The Girl From Barefoot House (40 page)

Josie thought about it, and decided it wasn’t a bad idea. Whenever Francie got a new girlfriend she didn’t feel
jealous, but she was always worried she would lose him as a friend. He’d become part of her life, like Lily and Aunt Ivy, like Mrs Kavanagh had been. Francie touched a side of her that no one else did. He made the world seem funny and young. They had a good laugh together. Was that enough to make a marriage? Well, she’d never know if she didn’t try. And they might grow to love each other one day, you never knew.

‘But would you mind if we left it until next year?’ she said to him the night she accepted his proposal. ‘It’s been such an awful year so far. We’ve known each for half our lives, so another few months won’t make much difference. And, if you don’t mind, I’d sooner we kept it between ourselves for now.’

‘In case you get cold feet?’

Josie chewed her lip. ‘I’m not sure, Francie, to be honest. I mean, this isn’t exactly a romantic situation we’re in, is it? It’s almost a business arrangement.
You
might get cold feet. Say you fall madly in love with some girl next week, for instance?’

‘I don’t think I’m capable of falling in love,’ Francie said glumly. He folded his arms over his lavishly embroidered waistcoat, and looked at her challengingly. ‘Okay, so we get married next year. In the meantime, what about the bed bit?’

‘What
about
the bed bit?’

‘Do I have to wait for that until next year, too?’

‘Oh, I dunno, Francie. Let me think about it.’

They made love the first time in Francie’s new house in Halewood, because it would have been impossible in Baker’s Row with Dinah in the next room. He was a fervent, inventive lover, who still managed to make her laugh, even at the height of passion, and Josie felt enjoyably exhausted when it was over. They leaned
against the pillows and finished off the wine they’d brought with them to bed. Francie looked even more sinister naked, with the faintly blue bones of his ribs showing through a surprisingly hairy body.

‘Now we’ve broken the ice, we must do this more often,’ he said. ‘Twice a night would suit me fine.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’ Josie stared around the bare room. ‘You could do with some pictures up, Francie. And those curtains are dead dull.’ The curtains were a sickly beige, to go with the carpet and the walls.

‘It needs a woman’s touch.’ Francie grinned. He pulled her hand under the bedclothes. ‘Like me.’

‘Nineteen-seventy,’ Lily said gloomily. ‘It’ll be nineteen-seventy in a few hours. Where have the years gone, Jose?’

‘I dunno.’ All day, Josie’s mind had kept going back to the eve of the last decade. She glanced at her watch. It was just gone six. Ten years ago she was putting on the purple mini-dress ready for Maya’s party, waiting for Elsie Forrest to arrive. Laura was running around the house in Bingham Mews, excited that she was being allowed to stay up till midnight. Jack had already started to drink.

‘It’s been the most miserable Christmas I can ever remember.’ Lily’s eyes were moist.

‘I know, Lil.’ Stanley had stayed in Germany, Robert in London. Daisy and Manos had gone to Greece to spend Christmas with his family. There’d been no sign of Ben. It was as if Mrs Kavanagh had been the thread that had held her children together.

Now it was New Year’s Eve. Francie had got tickets for a dinner dance, but Josie had felt obliged to spend the evening with Lily, who had been deeply depressed since
her mother died. Dinah was in the lounge, watching television with Samantha and Gillian. Neil had gone to the pub, but had promised to be back before Big Ben chimed in the New Year. Francie, being Francie, hadn’t minded being forsaken for the woman he most loathed. There were plenty of parties he could go to.

‘I mean,’ Lily was saying, ‘what’s it all for? We’re born, we get married, we have children, we get old, then we die! It hardly seems worth it, Jose.’

‘Not if you put it like that. We’re supposed to enjoy ourselves along the way, be happy.’

‘Are you happy, Jose?’

Josie shrugged. ‘Well, yes. I think I am. A bit.’

‘
I’m
not, not the least bit, and it’s not just because of Ma. It’s, it’s …’ Lily searched for words. ‘It’s
Neil
.’ The name came out like a gasp. ‘Oh, I know he’s a bloke in a million, you said that once, but …’ She seemed lost for words again. ‘Remember that day in Haylands? It was the day after you’d been with that Griff for the first time. Your face, Jose. I often think about your face that day. It was sort of lit up – radiant, I think you’d call it. And your eyes were so bright, almost as if you’d been crying, except they were such happy eyes, shining.’ Lily looked shyly at Josie. ‘My face has never looked like that, Jose. Making love with Neil is a bit of an ordeal nowadays, and it’s never exactly turned me on. Oh,’ she cried, ‘I missed so much, marrying him. I should have waited. Look at our Daisy, madly in love at forty.’

