Fleur pushed open the double iron gates into the park and then closed them behind her. She could see Caroline waiting and she hurried towards her. So far she’d not seen Caroline in the same outfit twice and today was no exception. She was wearing a finely pleated skirt that stopped just below the knee with a blouse that had a scallop trim at the hemline and around the cuffs and collar. White. And with it she was wearing a red cloche hat the same shade as rosehips. She was wearing it pulled down further over one eye than the other and there was a silver brooch – like a bent leaf – pinned on the side.
And it will fit me!
‘Déjà vu,’ Caroline said, standing up. She wasn’t looking exactly pleased to see her, Fleur thought.
Should she shake hands? Offer Caroline a cheek to kiss? What was the form with a mother you hardly knew? Fleur had no idea. But what could Caroline mean by her greeting? Fleur knew her forehead was creasing up with little furrows.
‘I’d have thought you would know what that means,’ Caroline said. ‘Or did Emma not teach you any French?’
Fleur wasn’t sure she liked the tone of Caroline’s voice. Of course Emma had taught her French. And in Vancouver just about every other person had been French so she’d spoken it on a regular basis.
‘I know what déjà vu means in French although there’s no real English translation – only the literal one,’ Fleur said. ‘I’m puzzled as to why you’ve said it. Here.’
‘Sit, and I’ll tell you.’ Caroline sat down again and patted the seat beside her.
Fleur ran the palm of her hand over the seat to check it wasn’t wet or greasy with the remains of someone’s picnic. Usually there were people picnicking in little groups on the grass, or even in the bandstand, but today there was no one. Just her and Caroline. Fleur sat.
‘A little closer,’ Caroline said. ‘I don’t bite.’
Fleur slid an inch or two along the wooden seat although she wasn’t very comfortable in doing so. Was that alcohol she could smell? Or some sort of strong perfume?
‘That’s better.’ Caroline laid a hand on Fleur’s knee then took it away again. ‘It was here that Seth first saw you. A tiny, red-faced, screaming bundle you were, too.’
Fleur bridled. Caroline seemed different today than she had in the Cliff Hotel. She was beginning to regret suggesting this place now. While the day was hot, it was cooler here on the north side of the park. Colder.
‘I expect most of us were tiny, red-faced, screaming bundles when we were babies,’ Fleur said.
Emma would have said something like that. Perhaps she was more like Emma than she thought she was. Wanted to be?
Caroline laughed. ‘You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that. And you’ve got acting skills. You’re a little apprehensive today, but you’re hiding it well.’
Fleur felt something cold run down the back of her neck, her spine. Her breathing quickened. She wasn’t much liking being seen through as though she were a pane of glass.
‘You’d be wonderful in films,’ Caroline said.
‘You mean like Clara Bow and …?’ She couldn’t think of any other film stars offhand. Me? Wonderful in films? If she agreed to go back to America with her could Caroline really get her into films?
‘Clara Bow has a reputation for being a very naughty girl. But it gets her places, if you know what I mean.’
Yes, Fleur did know. Who hadn’t heard of the casting couch, for goodness sake? But if Caroline thought she was going to sleep with men just to get a part in films then she had another think coming. Was that what she’d done? Before or after she’d married Miles Jago? Miles was dead, Fleur knew that. Her pa had had another brother, Carter, who was dead, too. And now her pa was dead. The Jago men didn’t make it to old age it seemed.
‘You could make a lot of money in films,’ Caroline went on. ‘A lot of money. Wouldn’t you like that?’
Well, who wouldn’t? But Emma wasn’t exactly poor and now with more and more clients for her dressmaking business she was making even more money. Fleur had secretly started drawing dresses – designing them, not copying them from the pages of Vogue. She’d thought about showing Emma who, she knew, didn’t need a pattern bought from a shop to make something. She hadn’t got around to it yet though. What would be the point if she was going to go to America? Paolo didn’t want her to go – he’d said as much when she’d told him Caroline lived in America and would be going back there. They’d fallen out a bit about that. He’d called her ungrateful for not appreciating everything Emma had done for her. Well, what did he know? He’d always known who his real mother was, hadn’t he? Even if she was dead now he still had a truthful childhood to look back on.
