In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

  It was a week later that Melvin Johnson, Mrs Hedges’ twenty-four-year-old handyman and lover, twelve years younger than his partner, had a row with her in Northampton, caused partly by fear and the discomforts of life on the run. During the argument he demanded a share of her savings so that they could split up. He wanted to go abroad. She refused to give him the money. He then went to London and attempted to blackmail a National Theatre director who had been a frequent customer at the Hall Avenue brothel. The director, throwing him out of his flat was seen by a passing patrol car shoving Johnson down a flight of steps outside his front door. As the car passed the police saw through their rear mirror that Johnson had fallen and failed to get up. They stopped at the end of the street, turned and sped back. From inside his house the theatre director saw, with horror, two policemen bending over Johnson’s prone body. Later he attempted to maintain that the fight had been an ordinary argument with a friend but Johnson, barely hurt by the fall, had lost his nerve. He was full of rage about Mrs Hedges cheating him, as he saw it, and about the assault by the theatre director. He was afraid that Mrs Hedges would get caught and lay most of the blame on him. He confirmed that if he co-operated with the police and revealed Mrs Hedges’s whereabouts he would get a lighter sentence and also shrewdly suspected what turned out to be the case – that even while he was in custody before the trial some of Mrs Hedges’s clients would manage to get in touch with him and make it worth his while to keep their names out of it.

  Johnson cut his losses and made a full statement to the police. He told them where Mrs Hedges was to be found. Although absolutely no one – not Lady Mary Fellows, or Nigel or the entire board of Samco or the Pickerings, least of all Ruth Pickering herself – wanted the scandal of Bernard Fellows’s death to resurface, the police, putting together evidence for the trial, revived Ruth Pickering’s statement about her detention in Colindale and her assault of a man there. They asked her if she would give evidence at the trial of Mrs Hedges and Johnson. The other young people from the house had scattered and her story was therefore vital to get a firm conviction. She was told that she would not be asked to give the names of clients at the brothel, even if she knew them, and that there was no need for the matter of the stabbing to be mentioned in court. All that was required was that Mrs Hedges and Johnson should be convicted of keeping a brothel and corrupting under-age children. Ruth, bravely, agreed to give evidence.

  In theory Sir Bernard Fellows’s name need not have been mentioned at the trial but word leaked out. Private Eye wrote about it; the City talked about it and the news spread even to Latin America – to Colombia where Samco had forestry interests. This was where, high up in the hills, one Englishman in a Samco lorry with an armed guard met another driving a Land-Rover full of blankets and bags of food, with a machine gun on his lap. There, Simon Fellows heard for the first time of the scandal concerning his father. One of the chief positive results of the arrest of Mrs Hedges and Melvin Johnson was that it brought Sim Fellows and his wife back to Britain.

  27

  Carnival!

  Arlette Jones spotted Sim first. She’d taken the day off from struggling and worrying all week – she had been obliged to organise a formal letter through the solicitor who employed her brother asking Lady Mary for the twins to be returned to them. In addition, she and her mother, realising the Savernake Estate, to all intents and purposes, had been sold off to developers, had been forced to examine their resources to see whether they could raise a mortgage for a home of their own. It meant cashing in Arlette’s mother’s life insurance and squeezing their incomes of all they would yield but, as they both agreed, it was not simply that alternative accommodation offered them by the council might be very poor but that if it came to a legal battle with the Fellows family for the twins they would need, in court, to demonstrate that they had nice living conditions. Mrs Jones had said grimly, ‘They’ve got millions and a mansion. All we got is the best we can do and Sim’s word he wanted the twins to stay with us.’

  So on the Bank Holiday Monday Arlette and her boyfriend decided to put their cares behind them and go to the Notting Hill Carnival to have a good time.

  At three that afternoon Arlette and Wayne were in Ladbroke Grove dancing behind a big float in a crowd of gyrating people dressed in gauzy outfits, waving big coloured wings, like butterflies, until, out of puff, they dropped out and went to sit on the steps of a house to wait for the next float to come by. The streets were ringing with music coming from all points. Crowds wandered past, eating, drinking, calling out to each other.

  ‘Quiet this year,’ observed a woman sitting on the step above Arlette.

