One Night Only

by Sue Welfare

  Helen hesitated. ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘What do you mean what does that mean?’ said Arthur, wiping a glut of jam off his chin. ‘It means that they want you to start filming at the end of the month. They’re sending me the contract later in the week.’

  ‘But –’ Helen stared at him. ‘Really? Are you serious? They want me? But they didn’t say anything while I was in there. I thought they didn’t like me. And besides, I’ve already got a job.’

  Arthur grinned, ‘Well, now you’ve got two, and you’re going to have to make your mind up which one you want to keep.’

  ‘But you said it was only a bit part.’

  ‘Was,’ said Arthur, smugly, rolling a cigar between his fingers. ‘Colin and I have just been talking about that.’

  SIXTEEN

  Helen wished more than anything that they were heading back to the hotel. She wanted to talk to Arthur, to call Bon in Dubai, to talk to familiar people whom she could let her guard down with. There was no chance of that here.

  Glancing around the car Helen knew damn well that anything she let slip in the back of the car would more than likely end up on screen. Natalia and Felix were both watching her intently. The red light was on; everything was up for grabs.

  Helen tried hard to settle down, her mind was a ragtag jumble of memories, thoughts and feelings, as she replayed the meeting with Harry and watched Billingsfield town centre give way to urban sprawl. Beyond the parade of shops, the market and the faded civic splendour of the Victorian manufacturing town were the factories, built along the road side and along the river bank, and then over the bridge down past the warehouses were row after row of redbrick town terraces. Even after all these years there was still a smell in the air; the smell of poverty and decline.

  Helen sighed; she had thought meeting Harry was going to be the easy part of coming back.

  ‘We’re nearly there now,’ said the driver conversationally, glancing over his shoulder at Helen. She managed to smile for the camera.

  The houses had all looked the same when Helen had lived in one and nothing had changed in the intervening years. She knew the names of the streets off by heart and without thinking began to recite them under her breath like a mantra, Mafeking Row, Mafeking Terrace, Albert Street, Edward Street, Victoria Street.

  Natalia tipped her head on one side like a quizzical dog.

  ‘It was how I used to work out when to get off the bus when I came home from school,’ Helen said self-consciously, feeling her colour rise. The red light on the camera seemed as if it was staring her out, willing her to blink.

  ‘When I first went to high school – you know how things seem so scary when you’re eleven,’ Helen said, by way of explanation. She didn’t tell them the times she came over the bridge, clutching her satchel, watching the houses pass by, watching them get shabbier and shabbier, walking slowly back home to an empty house, wishing that someone, anyone, anything would be home to meet her. She remembered unlocking the back door, lighting the fire and then turning on the radio in the kitchen so that she wouldn’t have to listen to the silence, while she peeled the potatoes for supper.

  ‘Can we get a dog, Dad?’ She heard the ghost of her own voice echoing back from some long-gone evening.

  He had been sitting at the kitchen table reading the papers. She was on the other side, talking to the open expanse of newsprint that cut him off from her.

  ‘Who’d let it out in the day? You’re at school, I’m at work. Wouldn’t be fair on an animal.’

  ‘A cat then?’

  ‘Spraying everywhere, stinking of tomcats, or kittens you’d have to drown. How about a canary or a budgie? You could have a budgie.’

  ‘I don’t want something that has to be in a cage.’

  ‘We could have it in here, in the kitchen. It could look out of the window,’ said the voice from behind the newspaper.

  ‘And see what it’s missing,’ murmured the younger Helen as she cleared away the plates.

  Helen stared out into the narrow street wondering where that memory had come from, so vivid that she could still see the headlines on the evening paper and catch the scent of mince and onions hanging heavy in the air.

  The car slowed down to turn the corner into Victoria Street. It crept along the kerb at walking pace, the crew calling out the numbers as they passed the houses.

  Her old home was halfway along on the right-hand side. Helen, who hadn’t expected to be so moved by the sight of her old street, found herself craning forward, peering out of the window, trying to spot her house amongst the others.

