Chrissie's Children (18 page)

Peter stared, impressed. ‘You live in here?’ He looked through the glass of the doors into the spacious foyer, thickly carpeted, with the grand staircase beyond. ‘By, lass,
you’ve got a good place to work.’ He automatically assumed that Sophie was a member of the staff ‘living in’.

She was grateful that she did not have to voice the lie. A quick glance around told her that neither her mother nor anyone in the hotel who knew her was watching. She leaned forward and kissed
Peter. ‘Goodnight. See you next week?’

‘Aye.’ His gaze followed her as she crossed the foyer and he saw the girl behind the reception desk smile at her and say something. He did not hear the words: ‘Hello, Miss
Sophie.’ He waited until she had disappeared into the recesses of the hotel and then started on his way home. He turned up his jacket collar against the rain that was falling more heavily now
and walked across the bridge to save the penny tram fare, whistling softly all the way.

The record shop was full on Saturday morning. Sophie sifted through sheet music for sale, humming to the record being played. She broke off to say, ‘We were soaked on
Wednesday night.’

Helen Diaz asked, ‘You and Peter?’ She was privy to the
affaire
and had made a threesome on occasion, reluctant despite Sophie’s insistence but relaxing in the face of
Peter’s welcoming grin.

Once he had said to her, ‘You’re a bit younger than Sophie, aren’t you?’

She had answered, straight faced, ‘A bit.’ In fact it was just a week.

Now Sophie nodded. ‘We walked along the sea front. It rained all night. He’s a bloody nuisance sometimes.’ She got a disapproving stare from Helen because of both the language
and the sentiment, but went on absently as she selected a sheet of music and searched in her purse. ‘There are times when I want to go somewhere but he can’t afford it so I pretend I
don’t care. He won’t let me pay for him, he’s so bloody proud.’

Helen snapped angrily, ‘He’s a nice chap!’

Now Sophie looked at her, startled. ‘I know that.’

‘Then how can you talk about him that way?’

‘Because it’s true. I didn’t want to go out that night but I’d promised, so I went. I would have loved to have gone in and had a cup of coffee somewhere instead of
squelching along with my shoes full of water, but I knew he didn’t have the money and I wouldn’t embarrass him by asking. I’m fond of him and I like talking to him and . . . you
know . . . but that’s all. I’m not in love.’

Helen was silenced for a moment, then she asked, ‘No? But what about him?’ and walked out.

Sophie hurriedly paid for the sheet of music and a record and dashed after Helen but could not see her in the Saturday crowds filling Fawcett Street. She walked back to the hotel disconsolately,
telling herself that Helen was wrong, that there was no harm in what was to Sophie a casual
affaire
.

As she pushed through the swing doors she followed a woman in a fur coat who crossed the foyer on high heels with a long-legged, hip-swinging stride. She paused at the reception desk and asked,
‘Can you show me in to Mrs Ballantyne, darling?’

The receptionist blinked at her but Sophie said from behind, ‘I’m just going in to see her. I’ll take you.’

The woman swung around on one heel, the open fur coat swirling to show a clinging, close-fitting rayon dress beneath and wafting a wave of expensive perfume towards Sophie. She now saw that this
was not a young woman and that the heavy make-up only concealed from a distance the fine lines at the corners of her eyes. But that did not matter. There was a style and flamboyance about her that
Sophie had not seen before. The woman was dark haired and her wide mouth smiled at Sophie. ‘That’s kind of you, darling.’

Sophie returned the smile and said, ‘Her office is through here.’ She led the way, pausing only to tap at the open door, and as Chrissie looked up from her desk Sophie announced,
‘There’s a lady here to see you, Mother.’

Chrissie’s welcoming smile dissolved and turned into a face of stone. The woman brushed past Sophie to enter the room, but turned her head, again with that wide smile, to say,
‘Mother? Then you must be Sophie.’

‘Yes, I am.’ She looked from one to the other, puzzled.

Chrissie said, without expression, ‘This is your grandmother, Martha Tate.’

Martha settled in an armchair before Chrissie’s desk, crossed long legs in sheer silk stockings and pulled off kid gloves. ‘You’ll have heard of me as Vesta
Nightingale.’

Sophie put her hands to her face and breathed, ‘Oh, yes!’