  ‘No trouble,’ agreed Arlette absently. She couldn’t get her mind off Lady Mary Fellows’s polite refusal, for that was what it amounted to, to return the twins forthwith. ‘They’re enjoying themselves so much. Do let’s agree to leave them here in the country for longer. I’d love you and your mother to visit them one weekend. An old man living here has some collie pups and they’re both in love with them …’ However disarmingly put it still added up to losing the twins to the Fellows family, thought Arlette. In one minute they’d have a puppy of their own, ponies to ride. It was obvious already that a nanny in a uniform was caring for them. ‘Like the royal family,’ Mrs Jones had said. ‘And they send them away to school when they’re still small. Of course,’ she added, ‘they get the best of everything.’

  ‘Josie’d go mad,’ Arlette sighed.

  ‘Then she shouldn’t have left them in the first place,’ her mother stated conclusively. ‘And no word from her – what are we supposed to think? That she’d die for her children?’ She sighed. ‘Well, we got no chance if we’re living in a tower block on that terrible Speedwell Estate. The judge wouldn’t hesitate – he’d give them to the other family straight away. After all,’ she added conclusively, ‘he one of them, not one of we.’

  ‘I’d like to catch that pair, Sim and Josie,’ Arlette said. ‘I’d let them know what I think.’

  Sitting on the hot and dirty step in the sunshine she watched, without much interest, another float approach, smaller than most of the others. It was a lorry with the tailboard down, a small sound system and a few musicians on the back. Because the music from the bigger, heavier float going round a corner was louder, the sound from the small lorry was almost inaudible. However, as it came closer to Arlette and Wayne they began to hear the treble of a pipe played by one of the musicians, a guitar and the rhythm of a high drum, like wood on hollow wood. In all, the sound was more Latin American than Caribbean and on the side of the lorry there was a hand-painted sign in blue and red, reading ‘Colombian Liberation Aid’.

  As the lorry drew level with Arlette, she saw, standing on the back, a familiar figure. She leapt to her feet and yelled, ‘Josie! Josie!’ The black girl, in an embroidered peasant skirt and blouse, started and looked round. Arlette was now in the street, running up to the lorry, Wayne beside her.

  ‘Arlette!’ cried Josie, looking down. Now Arlette spotted a tall, very thin man in a T-shirt and loose khaki trousers bent over a couple of small drums. Arlette, in tight skirt and stilettos, got hold of the back of the slowly moving lorry and tried to clamber aboard. Wayne gave her a push. She landed on the platform of the lorry on her knees and struggled up. Wayne scrambled on too.

  A knot of policemen on the corner began to take an interest as Arlette got her sister by the shoulders and began to yell into her face. The musicians stopped playing. Finally the thin man looked up and raised his drumsticks, only to have Arlette, still yelling, seize one and start hitting him. People in windows, on balconies and roofs began to concentrate their stares on the Colombian Liberation Aid lorry. There was a mild cheer as Arlette drove the thin white man, a startled look on his face, his arms raised against a hail of drumstick blows raining down on his head and face, against the side of the lorry. Wayne, meantime, stood nervously at the back, not wanting any trouble with the police. One of the other musicians banged on the cab of
the lorry, calling out in Spanish, and the lorry stopped half-way round the corner. All that could be heard was the distant sound of music from another float, further up the road, and the quack quack of police speaking into their radios. Arlette felt Josie pulling her away from the thin man. ‘You bastard, Sim,’ she shouted. ‘What do you mean, leaving the children with us and disappearing like that? Now they’re stuck at your mum’s and we can’t get them back. And I find you drumming, out of time, on a lorry—’ Wayne joined Josie in grappling with her.

  ‘Arlette,’ Wayne was saying, mildly but loudly. ‘Arlette – you leave him alone,’ Josie was crying.

  A policeman clambered on to the lorry. A bigger crowd was collecting rapidly, including large, calm black men with wary eyes. Sim’s T-shirt was raised to his nose, which was bleeding heavily. The policeman, a constable from Surrey, not liking his position stranded alone on the back of a float surrounded by black people, tried to assert his authority. ‘What’s going on? You can’t stop this vehicle here. Madam,’ he said to Arlette, ‘if you continue to assault this man I’ll have to arrest you. Would anybody like to explain what’s happening?’

