by Chris Curran
But there were other implications to what Kay had said. Her dad had helped to attract the girls, so he must have known something at least of what Sid was like. Of course, those girls they’d taken out after the show had gone willingly. Presumably they were old enough to drink and old enough to understand what they were getting into.
A shiver as she remembered Sid’s words to her. Thought we could all have a drink together later on. You’re old enough now and looking so grown up. But she wasn’t old enough, only fourteen, and certainly not old enough for what he tried to do to her.
And now she was thinking about the really young girls. The ones she had attracted as The Kid. Was that the reason he had wanted her in the act? The reason he wanted to build up her involvement?
She jumped and almost spilled her tea when Marcus put his hand on her shoulder.
‘You’re up early. Are you OK?’ When she nodded he sat next to her and took her hand. ‘Are you ready to tell me the rest of it yet? It’s obvious something else happened while you were in Clacton.’
His hand was warm on hers. Joycie took a deep breath. It was time to talk. If she was ever going to unlock all the doors in her mind, the ones that refused to be ignored since she started digging into the past, she had to share with him what she had been able to confront so far.
There in the green quiet of the garden she began to tell him. As soon as she started to speak the sense of calm lifted and it was so difficult to breathe she had to force each word out. It was disjointed and she could only give him the barest details, but he heard her out and did nothing more than squeeze her hand once or twice when she stumbled into a choked silence. At the end they sat together for a long time until she turned to him and he held her and kissed her hair while she rested her cheek on his chest.
After a while he moved away. ‘Breakfast, I think, don’t you?’
In the kitchen she made toast and scrambled eggs while Marcus heated some milk for coffee. When they were sitting at the little kitchen table she said, ‘I don’t understand why I can’t remember the rest.’
Marcus slammed his toast down and his voice was hard. ‘I can. That filthy bastard, I feel like going over there and beating the daylights out of him.’
She looked at him. ‘In the garden earlier I was thinking about what Kay said. Sid liked them young so I probably wasn’t the only one.’ They sat for a moment, neither of them touching their food. ‘I just hate that he must have met girls through my dad and even through me. I think that was why he wanted me in the act, Marcus, to attract the younger ones.’
He said, ‘Can you remember if you told your dad what Sid did to you?’ His face wavered in front of her eyes as a rush of dizziness swept over her. She gripped the edge of the table, hearing him say as if from miles away. ‘What’s wrong?’
His chair scraped on the floor and he was kneeling beside her, his arm around her shoulder when she was finally able to blink and look up at him. She took a breath and tried to smile. ‘I’m OK, just tired. Got up too early.’
He sat opposite again. ‘I know we’re booked to do that shoot for Yardley, but I can cancel it if you’re not up to it.’
‘No, I need to get back to work.’ Working would mean she didn’t have to think about any of this for a while. And that was what she wanted more than anything.
***
The Yardley shoot took two exhausting days. It was for a new range of hair products and they didn’t finish until late in the evening of the second day. By then her head and neck were aching and her hair felt as if it had been shocked by several thousand volts of electricity. She longed to go home and sleep but Lucy, the stylist, had worked hard and when she suggested they all go to the Marquee Club with her boyfriend later on she couldn’t say no.
They arranged to meet for a Chinese meal in Soho before going on to the club and when they got home Joycie had a quick bath and tried to wash some of the gunk from her hair. Then she threw on a pair of black slacks and a purple silk shirt – she didn’t bother much with clothes when she wasn’t working.
Marcus was still in the darkroom when she came down and she decided to phone Pauline’s friend, Helen, who was now apparently called Helen Banks.
The girl who answered had to shout above the music playing in the background, Tom Jones belting out ‘It’s Not Unusual’, but Joycie managed to get through to her that she wanted to speak to Helen Banks. Thankfully someone had turned the music down by the time Helen came to the phone and Joycie explained that she was Joyce Todd, a friend of Pauline Shaw. ‘I saw Pauline’s mum when I was in Clacton the other day and she said you were living in town now. Suggested I look you up.’
