Gemma's Journey

by Beryl Kingston

  They contained two old-fashioned books with marbled covers and gold lettering, Helen’s announcing that it was an Address Book, Naomi’s simply labelled Birthdays. They were an instant success and had to be filled in at once with every known and remembered date and address, even Gemma’s, new telephone number and all.

  So the awkward moment passed and after that they went on exchanging luxuries: chocolates, silk shirts, expensive slippers, books, toys, CDs, until the day faded and the room grew dark. And then they sat on in the firelight too replete and satisfied to move. And talked. About Susan’s promotion, the kids’ school play, Andrew’s journalism, Gemma’s new job.

  ‘Rob’s got a new job too,’ Susan said. ‘Did we tell you?’

  ‘A new assignment,’ Rob corrected. ‘You make it sound as though I’ve sold the centre.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you ever doing that,’ Andrew told him.

  ‘I couldn’t imagine you writing a newspaper column,’ Susan said. ‘But you’re doing it.’

  ‘True!’

  ‘So what’s the assignment?’ Nick wanted to know.

  ‘The gardens of the Alhambra Hotel,’ Rob said. ‘Big place by the station in York. Do you remember it, Nick? Used to be rather grand when you and Chris were little. Four-star stuff. Might even have been five. It’s been tatty for ages, really going downhill, and now they’re going to refurbish it. We’ve been asked to resuscitate the gardens. It’s quite a challenge. But as Sue’s taken a new job I thought I’d better strike out too.’

  Naomi yawned like a cat. All this grown-up talk was boring. ‘Are we going to play charades?’ she asked.

  ‘When the others come,’ Susan told her. There was to be a party that evening for friends and neighbours. ‘Then I suppose you’ll be fighting over who has Gemma on their side.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ Helen said. And when her mother made a face at her. ‘Why would we?’

  ‘Because she’s an actress.’

  Both girls swivelled round to look at her. ‘Really!’

  ‘She’s just applied for a part in a play,’ Catherine said. ‘In the West End. Haven’t you, Gemma?’

  ‘Have you been on television?’ Naomi wanted to know.

  Gemma grinned at that. ‘Only in a non-acting capacity.’

  And Helen asked, ‘Can you really act? Can you show us?’

  ‘You can see her after supper,’ Catherine said, ‘when we play charades. How will that be?’

  They answered with one voice, both looking at Gemma. ‘Wicked! Can I be in your team?’

  ‘You see what I mean,’ Susan laughed. But before they could protest against her teasing, the phone rang and they all rushed to answer it knowing it would be Chris on the line to wish them happy Christmas. As it was. ‘Chris! Lovely to hear you! Yes. We’re all here.’

  Gemma stayed where she was on the sofa and watched them. Although none of them had anything particular to say, their affection for this absent member of the family was as clear as daylight. His wife took the phone and was told the same things in varied detail, and after that their two sons came chirruping on to the line, their voices so bright and tinny with excitement that Gemma could hear them where she sat. She looked across the hearth to Rob, who, like her, was still sitting by the fire, watching the action, half smiling. We’re the outsiders here, she realised, but it seemed an odd thing to think because she hadn’t been made to feel like an outsider at all that day.

  ‘Family tribe in action,’ he observed, nodding towards them.

  ‘They’re very fond of him,’ she said. ‘And his wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed and added rather wryly, ‘Whatever else you might say about them, they include you in.’

  It seemed a rather odd phrase to use and his body cues were awkward too, his shoulders hunched and his head turned too stiffly towards the group round the phone. But there wasn’t time to say anything more, even if she could have thought of something, because Andrew had put the receiver down and they were all on their way back to the fire and Nick was saying he’d got to be off.

  A flurry of leave-taking, kisses, last-minute instructions. Then he was gone and the next phase of the day was beginning, with the drawing room fire to attend to and the table to be set for their buffet supper. There wasn’t time to miss him but Gemma missed him acutely, tantalised by those few short hours in his company and the dearth of communication between them.