‘Lily, you would have been unbearable if you’d had to wait to get married until you were forty. You’d have had all of us nervous wrecks by now.’

‘I know.’ Lily sighed. ‘I’m too impatient. I grabbed the first man that asked. Neil’s good and decent, but
I should have turned him down. He would have been hurt, but not as much as he’ll be hurt now.’

Josie looked askance at her friend. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m going to chuck him out, Jose,’ Lily said in a shaky voice. ‘Ask him to leave. I’ll suggest we sell the house, get rid of the mortgage and I’ll buy something smaller for me and the girls. I don’t want the poor bloke on the streets. Then I’ll get a job like you. Anything’s better than being stuck in a dead boring marriage for the rest of me days. I always said our Ben was daft, sticking by Imelda. Well, the same rule applies to me. I’m wasting me life with Neil.’ Lily glared at her friend, her small face knotted in determination. ‘And do you know what else I’m going to do, Jose?’

‘What’s that, Lil?’

‘I’m going to chase Francie O’Leary like he’s never been chased before. I’ll get him to the altar if it’s the last thing I do. I could never understand you still being in love with Jack, until I realised I’ve been in love with Francie since I was sixteen. I’m going to marry him, Josie, or die in the attempt.’

There was a significance about 1974, but Josie couldn’t remember what it was. It wasn’t to do with turning forty, which she didn’t regard as significant, but something else. A long while ago, 1974 had been mentioned as a year when something would happen. She had racked her brains every day since the year began, but nothing would come.

She got ready for work on a crisp, February morning, making up her nearly forty-year-old face in the dressing-table mirror. Now she worked for the accountants from nine till four, with half an hour for lunch, almost full
time. She kept promising herself she would leave, but it was convenient and well paid.

I’m wasting me life, she told herself. Though perhaps I expect too much. There was always a nagging feeling that she was missing out on something.

‘Dinah,’ she yelled. ‘It’s half past eight. You should be on your way to school by now, not still in bed.’

There was an answering thump. Josie went downstairs and made herself a bowl of cornflakes. It was no good putting food out for Dinah, she rarely had time in the mornings to eat. A few minutes later her daughter appeared, looking surprisingly neat in her gymslip, blouse and tie, considering the short time she’d had to get dressed.

‘Don’t want breakfast, Mum.’ She disappeared into the bathroom. Water briefly ran, the lavatory flushed. Dinah reappeared. ‘Where’s me satchel?’

‘Don’t ask me, luv. It’s wherever you left it last night.’

‘Where did I do me homework?’

‘I can’t recall you doing any.’

‘I read a book, didn’t I?’ Dinah looked at her defiantly.

‘I didn’t realise they set
True Confessions
as homework these days.’

‘I read a chapter of
Vanity Fair
, if you must know.’

She must have read it awfully quickly. Josie held back the comment, and found the satchel on the floor beside the settee.

Dinah swung the bag on to her shoulder. ‘Ta, Mum. I might be late home from school.’

‘Where are you going, luv?’ Josie asked anxiously. Dinah was late home most nights. Sometimes it was seven o’clock by the time she put in an appearance.

‘Round Charlie Flaherty’s house.’

‘A boy! Will there be other girls there, Dinah?’

‘Oh, Mum. Get with it. Charlie’s a girl – Charlotte. We’re only going to listen to her record player. Where’s me coat?’

‘Behind the door, where it always is.’

‘Well, it’s not there now!’

The navy blue duffel coat was on the floor on the other side of the settee. Dinah picked it up, muttered a curt, ‘Tara,’ and left the house, only half into the coat.

Josie stood at the window and watched the tall, slim figure of her daughter go running down the path, still struggling with the coat. She sighed. It was a sad fact, but she didn’t get on with Dinah. They never really had, but things had gone from bad to worse since she’d started at the local comprehensive school three years ago. She’d faded the eleven-plus, Josie suspected deliberately, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, because everybody, her mother included, had expected her to pass, or it might have been because she didn’t fancy the long journey each day to the nearest grammar school. Whatever the reason, Dinah had failed, and now they seemed at daggers drawn most of the time.

