Georgia (26 page)

‘Yes,’ Georgia took a deep breath, glad that Helen had led her into something other than her illness. ‘You wait till you see our room. It’s like a palace now. White walls, yellow door. I’ve even painted all the furniture yellow. It’s like being in permanent sunshine.’

For a second Helen didn’t answer. Her green eyes studied Georgia’s face, as if she were trying hard to memorize it.

‘You’ve been like sunshine to me ever since I met you,’ she said at length, her voice faint and breathless.

‘And you’re my best and dearest friend,’ Georgia said, taking Helen’s small hand and holding it to her lips. ‘I love you. I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. I only didn’t come because Bert and Babs were.’

‘I know that,’ Helen turned her head slightly and looked hard at Georgia. ‘They told me about the room. How you did it for me. I felt so ashamed at what I said about you having friends round there.’

‘It didn’t matter,’ Georgia felt tears threatening to run down her cheeks. ‘You’ll see it soon, I’ll teach you to dance and we’ll find ourselves a couple of rich men to take us out.’

‘You do it all for me,’ Helen’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘Become a big star in the West End, wear lovely clothes and have hundreds of admirers. I’ll be watching you.’

‘You’ll do it with me!’ Georgia tried to sound bossy and hard but it came out like a plea.

‘I’m dying, Georgia,’ Helen spoke softly, one thin white hand reaching up to touch her friend’s face, her expression one of tenderness. ‘I knew I would after the op, it was all a dream, a lovely dream of dancing and being like you. But you must carry on, make my dream a reality.’

‘I can’t without you,’ Georgia’s tears couldn’t stop now. ‘You are my family, everything.’

‘Don’t cry for me,’ Helen’s eyes brimmed over. ‘I’m not scared or anything now, I feel peaceful and content. I’m too tired of struggling, I’m happy to be going to a place where there’s no pain, no striving for anything.’

‘But how will I manage without you? You are my only friend.’

‘You’ll make new ones. Girls who won’t hold you back like I would.’

‘You wouldn’t hold me back,’ Georgia pleaded with her, clutching Helen’s hand and kissing the palm.

‘It’s the way it has to be,’ Helen’s eyes seemed like emeralds, set on white velvet. ‘Just think of me going somewhere good. Everything I have is yours. In the bottom of the wardrobe is a box. There’s something special for you in there.’

She made a choking sound in her throat, a flicker of pain passed across her face, her eyes closed.

Georgia put her finger on the bell. She could hear her own heart pounding with terror, but she was afraid to leave Helen even to summon help.

Sister came running in.

She moved round to the other side of the bed and felt Helen’s pulse, her eyes meeting Georgia’s tear-filled ones across the tiny redhead.

Helen opened her eyes again slowly.

‘Sing to me?’

Helen looked at Sister with wide and troubled eyes.

Sister nodded.

‘I can’t, not in here,’ she whispered.

‘Please,’ Helen’s eyes pleaded. ‘Just let me hear you one more time?’

It was so quiet in the small room. Georgia was aware of other patients sleeping just the other side of the partition. It seemed all wrong, to sing while her dearest friend slipped away.

‘Sing, Georgia,’ Sister Hall whispered. ‘Forget where you are.’

Georgia took a deep breath to calm herself.

‘Summertime. When the living is easy.’ Georgia’s rich contralto voice rang out around the small room.

‘The fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Your pa is rich and mama’s good lookin’.’ She looked down at Helen, her eyes were still glowing, yet they appeared to be getting dimmer.

‘So hush little baby don’t ya cry.’

Helen’s face was at peace again, her eyes on Georgia, drinking in the words and the music.

‘One of these days, you’re gonna rise up singin’, you’re gonna spread your wings and fly to the sky. One of these days you gonna rise up singing. So hush little baby, don’t ya cry.’

Georgia felt something in the hand in hers. Not a movement or even a flicker, but she knew without being told Helen had gone.

‘No,’ she cried out, leaning over to kiss her friend.

‘She can’t,’ she looked up in anguish at the Sister.

Sister silently closed Helen’s eyes and put her two hands together on the sheet. Then she moved round the bed to embrace Georgia.