  Every house had a tiny front garden, a strip of grey, barren, ashy soil barely three feet wide that divided the house from the road. As they crept past the row of low redbrick walls with their tightly closed gates Helen had a sudden rush of memory, remembering her father on some long distant spring morning standing pots of daffodils out by the front door, the blooms an extraordinary show of individuality in the street’s unending sameness. It was such an intense image. It must have been before her mother left; Helen couldn’t imagine it would have been after.

  ‘There,’ said Felix, motioning with his fingers. ‘Far side of the lamppost.’

  Number thirty-six still had its wrought-iron gate, still had all its woodwork painted toffee brown with the inner window frame and glazing bars picked out in cream. Helen held her breath as the car pulled to a halt outside. It looked exactly the way she remembered it, so much so that Helen wouldn’t have been at all surprised if her father opened the door and peered out from the darkness of the hall to see who it was who was parking outside his house.

  Natalia pulled a face. ‘Bloody hell, I can see why you wanted to get away from here,’ she said.

  Helen felt uncomfortable. The street looked grubby and poor. The pavements were uneven and badly patched; here and there clumps of weeds sprang from the gutter. There were takeaway trays and cans tucked into the spaces between the walls and street signs. Two small children, sitting on the kerb, eyed them with curiosity. Helen knew that Natalia was making all kinds of judgements. At the house opposite her old home the nets were ripped and a dog was busy dragging empty food cartons out of a split rubbish sack.

  ‘How long is it since you’ve been home?’ asked Natalia.

  She felt guilty enough about not coming back without being interrogated. ‘I came back for my Dad’s funeral. I didn’t stay for long, just a few hours really. We hired someone to clear the house. Dad went into a nursing home for the last few weeks, a really nice place over near Portlee.’ Helen paused. ‘He’d looked at a few apparently; he didn’t even tell me he was looking, let alone going. He was like that. I only found out when I rang up and a neighbour answered. It was just sheer luck; she’d come in to check that everything was okay and pick up his post. I went to see him there but he was very frail. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure he even knew who I was. He kept calling me Amy.’

  ‘Which was your mum’s name, right?’

  Helen nodded and stopped talking, the words fading as she remembered him sitting in a chair by the window of the nursing home looking out over the lawn. He had been painfully thin, and so very very still, his skin almost translucent, dry as parchment and cool to the touch.

  ‘I knew you’d come back in the end,’ he’d said, although Helen knew that those words hadn’t been meant for her. So they had sat side by side, holding hands until he fell into sleep. It had been the last time she had seen him alive.

  Helen looked at Natalia; those last minutes together were far too precious to share, so after a second or two she said, ‘We lost contact over the years. To be perfectly honest he didn’t seem to care whether we spoke or not. When I was growing up it was as if I was something to be coped with, rather than something to be loved.’ A tear rolled unbidden down her face – how could she hope to make anyone understand that she felt like a kitten that he couldn’t quite bring himself to drown.

  ‘Looking back I know he did his best, but I never re
ally felt that he loved me, and he barely talked to me. We’d sit in the evening in the front room with the TV on and he’d not say a word until it was my bed time, and then he’d say, “Come on, lass – up you go.” That was it, and then when I was older it would get to ten o’clock and he’d get up and switch the television set off and go up to bed, almost as if I wasn’t there.’

  ‘And before that?’ pressed Natalia. ‘Before the funeral, when was the last time you actually came and stayed here?’

  ‘I came back for the week before I left Billingsfield to work on my first TV show. The Right Brothers it was called. Colin Paulman wrote it. He did a lot of work on Cannon Square later. I don’t know how many people would remember it now. Anyway I came back home to sort things, to pack, to say goodbye, I suppose. I’m sure my dad was worried that I was in some sort of trouble.’

  ‘Because you’d left your job at the toy shop?’