Now Martha smiled at Chrissie. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Chrissie thought her mother had changed little. She looked a little older, although the make-up hid most of the signs, and a little harder, but she had always been hard. This was the woman who
had abandoned Chrissie as a child, only came to her for money or help, cared only for men and her own pleasures. Chrissie said, ‘It has,’ thinking, Not long enough. She asked abruptly,
‘What do you want?’

Martha took a silver cigarette case from her bag, extracted a Players with scarlet-tipped fingers and lit it with a silver lighter. She blew smoke and explained, ‘I’ve got a week at
the Empire here. I thought you could put me up.’

Chrissie saw Sophie lower herself into a chair by the door, her eyes fixed on Martha’s face. ‘Sophie, will you run along to the kitchen and fetch some tea for all of us,
please?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Sophie smiled at Martha and hurried out.

‘Actually, darling, I’m not too keen on tea at the moment. I see you’ve got a drink there . . .’ Martha’s gaze flicked to the bottle-filled cocktail cabinet against
one wall.

Chrissie replied, ‘Help yourself,’ but Martha was already crossing to the cabinet with that hip-swivelling stride. She poured gin into a tumbler and added a token splash of tonic.
Taking a gulp from the brimming glass to save it from spilling, she returned to her seat.

She smiled at her daughter. ‘That’s a bonny lass you’ve got there. She does you credit.’

Chrissie warmed to that praise and said, ‘She’s a good girl.’ She hoped she was right.

Martha said, ‘She’s your daughter so I’m sure she is. You always had your head screwed on the right way. You deserve everything you’ve got now.’

‘Thank you.’

Martha tapped ash from her cigarette and asked, ‘So I suppose you can let me have a room here on reasonable terms? Usually I’d go to the Palace with the rest of them on the bill . .
.’ The Palace was the biggest hotel in the town where most of the ‘theatricals’ stayed. ‘There’s not so much work around these days. The cinemas are killing the old
variety halls, so I have to economise a bit.’

Chrissie hesitated, weakening, and told herself that what was past was past and if her mother had fallen on hard times . . . Martha Tate, dressed to the nines and steadily drinking gin, was
scarcely an object of pity, but . . . Chrissie said doubtfully, ‘I expect we can find a room.’

‘Lovely.’ Martha’s smile stretched wider. ‘I’ll square up with you in the New Year when business picks up.’ Chrissie knew what that promise was worth. Martha,
relaxing now, helped herself to more gin and settled in her chair again. She glanced at the framed photographs on Chrissie’s desk. ‘That’s Sophie, of course, and that’s the
chap you married – you knew what you were doing there. That one looks like his father.’

Chrissie supplied, ‘Matthew.’

Martha reached out a hand to the last photo, picked it up and examined it. ‘And this is Tom?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible. He looks more like his father than the other one, but from what I’ve heard he was somebody else’s mistake.’ Martha swallowed
gin and drew on the cigarette, blew smoke and pushed the photo back on to the desk.

Chrissie flinched, and held her tongue somehow until the first flush of anger had gone – but it left behind cold rage. She slid from behind the desk, stalked to the door and flung it open.
‘Get out!’

Martha Tate stared at her, red lips parted and trickling smoke. ‘What?’

‘Get
out
!’ Chrissie shouted.

Martha’s head jerked back as if slapped. In genuine bewilderment she asked, ‘What’s got into you now? You said you’d put me up . . .’

‘Not here or anywhere, any time! Now get out of here and out of my life! I swear to God I’ll drag you out by the scruff of your neck if I have to!’ She meant it, and Martha
Tate saw that she did, so she rose and flounced from the room. Chrissie watched her walk, still swaying but hurrying now, along the passage and across the foyer. Then she became aware that Sophie
stood open mouthed behind her in the passage, a tray loaded with tea things in her hands. Chrissie said, ‘Put that on my desk.’

Sophie shoved the tray at her. Chrissie saw there were tears in her daughter’s eyes and now Sophie said, her voice breaking, ‘How could you turn your own mother away?’ Then she
turned and ran.

Chrissie called after her, ‘Come back! You don’t understand!’ Sophie kept on, rounded a corner in the passage and disappeared. Chrissie set the tray on the desk with shaking
hands then sat down, laid her head on her arms and wept.