Unlike me.
‘Well?’ Caroline prompted her. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. Ma … Emma … was telling me about a college course I could take here. Art, music and drama. I—’
‘You don’t want to even waste time thinking about that in that pretty little head of yours. You’re a natural. I know it.’
‘I can’t make such a big decision on the spur of the moment.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ Caroline said, with a giggle. But Fleur thought she sounded exasperated all the same.
‘I won’t earn much money to begin with, will I? I’d have to have money to pay rent and buy food.’
Caroline laughed loudly this time. ‘Whatever makes you think that? I’m your mother. You can stay with me in my apartment. All the presents I’ve bought you were expensive things bought with money earned from films. Where else did you think the money came from?’
She’s trying to buy me off, Fleur thought. And she was frightened. But a little part of her was fizzing with excitement at the thought. Oh, what to do?
‘I’ve bought your passage, you know that. I thought you would have been grateful I’ve turned up to take you away from this dump.’ Caroline waved one hand in an arc across the park, and with the other she clasped Fleur firmly at the wrist.
‘Stop it,’ Fleur said. She tried to wriggle her wrist free but Caroline had caught her by surprise and it was as though she’d frozen, like Vancouver harbour had for months on end.
‘I think it’s time you started packing for our journey, don’t you?’ Caroline leaned in close and it was definitely alcohol Fleur could smell on her breath now. But she let go of Fleur’s wrist, much to Fleur’s relief. ‘But first I have something to tell you.’
‘Tell me, then,’ Fleur said.
‘Do you know your mother also had a lover?’
‘When Ma was married to Pa?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe you. Ma would never do that.’
‘Goodness, what a little innocent you are. His name is Matthew Caunter. Ever heard that name?’
‘No.’
‘Well, let me tell you it’s a name that’s caused me more grief than is right and proper. Matthew Caunter was responsible for sending your two uncles to the gallows. Did you know that?’
To the gallows? What had they done? Well, she wasn’t going to ask. It could be the alcohol she’d obviously been drinking that was making Caroline say these things. Back in Vancouver, around the harbour area, there had almost always been men, as drunk as skunks, shouting out all sorts of rubbish at passers-by.
‘No.’
‘Emma hasn’t told you anything of this, has she?’
Why would she if it wasn’t true?
‘I think you can guess she hasn’t.’ Fleur didn’t know what to think now. If it were true then why hadn’t her pa told her, if not Emma?
‘I thought not. It was a while ago now. Trumped up charges for the murder of the Jago housemaid against Carter – a silly woman who didn’t know which side her bread was buttered. Miles, God rest his soul, came back to England to fetch you because I knew I’d done the wrong thing leaving you with Seth and her—’
‘Emma. She’s called Emma.’
And I want you now, Ma. Oh, how I want you now. If only to ask why you’ve ke
pt all this from me.
‘Don’t interrupt. Has no one ever told you it’s rude to interrupt when your elders are speaking?’ When Fleur nodded, meaning yes, of course I know it’s rude, Caroline went on: ‘And Matthew Caunter prevented that. Miles had been wrongly imprisoned before we went to America, but he’d escaped. A warder got in the way.’
You mean Miles killed him in his escape.
A plane droned overhead. Fleur inhaled deeply in an attempt to steady herself, slow down her heartbeat. But it was going faster than the steam engine pistons on the hurdy-gurdy at the Fair.
‘You’re frightening me,’ Fleur said. ‘And I don’t think mothers should frighten their daughters.’
‘Don’t you, then?’ Caroline said. She threw back her head and laughed loudly. ‘But I’ll say this for you, you’re spirited. Have I told you that already? You’ll need spirit in the film industry.’ Caroline fiddled with her necklace and then began primping her hair with her fingers. She took out a compact and powdered her nose and cheeks, and then found a lipstick and applied it with more vigour than accuracy.
