Clover's Child (14 page)

Sol trod the soft wool carpet along the corridor and closed his bedroom door behind him. He glanced at the bureau, the small pewter dishes containing cufflinks and ivory collar stiffeners. Once again he imagined Clover’s jewellery and perfume next to his things, a sign of a couple living in harmony, a sign of being married.

He sat on the rather firm mattress and eased the leather slippers from his feet. The silk counterpane had been folded down, as it was every night, to reveal the starched Egyptian cotton sheets. Sol raised his legs and swung into bed, reaching for the lamp switch to click his world into darkness. It was then that the envelope caught his eye. It was perched between the light and his water glass on its silver salver.

The large cream envelope opened with ease, suggesting it had not long been glued shut. He removed the rather bulky contents that had been folded and folded again. It was a thin, old document of some sort, scrawled with violet ink and the occasional flourish of a fountain pen. He placed it to one side and turned his attention to the thick sheet of pale writing paper that was peppered with the unmistakeable green ink that his mother favoured.

Son,

I love you and while it may not always appear so to you, like Daddy, I have your very best interests at heart. Your stubborn refusal to see sense leaves me with no other option than to act before you make the biggest mistake of your life, a mistake that could ruin everything that I have worked for, everything that I have planned for you.

In this envelope are the deeds to a certain house in Ropemakers Fields that I have acquired very recently and not, I can assure you, without considerable trouble.

I am giving you two choices, Solomon. If you go back to St Lucia on the first available flight, these deeds will be locked away and the Simpson family who currently reside there will be able to do so until their deaths, rent free.

If you refuse, I already have new tenants waiting and the Simpsons will be given twenty-four hours to leave the premises.

If you speak to anyone of this, or communicate with that girl in any form, I shall invoke the second option without hesitation.

Mother

Sol placed his hand on his heart, which was thumping irregularly. He swallowed hard, trying to take a full breath. The paper trembled in his hand. He jumped from the bed and ran along the corridor towards his mother’s bedroom. But there was lamplight in the drawing room.

Vida sat in the wing-back chair with a cashmere throw over her knees. Sol felt weak beyond measure, too distressed for anger.

He stood in front of her. ‘What is this?’ He brandished the letter in her direction.

Vida looked unfazed. ‘Well, assuming that you have actually read the contents, I would have thought that with your level of education it was all quite self-explanatory.’

‘Is this for real?’

‘It is absolutely one hundred per cent real.’

‘I don’t believe you; this has to be some kind of joke. You wouldn’t do this, I know you wouldn’t.’

Her face was solemn. ‘I can assure you that this is no joke.’

Sol sank down onto the floor and sat at the foot of her chair.

‘How… how can you do this to me?’ He was breathless.

‘I am not doing it
to
you; I am doing it
for
you.’

‘Mumma… Mum… please, please do not do this to me. Please!’

He swallowed and fought the urge to cry, a feeling that was unfamiliar to this young man who in his short life had had very little to cry about. He folded the paper into his lap and breathed deeply, trying not to weep.

‘Listen to me, Mumma, please. I love her! I love her! And you can’t change that. I will find a way, I will, because I love her.’

His mother looked over his head towards the fireplace and spoke into the middle distance. ‘And that is precisely why I am forced to take this action.’

‘Why? Why are you doing this to me, to us?’

‘There is no “us”, Solomon, how many more times must you make me say that? It is madness.’

‘I’ll do anything, anything. Please! I can buy the house…’ His eyes widened as an idea occurred to him. ‘I’ve got my own money, we don’t need you and Dad, Clover knows how to survive! She is starting work at a match factory tomorrow, just to get money, we will be okay.’

‘Perfect – a little match girl, good grief.’ Vida pinched her nose and closed her eyes. ‘And just so that we are clear, you are mistaken, Solomon, your money is my money and I shall see that you don’t get a penny.’

Solomon’s tears finally broke their banks and coursed down his face. It felt like a never-ending river of sorrow; great gulping sobs shook his shoulders and pulled his vocal chords taut.

