He sat down opposite Jo, but got up again to give her an ashtray, as she flicked cigarette ash on to the carpet after the habit of Denbigh Terrace, where stubs were ground out on the floor among the toast crusts and dogs’ bones.
Rodney hoped she would not stay long. She might be a girl who had come to complain to him of one of his friends, and he did not know how to talk to girls like that; they were too astute for him. She was shy now, and kept clearing her throat with a birdlike movement of her head, but he supposed that once she got started, her voice would be a high-pitched battering ram of grievances that would debilitate him into handing out notes in order to get rid of her.
But when she answered his vague conversational openings, although her accent was affected and the vowels atrocious, somewhere in her voice was a warmth and softness not usually found in the tinny London tones. She was decorative, too, with her square-chinned little face, whose pallor was not pasty but flower-like. Though smudged round with tired shadow, her eyes were a deep and brilliant blue, and her chestnut hair bright against the green brocade chair.
Rodney sighed and recrossed his legs. ‘Well,’ he prompted her, ‘and what can I do for you, young lady?’ She looked so much younger and more ingenuous than the women who usually sat in that chair that he felt like her elderly uncle.
Which then, by devious routes, she proceeded to tell him that he was.
‘I don’t know where to start, really,’ she began. ‘I hadn’t thought …’ She had been through so much since that first terrible revelation in her parents’ flat that it was hard to go back, to begin at the beginning with someone who knew nothing about it. The two days in which she had known the truth were like half a lifetime. She seemed to have been travelling about England for ages, driven here and there by her racking uncertainty, seeing no farther behind her than the end of her security, the toppling moment when she was suddenly not Jo Abinger; seeing no farther ahead than the answer to her desperate question: ‘Who am I? Who am I?’
She had not paused. Even when she was still, her mind had raced on with the search, but now here was a pause. A barrier of passive luxury stood between her and the man to whom she had run without a second thought. Though Rodney smiled, he was unapproachable. His flat, though not half so smart and modern as Felix McOsterburg’s, was in some indefinable, disconcerting way, even grander.
‘Perhaps I didn’t ought to have come, Sir Rodney,’ she said, ‘but I never thought twice about it. You see – ’ She leaned forward, to shock him into awareness of her, ‘I’ve been to Bolt House!’ She stressed the words as if they were a code between fellow-spies.
‘Bolt House … Bolt House?’ Rodney wrinkled his sloping tract of forehead. ‘What does that imply? Elucidate.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Explain yourself.’
‘Well.’ Jo took a deep breath. ‘You remember twenty years ago, and the babies, and the fire, and your sister’s baby which you thought was dead?’
‘So she was dead,’ he said. ‘Poor little rat. I saw her. Bolt House? Of course, that’s why the name was familiar. But what’s it got to do with you? How do you know about it?’
Jo watched him closely. ‘What would you say if that baby wasn’t dead at all?’
‘She was. I saw her.’ He made the face he used for corked champagne.
‘Well, but if?’
‘Oh my God.’ Rodney shaded his eyes. ‘Must I answer riddles at this time of night?’ He had a clear, precise voice, the kind in which modern actors speak Restoration comedy: slightly falsetto, unstressed, the R’s trilled, a trace of a lisp, all mute aspirates sounded. Jo had thought him affected at first, but she was already getting used to his voice. It fitted him and his surroundings.
Rodney was getting used to Jo’s voice too. Neither she nor her voice fitted her surroundings, and yet in a striking way, she gave a touch of movement and colour that improved them. Women like Sheena, all pastel undertones and cat-like stillness blended too well with the room, so that the silver-grey and green décor, designed round the Corot silver birches, became too important, having no competition. With this copper-haired, vividly common girl, the room retreated to its proper status as a background for personality.
Gradually, with many false starts and repetitions and back-to-front incidents, Jo got her story out. She twisted her legs round the chair and pulled at one side of her hair, forgetting to put on an act in her desire to convince him. She did not have to exaggerate, as she usually did when telling any story. The truth of this one was fantastic enough. It was like a nursery tale of the princess brought up among swineherds. It was like a fairy story.