  But then the guests began to arrive and soon they were acting charades, where she was in her element, and joining in quiz games that all seemed to be designed to baffle her and talking and joking well into Boxing Day. Which consequently began very late indeed with a yawning brunch and the casually given information that Nick wouldn’t be with them again until Saturday evening.

  As Helen said, ‘Poor old Uncle Nick, He does work hard.’

  And on Saturday, Gemma thought, I shall be moving so I shan’t see him. I thought we were getting on so well when we were in York that day but I was wrong. I was reading too much into it. No wonder he was embarrassed when I gave him that pen. And despite the pleasure of the day she yearned to be on her own in her flat, leading her independent life.

  It was just as well there was plenty to entertain her until the move, with another party that night for old friends from the practice, and a trip to the winter sales and finally a visit to a pantomime, where they hissed Abanazer and screamed advice at Aladdin and Helen was scathing about the acting ability of the princess, telling Gemma, ‘You could do it much better than her.’

  And then it was Saturday at last and she had to face the mayhem of the move. Many hands may make light work but the countless bags and boxes they carried on this occasion filled the little flat beyond its capacity. To make matters worse, Helen and Naomi decided that the wheelchair would make a splendid trolley and took it in turns to sit in it and ferry the biggest boxes into the flat on their laps. They even tried it with the yucca plant and ended up dropping it and spilling compost all over Gemma’s new carpet, to Susan’s annoyance.

  ‘I warned you that would happen,’ she scolded. ‘Now look at the mess. And you’re getting in everyone’s way. We can’t turn round in here with you under our feet all the time.’

  ‘I’ll get a dust shovel and brush,’ Helen offered quickly, but Gemma couldn’t remember where she packed them. Now and too late in the day, she realised that she should have labelled the boxes.

  ‘That’s the lot,’ Rob said, coming into the hall with the last cardboard box. ‘Where d’you want this putting?’

  ‘It had better go in the living room with the others,’ Gemma said. ‘If I open them I shall see what’s what.’

  But they’d barely opened three before the bell rang and it was the furniture store delivering her new bed and the table and chairs.

  ‘If I live through this day the rest of my life will be a doddle,’ Gemma said and she was only half joking.

  ‘We’ll get the bed put up and the kitchen more or less straight,’ Catherine promised. ‘They’re the main things. You can sort everything else out at your leisure.’

  ‘I start work on the sixth,’ Gemma pointed out, looking at the wreckage in her once-neat rooms. ‘Leisure’s going to be in short supply.’

  Which was true enough for there were far too many things to do in those few short days and, as she soon discovered, far too many physical problems in her new environment. Working in a new kitchen took practice, she fell twice in her new shower and, by New Year’s Eve she’d bruised her thigh so many times by misjudging the position of her new furniture that it was quite tender. But she was independent now and if she made mistakes there was no one there to see them. She could get on with her life in peace. New Year, new start.

  Billie and Tim saw in the New Year in their local pub, where Tim acquired a circle of instant friends most of whom were reeling before they arrived. Billie would have preferred a twosome at home in the comfort of her flat, but she drank to the New Year gamely and proposed a special and private toast to T
im as the clock struck twelve.

  ‘Success to your endeavours, my darling!’

  ‘Starting tomorrow,’ he promised. ‘Just you watch me.’

  But in fact it took several days and much heavily enforced patience before he found what he wanted. There were so many obstacles in his way that he began to complain that they were ‘doing it deliberately.’ First the journalist he needed to see was away, then it wasn’t convenient for him to use the microfiche, then there was nobody who could date the picture they’d used in their recent article on Dr Quennell. But at last he was given the information he needed and allowed to sit before a relevant screen and trawl his way through the ancient pages on the microfiche.

  The history of the Cyprus troubles scrolled past. He read about British paratroopers patrolling the streets of Nicosia and Limassol, and Turks threatening to take ‘five Greek lives for every Turk.’

  Vaguely remembered, once-famous names jumped out of the print, Field Marshall Sir John Harding, Archbishop Makarios, Colonel Grivas. But there was no mention of a soldier called Quennell.

