Emma and Her Daughter

by Linda Mitchelmore

  She’d opened an account with Beares, the haberdashers, in Victoria Street, where the manageress had said they could deliver if needed. Emma needed. Well, until she got around to buying a car, that is. She missed driving. Back in 1923, in Vancouver, Seth had bought a Buick Sedan as different from his Wolseley, that Emma had driven in England before they’d left for Canada, as it was possible for a car to be. It was a huge thing, the colour of morello cherries, with running boards. It had leather seats and a little window flap on the windscreen to let in fresh air in the summer. Emma had enjoyed driving it even though some of the roads had been rougher than rough over there. But she didn’t need anything quite that large in Devon. Just something big enough for her and Fleur – a two-seater would do – as long as there was a decent-sized boot to carry things.

  ‘Ma! Where are you?’ Fleur’s yell jolted Emma back to the present.

  ‘In here. In my atelier.’

  Fleur peered around the edge of the half-open door. ‘I’m going out,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! Where?’

  Fleur sighed theatrically. ‘For a walk. With Paolo. Well, actually, we’re going roller-skating.’

  ‘But you haven’t got any roller-skates. If you—’

  ‘Ever heard of hiring things, Ma?’ Fleur interrupted.

  Well, of course she had. Hadn’t she hired a sewing machine when they’d been staying at the Grand Hotel – a hand-operated one. She’d sent that back now, though, and had her deposit back, and was now the proud owner of the latest Singer sewing machine to come on the market – it came with its own wooden base with a motor and boasted a foot-operated control. Not quite an industrial model but it would cope with thicknesses as well as doing the finest of stitches. And it was a far cry from the treadle machine her mama had used at the beginning of the century.

  ‘You don’t have to be so snippy,’ Emma said. ‘I was going to say that if you like roller-skating then I could buy you some for your birthday next month.’

  Fleur sighed again. ‘I know when my birthday is, Ma. Same as you do. Neither of us is likely to forget, are we?’

  Emma’s blood chilled in her veins. A ripple of unease snaked up her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She knew she’d have to sit Fleur down and tell her as gently as she could, that she hadn’t given birth to her. Another woman had. And that woman was Caroline Prentiss – someone Emma hoped with all her heart she’d never set eyes on again. Fleur ought to have been told before. Seth said he was going to do it – he’d know the moment, so he’d said. But for Seth that moment had never come. And now Emma would have to do it. She would have to dredge up the courage from somewhere but, like Seth, she hoped she’d know when the right time to say what she had to presented itself.

  ‘No, no we’re not likely to forget,’ she managed to say.

  ‘Well, then,’ Fleur said. ‘Can I go now? Please?’

  ‘If you can do something for me on the way, yes.’

  Emma reached for a sheet of paper on the edge of the table. She’d drafted out an advertisement for her business, with her name and address, and telephone number on it and the name of her business written in a swirly hand in the centre. Femme. The French for woman and wife. She’d drawn two figures – one in a dropped-waist dress with an asymmetric hem, and the other in a fitted costume, on either side of the word.

  ‘What?’ Fleur said.

  ‘Could you drop this into Partington the Printers and ask them to print six the same size as this piece of paper, or thereabouts, and one hundred at calling card size? Please?’

  The large ones, Emma intended to place in newsagents’ windows to advertise her business, and the little cards she would hand to each client she garnered from that, with the request they pass it on to anyone else who might be interested in Emma making things for them.

  Fleur huffed. ‘You’re making me late,’ she whined.

  ‘Well, you’re worth waiting for, aren’t you?’ Emma said, with a smile. Fleur was getting more beautiful by the day and would be more beautiful still if only she’d smile more. Emma knew Fleur’s lack of smiles was because she was having trouble settling in England. She hoped this budding friendship with Paolo would bring the smile back to Fleur’s face soon. ‘If Paolo thinks enough of you, he’ll wait.’

  Seth had waited for her, oh how he’d waited. He’d given her the time to make up her mind – make her choice, him or Matthew Caunter? To go to Canada with Seth, or not? Emma had made her choice, and she hadn’t regretted it for a moment.

