The Joyce Girl

by Annabel Abbs

  “I think it should say PHYSICAL TRAINING and under that, PRIVATE LESSONS. And then a telephone number. We can do the lessons at my house.”

  I twirled my umbrella and then waved it in the air, as though it were a victory flag. A flurry of rain drops fell from its furled panels and when I looked up I saw a fragile, gauzy rainbow reaching across the bowl of the sky.

  “I’ll ask Mama if I can put our telephone number on the card. There’s always someone in at our house. Oh, Kitten, I’m so excited!”

  “Imagine if our Method is really successful, Lucia. We’d be running our own dance school. Wouldn’t that be divine?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. Already I was thinking of my independence and freedom. And this time I wouldn’t fail. I was determined not to fail. I would be Miss Lucia Joyce, founder of the Joyce Neel Institute of Dance and Physical Culture. Not Mrs Calder or Mrs Beckett or Mrs Fernandez. Not someone’s muse. Just me, myself. And I would not fail.

  Kitten and I spent the next two weeks working on our Method, creating sequences of movement and chains of positions for strengthening and toning and improving balance. And when we were happy with our programme I asked Mama if we could use the Robiac Square telephone number for all the enquiries that we would, inevitably, receive.

  * * *

  She was sitting at the kitchen table hunched over a piece of paper. Spread out before her were all Mrs Fleischman’s gifts from the last year: a porcelain tea set; several silk scarves; four cut-glass bottles of perfume; eleven books for Babbo.

  “This lot comes to more than £200, and that,” she said smugly, “is without the cigarettes or wine.”

  “What are you doing, Mama?”

  “Adding up the value of that vampire’s presents. She must have given you some things.”

  “Only her cast-off clothes and that scarf.” I pointed to the silk Coco Chanel scarf which Mama had draped over the teapot.

  “I’m thinking that if the gifts keep rolling in like this, I might be able to go to the wedding after all.” Mama gouged at the air with her pencil. “I’ll be letting you go to the wedding too, Lucia.”

  But I didn’t want to think about Giorgio’s impending marriage, so I just nodded and said, “Mama, please can I use our telephone number for my trading cards?”

  “What trading cards?” She surveyed the table of gifts again and made a smacking noise with her lips.

  “Kitten and I want to take private pupils for dance lessons and we need a telephone number so we can be contacted.”

  “So that’s what the two of you have been up to! All that whispering and disappearing into your bedroom. You can use our number, but be sure to put a time. I’m not wanting to be answering the telephone day and night, or taking messages when Jim’s trying to work. And what does your father have to say about this daft idea?”

  “I haven’t told him yet. He’s too preoccupied with his law books.”

  Mama gave her wedding ring a quick twist and then looked up at me. “Yes, best to leave him out o’ this. He’ll only start harping on about book-binding again.”

  “I’ll ask people to telephone between two o’clock and three o’clock and I’ll sit by the telephone every day for that hour. I promise.”

  “And what about your dancing at the Margaret Morris school? I don’t want you hanging around here, getting under me feet all day.”

  “I’ve told them I’m leaving. I need to concentrate on my work with Kitten.” I started edging towards the door. I didn’t have time to chat. A new chapter in my life was opening and I needed to get to the printers – before Mama changed her mind.

  * * *

  Four days later our cards arrived. How smart they looked! Little oblongs of stiff white card with our names in black. At the bottom was the Robiac Square telephone number and a polite request to telephone between 2 and 3pm. And it was my name on it, not Mrs Alexander Calder or Mrs Samuel Beckett but me, Lucia Joyce, dance instructor for private pupils. Inventor of the Joyce Neel method. Creator and founder of the Joyce Neel School of Dance. I put the box of cards – 200 of them – inside my wardrobe. Then I remembered Mama and Babbo and slipped a few into my pocket. I’d present them with a card each, and a few for their friends. But first I’d telephone Kitten and tell her how marvellously divine our cards looked.

  “They look so sophisticated and modern,” I gushed into the receiver. “The font we chose is perfect. When can you come and get some? And when shall we start giving them out?”