Fleur thought it made her look like a clown but hell would freeze over before she told her so. Emma would never, ever, have powdered her nose in public. Come to think of it, Fleur had never seen Emma wear powder anyway.
‘Who says I’m going to go into the film industry?’ Fleur replied. ‘Miss Baxter wouldn’t let me have a part in the Nativity when I was six years old. I had to be a shepherd with the boys because I was so tall for my age.’
Keep talking. But agree to nothing. Fleur hardly knew the woman really. But what she did know was that something wasn’t right.
‘And I’ve got a terrible memory,’ Fleur said. ‘I had the most terrific trouble learning my times tables, and as for Keats and Shakespeare, which I had to learn verses and verses of and recite to our stupid English teacher, Miss Bannister, I never could see the point in it. She rapped my knuckles more than a few times for not doing it properly.’ Fleur struggled to think of something else to say. ‘I … I …’
‘You’ve got the most beautiful speaking voice. Talkies are the new thing. You’ll be such an asset in Hollywood.’
If I go. If smelling of drink is expected of you in the middle of the day I don’t know I want to be part of that. I shouldn’t have come.
‘Thank you for telling me what you have. I’d like to go home now and ask Emma why she’s kept what you’ve just told me from me all these years.’
‘You can. But not just yet. I’ve got a treat lined up for you today. I have a friend arriving soon … oh, there he is now.’
Caroline waved an arm vigorously up and down to get the attention of a man who had just come through the park gates. He was tall, but not as tall as her pa had been. And he was wearing a long overcoat. An overcoat on such a humid, August afternoon! ‘And my friend will tell you how perfect you are.’
Only because he thinks he might be able to make money out of me.
Fleur placed her hands together, prayer fashion, and slid them between her knees. She did not want to shake the hand of the man walking slowly towards them as though he owned the park, or indeed the whole country and the whole world. He was wearing a huge hat – a bit like a cowboy hat only white – covering half his face. And spats.
Again, Caroline threw back her head and laughed loudly at Fleur’s expression. ‘You are a one! Part of me wishes I’d tried to find you before now, but another part tells me this is the perfect time. I’ve avoided all the diaper-changing, and the childhood illnesses I’d have had to cope with if I’d found you earlier. Goody-two-shoes Emma did all that for me.’ Caroline made the word Emma sound as though it was something best left in the gutter.
Nothing to do with loving the child you gave birth to, then?
‘Archie, this is Fleur,’ Caroline said, standing up as the man took the steps up into the bandstand two at a time. She put her arms on Archie’s shoulders and kissed his cheeks.
Fleur shivered. She recognised him now. He was the man who’d offered her a cigarette on the pier, wasn’t he? And … oh, had that been Caroline with a cigarette in her fingers on the opposite side of the pier that day? She’d barely registered the woman then, but now …
‘Hi, Fleur,’ Archie said. ‘We meet again. Pretty name for an even prettier girl.’
‘How do you do,’ Fleur said, looking at her feet. ‘But I’m going to have to go now. My ma—’
She didn’t know what was going on here but she was frightened and the sooner she could get away from these two the better it would be.
‘But I’m your ma,’ Caroline said. ‘Although you’ll have to learn to call me Mom in America.’
‘Who says I’m going to America?’
Fleur saw Caroline glance at Archie and raise her eyebrows.
‘See, I told you she’d be perfect,’ Caroline said. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘Perfect,’ Archie said. ‘Such drama!’
This is surreal. This conversation is not happening. There was no one else in the park except the three of them. Should she make a run for it now? No, there were two chances of being apprehended before she could make the gates and the road beyond. Or she could talk her way out of it.
‘Have you been following me? That day on the pier …?’
‘Bright, too,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll let your mother explain.’ He patted Caroline’s hand.
‘Archie is a film director—’
‘Then why isn’t he in America directing them?’