  Why then, over the years, had Matthew Caunter, and the kiss he’d stolen from her up at Nase Head House on the night of Rupert and Joanna Smythe’s wedding, come to her in dreams ever since?

  ‘He might,’ Fleur said. ‘And he might not.’ She made patterns with the toe of her shoe on the wooden floor and folded her arms in front of her at waist level.

  Ah, Emma thought, things aren’t going so well with Paolo.

  ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ Emma said. ‘But you do have to let him know you’re not coming.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Fleur said, and she said it with a Canadian accent.

  Back in Vancouver Fleur had had to say ma’am and sir to just about anyone older than she was when she met them, and when she said goodbye. Was saying it now letting Emma know she was homesick for Canada and the only life she’d known?

  Now she was looking at her properly, and not with half an eye on things that needed doing in her atelier, Emma could see Fleur looked a little pale, with dark patches under her eyes.

  ‘Fleur,’ she said, ‘you can stay here and help me if you really don’t want to meet Paolo. We need to talk about what you’re going to do at some stage and today might be a good opportunity. A study course of some sort? Accounting? Shorthand and typing? Teaching?’

  ‘Ma, stop!’ Fleur said. ‘Who said anything about all that accounting and teaching stuff? I said I was going out.’ Fleur took a few steps into the room and snatched up the piece of paper from the table. ‘I’ll take this with me.’

  ‘Thank you. Can you tell them I’ll call in a day or two to see if they’re ready?’

  But we do need to talk, and soon – about everything. You can’t just do nothing. It’s not good for you.

  ‘Uh?’ Fleur said, and for a moment Emma wondered if she’d said the words out loud instead of thinking them. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Never mind. Six large ones and one hundred calling card size. Can you remember that?’

  Fleur rolled her eyes heavenwards but Emma effected not to notice. She didn’t want, or need, an argument with Fleur. Eduardo had invited her to a concert at the Pavilion. She wondered if she would have enough time to make a dress to wear to it. Something in lace, perhaps? And long. Although she wore her day clothes much shorter these days, as was the fashion, sometimes she missed the swish of fabric around her ankles and the longer, leaner line a full-length dress gave her. She reached for the latest copy of Vogue – she’d seen a photograph of Coco Chanel wearing a lace dress with a bolero. She could copy it, she knew she could. But she’d have to limit her outings with Eduardo – or anyone else for that matter – because she had a business to start, and make a success of.

  And she would – or her name wasn’t Emma Jago.

  ‘Fleur!’ Paolo came running towards her, his hair dishevelled and his face rather pink. ‘I sorry I late. My papa he make me do strawberry ice cream and then he make me wash floor in kitchen. Mia nonna, she not well.’ Paolo pulled a sad face and Fleur couldn’t be sure if it was because he’d been made to make ice cream and scrub a floor, or that his grandmother was ill.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’m late, too. I’ve only just arrived myself. Ma made me do an errand.’

  She pulled a face. What a dump the printing shop had been. There’d been ink on just about everything – the counter, the chair in front of it where she’d had to wait a few minutes for the customer in front of her to be served and on which she hadn�
��t sat, and the door handle. She’d had to spit on her fingers to get ink off them after touching it. Eurghh.

  ‘We must,’ Paolo said. ‘Is duty to help genitori.’

  ‘Jen … what?’ Fleur asked.

  ‘Mama and papa.’

  ‘Oh, you mean “parents”,’ she said.

  Every time she met Paolo they spent the first half hour or so trying to understand one another. She’d found it endearing to begin with but now she was becoming irritated by it – why couldn’t he speak English properly, for goodness sake? He’d been born in London! Or so he’d said.

  ‘Si. Parents. For me is only papa. And for you is only mama.’

  Yes, and what a pain she is at times. How does she think she is going to find people in this dump to make fancy couture clothes for? Well, she hadn’t met up with Paolo to talk about her mama, had she?

  ‘At the momento,’ Paolo said, grinning at her as though he had a secret.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Fleur asked – and she didn’t mean the Italian word, she meant the implication of his comment.

  ‘That my papa like your mama. He like very much.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t like me much a few weeks ago when he caught us kissing in his kitchen.’