‘I can’t believe that you would do it, Mum. I can’t believe that you would put a family on the streets, a little girl on the streets, just so you can have your own way!’

‘You would be amazed, Solomon, at what I would and would not do to protect my family, to protect you.’

‘I am begging you, do not make me do this, please.’

‘You will thank me one day.’

‘No… no I won’t. Things will never be the same between us. I will never, ever forget this. I will never ever forget.’ Sol’s pupils shrank as his eyes flashed with anger. His body shook and his throat throbbed with the hidden sobs that fought to escape.

‘You are young, so young. I accept that things will not be the same between us for a while, but when you marry the girl that you are supposed to and the Jasmine House is full of tiny children, you will thank me then. You will, you will thank me.’

‘The girl that I am
supposed
to marry? Don’t you get it? If I can’t marry her then I shan’t marry anyone, ever.’

‘Those are dramatic words for a twenty-two-year-old, but trust me, Solomon, you will marry and you will be happy. This will pass.’

‘I must be able to do something. I’ll speak to Dad.’

‘If you bother your father with this, I will give the order, Solomon and they will be on the streets with their boxes piled around them.’

Sol pictured Dee and Dot with their belongings on the wet cobbles.

‘But if you go back to St Lucia, that house is theirs until they die. And judging by the state of the father, that might be just the thing the mother needs. You are giving them a great gift, a roof over their heads, worry-free for as long as they need it. It is more than they could ever have hoped to achieve.’

‘Can I… can… can I say goodbye to her, please? I need to see her once more, to explain. I can’t just disappear.’

‘No. You pack, you get on the plane tomorrow that’s heading to New York and you go from New York home and we never speak of this again.’

Sol stood and wiped at his red and swollen eyes. He considered all the options, his thoughts whirring, confused by the cloak of grief.

‘You will give them the house?’

‘You have my word.’

Sol breathed deeply and wiped his running nose and tears on the sleeve of his pyjama jacket.

‘Mum, I just want you to know, my heart is broken. It will never, ever be whole again. I hope that you are happy now. You have what you want. I’ll leave, but she’ll have my heart forever, my broken heart.’

Sol walked slowly along the corridor, touching his fingers to the wall where the two of them had so recently bumped and kissed. He wailed like a cat mewling in distress; he couldn’t help it. It was as if his soul was weeping.

Vida listened to her son and tucked the blanket around her legs. ‘Hearts mend, my son, they mend.’

6

Dot poured a cup of tea from the pot and bit her lower lip, concentrating on hiding the smile that threatened to split her face every time she remembered the previous evening. Joan placed a plate in front of her, two poached eggs and a slice of toast.

‘You need to eat breakfast, love.’ This she delivered with a small smile. ‘Are you all set?’

‘Think so, don’t really know what to expect. I’m a bit nervous, tell you the truth, Mum.’

Joan cupped her hand over her daughter’s. ‘Course you are, but it’ll be all right.’

Dot was grateful for the gesture. It meant understanding, an apology, a peace offering of sorts.

‘It’ll have to be, Mum, won’t it.’

‘Yep, it will, Dot. But I promise you, as soon as I’ve got something that pays half decent, you can go back to Selfridges. I’m not saying I’m happy about the situation, but I do appreciate you trying to fix it.’

Dot smiled at her mum and thought about a beach and pineapple juice; she knew that she would never be going back to Selfridges and until she went to live in her fairy tale, trying to fix things was the least she could do.

She looked at the eggs on her plate and felt a wave of queasiness wash over her. ‘Sorry, Mum, don’t think I can face breakfast. Reckon I must be more nervous than I thought.’

Solomon had not slept. He had spent the night crouched on his pillows with his arms looped over his hunched-up knees, pondering on how to resolve the wretched situation in which he found himself. Every idea he had, every possible solution led him up a dark alley with no prospect of success and the Simpson family on the streets. In the early hours, he haphazardly packed up his belongings for the trip back to St Lucia, inhaling the vest he had worn the night before, unwashed and bearing the faintest trace of her scent. He knew that what he felt for Clover was deep and pure love, but to see her and her family made destitute as the price for that love was too much for him to contemplate; he loved her far too much for that. Unshaven, eyes swollen and with a pain in his heart and chest that he thought might kill him, he trod the stairs to the awaiting taxi and left London before his beloved had woken. He tried not to notice the swing of the lace curtain on the upper hallway, unable to look his mother in the eye.

