by Leah Fleming
The old woman falls silent, averts her gaze. ‘I do vat I think right. I do the best for you.’
‘Well, you can stop all the phoney accent when you talk to me. I know your story. I don’t believe you are telling me the truth. I think you killed her and buried her. Just show me where or I go to the police!’ She waves her finger.
‘Stop your threats! I do vat I think best. You just get strong. Go away from here, start again. Go to London. What is done is done. I can do no more now. I keep you safe, like you ask. I give you my rations. I tell no one, like you ask. That vat you want when you come to me. It all gone wrong. I know that now. Forget ze baby. Have many babies and you forget zis one. Brown babies, no one wants reminding . . . you will see.’
The small woman, her face tired, lifts her scissors to tailor a winter coat from an army blanket of tough grey wool. ‘See, I make you fine coat out of Chad’s blanket. He left me two whole ones.’
‘I don’t care if he left you a hundred. I’ll not wear it. I wish I never came back here. I don’t trust you anymore. I’ll never trust you again. I thought you cared for me. Now I can’t wait to get away from this cursed place!’ Dorrie clatters up the wooden stairs, nursing her grievance with a bitter heart, and begins to pack.
Midnight
Dorrie was tired now, tired of tramping the stations of her cross. ‘Tomorrow will be my dancing day.’ She smiled as her head hit the pillow.
Once again she dreamt of a dancing child who skipped and twirled with waving arms and hair streaming, who coloured the dreams in an instant with a touch of her magic paintbrush, brightening the edges of her troubled sleep. Who was this creature with harlequin pants and scarlet ribbons? She often came to taunt and tantalise, so silent, always out of reach around the next corner? Tomorrow’s child, tomorrow’s hope perhaps . . .’ The woman woke with a start. Only one more place to call. Tomorrow will take care of it.
Midnight
In her cottage, Isobel tossed and turned. Unfinished business, like an unpressed seam, was pulling the material of her life out of line. Invisible to the casual eye, it is to the seamstress a blemish, a distraction.
Unfinished business skulked in the shadows, stalking silently, reproachfully. ‘Look at me . . . I’m still here to dog your heels.’
Unfinished business was the skeleton in the family cupboard, never unearthed; the earnest quest for an answer, too easily quenched in a wayside pub and forgotten.
Now, when there was time to chew the cud of life in peace, came faces at the window, waving for attention, sepia faces from crinkled photos too long exposed to light.
Tomorrow, Dorrie Goodman will call. Why should I stay and face the music, when pills are by my bed, waiting with the gift of sleep. There’s enough in the bottle to launch myself out on that last journey into the lake of dreams.
I have to stay; there are others to consider. How I wish I could forget our last meeting in November 1944.
5
BELLE. SOLO
Menu
Winterwarming Soup
Steamed Fish Roll with Suet Crust Pastry and Chipped Potatoes
Mock Mincemeat Slice or Belle’s Christmas Pud with Custard
November 1944
Belle Morton peers out into the street. Outside, lamplight twinkles cautiously since the lifting of some blackout restrictions, tempting Christmas shoppers to linger over their purchases with hot cups of Bovril before the bus journey home.
Wyn has gone home early, with ‘one of her chests’. Belle feels unsettled, discovering that some of her pies have gone walkabout, as Digger would say! ‘The flour fairy up to her old tricks, no doubt. I don’t know where she puts the stuff,’ she sighs, for Prin is as bony as a chicken carcass. Hard enough always being short staffed, without food going missing. ‘One of these days I’ll bake her a mustard pie and leave it in the cold store, with so much powder in it, she’ll have to call out the fire brigade!’
Prin behaves oddly, peering over the banister, checking who is in or out. Yet sometimes when she does leave her rooms to shop or fit costumes, Belle could swear she can hear footsteps creaking on the floorboards overhead. But she knows it must just be her imagination working overtime. An odd piece of pie she tolerates now and then but someone has definitely been rooting in the cupboards, disturbing her supplies, crockery and pans shifted enough to arouse suspicion.
