Songs from the Violet Cafe

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘Well, Lou left her a little present, didn’t he?’ Marianne was saying. ‘I expect she showed you the pictures of the children. How I detest people who’re always flashing their loved ones out of their wallets. Really hokey.’

  Wallace junior. Perhaps. No, it was the girl who was older. Jessie was silent. Marianne said, ‘This girl you’ve come about?’

  ‘I thought that was supposed to be confidential.’

  ‘Oh it is. You have to be careful, Jessie. People know about that convent. And the children Lou Messenger’s taken there.’

  ‘But …’ Jessie began to say, feeling her face redden.

  ‘That place is marked. Oh, I don’t think anyone doubts your good intentions, Jessie. Life’s full of moral contradictions out here in the East, but I’m sure you know that better than I do. We’re really alike, you and I, we’ve learned to paper over the cracks. I decided not to suffer for mine, not to let them get in the way of the present. But every now and then they trip you up. The view is that anything Lou’s touched is morally indefensible, and why should I argue with that? Perhaps you’ve forgotten, Evelyn Messenger was my very best friend. You might have trouble convincing the authorities that you’d never had anything to do with him. If you take my point.’

  ‘You won’t help me then?’ Jessie had said.

  Marianne gave her a long level stare. ‘I won’t get in your way.’ She waved for a waiter to bring more brandy.

  Jessie stood and felt her head spin. ‘Goodnight, Marianne,’ she said, moving swiftly to let herself out. Outside, the air was hugely overheated, the humidity as thick as linen, with traces of lightning illuminating the sky over the Chao Praya River. The night had just begun in Bangkok.

  Back in the hotel, she wrote a letter to Sister Mary Luke.

  Dear Sister,

  I do not believe that it will be possible for me to take Bopha back to London with me. I will never forsake her. As long as I live, I will think of her as my child. There may come a time when I am able to claim her as my own, to educate her in the way that she deserves, but that time has not come. Perhaps her country really does need her, but that is not an excuse; it is a hope for the future. I ask one favour, however difficult, that you will allow her to follow in the Buddhist faith if she chooses.

  CAROLINE

  Dear Jessie,

  Perhaps by now you will have forgotten us people you used to know when you were young. It’s a while since you looked me up, at least ten years. I must admit that I felt angry when you turned up on my doorstep without an appointment (ah, there I have you, Jessie, you didn’t think someone like me would need appointments to be seen, but I can tell you I’m very booked up ahead these days). It wasn’t so much that you were inconsiderate, it was thinking about how you had run off and how many years it had taken you to come back, walking in, as if nothing had changed. I can tell you, everything changed that night when Owen died. Each day has seemed like eternity. People used to say to me that I should shift away, go to some other place. But where would I have gone? And why should I? Instead of my mother looking at me with reproach because I had gone off and married Owen, I could bare my teeth at her, for not wanting more for me, for not understanding how my life could have been if I had been married younger, if I hadn’t listened to her. You may think me a bitter woman, but that is not altogether true. I will be fifty next year, and I’ve come to terms with what I’ve got. This house, which is so eccentric and well preserved that now the historical society wants me to leave it to them for a museum. Hah! Plenty of life in me yet. They’ll have to wait a while. I still have my brides.

  Oh my brides, Jessie. You’ve never been one. Well, it’s hardly surprising. You were an attractive enough woman, back to front, but a bride needs a bit of cleavage and a big smile. I can’t remember you smiling much, Jessie. Perhaps that was your trouble, you were an inward sort of girl. Well, I love helping the girls here organise their weddings. I make their dresses and cut out their veils and help them choose the right colour to have their shoes dyed, and go to the florist with them, and talk to their mothers about how to do things with style. I’m very popular. People know if they don’t get me the minute they’re engaged then they’ll miss out, and have to wait as long as I did. Hester’s Wedding Treats — that’s the name of my business. And fancy, I’m quite well-off. I didn’t have to sell Mother’s house in order to put eggs in the nest.

  Anyway, Mother’s dead, and we won’t dwell on that. Would you believe she had a letter from Freda Messenger before she died? No address, just a Washington postmark. She said Evelyn had a couple of sons when she was in her forties and she’d set Freda up in one of those little towns they have in America with security all around. Sounded to me like Evelyn had had her locked up, but what would I know about that? No mention of the economy.

