Georgia (55 page)

‘It’s true,’ Brian said. ‘Look at the other one too. She’s there again with my wife and I at a bank dinner and dance.’

It felt good to admit it. The hazy grey mist was lifting so quickly he could remember other things too.

Georgia sitting between them, in a light-coloured dress with a kind of ruffle round the neck, smiling at her father in dinner-jacket and bow tie. Celia, on her other side was in a chiffon, low-necked dress, a glass of wine in her hand. That night all his staff had been there, formality forgotten with Christmas coming. He’d given them little presents, shared jokes and pulled crackers.

He saw a red flush creeping up Adam’s face, his eyes narrowed as he looked at the snap, going back to Brian’s face, then back to the picture.

‘She changed her name of course,’ Brian picked up his tea and tried to control his shaking hands. ‘There’s things I could tell you about her.’ He paused, sensing something more in the man’s expression.

Not disbelief or scorn. But excitement.

‘How can she be your daughter?’ the man asked. ‘She’s black.’

‘Half-caste.’ Brian was surprised how easy he found to explain. ‘We fostered her, gave her everything, singing and dancing lessons, nice clothes. We loved her like she was our own.’

‘But –’ The man’s mouth was hanging open again.

‘But why am I like this if I’ve got a famous rich daughter?’ Brian’s laugh was hollow. ‘Because she’s a little bitch. That’s why.’

John Adams wasn’t a man who was shocked easily. He had grown up in Ladbroke Grove and knew many of the odd characters who lived there. Pimps, prostitutes, thieves, faded actresses, doctors who’d been struck off, he’d even met a few titled people who’d fallen on hard times. It was an area where people ended up. A dustbin of human life. Yet if he believed everything he’d been told in pubs, listened to every old wino who bleated out a sob story then it would be him next for the funny farm.

He’d seen Anderson before. He knew he drank heavily and sometimes he shouted and talked to himself. He had guessed the man wasn’t as old as he looked, and there were the rumours.

Didn’t Jock down at the Bell claim he was a retired bank manager? That a couple of years ago before he got this far out of it, he advised him on a couple of investments? Then there was Martha at the Black Horse, who felt sorry for him one night and put him to bed in her spare room. Later he’d written her a letter thanking her and that letter had been passed round the bar. Beautifully written in a stylish copperplate handwriting, the type of letter that could only be written by a man with a first-class upbringing and education.

The man lived in squalor now. His clothes were little better than a tramp’s, he was dirty, unshaven, neglected and definitely half way round the bend. But his accent was impeccable. He had good manners. Despite his present appearance he could see Anderson was the man in the photograph. Suppose it was true? The story could make a fortune.

‘Look,’ John leaned closer across the table. ‘I’ll be straight with you. If what you are telling me is true I can get you enough money to make up for what those guys took. I know you’re ill. You may have even had a bang on the head. But if you are making it up for God’s sake level with me now.’

‘Can I have made that up?’ Brian pushed the picture of the family group towards him again. ‘You can see plainly that’s her, even if she was only a kid then. You can see it’s me too, if you take away the fine clothes. How else would I have that picture if it wasn’t true?’

A picture five or six years old. How could it be a fake? Only a practised confidence trickster could engineer something like that, and this sad old man wasn’t that.

‘Would you tell me everything about her?’ Adams asked gently. ‘I’m a writer you see.’

Calling himself a writer was stretching the truth a bit. He’d been paid for a couple of articles on local history, written a few letters to
The Times
. But he could string a few words together, and he had got a couple of mates in Fleet Street.

‘All right. I will.’

Adams could only stare at the old man. He’d expected haggling, even straight, sober people asked for money up front. He remembered one of his journalist friends words. ‘They either spill the beans for money, or revenge.’ Revenge would pay the most!

By the time a policeman had been and taken a statement and John Adams had bought him a big breakfast, Brian was feeling better.

Adams had suggested he go home with him for a talk, he’d even suggested there might be some money in it for him. Maybe his luck was turning at last?

It was close to six o’clock when Adams showed Anderson the door. He had been tempted to ask the man to stay the night and finish what he’d started, but he was so overwhelmed by what he had heard he needed to be alone.