  It was Wayne, still holding Arlette back, who found the appropriate words to defuse the situation. ‘It’s domestic,’ he said. ‘This man’s her brother-in-law.’

  A police inspector called up from the pavement, ‘You’ll have to sort your family problems out somewhere else. This lorry’s got to be moved on.’

  Looking straight at Sim’s blood-stained T-shirt, Arlette said, ‘I should think you ought to be visiting your children, not playing on a truck.’

  Wayne muttered to Josie, ‘His family got all sorts of problems. What’s he doing here – and you?’

  ‘I don’t want to arrest anyone,’ the inspector continued. ‘This is supposed to be an enjoyable occasion for all –’ There was a subdued, ironical cheer ‘– but if you can’t resolve the situation you’ll all have to get off and let the float proceed without you.’

  The Colombian musicians, who had been talking between themselves, spoke now to Josie. A boy of ten took the drumsticks discreetly from Arlette. The music began again softly.

  ‘Arrest them,’ Arlette ordered the police inspector. ‘Arrest them now – no way are they escaping again.’

  A man in a tropical suit addressed the inspector. Sim’s voice, muffled by the T-shirt he still had bunched to his nose, said, ‘I’ve tried to ring my mother. No one came to the phone.’

  ‘Off,’ the inspector said firmly.

  As the four scrambled down from the lorry and on to the pavement it started up and moved round the corner.

  ‘Names,’ demanded the inspector.

  Arlette dug into her bag and produced a packet of tissues which she handed to Sim. ‘Simon Fellows,’ she stated, nodding at him.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Arlette Jones.’

  ‘Address?’

  She gave it.

  ‘Yours,’ said the inspector to Wayne.

  ‘Wayne Corrington.’

  ‘Address?’

  Wayne gave his address.

  ‘Sir?’ the inspector said, looking at Sim.

  ‘Simon Fellows.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Colle Verde, San Miguel, Colombia,’ Simon said.

  The inspector stared at him hard.

  ‘His address in this country is Durham House, Belshaw, Hampshire,’ Josie said strongmindedly. ‘He’s a baronet. I’m his wife, Lady Fellows.’ The young black woman dressed like a South American peasant and the large, white man in police inspector’s uniform stared at each other long and hard.

  ‘This is her sister,’ supplied Wayne, to break the deadlock, his arm round Arlette’s shoulders.

  ‘All right,’ said the inspector as two police cars sped towards them, scattering people all over the road and pulling up sharply near by. ‘If I can take it this is a family dispute you can sort out peaceably between yourselves we’ll leave it at that. Can you assure me there won’t be any more trouble?’

  ‘Yes,’ Josie said. ‘There won’t be any more trouble.’

  Wayne was putting sharp pressure on Arlette’s arm to restrain her from speech or action and as Josie spoke he tightened his grip threateningly. As soon as the police went off he let her go. The focus of public attention switched, another float came along surrounded by dancers and the group became simply a number of anonymous people arguing on the pavement. Arlette grasped her sister’s shoulder and spoke into her ear. The music was deafening. ‘We’re going back to Kenton right now. Mum wants to see you. She’s been worried to death, poor woman. Not like me. I knew you were alive.’ She turned to Sim and threatened, ‘You’re not even going to the gents.’

  ‘Oh, God, Arlette,’ said Sim. His nose-bleed had slackened and he dropped the T-shirt over his chest. It lay bloodily against his prominent ribs as though he had taken a ferocious beating. ‘We only arrived yesterday,’ he said. ‘I tried to ring—’

  ‘It’s true,’ Josie added angrily. ‘How are Miranda and Joseph?’

  ‘Fine, no thanks to you. But Sim’s mother’s got them and she’s not giving them back.’

  ‘What’s this story about Father being murdered or attacked by a girl?’ asked Sim. ‘I can’t get it straight – what happened?’

  ‘You’ve got no feelings, only for those Colombians,’ Arlette declared vigorously. ‘You leave your children, you don’t turn up for your father’s funeral. Your mother thinks you must be dead—’

  ‘You don’t know, Arlette,’ Josie said. ‘You don’t know anything. Why don’t you shut up till you hear?’