  Paolo shrugged. ‘He not meet your mama then properly. He sing in house now. La bohème. Cosí fan tutte. Don Giovanni. He know all the parts, all the words. He ask me if I like your mama, and he point to dito matrimonio.’ Paolo pointed to the wedding finger of his left hand.

  What? Was the man mad? People got married to have families and her ma was far too old to have another baby, wasn’t she? If she’d wanted one of those she’d have had one before now, wouldn’t she? A brother or sister for me.

  Time to change the subject!

  ‘Are we still going roller-skating?’ Fleur asked, tapping her wristwatch to let Paolo know time was whizzing by as he only had two hours from ice cream delivery duties to see her. But it looked as though they might not be able to roller-skate after all, because the pier was full of figures roller-skating with various degrees of success, and there were no skates left for hire in the rack. They would have to wait their turn, but for how long? She’d only said she would try roller-skating so she could hang onto Paolo’s arm and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that now. She’d had a sudden vision of the future in which she’d seen herself playing nursemaid to an ageing Ma and she hadn’t liked the picture of that one little bit. And she knew that Paolo was already in dutiful son mode, wasn’t he?

  ‘It looks very busy and it’s getting very hot,’ she said. ‘We’d only get hotter roller-skating.’

  Paolo shrugged. ‘I no mind,’ he said. ‘I happy only that I with you. We can walk.’ He held out his hand towards Fleur and she placed hers in it.

  ‘We can,’ she said. ‘We could go to Beacon Cove.’

  It was secluded there. Paolo had taken her once before and they’d kissed and kissed and Paolo’s kisses had made her body ache for something else. She’d felt Paolo’s ‘thing’ hard against her stomach when he was lying on top of her. He’d reached down and had begun to pull her skirt up when they’d been disturbed by a man with a large dog coming down the rough steps towards them.

  ‘We go,’ Paolo said. He quickened his pace as though he couldn’t wait to get there and start kissing her. Fleur liked that. She speeded up to keep alongside him.

  Hmm, perhaps today they wouldn’t be disturbed? She liked Paolo’s kisses and the way they made her body feel. Womanly. And not the kid her ma still thought she was, telling her she’d have to find something to do for heaven’s sake! As though she didn’t know that herself! Well, whatever it was it would be her choice and not her ma’s. And then an idea came to her.

  ‘I think, before we go to Beacon Cove, that I’d like to get my hair cut. Washing and drying this …’ with her free hand she lifted the heavy curtain of her hair up and let it flop down again, ‘… takes up too much time. And it makes me look like a little girl.’

  ‘You no little girl,’ Paolo said, laughing. ‘You beautiful donna now. You cut hair for movimento femminista?’

  Movimento femminista? Oh, Fleur could just about make out what Paolo was saying – feminist movement.

  ‘No,’ she said, feeling defiant. ‘I’m doing this for me. Besides, getting my hair bobbed is really going to get my ma’s goat.’

  ‘Emma? Is that you?’

  Emma had to hold the earpiece about a foot away from her ear because the person on the other end was shouting so loudly. She knew the voice. Ruby. And she also knew she hadn’t given a thought yet to how she was going to help Ruby. Yes, she’d left two five pound notes under the teapot on Ruby’s kitchen table. And she knew Ruby had seen it before she’d left, all thoughts of not accepting Emma’s charity thrown out of the window at the sight of them. Not that Emma minded that. But she knew it might be best not to ask if the money had run out and was that why Ruby was calling.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. But you don’t have to shout, Ruby,’ she said. ‘You’re deafening me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know ’ow to use these things, do I?’ Ruby said, speaking normally now. ‘Not like some as I can mention. Your turn to speak. I’ve just been told I’ve got to say that.’

  ‘Whose telephone are you using?’

  Emma didn’t think for a minute that Ruby had used the money she’d given her to get a telephone installed in Shingle Cottage.

  ‘The doctor’s. The new one where Dr Shaw used to be. It’s a woman, Em. Dr Howard. ’Er’s got a receptionist an’ all. An’ there’s a nurse ’ere for the women’s private bits. Did you ever?’