  Until he reached 25th March 1956 and an article headlined ‘Bombs thrown at army patrol.’

  ‘Despite the restrictions,’ the article said, ‘bombs were thrown yesterday at army patrols in Paphos in Western Cyprus. In one incident a medical Orderly, Corporal A.S. Quennell, rescued three members of a four-man patrol hit on the road into the Troödos mountains. Interviewed afterwards, Corporal Quennell said he had acted instinctively. ‘There wasn’t time to think.’

  Specious git! Tim thought, as he went on scrolling. Just the sort of thing he would say. Right. Now I know where he was and where he was based. If there was something else going on, and it was bad enough for him to want to keep quiet about it, there ought to be some mention of it somewhere.

  It took him three more days before he found what he was looking for and then it was such an insignificant item he could have missed it if he hadn’t noticed a familiar phrase.

  ‘Killed on the road to the Troödos mountains,’ the item said. ‘Residents of the village of Herapheton turned out in force yesterday for the funeral of Andreas Papagathangelou (16) who, according to his relatives, was shot and killed by a British medical orderly on the road to the Troödos mountains on Greek Independence Day. Troops were put on stand-by but the event passed off without incident.’

  That’s it! Tim thought. A medical orderly. On Greek Independence Day. It had to be him. The man’s a killer. No wonder he didn’t want to talk about it. With his heart pounding in triumph, he copied the item into his notebook, detail by detail, and went whistling back to Streatham.

  Billie was setting the table for the evening meal and cast down by the fact that she’d had another postcard from Gemma, still without an address.

  ‘It’s all very well for her,’ she complained. ‘She sounds quite perky. It was all about her flat. I still think she’d be better here with me but what’s the good of thinking when I can’t tell her.’

  ‘No good at all,’ he agreed. ‘Not while she’s under Quackquack’s influence. And no address, you say?’

  ‘No.’

  He was relieved to hear it. This whole thing needed careful stage management; an ill-judged visit could put the mockers on it. ‘Not to worry, Poppet,’ he said, expansive with the importance of what he was going to tell her. ‘I’ve found his Achilles’ heel. Didn’t I tell you I would? Look at that.’ And when she’d read it: ‘Now all I need to do is to go to Cyprus and find a relative and get them to spill the beans. We shan’t have any more trouble from Quack-quack Quennell then. You mark my words.’

  ‘But how do you know it’s him?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t say it’s him.’

  ‘I don’t know. I must follow my hunch, that’s all. That’s why I’ve got to go there. It’s the only way to find out.’ And a bit of freedom wouldn’t come amiss. Domestic life was getting very wearing. All this fussing about with flowers and tablecloths.

  ‘Now?’ Billie asked. ‘In this weather?’

  ‘The weather’s not important,’ he told her grandly. ‘This is our daughter’s future we’re talking about here. I’d go at once, if I could. I could be there and back in a week or two. The trouble is I’ve got a bit of a cash-flow problem and I might have to wait a few weeks or two for capital.’

  His anxious expression roused her sympathy. ‘How much do you need?’

  ‘About a grand,’ he hazarded. ‘Depends how long I have to stay. Seven hundred and fifty, maybe.’

  ‘I’ve got some savings,’ she told him. ‘You could borrow them if you like. Just to tide you over. You’d give them back afterwards, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re a star,’ he said, rewarding her with a kiss. ‘How soon can you lay your hands on it?’

  He was gone four days later. The flat seemed horribly empty without him and the bed miserably cold. But it was necessary, she knew that. If they were going to get Gemma back, it had to be done. She couldn’t go on living in that flat all by herself, poor girl.

  Chapter 25

  The New Year began in a confusion of blizzards and blocked roads. The television screens shone white with romantic visions of glistening snowscapes and delicately falling snow, but in the real world, cars inched and fumed, or stood moodily immobilised under thick white hoods, or slid out of control on ice their drivers couldn’t see. Tim’s flight was delayed for six hours, Billie’s boutique unvisited for as many days. Despite all-night work by gritters, it was hardly the most auspicious time to start a new job.