  “I’ll come tomorrow morning, darling. I think I’ve already gotten us our first pupil.” Kitten’s voice squeaked with excitement.

  “That’s wonderful! Who?” I held the receiver tightly against my ear, not wanting to miss a single syllable. Ahead of me, through the window, I could see the lights of the Eiffel Tower coming on, floor by floor, lighting up the Paris sky.

  “A friend of your mother? She wants to learn to dance? Well, she’s coming to the right place. The Joyce Neel Method is ready to take Paris by storm!”

  Kitten’s laughter seemed to ripple down the telephone wires towards me, like some joyous contagion. I laughed back and then said I had to go. I wanted Mama and Babbo to be the first official recipients of our glorious new cards.

  I had just put the receiver down, when Babbo called me into the dining room. I knew immediately something was amiss. Mama sat at the table, her face long and her mouth screwed up like a drawstring purse. She had her hands in her lap and was breathing loudly through her nostrils.

  Babbo motioned me to a chair and cleared his throat. My eyes flickered from him to Mama and back again. I put my hand into my pocket and curled my fingers round the sheaf of cards. This was my new chapter and nothing my parents said could change that.

  “Lucia, I’ve written to the landlord to give notice on Robiac Square.” Babbo’s words were slow and measured.

  “You can’t,” I said, my voice barely audible. “Our cards have been printed with this telephone number on. You have to tell the landlord – straight away. Look!” I brought the cards from my pocket and gave one to Babbo and one to Mama. Babbo looked at it and frowned.

  “Yes … well … you won’t be needing those,” Mama said dryly, passing the card back to me. She looked at Babbo in a deliberate way and I saw his lips move and the dark pouches beneath his eyes tremble.

  “W–what d’you mean?” I stammered, looking wildly from one parent to the other.

  “We have to leave for a while. All three of us. We’ll spend the summer in London.” Babbo paused and looked helplessly at Mama but she was staring at the table again and refusing to meet his eye.

  “But I don’t want to go to London. I want to stay here at Robiac Square!” My voice grew louder as his words sunk in. “My pupils will be calling here. This is the only place where I’ve lived for more than a few months. I’m not going!”

  “I’m afraid you have to, Lucia. Your mother and I have to go to London and you have to come too.” Babbo sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

  “I tell you I’m not bloody going!” I slammed my fist onto the table. “I’ll stay with Kitten or Mrs Fleischman or any of your obsequious slaves that’ll have me.”

  “Lucia! Don’t be talking to your father like that!” Mama’s eyes were like granite. But then she turned to Babbo and said “This’ll be all your fault, Jim. Dragging us all round Europe from pillar to post. What on earth d’ye expect?”

  “What about Giorgio? Is he coming too?”

  “He’ll be staying with Mrs Fleischman now they’re as good as married. It’s just us that’s needed, isn’t that right, Jim?”

  I looked, bewildered, at Babbo. His eyes were still shut but his Adam’s apple was going up and down and his ringed hands were twisting in his lap.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I said suspiciously. “Why do we have to go to London? Is this something to do with your new book?” I remembered Sandy’s words about my father and his dirty books, and glared at Babbo with undisguised disgust.

&nb
sp; “No, no, not really.” He opened his milky bloodshot eyes and looked pleadingly at Mama.

  Mama tutted, then rubbed her palm across her forehead. “We have to go to London to get married. There. I’ve said it. It’s a legal thing and nothing more.”

  I sat, stunned and motionless, as I took in her words. Nothing they were saying made any sense. Had they both finally gone mad?

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said. “My pupils will be calling here. Here! I’m starting a dance school. Kitten and I have come up with a whole programme. That’s all we’ve been doing for the last month, and we’ve spent all our savings on these cards. I can’t go. Anyway, you’re already married so you’re talking nonsense.”

  “We’re not properly married,” Mama said sharply. “I don’t know why you’re leaving this to me, Jim, I really don’t.” She looked at Babbo’s white face and shook her head in disbelief.

  “Your mother and I have to get married. In London.” Babbo took a cigarette from his pocket, jammed it between his lips, lit it and inhaled deeply.