Caroline sighed heavily. Interrupting again, the sigh said. ‘Because he’s here. He was due a holiday and came here to see me. Even film directors have holidays, Fleur. I asked Archie to check you out.’
‘Check me out?’
‘I didn’t want to mention the possibility of you being in films if Archie thought you weren’t suitable. That would have been unkind.’
‘Check out I’m not rat ugly, is that what you mean? I don’t know if I can believe a word of this?’
‘I rather guessed you might put up some resistance. I have a film magazine here with Archie’s name in it. I can show it you.’ Caroline reached in her bag for the magazine. ‘And I’ve also got a newspaper with mention of Miles’s court case – the one that Matthew Caunter—’
‘I don’t want to see them, thank you.’
If Caroline had brought evidence that her ma’s friend – lover? – had sent her uncle Miles to the gallows then it had to be true. And all the film stuff, too. Fleur felt tears welling and squeezed her eyes shut to blink them away. But one escaped, sliding slowly down her chin. Nothing was real any more. Who could she trust to speak the truth?
‘Tears on tap, Caroline,’ Archie said. ‘Even better than I thought. I repeat, such drama.’
‘And talking of drama,’ Caroline said. ‘As I said, I’ve lined up a little treat for you. Rolled Stockings is showing at the Odeon in Torquay and—’
‘Rolled Stockings?’ Fleur said. Louise Brooks was in that. And Nancy Phillips. And she’d had her hair bobbed like Louise Brooks! She gave it a little pat with the palm of her hand.
‘Ah, I can see you are interested.’ Caroline laughed. ‘Paramount are the producers. And someone not a million miles away from you has worked for Paramount. And someone else not a million miles away from you got her that part. So, what do you say, Fleur, to a visit to the cinema so you can see what sort of world you could be living in soon?’
‘Yes, honey, why not?’ Archie said, and he slid an arm around Fleur’s shoulder. She ducked out from under it and slid along the bench seat away from him.
She was tempted. But Archie … she didn’t trust him.
‘I can’t. I don’t think I’ve got time.’
‘Sure you have, honey,’ Archie said, grinning at her.
And I’d rather swallow carpet tacks without the aid of a glass of water to get them down than have you touch me again. And that was another expression Emma used when she had to do something she really, really, didn’t want to do. Fl
eur was, she was fast realising, more like Emma than she ever would be like Caroline.
‘You can’t say you don’t want to be in films until you’ve tried it,’ Caroline said. ‘An hour and a half to see something both Archie and I are part of – how could that hurt?’
Fleur thought fast. She’d told her ma she’d be with Paolo and stopping for supper and that she’d telephone from there when she was ready for her ma to fetch her. Perhaps Caroline had a point. Oh, her thoughts were all over the place!
‘Live a little dangerously,’ Caroline said. ‘And this dump could, sure as hell is hot, do with some life in it.’
Fleur took a deep breath. ‘The cinema,’ she said. ‘Gosh, how exciting.’
Archie hadn’t taken the quickest route, which was along the coast road, but had driven up hill and down dale, Caroline and Archie whispering to one another in the front seats so that Fleur hadn’t been able to hear what they were talking about. But they were here now. There was a small queue of people outside the cinema – about twenty of them – and Archie pulled up sharply at the kerb. He leapt out of the driving seat and ran around the front of the car to open the passenger door for Caroline. Fleur slid swiftly across the leather seat, eager to get out of the car.
‘Impatient little miss, isn’t she?’ Caroline said.
‘I don’t need a man to open doors for me,’ Fleur said, straightening her skirt once she was on the pavement. She looked up at the billboard and Louise Brooks’s eyes met hers, as though inviting her in. An hour or so watching a film couldn’t hurt, could it?
‘You don’t suppose Louise Brooks got to star in a film without letting a man or two open a door for her, do you?’ Caroline pointed a gloved finger at Louise Brooks.
Emma and Her Daughter Page 22