When she had finished, he blew out his cheeks, which made him look like an overfed baby. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to think.’ He got up to get them both another drink.
‘You don’t know what to think!’ cried Jo who, having talked so much was feeling more at home with him. ‘How would you feel if you were me and suddenly found that you weren’t who you thought you were? I know now, though, thanks to that funny old bird in Lynn, and none too soon, either. I’ll never forgive my mother – at least who I thought was my mother – for not telling me.’
‘Perhaps she did it for the best,’ suggested Rodney, turning from the cocktail cabinet. ‘She was afraid it might inhibit you.’
‘It never prohibited me from feeling anything but a misfit in the home she raised me in,’ said Jo belligerently. ‘I see why she never told, because she’d done this about pretending your baby was hers and was afraid it would all come out. I can’t think how you were soft enough to let them get away with it. Couldn’t you see which was your kid?’
‘No, because they were so – My God, I can see them now – quite nauseating. Sorry, my dear, of course one was you, wasn’t it?’ Jo nodded. ‘They told me Joy was dead – well, it was appallingly sad, but for the best in a way, as her parents were dead and no one really wanted the poor little beggar. My mother was ill then. She never recovered you know; she died fifteen years ago, and the other grandmother wasn’t co-operative because she’d never got on with Rose – my sister.’
‘My mother,’ put in Jo, who was going to miss no opportunity of ramming home her point.
Rodney sucked at his lower lip. ‘I suppose so,’ he said, ‘though the idea takes a bit of getting used to. All this talk about foundlings and crucifixes and cheating – I can’t see what your mother was up to.’
‘Can’t you see? Oh, you are slow!’ Jo beat the heels of her hands together, the fingers clasped. ‘Because she wanted a baby, specially a well-born baby, though why, when she was only going to raise it in the Porto – ’
‘The what?’
‘The Porto. The Lane, they call it. It’s a long slum, full of markets and dead cats and pubs people are sick outside, Saturday nights. You don’t mean you’ve never heard of it?’
‘No, thank God.’ Rodney took refuge in his arm-chair.
‘I used to like it when I was a kid; they all do, but latterly,’ this was a word she had picked up from a reception clerk at the Grand Metropolitan and used whenever possible, ‘latterly, I’ve hated the very thought of the place, much less live in it. That’s how I know I’m Joy Stretton. I’ve always known I was meant for something better than the life I had, like I would, wouldn’t I, if I’d been born into a family like yours? You being a Bart, does that make me a title or anything, or come into it when you die?’
Rodney laughed, fluting at the back of his nose. ‘Sorry, my dear. Even if I did oblige, I’ve got a younger brother with a son.’
‘Well, never mind, Sir Rodney,’ said Joy generously. ‘It’s enough for me to know I’m Joy Stretton, now I’m getting over the shock a bit. What do you think I ought to do now? I’m so tired I don’t think I can do any more. Must I go back to my job? They’ll skin me for playing the mike like this. In any case, did your niece ought to be selling cigs and chocs over the counter? What shall I do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rodney nervously. The s
ituation threatened disruption of his life’s pattern. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked helplessly.
Jo looked helpless too and sat down on a straight-back chair by the wall. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t thought. I simply came straight here to tell you that your niece wasn’t dead. I – I thought you’d be so pleased.’ She drooped, looking as forlorn as she felt.
‘But of course I am,’ said Rodney quickly, seeing that he had hurt her. ‘Just a little – bouleversé, shall we say? We both need a drink. Brandy this time.’
‘Oh, no.’ Jo waved a hand dully. ‘I don’t want anything more. I’m going in a minute.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Rodney. ‘Medicinal.’ Pouring her drink, he put from him the unworthy thought that this priceless brandy was wasted on her. If what she said were true, if the girl really was a Cope, it was high time she started to drink good brandy. He liked to think that he was the one to initiate her.