There was a moment’s silence then Helen said, ‘Are you the girl who used to come with the show? Worked with that comic?’ It was obvious she didn’t realize Joycie was also Orchid, but she grudgingly agreed to see her next day. ‘You’ll have to come to the boutique where I work. Expect you’ve heard of it – Plumes.’
When Joycie said she didn’t know it Helen made a noise that could have been a sniff and said, ‘It’s in Foubert’s Place just off Carnaby Street. All the mods come there and the pop stars. We had Lulu in last week.’
***
Next day Joycie dressed as plainly as she could in a blue shift dress, gathering her famous black hair into a pony tail.
The Sandie Shaw song that was in the charts, ‘Long Live Love’, was blasting through the tiny shop, which certainly appeared to be popular. Racks of clothes filled the place and girls were trying on hats, wrapping feather boas around them or holding dresses and trousers to themselves in front of the mirrors that lined one wall.
The girl behind the counter must be Helen, although she had changed dramatically from the pretty redhead Joycie remembered. The ginger curls had somehow been transformed into a dark shiny bob and the freckles were hidden under pale make-up. Her eyes were made enormous with false lashes and bright blue eyeshadow.
Unfortunately the wall behind the counter was covered by an enormous poster of Orchid/Joycie herself and, sod’s law, her hair in the picture was scraped back in a ponytail just like she had it now. As she approached, Helen’s eyes seemed to bulge from her head and she plonked herself onto a tiny stool as if too surprised to stay standing.
Joycie spoke quietly, hoping no one else would spot her. ‘Hello, Helen, it’s Joyce, I phoned about Pauline.’
Helen seemed to shake herself and glanced around at the shoppers, speaking in a loud whisper. ‘Good grief, are you really, you know …?’ She breathed the word, ‘Orchid,’ and her mouth opened in a silent scream as she pointed a finger over her shoulder at the poster behind her.
Joycie nodded. ‘That’s my working name, yes, but I’m just here as a friend, as Joyce, so can we keep it quiet please?’
Helen seemed unable to stop nodding, her thickly coated lashes fluttering like giant insects. She took a couple of steps to a beaded curtain and called through. ‘Norma, mind the counter will you, I’ve got to pop out.’ Without waiting for an answer she grabbed Joycie’s arm and led her out of the shop. There was a café just up the road and, thank God, it was blissfully silent inside. The band they’d seen at the Marquee last night, The Yardbirds, had been good, but her ears were still buzzing.
When they were settled at a table, Helen with an ice cream soda and Joycie with a piece of chocolate cake, Helen leaned forward. ‘So how did you get to be a model? You never used to be all that good-looking.’
Joycie had heard this kind of thing before and she just smiled. ‘I met Marcus Blake and that was it. He’s a brilliant photographer. Could make anyone look great.’
Helen smiled and relaxed, shaking her shiny bob so that her big plastic earrings, which Joycie saw were made to look like bunches of purple grapes, rattled and glinted. ‘A photographer was in the other day. Said I could be a model if only I was a bit taller. You’re lucky like that.’
‘But your shop looks a fun place to work.’
A little shrug. ‘It’s OK. Better than
the bank where I used to be.’
‘Mrs Shaw said you got married.’
Helen stirred her thick drink with the striped straw. ‘We aren’t really together any more. He works in an office and we had this flat in Hounslow.’ She pulled a little face. ‘The only good thing about that place is it’s on a tube line, but it takes ages to get into the centre. Before we moved from Clacton Dave promised we were going to see a bit of life, but he just used to come home at 6 o’clock, watch telly and go to bed before midnight with a cup of cocoa. But I’m still young. Wanted to live a bit before I fell for a baby and got really trapped. Haven’t told my folks though. They’d go mad.’
Helen looked at Joycie’s chocolate cake. ‘You’re so lucky to be able to eat stuff like that. If I so much as look at a cake or biscuit I gain half a stone.’ She took a breath. ‘It’s so funny, you being a famous model. I never saw the show when you were in it but Pauline told me you looked just like a boy. So why did you stop coming to Clacton? Pauline said something happened to your dad.’