  Emma waited for Ruby to tell her why she was calling from Dr Howard’s surgery, and her heart plummeted with dread. Was something wrong with Ruby? Something terrible like the canker that had killed her beloved Mrs Drew? Or Tom? Had Tom succumbed to his troubled mind? And then she realised Ruby was waiting for a response from her. When nothing more from Ruby was forthcoming, Emma said, ‘Ladies can be doctors, Ruby. Is something wrong? If you’re seeing a doctor?’

  Guilt enveloped her, uncomfortable and making her squirm a little, like a rough woollen garment against the skin. She ought to have gone back to see Ruby before now, to see how she was managing, and to let her friend know she still wanted to see her and that she was proud of her for making the break from her old life.

  ‘It id’n me what’s ill, Em. It’s my Alice. ’Er’s been proper poorly. Doctor thinks it’s some sort of fever ’er’s ’ad. I should’ve brought ’er before but I didn’t ’ave the money. And now I ’ave brought ’er I still ’aven’t got the money to pay. What you left me went on feedin’ my little varmints, an’ I’m grateful for it seein’ as I wasn’t doing the other to earn money. But, I were wonderin’, could I come and do a bit of cleanin’ or summat in that ’ouse you’ve got. And can I tell this woman ’ere I’ll ’ave the money soon to pay the bill? Please, Em.’

  I could, Emma thought. And I will. The way Ruby was chattering on like her old self warmed Emma’s heart and she guessed whatever fever it was Alice had had it wasn’t life-threatening, and thank heaven for that.

  ‘Did you ’ear any of that, Em, only you ain’t said anythin’ yet.’

  ‘I heard,’ Emma said. ‘And I’m really sorry to hear about Alice.’

  ‘Me an’ all, Em. I thought I was goin’ to lose her one night back along, that’s for sure.’

  Emma heard Ruby gulp – swallowing back tears no doubt. Fleur had been ill more than a few times, especially when they’d first gone to Canada and her little body had had trouble acclimatising to the cold the first winter they were there. Emma had sat up through the night many a time, willing Fleur to breathe. To live.

  But the last thing Emma wanted was for Ruby to be working for her to earn money for doctor’s bills for Alice – it would change their friendship, wouldn’t it? But Tom? Might it help him if he were to feel useful again? The garden had been left unattended for a good six months before Emma had become the ten
ant at Romer Lodge and Tom had been a gardener up at Nase Head House before the war.

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll let you have the money, Ruby. How much?’ Emma said.

  ‘Two guineas,’ Ruby said. ‘Oh gawd, I’m goin’ to wear me knees out scrubbin’ your floors to earn that much. Oh, and I’ve got somethin’ else to tell you, but that can wait. Your turn to speak.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Emma said.

  Well, someone had to let the doctor’s receptionist have her telephone back.

  ‘I love it even though I know Ma will hate it,’ Fleur said to herself as she caught her reflection in the window of the conservatory. She put the backs of her hands by her ears and lifted the sides of her bob up and let them fall again. She had a chill feeling on the back of her neck now there was no longer a yard of hair covering it but she was certain she’d get used to it.

  She’d been so long in the hairdresser’s that there hadn’t been time to go to Beacon Cove after all. Paolo had had to go back to work. Oh well, as her ma had said earlier she was worth waiting for, and if Paolo wanted her, he’d wait.

  Fleur took a deep breath and turned the huge brass knob on the front door.

  She sent up a silent prayer that her ma had had a good afternoon poking about in her atelier, as she liked to call it. And she had her trump card – or one hundred calling cards and posters to be exact – up her sleeve. Her ma wouldn’t be expecting her to have those already but the printer had said if she could call back around six o’clock then her order should be ready. It was.

  ‘Ma!’ she called cheerily. ‘I’m back.’

  Chapter Seven

  LATE JUNE 1927

  Emma wasted no time getting her notices put in shop windows. Fleur had happily gone with her, and Emma knew that was because she hadn’t read her the riot act over the haircut. Remembering how Fleur had stood in the doorway of the atelier, one hand showing off her bob, the other holding out the calling cards and posters, brought a smile to Emma’s face whenever she thought of it.