Jo did not know how to drink from a brandy glass. He showed her. That made her giggle and he giggled too and it all became rather fun. He liked her. It was ages since he had had someone so young and fresh in the flat. All his friends knew exactly what to do and how to do it wherever they went. They did not need showing. Sometimes he tried to show people how to look at pictures or listen to music. He might show his niece these things, too. She would pay more attention than his friends did; she might make things more fun.
Hang it, he thought, I like her, whoever she is. I like having her here.
The room seemed more friendly. The walls and bookcases and mirrors and his priceless china on the alcove shelves no longer seemed to watch him, as they did sometimes when he was alone, to see what he was going to do, since they did not intend to do anything to help his loneliness. The fire in the little gilt grate rustled and ticked as if it were more than just a decorative adjunct to the central heating. Rodney put on another piece of coal and had homely thoughts about making toast. When the domed clock chimed, it was a reminder, not of the slowness of time’s passing, but of its speed.
It was Rodney’s bedtime, and he let it go by. To crown everything, Lady, who loathed strangers, flopped off her cushion and, came to snore and slobber round Jo’s legs, as if she knew she was one of the family.
‘What’s his name?’ Jo asked, bending to pat her.
‘Lady Precious Stream,’ recited Rodney, making it sound very precious indeed.
‘Oh.’ Jo went on stroking the top of the dog’s head until it seemed as though its eyes must pop right out at last.
Rodney did not explain to her now about the play, nor show her the original Chinese prints he had of the scenes. He would reserve that pleasure for another time. For there was going to be another time. He had had an idea.
‘My dear,’ he said, intensely affected by his sacrifice, ‘I’ve a suggestion to make.’
Jo looked up and stopped stroking Lady, who bumped her dripping nose against her stockings to make her go on.
‘If you’re really Joy, which we shall have to prove, I expect, with all manner of tedious litigation, if you’re really my poor sister’s child – and I tell you frankly, my dear, I like to think that you are – why not come and live here with me?’
‘Here?’ Jo was shocked. ‘Alone with you? Why, whatever would people say?’
Rodney made the woodwind noise which was as near as he ever got to a hearty laugh. ‘My dear, I’m old enough to be your father! I’m your uncle, in fact. Anyway, we wouldn’t be here alone. There’s Alexander.’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘Alexander?’ It was inconceivable that anyone in London should not know him. ‘He’s my man. You’ll like him.’ But would Alexander like the girl? He was funny about women. He himself had some girl secreted in Hounslow, whom he was understood to visit on his half day. No one had ever seen her and he never spoke of her. When Rodney, morbidly fearful of losing him, tried to probe the future, Alexander would lower from his great saturnine height: ‘Marriage, sir? Have I ever mentioned it?’
‘No, but this girl – isn’t she getting restive?’
‘That is a subject,’ said Alexander coldly, ‘with which I believe I have never bored you. I would appreciate the same consideration from you, Sir Rodney.’
He liked to keep Rodney in his place. He was not in favour of marriage for him either, which biased his opinion of the women who came to the Mount Street flat. Unmarried women were only safe if they were ‘of a type’. They must not be young and virtuous, nor falling off and hungrily questing. He never openly disapproved. With his passion for mystery he did nothing openly; he even opened the front door as if the flat were a speakeasy. He did not voice his mistrust, but he had a threatening way of putting down plates, or of saying: ‘Miss X to dinner? I’ll see what I can do, sir,’ which implied strychnine in the soup, and discouraged Rodney from asking Miss X again.
He might think Jo was a fortune hunter. Rodney always knew when he suspected this, because he would not put out the best glass, nor serve coloured sugar with the coffee, as if to imply that there was nothing here worth angling for.
Yet Alexander was humane and his psychology, as Rodney never tired of boasting, was infallible. He would see Jo for what she was: a sweet, unscheming child to whom life so far had dealt a poorish hand.
He showed her round the flat. Jo had by now abandoned any pretence at blasé gentility and Rodney was touched by her ingenuous enthusiasm. She certainly was stimulating. Every time he passed a clock, he marvelled anew that it was long past his bedtime and still he did not care. No one had ever praised his bathroom like Josephine. When he showed her his bedroom, she could hardly believe, from the size of his bed, that he was not married. He showed her the room that would be hers, and she could not speak, but her tired eyes shone. Rodney could weep that anyone should get so excited about a small room that looked over the roofs and window-whirling mops of the chambermaids at the Connaught Hotel.