  Phlegmatic as ever, Rob set off to work in his Land Rover as though the roads were clear and it was just another day. But Susan decided to let the train take the strain, saying ‘I’ve earned it if anyone has.’ The service from their little station at Poppleton was very good, even in bad weather, and she had no intention of reporting for her first day dishevelled by a difficult drive.

  She’d organised the start of the day down to the last meticulous detail. Her new Black Watch tartan trouser suit was laid out in the spare bedroom with all its carefully chosen accessories neatly arranged beside it, her new executive rail pass was in its gold-edged docket in her handbag, her new nanny had been told to arrive half an hour before she was actually needed so as to ensure that she turned up more or less on time, the girls had new toys to play with and a video to keep them entertained and there was enough food in the freezer to feed a regiment. Whatever problems the day might drop on her desk, she was ready.

  ‘Now be good girls,’ she said to Helen and Naomi as she put on her last layer of mascara, leaning towards her dressing-table mirror. Eye make-up is irritatingly difficult when you are short-sighted. ‘Do what Nanny says.’

  Her daughters stood behind her, neat and clean in their designer jeans and their new Christmas sweaters, watching apprehensively.

  ‘Do we have to have another nanny?’ Helen complained, wiping her nose on her fingers.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Susan rebuked, ‘Take a tissue. Yes, you do. You can’t stay in the house with no one to look after you.’

  Helen took a tissue but persisted in her complaint. ‘I don’t see why not. We’re not babies. I’m ten, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘And don’t be rude,’ her mother said.

  ‘I hate nannies,’ Naomi weighed in, sensing from her mother’s irritation that Helen had scored a point. ‘They’re gross.’

  ‘You’ll like this one,’ Susan instructed them. ‘Her name’s Sheryl and she’s very nice.’

  ‘You said that about the last one,’ Helen reminded her. ‘And she broke your crystal vase.’

  ‘Time you cleaned your teeth,’ Susan said, putting the mascara in her make-up bag. ‘Unless you’re waiting for her to do it for you.’

  ‘No fear!’

  ‘Well then,’ Susan said. They always made such a fuss over a new nanny and it wasn’t necessary, even if the last one had been dire. But there you are, it was the price she had to pay for continuing her career.

  There
was movement in the garden below her. A dark figure was battling in through the gate, doubled against the wind and clutching a wide-brimmed hat to her head. Not a very prepossessing figure, Susan thought, ginger hair, very long and tatty, glasses – although I suppose I can’t fault her for that – red maxi coat flapping behind her, fashionable boots with sharp high heels. Not exactly Norland! And thirty-three minutes late. ‘She’s here!’

  The two girls came down the stairs to be introduced, their faces set and sullen. ‘My name’s Helen,’ that damsel announced. ‘And she’s Naomi and we don’t have nicknames and we don’t like cocoa and we always have chocolate biscuits at half-past ten.’

  The new nanny was vague and looked as if she’d just woken up. ‘Yeah!’ she said. ‘Right!’

  ‘They’ll show you where everything is,’ Susan said, putting on her coat. ‘Won’t you, girls?’

  ‘If we have to,’ Helen said.

  A bad start, Susan thought, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. Not if she was going to catch her train. ‘Be good!’ she warned. And left them to it.

  It was a difficult first day. For a start, there was as much frost inside the building as on the pavements outside. The central heating system had broken down and although there seemed to be an army of men in boiler suits trying to get it running again, it was so cold that the staff were all still in their coats. Even in her personal office on the fourth floor, which was close carpeted and sumptuously furnished and had enough radiators in it to be comfortably warm, if only they’d been working, the desk was chill to the touch and her breath streamed before her every time she spoke.

  ‘Sorry about this, Ms Pengilly,’ her secretary said.

  ‘That’s the winter for you,’ Susan said, determined not to be discouraged. ‘Is there any coffee?’

  ‘You generally have coffee during the board meeting,’ the secretary told her.

  Susan opened her desk diary. ‘When’s that?’