‘Dad died and I had to go and live with friends.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know. That’s a real shame and he wasn’t that old was he? Pauline said he was a lovely man and some of the girls at school really fancied him. Not like that horrible comic. He was a right creep and I know Pauline couldn’t stand him.’
‘Mrs Shaw said you might have been in touch with Pauline.’
Helen sucked her straw so hard it made a gurgling sound. ‘I told her when she rang me. I haven’t seen Pauline since she left Clacton.’
‘You’ve no idea where she went?’
‘She was so miserable that last summer. I thought it was because you didn’t come down. And then she got the boyfriend and we didn’t see much of each other after that.’
‘Who was the boyfriend?’
‘Don’t know, she kept him quiet, but then her parents were so fuddy-duddy I guess she had to.’ She reached into her tiny black and white bag and fished out a box of Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes, flipping it open and offering them to Joycie. When Joycie shook her head Helen pursed her pale lips, her fingers hovering over the coloured cigarettes as if choosing from a box of sweets. In the end she settled for a bright pink one and lit up, breathing in deeply.
To stop herself from checking her watch, Joycie rubbed a hand over her hair, which still felt sticky from its two day torture. ‘You know Pauline got pregnant?’
Helen looked down at her cigarette, flicking her nail against the gold band near the tip. ‘That’s what people said.’
‘She never told you?’
‘Like I said, she wasn’t around much. And I was already going out with Dave.’ She was still looking at her pink cigarette, still flicking at its gold tip. Mrs Shaw had been right, she was holding something back.
Joycie leaned on the table, pushing her plate out of the way. ‘I won’t tell Mrs Shaw if you think I shouldn’t.’
Those enormous eyelashes flipped back, the blue eyes considered Joycie for a moment. Then Helen said, ‘Look, I only got this from my sister, Sally. She’s three years older than us and she said one of the girls she worked with lived in Pauline’s street. This girl, Mandy, was a right slut and she told Sally that Pauline asked her about …’ She looked around then shifted closer, the insect lashes fluttering fast. ‘Apparently Pauline was asking about getting rid of it, you know …’ she mouthed rather than said the words, ‘an abortion.’
Joycie couldn’t speak, just swallowed down a rush of sharp bile as Helen sat back looking satisfied at having delivered her bombshell. ‘So I reckon she came up to the Smoke to get it done. Well I’ve heard about them so-called doctors, the backstreet ones, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t go right. Could even have killed her.’
Joycie’s breath had stopped and her stomach seemed to have plummeted deep down inside. It shouldn’t have been surprising and it would make sense of why Pauline had never been in contact with her family, but she couldn’t bear to think of it. She certainly couldn’t share it with Mrs Shaw.
‘That’s awful,’ she said, trying to push away the image of pretty, smiling Pauline in a dingy room with some horrible quack. She swallowed, looking at Helen who was stirring the ice cream in the bottom of her glass. ‘But you don’t know any of this for sure?’
‘Oh no and I hope I’m wrong. Maybe she’s emigrated to Australia or something.’
Joycie managed to get away after promising to send a big signed photo to hang in the boutique and giving Helen her telephone number when she said, ‘I’ll have a think in case there’s anything else I remember about Pauline. And we should keep in touch anyway. Maybe go out one night soon.’
As she walked away down the sunny street the voices of The Righteous Brothers screamed at her from the open doors of the boutique: telling her she’d lost that loving feeling. She moved faster and faster until she was almost running. Trying to put Helen, the music, and the whole conversation behind her.
Poor, poor Pauline. Joycie had always imagined her still in Clacton with a lovely husband and a tribe of kids, making cakes and having Sunday dinner with her mum and dad every week. The idea that she might be dead had never entered her head.
She jumped on a bus to head home and the motion soothed away the buzz in her ears and let her think more clearly. Underneath the horrible image of Pauline, all alone as she bled to death, something else had been niggling at her brain.
Why had no one seen this mysterious boyfriend? And why was she unable to stop thinking about what Helen had said right at the start. Something about Sid. ‘He was a right creep and I know Pauline couldn’t stand him.’