‘I should move the bed,’ she said, ‘if you didn’t object. I never fancy the light in my eyes.’ Well, very good. Here she would lie, so. There would her clothes hang. Here, the silver dressingtable set that Rodney would give her.
She wanted to see everything, but he would not allow her as far as Alexander’s domain at the end of the passage. Rodney himself was only allowed in the kitchen or pantry as a favour, if there were game to be inspected, or a wine discussed. It would be a test to see whether Alexander received Jo there. She would not go into his bed-sitting room, of course. No one, not even Ned’s children, had ever been there, but if he allowed her into the kitchen, and even – dared one hope? – let her make an omelette on his evening out, she would have arrived.
Rodney began to have audacious visions of not always having to dine out on a Thursday. Jo would wear a delectable apron, and they would have one of those supper snacks advised by Vague, and some suitably Bohemian vin du pays on the low round table in the drawing-room.
‘Not to-night,’ he heard himself telephoning on a Thursday morning. ‘We pig it chez nous on Thursdays. The child looks forward to it all week.’
‘And so do you,’ would tease the faintly jealous voice along the wire.
‘Oh, well.’ The deprecating laugh. ‘Domesticity has its charms. Don’t you find – or don’t you?’
He wanted to have her here. It would be as good as being married, without the ties and wearisome demands of marriage. Jo was stimulating, but she was also more malleable than any wife would be, and she was so pretty, and her figure perfect. He saw himself in Bruton Street, supervising her – well, you couldn’t call it a trousseau, but she would have to have everything new, if all her clothes were on a par with the outfit she wore now. Her underclothes were probably appalling. These girls spent all their money on the top layer. Her hair? Mentally, he brought it down and brushed it out and set it in a deceptively simple sheet of copper, just as Raymond would do at his instructions. Her accent? Greater problems of conversion had been tackled. It would be as rewarding as
that time he had cleaned off an oleograph and found a Millais underneath. He would fix her as one would restore a picture or convert a tasteless room, to the marvel of all his friends.
Rodney began to see himself as Pygmalion, and liked the idea.
When it was really time at last for her to go, she looked to him for instructions, as she would look, he foresaw, so often in the future. ‘What shall I tell people? How am I going to get away from Mum and Dad? Suppose they won’t give me up? Dad’s funny, and Mum – well, I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mum.’
‘You’re fond of her?’
‘Yes,’ said Jo, caught unawares. ‘At least I was,’ she amended. ‘But knowing how she’s deceived me all these years has made me feel different. She’s got no right to me, after all.’ Thus she tried to smother her conscience and the tugs of old affections that must not drag her back to the Portobello Road. If she was to be Joy Stretton, she must cut herself off from everything she had ever known.
‘We should have to go to Law, I suppose,’ sighed Rodney.
‘Oh no,’ said Jo. ‘I couldn’t face that.’ Norman had imbued her with horror of the Law, and the idea that it was always against you, whether you were plaintiff or defendant.
‘It would be tedious, I grant you. Perhaps we can circumvent that. They’re badly off, you say? Perhaps a little touch of – ’ With upturned palm, he made the traditional gesture of delicately tickling fingers. He had always got everything he wanted with money. Why not this girl?
‘You go home and prepare the ground,’ he said. ‘I’ll sow the seed.’ He came all the way to the ground floor to chaperon her past the night porter, who had a leery mind. Williams must not start thinking things about Jo.
‘See if you can find my niece a taxi,’ Rodney said, and if Williams were not already afflicted with a drooping left eyelid, he might be thought to have winked.
‘I won’t wait, Jo,’ Rodney said, ‘because if I catch a cold, I never throw it off.’
‘You didn’t ought to call me Jo,’ she said in a blurred, sleepy way, bunching her thin coat round her. ‘I’m Joy. Get your tongue round that.’
Joy and Josephine Page 29