Georgia (22 page)

Celia had never liked nets. She believed they were unnecessary, spoiling natural light, fussy and old-fashioned.

Georgia stood just a little way away from the house wondering what to do.

It was possible that Brian still lived there and the last thing she wanted to do was see him.

Instead she passed the house and called two doors away where Mrs Owen lived. She hadn’t been a friend of the Andersons, just a gossipy neighbour, but if anyone knew where Celia had gone it would be her.

She rang the bell nervously.

A short, plump, middle-aged lady answered the door, wiping her hands on a tea-towel.

‘Does Mrs Owen still live here?’ Georgia’s heart plummeted to even greater depths. She was like Mrs Owen, but smarter and several years younger.

‘She’s gone to visit her daughter in Australia,’ the woman smiled. ‘I’m her sister.’ Despite her smile she looked flustered, as if caught in the middle of something.

‘Oh,’ Georgia frowned with disappointment.

‘Can I help?’ the question was one of indifferent politeness, already she was looking past Georgia out towards the heath as if wondering how long this was going to take.

‘I was looking for someone who lived at number nine. Mrs Owen was friendly with her. I thought she might know where she went?’

The woman stepped forward out of her porch, glancing down the road as if to try and remember.

‘Oh yes, you must mean the Andersons,’ she said. ‘I never met them, but Nancy used to talk about them. They sold the house, dear. There’s students living there now.’

Georgia sensed the brush off. The woman didn’t want to talk, already she was retreating back into her doorway.

‘Thank you,’ Georgia took a step back. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

‘Sorry I couldn’t help more,’ the woman was already closing the door. ‘Try the estate agents. It’s Goodman and Smith, the first one you come to. They’re bound to know.’

By the time Georgia got off the train at Charing Cross she was wet through and so cold her teeth were chattering.

The estate agents had given her an address, but it was Brian’s.

‘Terrible mess the house was in,’ the pink-faced, snobby estate agent told her. ‘Seems his wife left him and he went to pieces afterwards. He got us to sell off everything. He said he was going abroad.’

‘But did he tell you where his wife went?’ Georgia was tempted to tell him the whole story if only to get his full attention, but he was so cold and businesslike she merely pretended to be a niece.

‘Rumour had it she ran off months before,’ the man said haughtily. ‘I believe Anderson drank, we certainly found a great deal of evidence to bear that out. We had no reason to contact Mrs Anderson, the house was his sole property.’

She took Brian’s address in New Cross out of politeness, but once outside she tore it up and threw it away.

As she opened the door to her room, Helen hobbled towards her, green eyes blazing like fireworks, her pale face flushed and hot-looking. Clothes were strewn all over the place and the air thick with the smell of burnt toast.

‘I’ve got a hospital bed at last,’ she flung herself at Georgia. ‘Next week. Isn’t it wonderful?’

Georgia took a deep breath and tried hard to smile.

‘I’m so pleased for you,’ she bit back tears and held Helen tightly. ‘You’ve waited so long.’

‘I’ve got so much to do I don’t know where to start.’ Helen wriggled out of her arms, picking up things and throwing them down while all the time she trembled with excitement.

‘What have you got to do?’ Georgia had to laugh despite her own misery. Helen was normally so placid and quiet, it was a diversion at least from her own troubles.

‘I’ll have to give my notice at the club. Buy some new nighties, tell Bert I won’t be here. So much.’

‘Now calm down,’ Georgia said, taking Helen by the shoulders firmly. ‘All that will take less than half an hour.’

Helen tried to dance, hopping around on her one good leg, her smile stretching across her whole face. ‘Oh, Georgia in a week or two we might be able to go out dancing. By the time you sing at the Acropolis I might be a normal girl.’

All the previous year Helen had been waiting for this bed. Twice before she had been accepted as a patient and then the operation had been cancelled just days before.

‘Don’t build your hopes up too high,’ Georgia said slowly. ‘Think the worst, just in case.’

‘That’s an odd thing for you to say,’ Helen spun round and looked at Georgia sharply, colour draining from her face, as she remembered where Georgia had been going. ‘Don’t say you didn’t find Peter?’

‘Worse,’ Georgia slumped down into a chair. ‘He doesn’t care about me anymore. I think his mother hates me. Mum’s vanished too.’