  You’ll probably think I’m hard. That I’m looking for someone to blame. And there were so many I could have, but what’s the point of that? Violet Trench was the one who felt the most remorse. I should have seen it coming she says to me some nights when she’s in her cups. You can’t bring them back, I tell her. Go to sleep.

  Oh yes, I haven’t told you, Violet lives with me. She’s a widow now. Lord, how the years roll on by, and sweep people away. The good doctor died on her, when they were climbing in Argentina. Well, he was, although I suspect that Violet was close by in a swank hotel sipping very dry martinis. Heart, of course. The man was in his seventies. You’d wonder why the travel agents would allow a man of his age to go rabbiting up mountainsides, but then Violet tells me that these tour operators have got no scruples at all, they just take the money and leave their clients to it. Still, you might know more about things like that than I do, I’ve never travelled, wouldn’t want to.

  I was sorry for the old biddy when she came back to town. She had nowhere to go, and it was her that set me free in the first place. At least free enough to experience a little of what life is about, which I hope for your sake you’ve managed to do, although sex without marriage is promiscuity, I’ve always believed, not that some of the poor girls who come to me seem to have cottoned on to it. If they want alterations done, and the dresses letting out, they have to let me know a month in advance, which means of course that I often get to know before their own mothers. Not that I’d breathe a word.

  I should have Violet put away, I suppose, but she can still get around, and she does like a tipple in the evenings which she wouldn’t get in the rest home, so I let her stay on with me. I quite like the company, to tell you the truth. But just lately she’s had a bee in her bonnet, and she thinks you might be able to help her. She wants to trace some relative of hers called Caroline. She thinks she might live in London, and says you might remember her kindly enough to be willing to help. (Did she give you some money? I never did think of Violet as a real business-woman.) So before we go into all the details, perhaps you could drop me a line and let me know if you’ve time in your schedule to do the old lady a favour.

  Hester

  London was crackling with October’s early frost when Jessie read this letter, although it had been written in June. It was at the bottom of a pile of mail she had collected from her lawyer’s office where correspondence was redirected on her trips away. The blue aerogramme had a homely look about it, stuck together off-square and addressed in round scribbled handwriting. Jessie studied the New Zealand postmark, for a moment not registering the sender’s name written on the back. When she did, she placed the letter on the polished mahogany hall table, and slowly took off the grey woollen coat that fell gracefully from her shoulders when she walked. It was lined with forest-green silk. For some years, she had been moving from place to place giving lectures and talks. Her first book, Indochine, The Heart’s Tragedy, had been so favourably reviewed that she had been invited to tour in America, stopping first at Harvard, where she was a guest lecturer for six months, with a regular offer of a half-time place for the next three years. A whole series of appearances followed each of these teaching stin
ts. They had taken her criss-crossing the States, up to Canada, over to Paris and Belgium, where she spoke through interpreters, and several times to Australia. The Australian trips were a convenient stopping-over place for her annual trips to Cambodia. She always tried to be there with Bopha for the New Year celebrations. She didn’t consider going south to New Zealand these days. It was, she believed, a country she had now put behind her altogether. From time to time, she heard news of her half-sister Belinda, who had married young and had two daughters by the time she was twenty. They sent her cards and notes that started out in round childish hands with the words ‘Dear Aunt Jessie, thank you for the money for my birthday.’ Always much the same. Their handwriting was beginning to take shape, reflections of how their signatures would appear when they were adults, one of them tentative, the second one bold and flourishing. I think Sally might turn out like her Auntie Jessie, Belinda had written at the bottom of one of her notes, with an exclamation mark. The nearest she had come to expressing an opinion of Jessie.

  Two of these letters from Belinda’s children were in the waiting pile. These were the first she opened, making a mental resolution to do something about seeing these children. Not that she expected to soon. When she had poured herself a drink, she sat down by the gas fire and read Hester’s letter, noting the date at the top.

