to get some quick promotion. It’s not Eve, it’s her father, he’s the big potato in our town. Rich… big house… owns a bread and cake factory. A borough alderman and a right swine with his employees. Fancies his chances with the women.’
Dave Greenaway’s two mates understood: no decent working-class family would gladly welcome the daughter of the owner of a cake factory who had so many other points against him – alderman, skirt-chaser.
‘And his darling daughter fancies ye?’
‘More than fancies me. My God, she’s lovely. I can never see her without thinking of big, ripe luscious strawberries with cream.’ His gaze was away out of the sawdust and smoke of the bar. ‘She’s like that… pink and tender and sweet.’
The red-haired sailor nudged his mate. ‘I can see ye’ve got it bad, Greeny.’
‘I want to ask her to marry me.’
‘Ye could run away to Gretna.’
‘No, no… for a start my Mam wouldn’t forgive me.’
Her beautiful, educated voice had not a trace of Hampshire breadth.
We could run away and be married over the anvil at Gretna Green, David.
His strawberry-flavoured girl would have run to the ends of the earth with him.
No, Eve, I don’t want us married without our two families there when we come down the aisle of St Mary’s, I want the Greenaways and the Hardys smiling at one another.
That’s like waiting for the Montagues and Capulets to smile at one another.
It was, perhaps, an awareness of their universal, ageless situation that gave Eve and David such romantic notions about one another. They were very much in love with forbidden love – had been since they first met.
If we wanted to go behind their backs, Eve, we could simply get a Special Licence. Although Dave Greenaway thought himself and Eve to be beyond hidebound influences and convention, a Special Licence still held for him connotations of illicit sexual connection and hasty marriage. I want my Mam to respect yo
u.
‘Is she having a shindig for her birthday?’
‘Oh yes, a great do with a marquee and a band, it’ll be in all the local newspapers.’
‘Well then, she’ll no doot be dancing, so what about it? I’d not say there was much wrong wi’ a dance for Greeny too.’
So, with his troubles shared and two decent Scotches inside him, Able Seaman Greenaway was persuaded to go dancing, and had not at all a bad time with a plump, blonde-haired girl who had sweet breath and whose breasts were like satin cushions inside her satin blouse and who wore his hat through the streets when she let him walk her home. But, of course, she wasn’t Eve.
1989
The sound of Hildy’s solid shoes on the stone terrace aroused the old lady.
‘Don’t bother with lunch, Hildy, I’ll have what’s left of that gazpacho from last night.’
‘Cold soup do you not good. Old ladies should eat well.’
‘Which old lady?’
‘You old lady.’
‘And you are a bloody sight too familiar with your elders and betters.’
‘Somebody must be familiar with you or you never eat at all, I think. And I promise Mister Fergus.’
‘I eat perfectly well when Mister Fergus is in Brussels. One day Mister Fergus will know what it’s like. In no time at all, it will be Josh’s turn to descend on Mister Fergus and tell him what to eat and what not to eat and how much.’ She closed the book she had been reading and smoothed its cover.
Hildegard picked it up and riffled through the pages. ‘He cares for you.’ She was the younger of the two women, but was older looking – mistress and housekeeper. She went to sit on the low stone wall of the terrace.
‘You’ll get piles, sit on this.’
They had lived in one another’s pockets for much of their lives, each telling the other what to do. Each dreading that they would be left alone, yet each wanting to protect the other from being the one who is left. That the housekeeper was well provided for in the mistress’s will did not signify, they had been together for too long for the money to matter once one of them was dead.
‘That Josh. Did you ever see such a baby, milady? Walking so soon!’
‘Like his father. Fergus walked at a year, and stop calling me by that stupid name.’
‘You called me Brünnhilde. You are wrong, the one who walked early was Melanie. You remember, we were still in Markham. My memory does not play tricks.’
‘And mine does? I remember clearly, Fergus on the beach in Spain, suddenly walking off on his own.’
‘Spain was Melanie, and she was one and a half years. Fergus was such a good crawler – he had no need to walk. Do you not remember, it was at Melanie’s birthday party that she walked. The old man said that she was like a little wind-up doll?’
It was their pleasure to wrangle on about some small point like this. The gradually expanding family was at the centre of their lives, and the reason that they lived in a house with so many spare rooms. Such a wrangle was a way of saying, let’s have a little session remembering when the children were young.
‘You are probably right, Hildy. One gets so confused. Grandsons, great-grandsons…’
‘I shall make tuna omelette? The fish will be good for you.’
‘Gazpacho. My brain is perfectly all right, I do not need fish.’
The housekeeper nodded – she would serve both.
Eve opened her book again. ‘And if the phone rings, don’t answer it, I must get this book read.’
‘Do you think that she has grown old well?’ Hildy pointed to the photo on the book-jacket.
‘I think I would recognize her, even though it’s fifty years. Would you?’
‘She looks just like any old woman to me. Perhaps I never saw her.’
‘She has worn pretty well, she’s my age.’
‘But milady has not had her face repaired. You have good honest wrinkles.’
