Before I Met You

59


1995




CLARA DAVIES LIVED in a tiny cottage off Battersea High Street. She was tall and elegant, with wiry silver hair, which she wore tied back in a bun, and was dressed in black trousers, a black T-shirt and a turquoise belted cardigan. On her feet were red patent pumps with gold buckles.

Betty stared at the pumps in surprise, thinking how much Arlette would have liked them.

‘Betty?’ she said, in a rough London accent, that didn’t quite match her elegant appearance. ‘Lovely to meet you. Come in.’

She held the door open and Betty entered. ‘I’m really sorry I’m late,’ she said, brushing her feet against the doormat, ‘I work as a nanny and my boss was a bit late home.’

‘Never mind, never mind, you’re here now.’ She led her into a tiny living room where a tray of tea and biscuits was neatly laid out. Everything in her house was perfect: floral curtains, antique pine furnishings, a smoke-stained fireplace, a vase of yellow tulips and pictures everywhere of children and grandchildren, of holidays and Christmases and good times.

Clara poured her tea into a chinoiserie cup and passed it to her. She looked like Godfrey, Betty thought, or at least she looked like the portrait of Godfrey that Gideon Worsley’s nephew had shown him in that book in his shop. She had the hooked nose, although much smaller and neater, and the heavy-lidded eyes. She was strikingly, remarkably beautiful even in her seventies and Betty’s eyes then rested upon a studio portrait, in black and white, of Clara in her youth.

‘Is that you?’ she asked, pointing at it.

‘Oh, yes. That’s me all right. Back in my heyday.’ She laughed warmly. ‘Had that on my Z-card.’

‘Z-card?’

‘Yeah, you know, my modelling card.’

‘You were a model?’

‘Yes, well, sort of. Not much call for mixed-race girls in my day. But I did a bit of that, a bit of singing, bit of acting. I was a regular little showgirl, really.’ She chuckled and poured herself a cup of tea.

Betty smiled at her. ‘You were very beautiful,’ she said. ‘If you were modelling today ...’

‘Yeah, I’d probably be on the front of Vogue or something. But that’s that. That’s the way it was. Life moves on. I’ve had a good life so I can’t complain about anything really. Though the money these supermodels make these days, I could have done with a bit of that.’ She laughed out loud and Betty, at the mention of money, pulled out her handbag.

‘So, listen, first things first. This inheritance.’

Clara’s eyes lit up. ‘Well, yes. All very mysterious. Are you sure you’ve got the right Clara Davies?’ She laughed again.

Betty laughed too. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Quite sure. Although the name on the will is actually Clara Jones. Or Clara Pickle.’

‘Clara Pickle!’ She laughed even louder then. ‘What sort of name is that?’

‘Well,’ said Betty, gently, ‘that’s the name you’d have had if your father hadn’t died.’

Clara put her hands to her throat and roared out laughing. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she breathed, ‘Clara Pickle. Can you imagine! Clara Pickle. Well, I had a close escape there then, didn’t I? I always thought Minchin was bad. But Pickle ...’

‘Godfrey Pickle. That was his name.’

Clara stopped laughing and became more serious. She narrowed her eyes at Betty and said, ‘How do you know all this? Who are you?’

‘I told you, my grandmother was a friend of Godfrey’s. I think ...’ she paused, passed her hand over the book in her handbag, ‘... I think they were lovers. I don’t know. She never mentioned it while she was alive. But she hired a private eye to find you, when she was alive.’ She shrugged. ‘And also, at some point she put you in her will. So whatever their relationship with each other, it must have been important in some way.’

Clara nodded, her teacup still held in her hand where it had been suspended for the past minute.

‘And anyway,’ Betty continued. ‘At some point, while my grandmother still had her health, she sent this private eye some bits and pieces from her time in London – photos, flyers – but it seems that the investigator died before he ever managed to find anything to lead him to you. His ex-wife had been sitting with all this stuff in a box for years, wondering what to do with it.’

‘And then you came along?’

‘Yes,’ smiled Betty. ‘The will states that you had to be found in a year, and if neither you nor any of your successors were found within that time, then, well, the inheritance would revert to me.’

Clara’s eyes widened. ‘My God, you daft ha’p’orth, why did you find me?’ she laughed again, loud and rich.

‘Legally incumbent and all that,’ she replied. ‘If you’d ever found out that you’d been mentioned in this will and no one had made any effort to find you, you could have sued. Me,’ she finished, with a small laugh. ‘So I came over in April and set out to find you. And eight weeks later, here I am.’