After a time she looked up to blink through her tears at Tom’s photograph. He had come home from school in tears some years ago. A child had overheard his parents talking about the
Ballantynes, venting their jealousy and spite. He had taunted Tom with being a bastard. Tom had fought him but the boy had still insisted the story was true.

Chrissie had told Tom his antecedents in front of Sophie and Matt. ‘Your mother was a good friend of mine and your father was a brave man who was killed in the war. I’d promised your
mother I would look after you if anything happened to her and when she died we adopted you.’ Then she had told them, ‘Your father and I had all three of you because we wanted you, but
while we took a chance on Sophie and Matt we knew what we were getting in Tom.’

Then Jack had put in, ‘It’s not a secret but there’s nothing to talk about. Tom is the eldest and your brother as he has always been and that’s all there is to
it.’

Chrissie put away her work and took the untouched, cold tea back to the kitchen. She drove home, looked for Sophie and found her in her room, curled up on the bed. She was listening to the
wireless playing dance music, a girl singing.

Chrissie switched off the set and said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ Sophie glared at her rebelliously but Chrissie went on, ‘I’m not going to tell you all about your
grandmother, though I could go on all night, but the reason I turned her away today was because she made an unpleasant remark about Tom not being my child – in fact, that he was illegitimate.
I couldn’t forgive that.’

Sophie shifted uneasily. ‘Maybe she was just making a joke in bad taste. None of us is perfect.’

‘It was in bad taste but it was no joke.’

Sophie complained, ‘I still don’t think you should have thrown her out like that. I’ve never had a chance to get to know her. I thought she could tell me about her life on the
stage. She’s been all over this country and America, hasn’t she?’

Chrissie admitted, ‘She does have talent but I think she’s wasted it. I don’t think you would learn anything good from her.’

‘It looks as though I won’t have the chance to find out for myself. Is that why you did it? Because you don’t want me to be a singer like her?’

Was it? Chrissie hesitated, for a moment uncertain, and Sophie jumped on that: ‘So that was it! I think that’s mean!’

Chrissie shook her head, the brief doubt gone. ‘It’s true I don’t want that sort of life for you, but I turned my own mother away because of what she’s done to me in the
past and would do to me again. And that’s the truth.’

Sophie said with distaste, ‘I think that’s awful.’

Chrissie’s patience ran out and her bruised emotions spoke: ‘I think you should wait until you grow up and know what you are talking about before you judge me,’ and she left
Sophie staring after her mutinously.

On the Monday night Sophie sat in the ‘gods’ at the Empire, the cheapest seats right up under the roof, squashed shoulder to shoulder among the others who had paid
their coppers to climb the interminable stairs. From up there Vesta Nightingale looked like a child’s doll singing and pirouetting in the beam of the spotlight. Sophie did not care. She was
seeing her own grandmother performing on stage in front of a packed house. She came on immediately after the interval, when people were still making their way back from the bar in a clatter of talk
and banging seats. Her voice was gin-coarsened, but Sophie did not realise this. Nor did she see the flabbiness of the lifted arms, the wrinkles at the neck, because distance and make-up hid these.
This was her grandmother,
the
‘Vesta Nightingale – dance and vocals’.

Sophie stood up as soon as Vesta left the stage to scattered applause, and made her way out, squeezing past people’s knees and ignoring their grumbling: ‘Come on, lass! We’ve
just got sat down!’ Outside the theatre she ran around to the stage door and told the man guarding it, ‘I’ve come to see Vesta Nightingale. I’m a friend of hers.’

He nodded. ‘Oh, aye. She’s expecting you.’

Sophie was taken aback at that but followed his directions and found Martha Tate in her tiny, smoke-filled dressing-room. She slouched in a straight-backed chair balanced on its back legs, her
feet on the little table. She wore a robe that had fallen open to show her long legs up to her knickers and held a cigarette in one hand, a glass of colourless liquid in the other. When she saw
Sophie she set the chair down with a crash and dropped her feet to the floor. She pulled the robe around her and snapped, ‘Christ! What the hell are you doing here?’

Sophie blinked at this reception. Nervous already, now she said shyly, ‘I came to watch you. I was up in the gods. You were
marvellous
!’

Martha Tate smiled. ‘They loved me, didn’t they? They always did – do. And you came to see me all on your own?’

Sophie groped for words, ‘Yes, well – besides, I wanted to say sorry about the other day. When Mother – you know – I don’t think she should have . . . done what she
did.’