It was a beautiful May morning, the cherry trees were in flower and the hawthorns that flourished in many a front garden were drooping under the weight of the pink and white blossom. The sun was bright if not warm and Dot felt a swell of happiness in her tummy, despite the fact that she was off to work in a factory. She had so much to look forward to; it was difficult to contain it all. She had to fight the urge to tell anyone that caught her eye of their plans. If she could, she’d have run down the middle of the street with her arms spread wide, shouting, ‘Last night I danced in front of Etta James with my fiancé! And this time next year I will be sitting on a beach in the sunshine!’

Dot caught the bus to Bow and hummed all the way, ‘
At last/My love has come along…
’ She alighted with several other girls, all of them heading for Bryant and May. The previous night filled her thoughts, leaving little room to worry about what her first day in the match factory might hold. She pictured a girl with a red velvet ribbon in her hair, in the elegant arms of the man she loved, being serenaded by Etta James. It seemed unbelievable that the girl was her, plain old Dot Simpson of Ropemakers Fields.

Stepping into Fairfield Road, Dot spied the red-brick building up ahead. This was it. A gust of wind picked up and Dot was hit by a wall of sulphurous odour that drifted from the factory and went right up her nose. Before she had time to react, her gut constricted, sending a wave of vomit from her mouth and out onto the pavement, splashing across her shoes. For the second bout, she managed to find her way to the kerb; holding her hair in a bunch with her right hand, she retched and heaved until her stomach was empty.

‘You all right, love?’ a woman asked.

Dot, bent over at a right angle, nodded at the ground. ‘Yup.’

‘You don’t look all right.’

Strands of her hair had stuck to her face with sick; Dot pulled them loose. ‘I’ll be okay in a minute. I’m starting work here today.’

The woman chuckled. ‘Oh, love, you want to get yourself up the docs.’

Dot stared at the tarmac and felt as if the ground was rushing up to meet her.

It was a long day. Working in the factory was the exact opposite of life in the Haberdashery Department. She missed the genteel hum of ladies chatting as they browsed, and the sight of her fabric rainbow. Mostly she missed Barb – they rarely went a day without seeing each other.

The noise was deafening, the smell offensive and her role monotonous. She learnt the job quickly and proved capable, if a little slow. On the plus side, when engrossed in the fiddly task that she could complete with ease, fourteen times a minute, her mind was free to wonder to warmer climes than Bow and inside her head, she replayed the previous magical night. She watched it over and over like a movie, saw it from every angle, and each performance ended with Etta’s outstretched arm and the phrase ‘The two young lovers!’

The best thing about the factory was the group of girls in her section, especially the cousins Milly and Pru, who informed her that this was only a stop gap for them, as both were planning on seeking fame and fortune up West. It was only her first day, but already she was included in the banter, privy to gossip and offered fags, tea and sandwiches by the others. She felt right at home, and while she did miss the refined atmosphere of Selfridges, not having to look at Miss Blight’s miserable phizog was a definite plus.

As the bell clanged for knocking-off time, Dot’s feet throbbed inside her pumps; the ball of her left foot had stood on a wrinkle in her stockings all day and her scalp itched inside the elasticated hair net. But all things considered, the prospect of going back tomorrow wasn’t that bad.

Dot scrubbed her hands and face in the washroom, applied a slick of lippy, patted and teased her hair into place and then walked to the bus stop. She decided to go straight to Paolo’s and not waste time diverting to home; if she carried a slightly sulphurous air, then too bad, nothing a lifetime of bobbing about in the warm Caribbean sea wouldn’t erase!

She eased into the booth, stretching and flexing her stockinged feet under the table.

‘Coffee, love?’

Dot exhaled through bloated cheeks. She didn’t feel like coffee, she didn’t feel like anything. ‘Actually, just a glass of water please, Paolo.’