Clara put down her teacup and smiled at Betty. ‘Maybe a new career for you then. Private investigator.’

Betty smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘So, listen then, here it is ...’ She pulled out the will and passed it to Clara. ‘Proof, that I’m not a nut-job.’

Clara read the will, slowly and silently. ‘What’s this?’ she said. ‘St Anne’s Court. Soho?’

‘It used to be a home,’ Betty explained, ‘for unwed mothers. I think it’s where you were born.’

Clara put a hand to her heart, as though finally, the significance of this meeting was making itself felt.

‘And who are all these other people?’

‘That’s Jolyon, my stepfather, and Alison is my mum.’

Clara carried on reading and smiled as she read Arlette’s closing line about jazz and dancing at her funeral.

‘She sounds like a fun lady, your grandmother.’

‘Well, no, she wasn’t. Not really. She was quite proper. Quite stern. Didn’t really like anyone. But she did like me,’ Betty said. ‘She liked me very much. I think ...’ She paused, a thought occurring to her, fresh and new. ‘She always used to say she’d wanted a girl. I think, in her heart, she always felt she should have had you.’

A small silence fell and Betty sipped her tea.

‘So,’ said Clara. ‘The big question ...’

Betty put down her cup and sat up straight, glad to be pulled out of her reverie and back to the point in question. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, according to my stepfather, the sum of money in the bank account she stipulates is around about ten thousand pounds.’

Clara gasped. ‘Well, I never,’ she said.

‘But there’s also some pension funds and saving schemes and a lot of other stuff that he’s still sorting out from her estate. It could be a lot more than that.’

Clara gasped again.

‘And there’s something else.’ Betty reached back into her bag. ‘I found this, in Arlette’s wardrobe. I realised when I saw the inscription that there was a connection with the girl in the will, so I brought it with me.’

She passed the book to Clara, who stared at it tenderly.

‘Look,’ said Betty, ‘look at the inscription.’

Clara opened the book and read it. A sheen of tears came to her eyes. ‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘What a lovely, lovely thing.’ She flicked through the book and smiled. ‘It’s so old,’ she said, ‘I’ve never seen such an old book before.’

‘I’ve had it valued. It’s worth only about forty pounds, but could be more now that we know the story behind the inscription. That would add to its value. Because there’s so much to this story, Clara, so much I don’t think you know.’

‘Shall I get us a glass of wine?’

Betty smiled and nodded.

Clara brought the wine in two small glasses and handed one to Betty. She also put a bowl of salted nuts on the table between them. ‘So,’ she said, ‘tell me what you know.’

‘Well, why don’t we start with you telling me what you know, so that I don’t spring anything too shocking on you.’

‘Well,’ said Clara, gently running her hand up and down the book on her lap. ‘I really don’t know anything. Just what I said. My mum was taken somewhat against her will by a “dirty black boss-eyed sailor”. That’s what my dad told us. Just the once mind, sat us all down when I was about six, when I asked why I was black and the others weren’t. Sat us all down and told us that. Told us never to mention it to Mum, said she couldn’t talk about it, even now. Said he’d taken pity on Mum, and married her even with the black bastard baby. I mean, you can see why I didn’t want to dwell on it too much, can’t you? You can see why we didn’t talk about it.’ She stopped and looked up at Betty questioningly. ‘So,’ she said, ‘go on ...’

Betty took a deep breath. The woman sitting in front of her was seventy-three years old, she’d had children and grandchildren, she’d lived a long, full, colourful life and it seemed insolent, in a way, for a stripling like Betty, a girl who’d done nothing and gone nowhere, to be rearranging the entire skeleton of this fine woman’s history.

‘Your father,’ she began, ‘was not a sailor. He was a musician. A clarinettist. He played with a world-famous jazz orchestra. Your father played in front of the King of England. He played in every city in this country. He had London at his feet. Your father was not a boss-eyed sailor. Or a rapist. He was a legend.’

Clara stared at her.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘here are some photocopies that they did for me at the Soho Historical Society, of flyers and stuff. And here’s a photo of the orchestra. Godfrey’s not in that picture, unfortunately; it was taken before he joined.’