Chapter Eleven
‘You’re not thinking Sid forced himself on Pauline and got her pregnant, are you?’ Marcus said. They were sitting in the garden drinking gin and tonics, the ice chinking in their glasses, and Joycie had just told him about her meeting with Helen. He had been in his darkroom as usual when she got back and she had knocked on the door, desperate to speak to him right away.
‘It’s so horrible I can hardly bear to think of it, but it does make sense,’ she said. ‘Nobody ever saw the boyfriend and she obviously couldn’t turn to him for help when she needed it. So maybe he didn’t exist.’
Marcus pulled at the lavender bush next to his seat, breaking off a spike of flowers and twirling it in his fingers, so that Joycie caught a hint of the sharp, clean scent. ‘And she never contacted you?’ he said.
‘No. I blame myself for that. When I was living with Irene and Deirdre I didn’t want to see or even write to anyone. Tried not to think about how things had been before Dad died. But Mrs Shaw asked Sid for my new address and he said he didn’t know it, which was a downright lie.’
They were silent for a while, sipping their drinks. Joycie’s was too strong, and she went into the kitchen to add more tonic. As she was pouring, and putting in another ice cube, Marcus’s voice came to her through the open back door. ‘Hang on a minute. You said Mrs Shaw asked Sid for the address, but he didn’t tell her.’ When she came out to sit beside him again he twisted in his seat to face her. ‘Well what if Pauline went on to ask Sid herself?’
Acid in her mouth and goose pimples chilling her arms. She put her drink carefully on the grass beside her. ‘You think he offered to tell her, but not her mum? Oh God, Marcus, he could have used that as a way to get her on her own.’ A wave of dizziness that she forced herself to ignore. ‘He could have lured her to his dressing room or his lodgings. And he had a car too. So he might even have offered to take her to see me.’
Marcus must have heard the wobble in her voice because he put down his own drink and took both her hands in his. ‘Now stop that. I agree it’s possible, but not all that likely. And even if it’s true it wasn’t your fault.’ They sat without speaking as the sky turned paler with evening, the air cooled, and streaks of pink began to stain the clouds on the horizon.
Then Marcus said, ‘I was supposed to have a drink with Tommy Green tonight. Do you want me to put
him off?’
She stood, arms folded, hands rubbing at her chilly skin. Tommy was a tailor – a real East End character who had realized there was money to be made catering for the new fashions. The friendship was important to Marcus. It had helped him shed some of his public school mannerisms and fit in with the other young photographers, who all seemed to be cockney lads.
‘No, you go. You won’t be back late, will you?’ She hadn’t realized how anxious she was not to be left alone at night and had to fight to keep the pleading note from her voice.
‘Just long enough for a couple of drinks. Tommy’s a good bloke and I’ve got a favour to ask him, but I’ll be home before the pubs close.’
She followed him into the kitchen, turning the key in the back door. He kissed her and said, ‘Lock and bolt the front door after me.’ A smile. ‘Just so I won’t worry.’
After he’d gone she sat on the sofa trying to read. She had a book by a new author, John le Carré, on the go but it was about spies and was so sinister it made her look behind her every time the house creaked. She knelt by the bookcase in the corner to check what Marcus’s mother had left behind and pulled out a Miss Read novel – a story about life as a teacher in a country school – that might help calm her down.
She felt better when she’d read a couple of chapters and she got up to make herself some coffee, but when she sat down again she couldn’t face the book. Would she ever be able to think of Pauline without the hated shadow of Sid getting in the way? The thought that he could have used her friendship with Joycie to get to her was sickening.
But what about her dad? All those years when he was Sid’s stooge. Did he know what Sid was like with young girls and look the other way? Or, worse, did he help?
And all at once she felt the memories stirring. Another locked door in her head beginning to creak open. She wanted to close it tight again, didn’t want to know, or to see. But she thought of the way she was with Marcus and the way she wanted to be. And most of all she thought of Pauline. If uncovering those horrible memories might shed even a little light on what happened to her friend she had to face them.