  Helen shook her head and smiled ruefully. ‘No, because I had come back home. It worried him. I think he assumed I was pregnant. Ironic really, given the situation with Adam. I remember Dad standing in the kitchen, packing up his lunch for the next day, and him saying, “Is there anything you want to tell me, Helen, because whatever it is it’ll be all right.”’

  The words caught in her throat. Helen glanced at the front door, wishing that her dad was still there to open it. There were so many things now that she wished she had said to him. Maybe after all these years they could have found a way to bridge the silence.

  ‘It was such a big thing for him to say to me. He was a very quiet man, my dad – closed off. It was almost as if he was never really with you. You never really knew what was going on in his head. After the funeral I came back here. Just to look. There was hardly anything to do. It was like he had barely broken the surface of his life. Everywhere was tidy. All his bills and the receipts were all neatly filed, his bank accounts, his papers, all in order, all sorted out and stacked in shoe boxes in the cupboard in the kitchen, all with the year written on them, all in order. All the rest of it; his furniture, his clothes. What he left behind him was just the lightest of impressions, like he hadn’t wanted to leave a mark.’ Helen smiled, aware that the crew were completely focused on her now, probably dragging her in for a close-up.

  ‘I used to ring him, more so when I first left home. I suppose I was hoping for some reassurance – not that he was any good at that kind of thing – but I wanted to let him know I was okay and to allay his fears, or maybe mine. When I started earning real money I offered to buy him a house. And he said, ‘”Where would I go? I’m fine where I am; you put that money away just in case you need it.” So I used to send him cheques. When they came to clear out his things I discovered that he’d put all the money into a savings account; he’d never touched a penny of it. Not a single penny.’

  Helen looked up at the front of the house. ‘When the house came up for sale in the nineties I bought it for him so that at least he would have some security. I got Arthur to do the actual deal, because if Dad had known it was me who’d bought it I’m not sure what he would have done. Anyway, every month Dad would send in the money for his rent. Never failed. Not once.’

  ‘Right, great –’ said Felix briskly. ‘If we could cut there, that’s great – and then we’ll set up outside so we can see you going up to the front door.’

  Natalia nodded as the crew clambered out.

  Helen sat quietly staring at the door, wondering what lay behind it.

  ‘What did you say the name of the programme was that you left to do?’ Natalia was asking, peering down at her clipboard. Helen glanced across at her, wondering if Natalia had really listened to anything that she had said.

  ‘It was called The Right Brothers. About two brothers who inherited their father’s factory?’

  Natalia nodded and made a note. ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve got down here, I think we’ve got some notes on that back at the office but we haven’t got that much. It was one of those shows that no one kept much in the way of footage of. Was that with Rory Turner?’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘Didn’t you go out with him for a while?’

  ‘No, not really, he wasn’t my type, ex-public schoolboy – but I never really came home again after that. It was my first big break. I moved up to London and stayed with Arthur for three months while they filmed the first series. As a lodger.’

  Natalia nodded. ‘So you weren’t an item then?’

  ‘No, he was going out with a writer. Joan Hastings – she did some work on Cannon Square.’

  ‘But later?’

  Helen nodded. ‘I think it was a couple of years after, there was this moment when Arthur came to pick me up from a job and we just knew.’

  ‘Uh huh, and what happened to it?’ asked Natalia, still writing.

  ‘To me and Arthur?’ Helen asked, slightly confused.

  ‘No, not to you and Arthur, to The Right Brothers?

  ‘We did the pilot and it got commissioned by regional, but it didn’t really take off. The viewing figures were pretty dire. So they pulled it after the first series.’

  Natalia scribbled something else on her pad. ‘Didn’t you think of coming back home to Billingsfield then, you know, when the work dried up?’

  ‘Not really, there was no work for me here and Arthur was a good agent. He managed to get me into all sorts of things – small parts mostly, but work is work. I did some ads, and quite a lot of radio drama, and I was in The Onedin Line, Juliet Bravo, lots of the soaps – I even did a walk-on in Coronation Street. And later there was Casualty and a couple of police dramas – I can’t remember the names now. And between times Arthur had me going to classes, and I always sang. I did some cabaret and some theatre.’