‘I never saw a more beautiful and peaceful death,’ she said softly, holding Georgia against her shoulder. ‘Your voice and song took her where she wanted to be. Now you must be strong too. She told me about your singing, she was so very proud of you. You must let her be your inspiration. Achieve everything she wanted for you.’

Georgia refused a lift home. London’s streets held no terrors for her. It wasn’t strangers she had to fear. But people she knew and trusted.

Well she had no one now. Her mother, Peter, and now Helen, all gone.

The dark streets and alleys reflected her feelings. Dark, desolate, empty. Shafts of light here and there from street lamps splayed out an arc of gold light over a small area.

Her life was just like that. A patch of light and happiness, only to go a little further and she was back in the darkness, alone again.

If she had known the risk Helen was taking she would have prevented it somehow. How could Helen have been so foolish if she knew her heart was weak too?

Wearily she climbed the stairs and opened the door of her room.

As she switched on the light, the first thing she saw was the woolly, emerald green shawl Helen put round her shoulders on cold nights.

She picked it up and held it to her face, drinking in the smell of Helen it carried in it, remembering the colour of her eyes.

There was no one to see her now, here alone with all the memories of Helen she could mourn her privately.

Never again would she hear that familiar clonking sound on the stairs. Or wake to see Helen making tea in her long, white old-fashioned nightdress, her red hair flowing over her shoulders.

So many pictures trapped in her mind like a photograph album.

Helen lying on the bed reading fashion magazines.

‘Do you think I could wear my hair like this?’ she’d say, holding the glorious mane on top of her head. ‘When my leg is normal again I won’t need to hide under all this!’

There was the picture too of Helen on the market stall. Fur collar turned up on her russet coat, blowing on her fingers to warm them. Pale cheeks turned pink with the cold wind, her hair escaping in tendrils from her woolly hat as she animatedly teased the customers.

Then there were the nights she didn’t work at the club. Those were special nights when they would giggle and chat until the small hours, drinking tea and eating biscuits in bed and Helen would talk about the man she intended to marry.

‘He’ll have to be big and strong. Dark hair, blue eyes, a sultry look like Elvis. But he’ll adore me shamelessly and buy me beautiful clothes and expensive perfume.

‘We’ll have two children. A boy with dark hair like him and a little girl with red. We’ll have a house on Hampstead Heath with a garden full of roses.’

She sank onto Helen’s bed, shawl in hands, rocking to and fro with grief, tears cascading down her cheeks. A bellow of rage started within her, filling the room with a terrible sound.

Helen would never find that perfect man, run, dance or make love. She would never know the bliss of a man’s arms around her who loved her, or have those children she’d longed for.

It was after three when Georgia finally crawled into bed, her eyes swollen, her heart numb with grief.

*

‘Georgia!’ she could hear Babs knocking on her door and calling. ‘Georgia. Pop’s been on the phone and wants to know if you’re all right.’

‘Come in,’ Georgia called out weakly. ‘It’s not locked.’

‘What is it ducks?’ Babs came bustling in bringing a smell of fried bacon with her. ‘Are you ill?’

‘Helen died last night.’

Babs stopped short for a moment, her big mouth dropping open. ‘But we only left her at seven!’ Her work-reddened hands twitched at the stained apron, her mouth sagged as if suddenly all her teeth were gone.

Georgia had forgotten how long Helen had lived in Bert and Babs’s room, and that they thought of her as a daughter. Until now she had been able to feel only her own grief, forgetting she didn’t have the monopoly in loving Helen.

Babs’s face crumpled, tears welled up in her eyes, hands moving up to conceal them, shoulders heaving.

So often Helen and Georgia had poked fun at Babs. They laughed about the rag-bag collection of clothes she wore, the way her hair never looked clean, and the missing tooth which gave her a curious wobbly smile.

Maybe she wasn’t one of the world’s great beauties, but now as Georgia saw her grief, she felt ashamed.

‘Her heart was weak, it just gave out. She had an infection in her leg too. She died just after midnight.’

Babs’s lips shook. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling.

‘Why take ’er?’ she said angrily as if addressing God personally.

‘’Ow did you find out?’ Babs whispered, creeping nearer to Georgia across the dim room, reaching out for her hand like a life raft.