Now it is hard to raise enthusiasm for Christmas puddings, after six long years of war. Wyn still misses her friend Dorrie Goodman’s company. Not a word from the minx in six months. Replacements come and go, hardly time to train them up before off they pop into the forces or better paid factory jobs. Sometimes when they’re short, Maggie Preece will do a few hours or the Prin too: definitely a last resort. She wolfs down any scraps before they reach the kitchen door.
Autumn brought the best news through the letter box. A Red Cross postcard from Digger Carstairs, landing on the mat, telling them he was a guest of the Germans: only a temporary guest, she hopes, if newspaper optimism is to be believed.
The spirit of the Vic is stumbling at the last hurdle; tired, bored by the sameness of the course. Ideas bubble in Belle’s stewpot, simmering away on the back burner for future reference. There is talk in the trade of a growing need for milk bars, places for young people to gather and have fun; all the rage in the United States; cookery books to write, for new wives setting up home after their demob, new ingredients to try, new techniques and new equipment to demonstrate. She must keep slogging on, rallying the troops, holding onto the regular custom. The old fire of challenge has gone, replaced by an aching loneliness, a hunger to put her arms around someone of her own.
It sounds as if a herd of elephants thunders above the ceiling, disturbing her train of thought, ‘That’s it, my girl! Sort out that damn woman once and for all,’ she yells, racing up the stairs at the double, flinging open the living room door, to give the Prin a piece of her mind.
There in the middle of the floor kneels Dorrie Goodman, on the rag rug, packing a kitbag. One look at the girl and Belle stares shocked. Gone is the pretty full-faced school-girl, the statuesque figure, those luminous dark eyes, once so innocent and sparkling. Before her cowers a gaunt young woman in a shabby gaberdine mackintosh, her hair lank, dulled, scraped back in a bun, her face pale, drawn with dark half moons under her eyes; a shadowy ghost of her former self. ‘Dorrie . . . my dear! What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been staying a while . . . I hope you don’t mind,’ she whispers, startled by the welcoming smile.
‘Why didn’t you come downstairs to see us all? Have we offended you?’
‘Nothing like that, Mrs Morton . . . it’s just that I’ve had a bad time recently. I need a bit of quiet. Prin understands me. I’m leaving now though, off to London on the train.’
‘Are you still in the Land Army, then? Your mother pops in to see if we’ve heard from you. She’s not looked well for a long time. We didn’t know where you were.’
‘I know . . . I had my reasons. I’ll send you an address when I’m settled. I’m going to join up properly, in the A.T.S. or something . . . see the world and all that . . . while I have a chance. I need to get away.’
‘Have you enough money, Dorrie? London is an expensive place.’
‘I’ll not starve.’
‘You look as if you have been doing. Look at you . . . like a drink of water . . . so thin. Come on, tell me what’s been the matter?’
‘It’s a long story, I haven’t time. Ask the Prin, she knows all about it. Tell her she can explain everything,’ mumbles the girl as she bounces the heavy kitbag down the stairs.
‘I hope you’ve packed all your music,’ Belle adds.
‘It’s all in there, a bit battered. It’s about time it got an airing. Don’t worry.’
‘You will keep in touch? Promise! Wyn will be sorry not to see you. She’s writing to your brother at sea . . . very regularly so she tells me.’
‘Good, I’m glad. Sol deserves a nice girl like
her.’
‘Dorrie Goodman, something awful has happened, hasn’t it? Tell me, I might be able to help.’ Belle dives into the cash register and pulls out a handful of notes, shoving them into the girl’s hand.
Dorrie draws back, shaking her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘You will, my girl. Think of all the times you stopped me from bashing Connie Spear over the head with a saucepan! Remember Victory Pie and Chad. How we danced with those Yankee boys. They were good times, weren’t they?’
‘I suppose so,’ nods the girl, close to tears.
‘You take that money. You earned it and I can see you need it. Please let us know when you’re famous and singing on the wireless. You will be, teacups or not!’ Belle reaches out to give her a big hug. ‘Mistakes can always be mended, Dorrie. Remember . . . she who never made a mistake, never made anything. I should know.’ Belle laughs.