It was only after her abortion that Georgia had finally told Helen the whole story. It had been the opening up, the sharing of pain which had helped her to gain her old confidence. Once again Helen listened, her green eyes filling with tears and she rested her small red head on Georgia’s dark one.

‘What can I say?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t really believe they don’t want to see you. How could anyone turn their back on you?’

‘But why didn’t Mum leave an address?’ Georgia sniffed. ‘Surely she knew I’d want to contact her?’

‘People do funny things when they’re hurt,’ Helen said thoughtfully. ‘But even though Peter’s mother sounds like a real old witch, I’m sure she will pass on your note to Peter. She probably got a shock seeing you on her doorstep.’

‘I handled it all wrong,’ Georgia sighed deeply. She was beyond crying now and she didn’t want to spoil Helen’s joy by dwelling on her own problems. ‘I should have trusted Peter a year ago and written. You can’t keep people in the dark and expect them to just know how you feel.’

‘You haven’t had much luck have you,’ Helen wound a strand of Georgia’s hair round her finger, her small bony arms holding Georgia tightly.

Georgia looked at Helen. The built-up brown boot was peeping out from her long skirt, her green cardigan had tiny darns where moths had eaten it and she was about to face a serious operation which might leave her lamer than before. Yet never once had Georgia heard her sniffle about having no family.

‘No luck?’ she forced herself to smile. ‘I found you. I’ve got a job and a home. I’ve even got a chance at the Acropolis. How much more luck does anyone need?’

*

It was after twelve that night when Mrs Radcliffe pulled the address out of her overall pocket. Peter had gone to bed early, his face white and strained.

It was lucky he hadn’t got home from the library ten minutes earlier, otherwise he might have caught her sending that girl packing.

Why couldn’t he be like her neighbours’ sons, out with the lads on a motorbike instead of mooning around waiting for her? He had a fine career ahead of him, no mother would gladly see her only son going off with some wild black girl.

‘I’m doing this for your own good, son,’ she muttered to herself, poking the fire up into a blaze. ‘She’s probably been on the game all this time. No good for you, my boy.’

She hesitated for a moment, then plunged the note into the flames before she could change her mind.

‘That’s it over now.’ She wiped her hands on her overall and straightened up. ‘You’ll thank me for it one day Peter.’

Chapter 7

‘You look exhausted,’ Peter frowned with concern as Celia sank into a chair without even taking her coat off, an unopened letter in her hand.

It was after ten, a cold March night, yet another evening spent fruitlessly in pubs and coffee bars searching for Georgia.

‘I’ll make some tea, then I’d better get home,’ Peter bent down to light the gas fire. ‘Are you just going to stare at that?’

‘It’s from
him
,’ Celia shuddered at the familiar neat script.

‘A letter can’t hurt you,’ Peter came closer and put one hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you want me to open it?’

She shook her head and slid one finger under the flap.

‘The telephone bill,’ she pursed her lips with annoyance. ‘He’s got a cheek, I’ve been gone three months!’

‘No letter?’ Peter asked.

‘Just a curt note saying the long distance calls –’ she stopped suddenly in mid-sentence, making Peter turn his head.

‘What is it?’

‘A postcard too, from Georgia.’

‘What!’ Peter came back to her side with one bound. ‘Let me see.’

Celia’s hands were trembling, her eyes filling with tears. Peter snatched it from her, just the sight of her rounded, childish writing filling him with renewed hope.

‘Read it to me,’ Celia whispered.

‘“Dear Mum, I’m safe and well. I’ve got a nice room, a job and new friends.”’ Peter gulped, glanced at Celia’s radiant face, then continued. ‘“Don’t worry about me please because everything’s fine. Soon I’ll be sixteen and then I can get in touch again. Give Peter my love, tell him I miss him. I love you, Georgia.” ’

For a moment they could only stare at one another, then Peter dropped down on to his knees beside Celia, running one finger over the few sentences as if committing them to memory.

‘Manchester,’ he held the card closer to the light, examining the postmark. ‘But it’s dated January 29th, it’s almost two months old.’

‘The evil swine,’ Celia’s face flushed with anger. ‘He’s sat on it for two months. How could he do that?’

‘Revenge?’ Peter shrugged his shoulders. ‘And all the time we’ve been wasting our time looking in London.’