  The trees had grown so close to Hester’s house that Jessie felt as if she was entering some dark domain. Branches of evergreens touched her face as she walked up the path. Little had changed, although the exterior had had a new coat of Spanish white paint. A sprinkle of snowdrops were scattered beneath a lemon tree, and some winter roses huddled on a patch of bare turned earth.

  ‘You might have told us you were coming,’ Hester said, flustered, when she opened the door. ‘It’s just like you — we don’t hear from you in years, you don’t answer our letters, and then you just turn up. Out of the blue. As it were.’

  ‘I did ring,’ said Jessie. ‘May I come in?’ Hester was dressed in loose black pants and a flowing red and green jacket that reached her knees. Her long white hair was bundled into a floating bun like a movie actress playing a nineteenth-century pioneer, and steel-rimmed glasses perched on the high bridge of her nose. She had thickened around the waist, and grown folds round her chin, but with a tape measure slung over one shoulder, she looked the part of the wedding planner, a woman to whom people turned.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor, Vi,’ Hester sang out ahead of her.

  Violet was seated in a low chair beneath one of the tasselled lamp-shades in the darkened sitting room, where Jessie used to stand while Hester pinned up her dresses. She was sitting motionless, her back to the door, so that the first Jessie saw was her fine blue hair, dressed up exactly as it had been at the Violet Café, shining in a halo of pinkish light. Beside her chair stood a walking stick.

  She turned as the two younger women came through the door. Jessie was afraid she would see a ravaged travesty of the past, but Violet’s face seemed little changed, and prettily made up, as if she was expecting visitors. The lines around her mouth had deepened, and a scarf obscured her throat, but her eyes were as blue as Jessie remembered, and as direct.

  She said, ‘I knew you’d come, Jessie.’

  Hester was fidgeting in the background, offering tea or coffee, and regretting that she hadn’t baked this morning — there were only bought ginger snaps. Did Jessie take milk these days, or did she only drink that Chinese stuff, now that she was an expert on the Orient? ‘I do keep up with your doings, you know. Your name’s in the papers. I cut out all the reviews. I expect you think this is too small a country to come and give your talks, but I can tell you people here are interested, and very interesting. They belong to book clubs, all sorts of things. This country has changed, you wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘She does like to fuss,’ Violet said indulgently. ‘But she looks after me very well. She’s still a great cook, even though she’s got a medieval kitchen. You know, she could afford to upgrade it.’

  ‘She likes spending money, don’t you?’ said Hester, arranging a fine cashmere rug around Violet’s knees. ‘Why would I need a new kitchen? That one’s always done in the past.’

  Jessie supposed, then, that they would tell her about the woman Violet was seeking. But Violet was intent on leading Jessie through a recital of her journeys, encouraging her to be outrageous, demanding that she describe what it was like to ride in a helicopter, to be under artillery fire, how to avoid snakebite in the jungle, and to tell her the best newspapers to order if she was travelling in the East. She steadied her cup in two hands; her joints were thick with arthritis.

  ‘You’re thinking of taking a trip then?’ said Hester, in a lightly mocking tone.

  ‘Well, I would if I could. Haven’t you got a client coming soon?’

  Hester slammed her cup down on an occasional table. ‘Well,’ she said to Jessie, ‘if that’s not an invitation to get lost, I don’t know what is. Wouldn’t you think?’

  Jessie thought of offering to leave, but decided it was pointless to have travelled all the way from London just to invoke a quarrel, even if that was what Hester was looking for. ‘I’ll fit in,’ she said.

  ‘Jessie’s come to talk to me about looking for Caroline. You know that, dear,’ Violet said.

  ‘Whoever Caroline is,’ Hester said, her voice tight. ‘I get to do the donkey work, track Jessie down, write the letters, but what happens next? I get thrown out of my own house.’

  ‘Don’t mind us,’ Violet said, ‘we’re just two silly old widows.’

  Jessie was tiring of the game of insults the two women were trading. Violet appeared to be paying a high price for a comfortable home, as a latter-day Ruth Hagley. ‘I was thinking of staying a day or so,’ she said. ‘I can come back tomorrow if you’d rather.’ This wasn’t really true, but she thought why not, if she must. Sooner or later, she would go and see Belinda. Since she had found Bopha, she felt more strongly drawn towards the idea of seeing her mother’s grandchildren. Perhaps she was not entirely immune to family. But she was booked to fly back to London in three days, so if she stayed here, Belinda and the children would be passed over again.