‘No, Mrs Morton. There is no righting this wrong, believe me. Thanks for everything!’ Dorrie shouts, as she flings open the door, disappearing across the Square into the gathering gloom.
Belle waits in her café, cleaning, polishing, tidying nervously, until she hears the turn of the lock and Prin’s arrival from the fitting appointment in the Close. ‘Right, Madame Oblonsky. Just what has been going on upstairs? Who has been ravishing my tins and raiding my pantry again? I want a proper explanation. No feeble excuses this time. I’ve already had one strange version from the secret lodger upstairs. Oh yes . . . I know who she is! So you needn’t lie to me on her account.’
Prin drops the sewing case, as she collapses on the bottom of the stairs like an empty sack. ‘Oh, Meez Morton. I do terrible thing. I don’t know vat to do. Pleez you gotta help me. I vant tell you. She no let me.’
‘Dorrie says you can spill the beans. Come on, let’s have a brew and sort it out right now.’
‘Oh, Meez Morton. I no mean harm, I know not vat is best for Dorrie. She like daughter to me. I so glad she came to me at first.’
‘When was that then?’
‘Two . . . three weeks ago . . . I lose track of time. I so upside down. I wan to tell you. Now you cross with poor refugee.’
‘Come on, stop talking in riddles. Spit it out.’ Belle leans over the table.
‘She come to me . . . very big with Lucky’s baby. She had to leave farm. Nowhere else to go. She very scared, no want brown baby, I think. I help her birth baby upstairs.’
‘In the attic, that dirty place?’
‘It not so bad, better than in some bus station. She has baby girl. I know not vat do. She fell asleep. I see to baby bits. I clean it up and I take it away.’
‘You what?’ gasps Belle.
‘I took it away, little girl, very beautiful, very brown. I know she not want brown baby so, I wrap it in a towel and a copy of the Daily Mail and army blanket from Chad. I make ze other into smart coat for Dorrie but she no want.’
‘But the baby, was it all right?’
‘Perfect. I wrap it careful, it cold night and I put it in basket like Moses. I carry it down to the Minster pool path across the Post Office by the Park Gardens. I put it careful in telephone kiosk, safe and warm. People always phoning there. She warm as toast but she crying bit. I had to be back to check on Dorrie, in case she bleed. Redheads always bleed after birthing, my mamma say.’
‘Oh Prin! What have you done?’ Belle’s heart thumps.
‘Oh, Meez Morton, zat not all . . . when she wake, she cry out for baby so much. I tell her it no breathe. It dead and I take it to the priest to baptize . . . so it go to heaven. I tell big stories. She no believe me. She very angry, crying for her baby. So I go back again in dead of night. I put on my cloak and scarf, hide my face and creep out as fast as I can to the basket. But it gone, Meez Morton. All gone! . . . I don’t know vat to do, I walk all streets, just in case. I no go police. They think I am drunk wiz such a story. I no shame my friend. So I think it for best she have no baby and go back. I can’t tell her vat I do, so I say nothing. I do terrible think but I do for Dorrie so she go away wiz out burden, have new life.’
‘You should have confided in me. I would never betray Dorrie. But you stole her child from her. You had no right.’
‘I tell her now then. I make it right? You come viz me and we tell her?’
With sinking heart and trembling legs, Belle replies, ‘But you can’t tell her, you fool. She’s gone!’
‘Gone out?’
‘No. She left for the London train, hours ago. I caught her packing when I heard a noise. I gave her money, sent her on her way. Oh God! Poor girl what have we both done?’
‘But she never say goodbye to her Prin.’
‘Do you blame her?’
‘We find her, we write to her?’ the old woman suggests, her hands shaking as she puffs a rollup.
‘I have a feeling that Dorrie is not going to be so easy to find. People disappear in wartime. All we can hope for is that she keeps her promise.’
‘Vat promise?’
‘To keep in touch!’ Belle crosses her fingers.