Clara fingered the photocopy gently, her eyes shining with pleasure. ‘Oh my, look at them,’ she said. ‘Aren’t they a fine-looking group of fellows? In their smart suits. I mean, gosh, I had no idea there were all these black fellows in London that long ago. I had no idea at all ...’ She looked up from the photo. ‘Are there any pictures of this Godfrey fellow? Of my ...?’

‘Your dad? Yes,’ Betty said, holding another photocopy to her chest. ‘I have got one. Are you ready?’

Clara gulped and nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ she said.

Betty passed her the Love Brothers flyer, the piece of paper that had gone from London to Guernsey seventy years ago, then back to London in the post to Peter Lawler, and then sat for years in a box in a flat on Battersea Park Road before being passed into her hands, and now, finally, being given to the person in the world to whom it would mean the most. Betty felt a chill run down her spine and she watched Clara intently.

Clara didn’t say anything for a moment. She sat, with her hand at her throat, her other hand holding the corner of the flyer. Her eyes filled with tears and then she looked up at Betty and said, ‘Him, in the middle?’

Betty nodded.

‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Oh my. He’s ...’ She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her cardigan and held it to her eyes. ‘He’s ever so handsome, isn’t he? What a handsome, handsome man. My word. My word.’

She stared at the flyer in silence again. ‘He looks like me,’ she whispered after a moment. She looked up at Betty and said it again, louder. ‘Don’t you think? He looks just like me?’

‘He really does,’ agreed Betty.

‘Is this the only picture you’ve got?’

Betty nodded. ‘Although ...’ she began.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, from what I can see it looks like my grandmother also had an affair with an artist while she was in London, an artist called Gideon Worsley. He has two portraits hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, including one of my grandmother.’

‘Well, I never.’

‘He painted a lot of jazz musicians from around that time. And I met his nephew last week and he showed me a picture of a portrait of both of them. Your father and my grandmother. Apparently it’s hanging in the estate where the artist grew up. In Oxfordshire.’

‘My word.’

‘Would you like to go and see it? It’s open to the public.’

Clara laughed nervously. ‘Well, yes. Gosh, yes, I’m sure I would. I think. But,’ her face darkened, ‘my dad. I mean, my real dad, the one who raised me. He’s so old now. He’s ninety-five. I just think, well, he mustn’t know. It might kill him, you know. All these years, he’s done everything for me, all these years, he’s been the best dad, always been my hero, you know. I want to go and see this painting. But, please, don’t ever let my dad know. Will you?’

‘No,’ said Betty, ‘of course I won’t. Never.’

Clara smiled with relief. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you. For everything. For this,’ she gestured at the flyer, ‘and this.’ She gestured at the will. ‘You know, all my life, I’ve thought it was a miracle that I could have come into this world through such dark happenings, that I could have had the genes of such a bad man, yet my entire life has been like a fairy tale, you know. Met the man of my dreams, had the job of my dreams, two beautiful daughters, two wonderful sisters, my funny brother, my sweet, sweet parents. Never wanted for anything, never known a day’s pain or sadness. I always wondered how it could be – that maybe I had a fairy godmother, you know, or a guardian angel, someone looking over me. And now it all makes sense. My father was a special man ...’ She paused thoughtfully for a moment and then looked at Betty. ‘I mean, I assume he’s dead. This man. This Godfrey Pickle?’

Betty nodded. ‘He died a month before you were born. He was twenty-seven. He and the orchestra were on a ship to Scotland. It collided with another ship in the fog. Eight of them died. They never found your father ...’

Fresh tears sprang to Clara’s eyes. ‘So Godfrey and my mother, were they ...?’

‘I don’t know that story, unfortunately. There’s only one person who could tell you the truth about that.’

‘Dad.’

‘Yes.’

Clara sighed. ‘Ah well,’ she said. ‘Then that is a story I will never really know.’

Clara put all the paper into a neat pile on the coffee table in front of her and sighed again. ‘Well,’ she said, bittersweetly, ‘well I never. This is like Surprise, Surprise. I keep half-expecting Cilla Black to walk in and burst into song!’

She laughed and picked up the Pollyanna book and as she did so, something fell from between its pages onto her lap. She picked it up and looked at it. ‘Whatever is that?’ she said, holding it up to Betty.