  Confused, I glanced at Mama’s left hand. Her gold wedding band gleamed dully on her fourth finger. Memories of all the wedding anniversaries we’d celebrated, every eighth of October, raced through my mind. I recalled, vividly, the twenty-fifth anniversary party Miss Beach threw for them. Mama had bought me a new dress in pea-green and I’d worn a daring purple turban and an opera cloak borrowed from Kitten.

  “What d’you mean, not properly married? Why d’you have to get married again? Why do we have to leave? I don’t understand.” I crossed my arms stoutly over my chest and raised my eyebrows questioningly.

  Babbo took a long drag on his cigarette and looked beseechingly at Mama again. But she shook her head and kept her lips pressed tightly together.

  “You got married on the eighth of October, 1904. Everyone knows that. That’s why we always celebrate then. That’s why you’re Mr and Mrs Joyce. That’s why Mama wears a wedding ring.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Babbo. He paused and I watched the cylinder of ash fall from his cigarette onto his flowered waistcoat.

  “Oh spit it out, Jim, for goodness sake, or we’ll be here all day! Just tell her, will you?” Mama said with irritation.

  “You and Giorgio are illegitimate. We have to make you legitimate so that any child of Giorgio and Helen’s can legally take the Joyce name.” Babbo wearily stubbed out his cigarette and finally turned to look at me. “The eighth of October is when your mother and I left Dublin.”

  I stared at his pallid face, trying to understand the full meaning of his words. Inside me, feelings of shock and horror and disbelief were crashing and colliding. “So I’m a bastard? Is that it?” I put my head in my hands. I felt humiliated, degraded, filthy. I was nothing but a bastard. And they had lied and lied. For years and years.

  “We have to marry in London in order to become British residents and make you both properly legitimate. And to become British residents, we have to look as though we’re planning to stay for some time. So I’ve taken a five month lease on a flat in London. We can come back to Paris after that.” Babbo lit another cigarette, his hands trembling as he struck the match.

  “So I’m not Lucia Joyce?” I glared at Babbo. “I’m Lucia Barnacle, aren’t I? Just a bastard Barnacle!”

  Babbo closed his eyes and said, “You’ll be Lucia Joyce as soon as we’re married.”

  “And you’ve lied to everyone for all these years! What the hell were we celebrating if we were bastards all along?” Spittle flew from my mouth as I shouted. “And what was all that shit about marriage first and mischief after? The fucking Irish way!”

  “Sweet Jesus! Calm yourself, Lucia. It’s not the end o’ the world. We’re just going to London for a bit.” Mama stood up and pushed her chair back. “Anyway, it’ll be worse for me. Me own mother won’t speak to me now, let alone the rest o’ me family in Ireland.”

  “What?” I shrieked. “You’ve destroyed my dream of a business with Kitten! You’ve told me I’m a bastard – no better than some whore’s unwanted brat! I find out you’ve lied to me – to everyone – all my life! You’re getting rid of the only home I’ve ever known! And you say it’s not the end of the world? You say it’s worse for you? It may not be the end of your world, but it’s the end of my damn world!” I took the cards out of my pocket and hurled them at her. Then I scraped back my chair with such ferocity that it fell on its side. I kicked it out of the way and shoved past Mama, pushing her so hard I felt her tip sideways.

  As I opened the door I glared back at Babbo. His face was drained of colour and there was a distant look in his pink-rimmed eyes. I paused for a second. Then I remembered this was his fault, that he and Mama had destroyed my life.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I shouted as I walked out. “I’m just a bastard!” I slammed the door with all my strength and ran to my room. I took the box of cards from my wardrobe, opened my bedroom window and tossed them out. They fluttered and swirled to the ground like oversized pieces of confetti. A passing man in a top hat looked up curiously. And through choked sobs, I shouted “Don’t worry about me – I’m just a bastard!” The man averted his eyes, quickened his pace, disappeared round the corner. “Nothing more than a bastard!” I heard my voice carrying over the crooked rooftops and chimney pots of Paris, the wind taking my words far, far away.