‘Is that so? Well, thank you for that.’
‘And you mean to go trappising all the way to England because this woman puts you in a book?’
‘Traipsing. I am not the only one – all the women are in it. We were like a family in many ways. And I want to see who’s left. And I want to see her, this old Georgia Giacopazzi without wrinkles who used to be my friend.’
‘And the old Madam? She is in the book?’
‘Yes, yes. Connie will be in it. Fergus said she was quite an eye-opener.’
‘I will get the omelette and leave you to read your book.’
‘Gazpacho – or you can take a month’s notice.’
She started the chapter over again to refresh her memory. When Josh was in the house, everything else went from her mind. What a joy, to live long enough to see your grandson with a child of his own.
Did Georgia Kennedy have children? Perhaps the book will tell.
She had read the personal details of the author as they appeared on the book-jacket. There was nothing about any family.
Poor Georgia if, after all, she ended up with no one. If that is so, then perhaps she really docs not have many lines and wrinkles, for they are the scars that children leave.
1939
Eve Hardy’s twenty-first birthday celebration went perfectly. There was an abundance of everything, including guests with county names and accents. There was even a Sir – an unimportant one, but most of the locals couldn’t tell one from the other, believing all rank had some sort of blue blood connection, and any kind of Sir added a touch of the exotic in much the same way as the pink bitters in the toasting champagne had.
Eve was a credit to her father – or was it her mother? Eve had inherited the Hardys’ looks, which were immutable. Her inclination was to be gentle so that, as her care and training had been left to Connie and a sleep-in local woman known as Nanny Bryce, Eve had retained her gentle nature. Had she been a boy, and thus Freddy’s to mould, there might not have been so much gentleness left by the time of coming of age.
Central to the evening were the speech, the cake and the revelation of her parents’ presents. These proceedings were to take place on the lawns behind the house, with Freddy, Connie and Eve on the raised terrace where everyone would have a view of them.
Connie was aware that most of the people there had come to tuck in, drink up and see what opulent thing Freddy Hardy would do to keep Markham gossiping for a month, so she had pruned his speech. The Clarion reporter had already noted the servants dressed like flunkeys in pantomime, the iced puddings called bombes, the whole salmon which were decorated like cakes, and hoped that it wouldn’t all be spoiled by a long-winded speech. Probably not, Freddy Hardy wasn’t often long-winded.
After thanking the guests for making this such a grand occasion, and then thanking Eve for the twenty-one years of joy she had brought him and her mother, Freddy proposed a toast and presented his pretty daughter with the diamond Es.
Eve immediately clipped them to her neckline and kissed him.
‘Thank you, Pa. Thank you, Mother,’ and to the guests, ‘Thank you all for making this such a nice party.’
Connie noticed a look of disappointment flit across the reporter’s face – he had expected something more spectacular than diamond clips. Connie smiled to herself. He wouldn’t be disappointed.
‘The little bit of diamond nonsense is just a token of love from a fond father. Our – mine and Connie’s – present to our daughter is a token of our wish for her to have some fun and some freedom whilst she is still young enough to enjoy it.’ He nodded to someone at the back of the crowd who must have passed on the signal.
Suddenly there came a roar from round the bend of the drive which was out of sight of the guests. They all turned at the same moment to see the night cut by twin searchlights, then a white MG tourer, bound round with ribbon tied in an enormous bow and with a huge key fixed to the radiator grille, was driven up the drive, across the lawn, through the assembled guests and to a halt below the terrace. The jazz-band played a hot ‘Happy Birthday
to You’.
Eve Hardy blushed – as well she might. Never mind that Pa went a bit far when he did things, this was exactly the freedom she would have asked for had she been the kind of girl to ask for anything much. Eve Hardy was really a very nice girl, and she was head over heels in love with Dave Greenaway who came from the wrong end of town.
Connie Hardy blushed at an idea well, if vulgarly, brought off. He was convinced that the car had been his idea. A single woman with money and four wheels could have more freedom than any woman would have dreamed possible twenty years ago. Connie was determined to do what she could to see to it that her daughter had some life before she suddenly found herself thrust into the small band of a wedding-ring.
Connie looked again at the Clarion reporter as he watched Eve take the white car with its satin and silver trimmings on a circuit of the grounds. The Clarion reporter had been a man of little faith: he should have known that Freddy Hardy would not let him down.
1989
The aircraft cabin lights were now dimmed. Although the drone of the engines was soporific, Georgia Giacopazzi was quite awake. She could easily have buzzed the steward and ordered a gin and tonic, but she preferred to let her mind wander over what was ahead.
Even though for years she had not needed much sleep, she was always able to relax, giving her time to think through a problem or anticipate a sticky situation. When she was asked how she managed to fit so much into twenty-four hours, her smart answer was, ‘When you are all asleep, I’m working’, and it was true.
Then she had started work on something very different from what was implied in her smart answer. She felt apprehensive. It had all seemed so simple when she had talked to her publisher about using real people and real events in the novel.