It was a small square of muslin, slightly yellowed with age. Clara held it to her nose and inhaled. ‘Mmm,’ she said, ‘it smells kind of perfumey.’ She passed it to Betty, who also smelled it. And as she did so it was as if she’d been swallowed up inside a tidal wave of nostalgia and memory. She was there, in Arlette’s boudoir, sniffing all her scents, the overwrought brown fragrances in delicate glass bottles with silver filigree casings and tiny glass droppers. And she saw herself, as if it were two minutes ago, reaching for the dropper of a bottle of something green and fresh-looking, and Arlette saying, ‘Ah, now that one, Betty, is not a lady’s perfume. That is an aftershave. A scent for a man. Have a sniff, tell me what you think.’

Betty dropped the perfume onto her tiny wrist and inhaled. ‘Yummy,’ she said. ‘It smells like being on holiday.’

‘Well, yes,’ Arlette had smiled, ‘exactly right. Sandalwood and vanilla. I got it shipped over specially from Liberty. It reminds me so very much of another time and place. It reminds me so much of Godfrey.’

‘Who was Godfrey?’

‘Godfrey was a friend of mine. A very long time ago. And that is how he smelled.’

Betty had not needed or asked for any more detail than that, and until this precise moment she had not remembered the conversation at all.

But now she passed the muslin square back to Clara and she smiled and said, ‘That was how your father smelled. Sandalwood and vanilla. From Liberty.’

Clara smiled too, sniffed the square one more time, deeply and intensely, and put it in the pocket of her cardigan.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for finding me. I am really ever so grateful.’

*

Dom’s plane landed at Heathrow at ten o’clock on Wednesday morning. At ten twenty-seven Betty’s phone rang. She was at the kitchen table in Amy’s house painting old toilet roll tubes with glitter paint.

‘I’m back,’ said Dom. ‘When can I see you?’

‘Now,’ said Betty, wanting to get this done. ‘I’m at home, with the kids, come now.’

‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ he said. ‘I missed you.’

Betty didn’t reply.


‘You’re blond again!’ were Dom’s first words as he strolled into the hallway at eleven thirty.

Betty put her hand to her hair and smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Amy paid for it. At her hairdressers.’

Dom rolled his eyes. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘buttering you up nicely.’

Betty smiled and said nothing but his reaction to Amy’s treat merely cemented her commitment to the decision she’d made on Sunday night.

‘It was a nice thing to do,’ she said.

‘Well, yes. It was. And you look stunning. But don’t be fooled. She has a hidden agenda, remember that.’

Betty narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the only hidden agenda Amy has is to provide decent childcare for her children. And the only reason why the other nannies never lasted more than four months was because they weren’t good enough. And I am.’

Dom raised his eyebrows at her and put up a pacifying hand. ‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to put you in the picture, that’s all.’

‘Dom,’ she said, ‘I am in the picture. I am standing right in the middle of the picture looking at it from every angle and all I can say is that while I respect you as a musician and as a father and as an employer, you are a really, really awful ex-husband.’

He threw her a look of horror.

‘Seriously. I mean it. You put three babies in that woman, one after the other, and then you let yourself be dragged into a filthy toilet by some “ugly girl”, because you have no control over your “little fella”,’ she stared meaningfully at his crotch, ‘and then you spend the next two months blaming your wife for everything when it is your wife who is running around like a headless chicken trying to hold everything together. And somehow you have managed to persuade yourself that things would be different with me. But they wouldn’t. I am not the answer, Dom. Really. I’m not. No woman is the answer for you. Because any woman you end up with would become Amy in the end. And you would never ever be faithful. And I am not so desperate to live in the lap of luxury that I would want to spend the rest of my life wondering who you’re in bed with or how much you’re drinking or whether you’re going to come home and be nice Dom or not nice Dom. And besides ...’ she paused for breath, inhaled, smiled softly, ‘besides all of that, Dom, I don’t love you.’

He stared at her agog.

‘So thank you, Dom, for the kind offer, but I’m afraid I won’t be taking you up on it. I’ll be staying here. In London. Working for Amy. And I’ll just be,’ she smiled again, ‘I’ll just be – the nanny.’

The monitor on the kitchen counter crackled into life then and the sound of Astrid waking from her morning nap filled the air.

‘Donny and Acacia are in the kitchen,’ she said, ‘they’d love to see you. Can you stay?’

He nodded at her mutely. ‘Er, sure,’ he said. ‘Yeah. I’m not in a hurry.’

‘Good,’ said Betty, heading up the stairs. ‘I’ve just boiled the kettle. Maybe you could make us a pot of tea?’

She walked away from him then, up the stairs and down the corridor, a smile of satisfaction playing gently on her lips.