‘Digger Carstairs, where are you when I need you? Your letters are only postcards.’ Belle pats powder on her nose, tilts her best felt hat to a precarious perch, passes the strap under the plump roll of hair and inspects the effect with a sniff at her reflection. ‘You’re on your own with this one, chum!’ She jabs in a hat pin for good measure and wrapping a musquash jacket tightly over her chest against the December chill, dawdles across the City to the police station with leaden feet.
At the sight of the blue lamp, she pauses for a deep gulp of air. Knocking at the enquiry window, Belle jumps as the moustached, fiery face of Constable Joby Goodman peers out at her in surprise. ‘What can we do for you, Mrs Morton? . . . That blighter upstairs been stealing your rations again?’
‘I have an appointment with the Inspector, for ten o’clock.’
The policeman searches the desk officiously. ‘It’s not down here. I shall have to see, he’s a very busy man. Can I deal with the matter?’
‘Thank you, Constable, but only the Inspector will do. We have spoken on the phone.’ Belle smiles, trying to control her trembling. Why, oh why, would he of all Bobbies be on duty this morning? Her instincts are to turn tail and run but, as if on cue, a side door opens and the Inspector waves her through politely, barking to Goodman, ‘Fetch the lady some tea and knock before you come in! Right, Mrs Morton . . . Isobel. We met at the Carol Concert at the Baverstocks . . . lovely house. Shame it’s so full of refugees . . . Amazing woman, Belinda. Salt of the earth.’ Belle shuffles in her chair. ‘Forgive me, you didn’t come for small talk. How can I be of assistance? It all sounded most mysterious on the phone.’
Belle clears her throat. ‘Can I speak to you confidentially . . . off the record?’
‘That depends,’ he advises, putting his hands together into a pyramid, resting his elbows on the desk, intrigued. ‘Carry on, please.’
‘Just supposing a young girl gets herself into trouble, you know how it is these days . . . and gives birth secretly,’ her voice descends to a whisper.
‘Yes . . . go on,’ urges the officer impatiently.
‘Just supposing a misguided but well-meaning onlooker is so concerned for her welfare that she removes said baby and places it safely but, publicly where it will be found . . . in a Moses in the bulrushes fashion.’ Belle falters and the man leans forward.
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Just supposing that well-meaning but misguided friend realises she made a terrible mistake and goes back to retrieve the said basket, only to find it has vanished from the hidey hole . . . I am here to ask you what might happen to the baby and to such a misguided friend who put it there?’
The silence is ominous. The officer rearranges himself, folding his arms. ‘Was the alleged mother aware of the intentions of her supposed friend?’
‘No, not at all. She was told the baby was dead, so left the city for the South, unaware of its existence and deeply distressed.’
‘I see. Was there anything else you might like to add to help in this enquiry – date, sex, that sort of thing?’
‘Only that it could be female and of a distinctive colouring. All this happened around the middle of November, I think.’
Another silence. ‘Well, Mrs Morton, just supposing all you have told me were to have occurred, I’m afraid that misguided friend, whoever she is, could be charged either under the 1861 Offences Against The Person Act or the Children and Young Persons Act of 1933. You can’t just abandon a child as you please.’
‘Inspector. This is not my doing. I am trying to repair the damage as best I can. Where might the baby be now?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I could have prevented it all if I had followed my instincts and pushed a bit harder. I can’t have a child put in an orphanage as a foundling, when I know that one parent is alive but unaware. Can I?’
‘Can’t you? It seems a perfectly logical place for, as you say, a distinctive child, handicapped by colour.’
‘If we can trace her mother, surely the child’s place is by her side?’
Joby Goodman hovers at the open door and places the cups down slowly, trying to catch the drift of this serious debate.
‘That’ll be all, Constable,’ dismisses the officer with grim face. Belle rattles the cup on the saucer. The Inspector frowns. ‘I think a crime has been committed and you are withholding evidence, my dear . . . an accessory after the fact.’
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘Everything, except the name of the mother. I have to have that name before we can proceed further in this matter. I must have the name, please.’