  ‘And so how did you get from there to Cannon Square?’

  Helen stared out at number thirty-six wondering what it would feel like to walk in through that front door. The crew were almost ready for her to get out of the car.

  Natalia was still smiling, still waiting for an answer. ‘Cannon Square,’ she prompted.

  ‘I was doing a radio play – it was a murder mystery thing – and Freddie Maritz, the man who originated and co-produced Cannon Square heard me on there and asked if I’d like to come in and audition.’

  Out in the street Felix was giving them the thumbs up.

  ‘Time to rock and roll,’ said Natalia, pushing open the door. ‘I’ll want to run-through the Cannon Square story on camera if that’s okay with you. Let me get out and get out of shot before you get out of the car. Okay?’

  Helen nodded and waited until Natalia was out of the way and behind the camera, and then she slowly climbed out of the car. As she walked across the pavement and opened the front gate, the door of number thirty-six opened a fraction, and a pair of bright eyes peered at them from the gloom inside. Helen felt a peculiar flutter deep in her chest. A second or two later a small grey-haired woman stepped into the light and for a split second Helen’s heart lurched, wondering if Roots had managed to track down her mother after all, and then the woman smiled at her, and the moment passed. There was no way this timid little bird of a woman was her mother, but even so her face was familiar.

  ‘Helen, isn’t it?’ the woman said, before she could speak. ‘You’re Gordon’s girl?’

  Without any conscious effort the woman’s name appeared in Helen’s head. She felt a great judder of tears. ‘Mrs Handley?’ she said. Her voice sounded strange.

  The old lady’s smile broadened out. ‘That’s right. I wondered if you would remember me. I always liked this house, your dad always kept it so nice and you get the sun this side – why don’t you come in, pet? I’ve got the kettle on. I don’t think you’ll find it’s changed that much, though I’ve had it decorated, obviously. My boys do it for me these days. I can’t get up a ladder like I used to – come in, come in.’ She waved them all inside.

  Mrs Handley smiled at a bemused looking Natalia. ‘I used to live over the road,’ she said, pointi
ng to the house opposite. ‘Look at the state of it now, breaks my heart. When this one came up to rent we thought we’d have a bit of a change. Me and Charlie, God rest his soul – this one’s got a nice yard and it’s lighter, with the sun. I’ve got geraniums in pots out there now, just like they do in the films. Get yourself inside, people are looking.’ She waved them all past.

  Helen heard what was being said somewhere out on the periphery of her hearing, while her eyes and her mind drank in the details of her old house. Her first thoughts were how much it had changed and then how nice it looked and how inviting. This was the way her home might have been if her mother hadn’t left. The walls were emulsioned a warm soft yellow, there were floral rugs in the hallway over fitted carpets, and pictures on every wall. Helen looked through the open door into the sitting room – there were flowers on the windowsill, dozens of ornaments all along the mantlepiece and on every flat surface, and knitting rolled up around needles on the sofa by the fireplace.

  ‘Of course in them days,’ the woman was saying to the crew, ‘this was the best room here at the front. We used to live in the kitchen and save the front room for Sundays, high days and holidays. I mean how daft is that? You can’t imagine people doing that now, can you? So would you like a tea or coffee?’

  Helen’s concentration was elsewhere. While Natalia and Mrs Handley made conversation, Helen wandered along the narrow hallway into the kitchen at the back of the house. The old pale green cabinets had long since gone, the pantry had been knocked out, and a run of worktops and new units lined the walls by the back door and around the corner under the kitchen window. The splashbacks were tiled with bright colours, by the sink there was a mug tree and a fat wire chicken full of eggs, and in the middle of the room was a round table set with a cruet and mats in a tidy pile. Children’s drawings, photos and cards were tacked to the fridge door with magnets shaped like fish and birds. It felt warm and homely. The contrast with the kitchen in her head and this cosy room couldn’t have been more stark.