  ‘We can’t stand here on the pavement, with him all covered in blood,’ said Wayne. ‘We need a cab, if one will take us. A nice day out,’ he added.

  Swapping stories and arguing, they plodded up to Notting Hill Gate. Wayne and Arlette made Sim and Josie stand apart from them until a taxi stopped. Then they all got in quickly. The cab driver was cautious, not liking the bloodstains or the kind of people he was being asked to carry all the way across the Thames to Kenton. There was an argument.

  ‘Might as well go to Bedford Square,’ said Sim. ‘I know a way in if there’s nobody there.’

  There was no one there. Sim squeezed through a hole at the back of the house which led into a cellar and let them in, through the front door. While he went off to wash, the others sat down in the huge chandeliered drawing room. However, a vigilant passer-by seeing a bloodstained white man in old clothes opening the door to three young black people, called the police. Sim, coming out of the bathroom in a shirt of Nigel’s which was too big for him, found it hard to prove his identity. Thus, the first news Lady Mary had that her son was alive came from a policeman on the phone asking her to describe him. Even then, Sim had to roll up his trouser leg to show the policeman an old scar on his thigh.

  When the police had left Arlette made a cup of tea in the palatial kitchen. Sim rolled a joint and passed it to Wayne.

  ‘You were lucky they never searched you on that float,’ Wayne remarked.

  The phone rang. ‘Certainly, Ma, I’m very sorry. Don’t send the car. We’ll get the train. Nige, look, I’m really sorry—’ Nigel Fellows’s voice, welcoming at first, was getting angry. ‘OK, we’ll sort it all out,’ Sim said calmly. ‘A day or two with lawyers. No, I haven’t made any decisions. Yes, I know it’s been intolerable – we can get a train down, I’ll let you know. Yes, today, for certain. Untwist your knickers, Nigel. All will be well.’ Sim put the phone down. ‘What a fuss,’ he remarked coolly.

  ‘Easy to accuse people of fussing when you’ve walked out of all your responsibilities,’ Arlette said bitterly, taking the phone and dialling. ‘I found Sim and Josie, Ma,’ she reported. ‘On a float at the carnival.’ There was a torrent from the other end. She put the phone down. ‘Poor woman. She’s crying,’ she reported. ‘You two, you been disgusting.’

  Vanessa and Annie, relaxing at the end of the evening over glasses of wine from a bottle aba
ndoned by a family party when the topic of Aunt Margaret’s will was raised, were startled by the chimes of midnight. The clock on the spire of Kenton Town Hall stuck at ten to three for the past six years, due to spending cuts, had been mended three weeks earlier to restore the morale of Foxwell residents. More or less inaudible during the day, the chimes did a good job, once the heavy traffic had ceased, of waking people up at night and in the early morning. It had been a successful Bank Holiday for the Arcadia. Once the chimes had ceased Vanessa, her feet on a chair, lifted her glass to Annie. ‘Another day over – cheers to us. This place is a success – we’re having to turn them away – who’d have believed it?’

  Annie looked across affectionately at Vanessa’s pretty, healthy face so unlike that of the peaky, pale waif with the grizzling child she had first met in the dentist’s surgery on that cold day in December. ‘We’ve worked for it, Vanessa …’

  ‘Worried for it …’

  ‘You’ve had to miss your children for it …’

  Vanessa grinned. ‘You found yourself in that Threpp Street you wrote the article about. Come on, Annie,’ she urged. ‘Admit it – you thought all that Victorian slum stuff was over – well, it’s not exactly the same but things haven’t changed as much as you thought they had on that happy day we took over George’s when you were young and innocent.’

  ‘Tom says occasionally there’s a hard look in my eyes,’ Annie admitted. ‘But at least people don’t keep on telling me these days I don’t live in the real world.’

  Vanessa looked at Annie and thought that she’d bloomed. She and Tom were in love again, which accounted for a lot of it, of course. She didn’t say this to Annie, for she and Tom were still pretending to themselves and each other that they were only together by accident and for convenience.

  Vanessa closed her eyes and sighed happily. ‘Do you think this can go on? Things being all right? The businesses making money, children all right? And Ben? It seems too good to be true.’