His feelings about Anderson had swung violently from pity to suspicion during the day, and now he wasn’t sure whose side he was on.

Pity had been the major feeling when the man came out of the bathroom. He could see shame on his face, now it was scrubbed clean, further evidence that he hadn’t always lived the way he did now.

‘I’ll get these cleaned for you and return them,’ he almost whispered, touching the clean shirt and old grey flannel trousers as if they’d come straight out of the window at Burton’s.

‘They’re yours.’ John hid his own discomfort by digging out a pair of black shoes which had been left behind by a friend. ‘Try these for size.’

He had felt bad taking a photograph of Anderson before the transformation. Even worse putting his old clothes into a bag and tying up the top to keep as evidence to back up his story. His mind was whirling with disgust at Georgia allowing her father to get to this stage, loathing at himself for cashing in on it, and an even greater desire to get to the hard truth.

He felt more pity too when he realized just how confused the man was. He had a story all right but it came out backwards, sideways, upside down, but rarely running straight.

Adams’ old tape recorder went round and round as he led Anderson through Georgia’s first days at his home. He heard about her being beaten by the nuns, her injuries and the way she brought sunshine into their home. Sometimes it sounded as if she was just a toddler on arrival, sometimes far older. One moment his eyes filled with tears, the next they flashed with hate.

But when Anderson got to the bit about the party, nothing sounded right. The emotion had gone from his voice, it sounded like a story he’d rehearsed. No unnecessary detail as there had been earlier. Like a journalist’s story in fact.

‘My wife had to go out you see,’ he kept saying. ‘I stayed downstairs because I didn’t want to spoil their fun. But I sensed something was going on.’

In one huge gulp he told the tale of how he saw her come out of the bedroom with her boyfriend.

‘I packed the kids off sharpish,’ he said. ‘Then I asked her what she thought she was doing. She told me to mind my own business and I slapped her. Next thing I knew she was coming up the stairs with a knife. She lunged at me, sticking it in my stomach. When I came round I was in hospital and I’d nearly died.’

There was the scar to back it up. A vivid red slash against his white belly, the skin puckered and wrinkled around it. But even as he looked at it, he wondered why she had hit her father so low. A frenzied attack was usually in the direction of the heart.

John wanted to go back over details. There was more, he knew it, but he was afraid to stop the man in case he dried up.

He could understand Georgia running away to escape punishment. But why did his wife leave? What had been left out?

If he was to believe everything Anderson told him, the man was a victim of not only his daughter’s cruelty, but his wife and employers too. Why should the bank sack him? It didn’t make sense.

Anderson was an alcoholic, that much was plain. His hands shook, his eyes constantly strayed around the room as if searching for drink. But was he already one when Georgia ran away, or was she the trigger that had started his downward spiral?

John Adams understood how bitterness could warp a person. A bright kid from the wrong side of the tracks who won a scholarship to public school, only to find he was a social outcast. Later at university he worked while everyone else enjoyed themselves. He got his ‘First’, but they got the girls, and later the good jobs.

Why did he end up in a laboratory testing paint while others less able set the world alight? All he had to show for his hard work was a poky one-bedroomed flat, a beaten-up Ford and no savings. Maybe he too could have turned to drink to cope with disappointment.

Brian Anderson lay on his bed shivering. He’d managed to get home without going in the pub and he’d paid Mrs Dooley what he owed, but it was a mistake to be sober in this room. The damp patches seemed to press in on him, and the sink full of weeks-old dirty dishes appalled him. He had to remain sober though; unless he did, John Adams wouldn’t help him any more.

This time with Adams’ help he was going to pull his life together. There was no way she could spoil things now, not like she had before.

It was November 1960 when he went up to the West End. The house in Blackheath was sold at last. The money safely in a bank until he decided what to do with it. A nice little flat in New Cross. A fresh start in a place where no one knew him.

He told his landlord he had retired early because of an old war wound. He liked the sound of that, it made him sound romantic, a man of action. He wasn’t going to drink again, not the way he had in those last dreadful months when everyone, Celia, the bank, friends and neighbours had turned against him. Maybe he would leave the country if he didn’t find a job that suited him, but that night as he went to the West End he was just looking for some company.