If it hadn’t been for Peter’s obstinate strength, Celia might have buckled under the strain weeks ago. No one else seemed concerned that an underage rape victim was out there somewhere alone. The police had given up looking for her. Even the agencies who advertised their concern had come up with nothing. Wild goose chases to places where someone had reported a girl fitting her description. A call from a hospital in North London where a girl lay in a coma, another to view a body in the Deptford morgue. Each time Celia rushed there full of hope, or dread, only to discover the only similarity was dark hair and the right age. Even the children’s department had lost interest, suggesting it was high time she concentrated on other children in her care. She couldn’t count the cost of phone calls, stamps or petrol, that was all incidental. What frightened her most was running out of hope. It was Peter who kept her going night after night. Meeting her to check out yet a few more clubs, pubs or bedsitter houses, never daunted by the size of the task, never flagging in enthusiasm.

Knowing Brian had raped Georgia was the worst thing that she’d ever been faced with. In the early days when Georgia lay in her bed refusing to speak, she kept that thought with her. Whatever came next had to come down on the scale of shock. Yet when she went into the kitchen and found Georgia’s note saying she’d left, Celia went to pieces.

The empty bed, half-eaten meal, a holdall gone from the cupboard. When she threw herself down on the little bed and smelled her daughter on the sheets she thought her heart would break.

Even now, months later the pain was still acute. All the things she once held so dear, gone for ever.

Two grubby little rooms were her home now, sharing a bathroom with four strangers. Belmont Road in Lewisham wasn’t that far from Blackheath in miles, yet it felt as if she were on another planet.

The rooms were at the top of a large house, divided into a rabbit warren of bedsitters. Cold, draughty, threadbare carpets, dirty bathrooms and continual noise from the other tenants.

It had been less than a week after Georgia left that Celia arrived home to find Brian back. He was hunched up in a chair, a blanket round him. The expression on his pale face one of a cringing dog who fully expects to be whipped.

‘What on earth!’ she exclaimed in horror.

‘You didn’t know I was coming home then?’ he said, his eyes cast down, hugging the blanket tighter around him.

If she’d had some warning of his discharge she would have made plans, at least prepared a speech to make her feelings quite plain. She wasn’t prepared for the feeling of nausea that washed over her, or the terror at being alone with him.

‘Look, Celia,’ he said, mistaking her silence for weakness. ‘I know you believe the worst of me, but it wasn’t like that at all.’

‘You louse,’ she spat at him, pulling her coat tightly round her, wanting to walk right out again if it meant sharing the same air as him. ‘Don’t try to wriggle out of what you’ve done. Nothing will persuade me to forgive you, but don’t insult my intelligence by lying!’

‘I knew you’d be like this,’ he said in a petulant tone, a crocodile tear dripping down his cheek. ‘That girl’s the liar and you are a fool if you believe her.’

‘She said nothing to anyone,’ Celia shook with rage. ‘I saw the evidence myself remember. I know what happened as if I’d seen it on a film. You’ve ruined her life and I can’t even bear to be in the same room as you.’

It would have been far better if she’d packed her bags and left that night. Only the certainty that Georgia would telephone kept her there a further two weeks. But two weeks was long enough for Brian to see it as compliance and she brought on herself that last ugly scene.

Looking back, that period seemed like months. Sleeping in Georgia’s old room, going through old diaries and address books, hoping for a lead. She didn’t speak to him, not one word. She went out daily, knocking on doors, meeting old friends of her daughter, walking the streets till exhaustion and the prospect of a telephone call drove her home.

Brian shuffled between the sitting room and the kitchen. He cooked food when she was out, leaving the dishes.

Celia did nothing for him. She let the dishes pile up, his clothes stay where he dropped them. She bought no food, she didn’t even pick up his mail.

She knew she was not behaving rationally. It would be better to scream abuse at him, hurt him as he’d hurt her. It was like an abscess that needed to be lanced. Ignoring it just prolonged the healing process, letting the poison slowly spread through both of them. But Celia remained trapped in a silent world, just as Georgia had been.

She barely noticed the house getting dirty. The dead flowers still sitting in vases and the kitchen bin full to overflowing. Brian was drinking, she couldn’t avoid seeing the endless empty bottles, or miss the smell of whiskey gradually permeating round the house. She guessed that many nights he passed out in the chair downstairs, and she hoped he would drink himself to death.