‘I was with her, a policeman came here for me about eleven.’

‘Oh, you poor love,’ now she enfolded Georgia in her arms, rocking her to and fro. ‘I know ’ow close you were. We told ’er what you was doing. She was so ashamed she’d thought the worst of you.’

‘She was so brave,’ Georgia buried her face in Babs’s big, soft chest, once again starting to cry. ‘She said she didn’t mind dying and that I had to do everything we’d talked about for her.’

‘Then you must my darlin’.’ Babs used that persuasive tone like Celia had, lifting her face up and dabbing at it with the corner of her apron. ‘But you’ve gotta get up and go to work. Sooner or later you’ll ’ave to.’

‘I know,’ Georgia buried her head in Babs’s shoulder. ‘But I loved her, she was my friend, sister and mother all rolled into one. I don’t even know what I should do about her funeral, or anything.’

‘Bert and me’ll take care of that,’ Babs said gently. Her voice, usually so loud, was hardly above a whisper. ‘She was our Helen an’ all.’

‘She said I was to have everything of hers.’ Georgia raised a tear-stained face. ‘She said there was a box in the wardrobe.’

‘’Ave you looked in it?’ Babs wiped at her own face with a corner of her apron.

‘No,’ Georgia sniffed. ‘I’m kind of afraid to.’

‘Well, let’s do it together,’ Babs said. ‘Come on!’

Georgia got out of bed reluctantly. The mirror on the wardrobe door reflected back a sad waif of a girl. Tangled dark hair, red-rimmed eyes, wearing pyjamas that she’d outgrown several months before.

She found the chocolate box decorated with faded purple velvet flowers, tucked away under a pile of old jumpers.

Georgia put it on the table and drew back the curtains.

Babs was lighting the fire.

‘Jesus it’s cold in ’ere,’ Babs said coming back to the table, slapping her raw hands together, eyes glistening with tears. ‘Come on, get the lid off!’

There was a letter on the top addressed to Georgia.

Georgia picked it up and looked questioningly at Babs.

‘She went prepared, I’d say,’ Babs smiled affectionately. ‘But she was always one to think everything out.’

Under the letter were three bundles of notes with rubber bands round them.

‘There’s about sixty quid ’ere,’ Babs said in surprise, flicking through the pound and ten shilling notes.

‘There’s more at the bottom, just change,’ Georgia said pulling out handfuls of halfcrowns.

‘Read the letter,’ Babs urged.

Georgia opened it, her hands shaking.

‘Dearest Georgia,

‘I feel a bit silly writing this, I keep hoping that when I get out of hospital I can get this out and we both can have a good laugh about it.

‘But I’ve had a feeling for quite some time that I might die. I’ve got a weak heart and I’ve been told about the risks. Anyway, I wanted to tell you, just in case I never got a chance to say it to your face, how much I loved you and how happy you made my last year.’

Georgia’s eyes misted over, for a moment she couldn’t see to read further.

‘I never had a family, or a close friend. I’d got so used to being on my own that I didn’t even try to make friends anymore. But then you came along, filled up my life with your presence and suddenly I felt wanted and needed.

‘If I am dead when you read this I hope you’ll be strong and not brood about me or feel guilty in any way.

‘Without this last year with you I would have died a lonely person. You enriched my life, you gave me laughter, the joy of sharing and most of all you gave me hope.

‘Carry on with your singing, fill the world with your beautiful voice. I’ll be watching over you forever now. Watching to see you don’t get tempted into bad things, or mix with evil people. I saw a lot of bad things while I worked at the club, gangsters, thieves, drugs and all sorts. Please be careful, don’t be too trusting and watch out for men who will try to use you.

‘All the money in here is for you. Buy a beautiful dress for your special night, something red, sparkly and flashy, the kind of dress we planned to wear when we were rich. You are probably amazed that I had so much. I had to be really careful when I first came to London and somehow I never got out of the habit.

‘Give Bert and Babs my love, thank them for all they did for me. I thought of them as my parents. I wish them a long and happy life.

‘Don’t cry for me Georgia. I’m happy now and I hope you get everything you’ve dreamed of.

My love always,

Helen.’

Georgia read the letter and handed it to Babs.