It had been some years since he last visited Soho. As he stood in Piccadilly looking at the neon lights flashing out messages and advertisements he felt charged with new life. He cut a smart figure in his new blazer, military tie and grey slacks. Somewhere in that square mile was a woman who’d share drinks and supper with him, someone to make him laugh and forget the past.

He found her sitting in the White Bear bar. Red hair curling to her shoulders and a vivid green dress that echoed her eyes.

‘Is there anyone sitting here?’ he said, pointing to the empty bench seat beside her.

‘Feel free,’ she said, moving up just slightly and crossing her long, slim legs.

He knew she was a prostitute, but that made it all the easier. She might try to con him out of a few bob but it was better than picking up a girl on the streets.

‘Hasn’t it changed around here?’ he said brightly. ‘Last time I came in here it was packed. Don’t people drink here anymore?’

‘It’s early yet,’ she said languidly, looking at a cheap imitation of a diamond-studded bracelet watch. ‘Are you from out of town?’

‘No,’ he laughed lightly, letting her know straightaway he understood the West End. ‘South London, just came up to have a little fun for a change.’

She was probably around thirty-five, though from a distance she looked nearer twenty-five. She smelled of apple blossom perfume that took him instantly back to a girl in Birmingham once. She wasn’t pretty, her face was too long and thin, her lips rather thin, but she had good breasts, pushed up to reveal deep cleavage.

The best thing about her was that she wasn’t obviously a tart. She could be a secretary or shop girl waiting for her boyfriend.

Her red hair was maybe a little startling, the dress a flashy cheap one, but then that made it more exciting.

‘I suppose you’re waiting for someone,’ he said as she picked up her glass and drank the last drop. ‘Can I buy you a drink while you wait?’

‘Okay,’ she flashed a brilliant smile at him, which sent shivers of delight down to his toes. ‘Gin and orange.’

Her name was Paula, she said she’d been a dancer and she had a flat nearby, and she was open enough to name her price immediately.

Ten months had passed since Georgia’s birthday and for the first time since that day he felt like his old self. Instead of gulping down drinks in an effort to forget, he found himself slowing down, listening to Paula’s chatter, enjoying the pressure of her thigh on his, his mind calm, his body relaxed.

He told her he was a retired bank manager, hinted at wealth and encouraged her natural sympathy by telling her he was a widower and their only daughter lived miles away and never visited.

‘Well you aren’t alone tonight, love,’ she said warmly. ‘Come on, drink up, let’s find somewhere to dance.’

Even when she softly asked for the money up front she did it gently, winding her soft arms round him and kissing him outside the club.

‘Better to get it over first,’ she smiled, pressing herself against him. ‘I want all the guys in there to think you are a date.’

Brian had been in the Mandrake club before. A damp basement that smelled of mould and beer. Hot, stale air wafted up as they went down the dimly lit stairs. The music came from a juke box in one corner of the room, jangling and distorted. The seats were little more than wooden benches, the floor solid concrete and apart from a few candles spluttering in Chianti bottles, the only light came from the small bar. But with a pretty woman on his arm and the promise of a night of love, it could have been the Café de Paris.

It didn’t matter that each drink cost nearly a pound. Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about money, right now he had a girl who cared about him. He was pleasantly tight, the club was warm and friendly. It had been so long since he held a woman in his arms, the smell of her perfume, the softness of her skin was like a soothing drug.

When they walked up the stairs after one, the fresh air caught them by surprise. Paula was staggering in her high heels and Brian put his arm round her.

At the end of St Anne’s Court they stopped for a moment in the shadows to kiss. It was quiet now, just the distant sound of music in another bar and fainter still the traffic from Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Avenue.

She kissed beautifully, slow, deliberate and sensuous, her tongue flickering across his, sending shudders of delight down Brian’s spine. In her arms he could forget the mean streets, the glaring neon signs, the overflowing dustbins and the smell of rotting rubbish. It looked almost pretty, an old street lamp sending a golden arc of light across the road, Dickensian and quaint.