  When my heart stopped hammering and my anger subsided, I crawled into bed, pulled the covers over my head and wept inconsolably. I hadn’t been Mrs Samuel Beckett, I hadn’t been Mrs Alexander Calder, and now I wasn’t even Miss Lucia Joyce. I was a bastard Barnacle, bereft and plundered.

  And then I thought of all the lies, all the deceit, from those I thought had loved me. Giorgio had lied to me. Beckett had lied to me. Sandy had lied to me. And now my own parents had lied to me – all my life. And I thought my tears would never end.

  Later on, much later on, I heard my mother packing up the china and Babbo taking down the ancestral portraits and I knew it was real. We were going to London.

  19

  May 1931

  London

  “But you promised no one would know, Jim. You promised!” Mama peered through the grimy lace curtains at the line of reporters waiting outside. Some had brought blankets and small cushions, as if they were planning to camp out on our doorstep. She began pacing round our tiny, fetid sitting room in Campden Grove, Kensington, wringing her hands. Every now and then her eyes developed a watery glaze and I thought she might cry – but she didn’t.

  The doorbell had been ringing all day. The first journalist arrived two hours after Babbo had applied for his special marriage licence (which he did a mere 24 hours before the wedding in a pathetic attempt at secrecy). Then they came, one after another, ringing and ringing, shouting through the letterbox, throwing pebbles at the window. Finally, when we thought they’d left for the night, Babbo insisted we go out for dinner, just the three of us. But when we returned at midnight we found another reporter sitting on the doorstep, a blanket over his peaked knees. We had to step across him while he fired a volley of questions at us.

  “What are we going to do, Jim?” Mama implored. “It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow, that Nora Barnacle, aged forty-seven and mother of two bastards, is finally getting married!”

  “Well, I’m the bastard,” I snarled. “I’ll be all over the papers as a Joyce bastard. And then I have to go to some art school and sit in a room full of people I don’t know pointing and whispering and jeering. That’s much worse. And it’s not even my fault!”

  “We should get some sleep.” Babbo fidgeted nervously with his ear lobe, his expression aloof and indecipherable.

  “How on earth d’ye expect us to sleep with reporters all around us? And there’s fungus growing in the bedroom. That’s no way to spend the night before your wedding! I should never have run off with you like that. Foolish, downright stupid I was. Let this be a lesson to you, Lucia. Don’t even touch a man ’til he’s pu
t a ring on your finger. They’re slippery buggers, all of them!”

  “You know I’m not coming to the wedding, don’t you?” I watched my parents’ faces closely, hoping they wouldn’t try and make me go, like they tried to make me do so many other things I didn’t want to do.

  “Of course not, Lucia,” said Babbo gently. “Go shopping. Buy yourself something nice. It’s not a big story, a couple of lines in a couple of the less salubrious papers, but nothing more.”

  “Oh you think so, do you? A couple o’ lines in a couple of the less salubrious papers! Well, I’ll be hoping you’re right. It’s not like we’re film stars or nothing. Although you, Jim, you might think you’re some sort o’ star for sure. But you’re not – you’re really not worth a couple o’ lines in a couple o’ rags.”

  “Babbo’s always right,” I said staunchly.

  “Oh look at you. Always so loyal. Always hanging on your father’s every word. Even after you know you’re a bastard.” Mama gave a shrill laugh and tossed her head.

  “Well, if I am one, it’s because you made me one!” I shouted. “Perhaps if you’d been a bit nicer, he might have married you!”

  “Come, come, Lucia. I’ve already told you we had a wedding of sorts in Trieste. When we arrived off the boat.” Babbo fiddled with the top button of his shirt, avoiding our eyes.

  “For pity’s sake can you be stopping that story, Jim! Putting a blarney gold ring on someone’s finger in a louse-ridden hotel room with not enough room to swing a rat is not what most people’s calling a wedding!” She glared at Babbo, the whites of her eyes shining in the gloom.

  “Now, now.” Babbo sighed deeply. “We’ll all be legitimate and married and legal tomorrow. Good night, Lucia.” He took Mama’s hand and they left me, curled up in the stained blue chair, listening to the scratching mice and the clock as it struck one – a single, solitary chime that echoed round the damp, empty flat where we were to start our lives as a respectable, legitimate family.