  ‘No,’ said Hester, suddenly quitting the argument. ‘I’ve got someone coming, as it happens. A consultation with a pig-headed girl. She wants to wear the trashiest shoes and jewellery. Well, why should I care, but people will know she’s one of mine. You just stay and take your time.’

  When Hester was gone, Violet said, ‘She blames herself, of course.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Owen dying. They’d had a quarrel, you know. He’d come to town to look for Hester.’

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ said Jessie. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Well, they were normal, I suppose. I’ve tried to tell her that. People will go on punishing themselves.’ Violet appeared to be gathering herself together. Was it Hester, Jessie wondered, who put the delicate blush of rouge on Violet’s cheeks when she dressed at the beginning of each day? Violet must sit here day after day, pampered and made pretty by Hester. Perhaps, rather than being unkind, Hester was simply exhausted.

  ‘You’ve probably worked out who Caroline is,’ Violet said, at last. ‘I expect Hester has too.’

  ‘Another of your children?’ Violet appeared to flinch. ‘A daughter.’

  ‘You heard that I had a child?’

  ‘A son, I was told.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Lou Messenger.’

  ‘Aaah.’ Violet expelled a long breath. ‘Lou Messenger.’

  ‘You knew he was alive?’

  ‘There’ve been rumours, of course, for years.’

  ‘I met him in a downtown bar in the middle of Phnom Penh, just after the Vietnamese drove Pol Pot out of the city. He exists. Well, he did then, though it’s a fair while ago. He thought John Wing Lee was your son.’

  ‘Well, what can I say about that?’

  ‘That it’s true?’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh yes, it’s true enough. I still feel badly I suppose, about trying to hold you back when I did. I took advantage of you, your awkwardness and your neediness, of you wanting John as much as you did. I can say that, now that you’ve turned out so well. You’re quite dashing, Jessie. Oh yes, I admire what you’ve become.’

  ‘Please, don’t make a speech,’ Jessie said. ‘You didn’t ruin my life.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my son I asked you to come here and talk about. Or your ruination, which clearly never happened. Although it has to be said that the summer when you girls all worked for me at the Violet Café, made great changes in people’s lives, and some of them were intolerably damaged. Don’t think I have no regrets. I’ve done enough damage to my own life. But I did see that it wouldn’t have worked out for you and John. Your landlady brought in the library books you’d left behind. I don’t know why she couldn’t have returned them herself. But when I looked at them I understood that it wasn’t just because of your mother that you’d gone that night. You would have tired of the life.

  ‘What I’m leading to is the question of choice. You see, Jessie, I had to choose between one child and another. At least, that’s how it seemed at the time. I took John to Hugo, who had been the first real love of my life, only at the time when I was in love with him, it didn’t seem right. It seemed sinful even to think like that, because his wife was dying, in the room, between us, inch by inch. So I went away. I wasn’t entirely without principles in those days. I met a man when I was a student at the music school in Versailles. I’d gone to Paris for the day. He was a soldier from England — when being in the military meant having a career — a well-off, fastidious, and rather arrogant man, but we had some good times together when it started. He gave me an excuse to drift away from music and follow what had come to interest me more, the pursuit of good food and good living. I decided to marry him, not that there was much choice — I was having his baby. But it did ease the longing I had for Hugo. Of course, my new husband had to take me home to meet his family. They didn’t like me from the beginning. They thought of me as his little colonial, like Katherine Mansfield, you know, the bourgeois girl on the make. Not that I was any girl by then, of course. Oh, I’d lived you know, I expect they saw that. The halls in the house where they lived were lined with pictures in gilded frames, of all the relations who had gone before, not like those of a tin canner’s daughter from New Zealand. But soon we had a girl. Caroline. She was picture-perfect, like one of those children in the advertisements for Pears’ soap — long blonde curls tied back in a ribbon. She showed early signs of artistic talent, much greater than I imagine I ever had as a child. We doted on her, her father and I, but not on each other. His family’s view of me soon made its mark.