She went into the dining room and finished off the cornflakes, then drained the pot of tea. She couldn’t help but wonder what Laura might have been like at fourteen. Josie felt sure she wouldn’t have spoken to her mother the way Dinah did, so impatiently, so rudely. They would have done things together – gone shopping, to the pictures, had little confidential chats. Perhaps Dinah would have been different if she’d had a father. Well, she
did
have a father, but he’d decided to ignore her existence, which only made it worse. It can’t have done the girl much good.

‘Oh, well, it’s no use sitting here thinking about what
might have been. I’ll be late for work,’ she said to the empty room.

She would have missed it if it hadn’t been for Mr Kavanagh, still living with Marigold and bedridden most of the time. He telephoned one Sunday morning in July. ‘Do you get the
Sunday Times
, dear?’

‘No, the
News of the World
.’

‘Well, I should get
The Times
today if I were you. There’s an article about that writer you used to work for, Louisa Chalcott. It’s very interesting. It’s her centenary, you see. She was born a hundred years ago this month.’

1974! Louisa had given her a brown envelope sealed with wax which wasn’t to be opened until 1974. Josie thanked Mr Kavanagh, and began to search for the envelope. She couldn’t remember where she’d put it. She ransacked the house, waking up an irritable Dinah who liked to lie in on Sundays, and found it at the bottom of the wardrobe drawer, underneath the spare blankets. She knelt on the floor and took the envelope out.

‘Oh, gosh!’ She recalled the night Louisa had given it to her. She’d just finished the garden, and they were sitting on the bench outside. The sea, the sky, the sand, had looked so beautiful, peaceful.

The envelope looked remarkably new. Josie broke the wax, and withdrew three shiny red exercise books. She flicked through them. Every page was crammed with Louisa’s scarcely decipherable scribble. It wasn’t poetry. She managed to read a page, thought it might be a highly risqué novel, then realised it was the story of Louisa’s life, her autobiography.

‘Oh, gosh!’ she said again.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
was probably mild by comparison. She noticed a slip of paper
had fallen from one of the books. ‘This book,’ she read, ‘is both dedicated and gifted to my dear friend, Miss Josephine Flynn, to do with whatsoever she may please.’

‘Well, I’m not likely to throw it away, am I, Louisa?’ Josie said aloud. ‘All I can do is read it, if I can make sense of your lousy writing, that is.’

‘Who are you talking to?’ Dinah, in the skimpiest of nighties, was at the bedroom door.

‘Meself. I’m just going to get the Sunday paper.’

‘What are those?’ Dinah asked as Josie returned the books and the slip of paper to the envelope.

‘Just something written by an old lady I used to work for. She was a poet. Her name was Louisa Chalcott.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘Well,’ Josie said doubtfully, ‘it’s not suitable for young eyes, luv. It’s pretty hot stuff, as they say.’

Dinah pouted. ‘You don’t mind me reading
True Confessions
.’

‘I do, actually. And this is
True Confessions
with knobs on. Oh, go on.’ She shoved the envelope at her daughter. ‘You probably won’t be able to make head or tail of her writing. Be careful with it. I’d like to try and read it meself some time.’

The article in the
Sunday Times
repeated much that had been in Louisa’s obituary twenty years before. She was before her time, her scandalous lifestyle had caused a furore in turn-of-the-century New York, and even later, in the twenties, when she had given birth to twins but had refused to name the father. The writer went on to say that the twins, Marian Moorcroft and Hilary Mann, now living in Croydon, England, had refused to discuss their mother. Lousia Chalcott’s raw, earthy poetry had seen a renaissance of late. The unsuspected power of her work was only now beginning to be recognised, and
would shortly be republished in full. There was, however, one choice piece of work the public would never see. According to her agent, Leonard McGill, Miss Chalcott had written her autobiography, but unfortunately it appeared to have been lost.

‘“She assured me, several times, in the years prior to her death, that she was writing her life story,” Mr McGill told me. “But although I and her daughters made a thorough search, the manuscript has never come to light.”’

‘Dinah,’ Josie said urgently. ‘Where’s that scrap of paper that fell out the books?’

‘Here.’ Dinah was reading a red exercise book, mouth open, eyes shocked. ‘Shit, Mum. This woman was an
ogre!
A nyphomaniac ogre! She must have been hell to work for.’