Father Unknown (29 page)

Less than fifteen minutes later she was walking up the hill towards the Downs and Clifton which lay beyond them. She had little more with her than when she’d left Cornwall – just new clothes that had replaced her old ones, and a few personal items she’d bought to make her bedroom more homely. But the case was heavy and it was starting to rain. She thought Roger might have come and said something to her before she left. He had always been more considerate and appreciative than his wife, but he’d stayed in the sitting-room throughout the row, and she thought he was cowardly.

But she was most saddened by not being allowed to say goodbye to the boys. She had grown to love them, and she was going to miss them terribly. Yet she bit back her tears and walked on determinedly.

She thought of telephoning Dr Fordham, but dismissed the idea immediately. She wasn’t going to beg for a bed for the night, she still had some pride.

It was another two weeks before Ellen was able to go and visit Josie. On the evening she’d been thrown out of the Sandersons’ home, she had got the local paper and seen that several hotels were advertising for live-in chambermaids. She rang several of them, although by then it was very late. All but one said she could come for an interview the following morning, but the St Vincent’s Rocks Hotel in Clifton sounded so desperate that she felt able to suggest she could call on them immediately.

They took her on there and then, at six pounds a week all found, and gave her a tiny room up in the attics. That night, as she looked out of her window and saw the Suspension Bridge across the Avon Gorge all lit up in the rain, she felt happier than she had for a long time. She was free for the very first time in her life.

As the coach drove into the bus station at Victoria, Ellen’s stomach was full of butterflies, afraid Josie might not be there to meet her as she’d promised. She had never been to London before, and she hadn’t expected it to be quite so vast, or so busy with traffic and people. But as she stepped down from the coach, Josie came whirling through the crowds and enveloped her in a tight hug.

‘I was afraid you might miss the bus or not be able to come after all,’ she blurted out. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else all week but you coming.’

For a moment or two Ellen could only stare at her sister in wonder. She looked so grown-up and beautiful in an emerald-green mini-dress with matching shoes. It was one thing to see her pictures, she knew that someone did her hair and makeup and chose her clothes for her, but she hadn’t expected her to look like a fashion plate in the flesh.

‘You look so gorgeous,’ she said reverently, then blushed, realizing how frumpy she looked in comparison. ‘I should have bought something new to wear,’ she added.

Josie giggled and looked Ellen up and down, as if agreeing that her cotton skirt was far too long and her blouse only suitable for the dustbin. ‘You can wear some of my things,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe how many clothes I’ve got now, they often give me stuff I model.’

On the bus back to Chelsea and her flat, Josie never drew breath once, pointing out sights, talking about restaurants and pubs she’d been to, and she mentioned Mark in almost every sentence.

It was only as they got off the bus that she asked how Ellen’s job was.

‘Dead easy,’ Ellen grinned. ‘Especially after how hard I was working at the Sandersons’. I only work from seven in the morning till twelve, doing the rooms and stuff. Then I get the afternoons off, go back to turn the beds down around seven, and that’s it for the day.’

‘So what do you do with all that time off?’ Josie asked.

Ellen shrugged. ‘Go round to flat-letting places to see what they’ve got, read, sunbathe on the Downs. Look in the shops. There’s another girl there called Anne, we often go out together in the evenings.’

‘What, to pubs or night-clubs?’ Josie asked.

‘No,’ Ellen giggled. ‘Just for a walk, or to the pictures. We aren’t old enough for that sort of stuff yet.’

‘Neither am I,’ Josie said airily. ‘But I go to them all the time with Mark.’

Ellen was really impressed by Josie’s sunny, spacious flat, although there wasn’t much furniture. ‘Where do you hang your washing?’ she asked, and Josie got a fit of giggles.

‘Don’t be daft, Ell,’ she said. ‘People in Chelsea don’t hang washing out. They take it to the laundrette.’

Ellen wanted to know what that was, and how much it cost, but Josie wasn’t interested in talking about such mundane things.

‘Get something out to wear,’ she insisted, pointing to the wardrobe. ‘And put some makeup on, then we’ll go down the King’s Road.’

Ellen wasn’t sure she had the courage to wear the dress Josie eventually selected for her. It was pale lemon with cut-away shoulders, and so short it barely covered her bottom, but she was pretty certain her sister wouldn’t be seen dead with anyone looking dowdy, so she said nothing. She made no comment either when Josie insisted she did her makeup for her. She never normally wore anything more than lipstick and mascara, and she thought the dark eyeliner was too much. But she was in London now after all.

It turned out to be the most wonderful day Ellen had ever spent. All down the King’s Road there were boutiques that sold amazing clothes, all too expensive for Ellen to buy anything, but it was fun just to look at them and try a few things on.

They went into coffee bars and watched other people walking by, and they all amazed Ellen too. All the girls wore minis, as short as the one Josie had insisted she wore, and there were no beehive hairstyles here like in Bristol. Everyone had sleek, bouncy, loose styles, short like Cilia Black’s, or long and flowing. The men were very different too. Few went in for the Mod style Ellen was used to – very short hair, heavy boots and jeans, or sharply tailored suits and winkle-pickers. Here the men wore their hair longer, influenced strongly by the Beatles, and their clothes were more individual – coloured shirts, and jeans so tight Ellen wondered how they could sit down. She and Josie attracted a great deal of attention, and several times Josie was recognized as Jojo the model.

‘I expect I could have the pick of any man walking along here,’ Josie said at one point in the afternoon as they stopped for another coffee at a place with tables outside in the sun.

‘I’m sure you could.’ Ellen smiled, a little embarrassed at her sister’s high opinion of herself. She had plenty of admiring glances herself, and she was enjoying it, in fact for the first time since Catherine was born she felt she would actually like to have a boyfriend. ‘So why don’t you pick someone then? Go on, I dare you!’

‘I can’t, because I’m in love with Mark,’ Josie replied, and for the first time during the day she looked uncertain.

‘So he’s your boyfriend then?’ Ellen wanted to meet and get to like this man she’d heard so much about, but so far she had only formed the opinion there was something fishy about him.

‘Not exactly,’ Josie said, and her eyes dropped. ‘Well, not in the way you mean, kissing and stuff. He does everything for me, manages me, gets me work and takes the pictures. But that’s all.’

This came as a bit of a relief to Ellen. She had made it her business to find out about Mark back in Bristol, and she knew he was in his mid-thirties and divorced. There was a great deal to admire about his work; she’d managed to find a book at the library with some of his award-winning photographs in it. But she was still waiting for an explanation as to how he really got involved with her sister, and why.

‘Tell me everything that happened after you left the farm,’ she suggested.

Josie told her a great deal, about the awful room she’d had, waitressing, and then how she got into working at the fake photographic studio. Then she explained how Mark came to her rescue.

‘He said he was going to make me a big star,’ she said with a toss of her head, making her corkscrew curls tumble about her face. ‘We’re getting there too, I’m in great demand already’

‘So how much money are you making?’ Ellen asked. She wanted to let Josie know how much she had hurt their parents and berate her for not letting her know where she was earlier, but she didn’t want to start playing big sister just yet.

Josie shrugged. ‘I only get pocket money now, Mark sees to the rent and everything for me.’

Ellen knew nothing whatsoever about what models earned, but she reckoned it had to be quite a bit. She didn’t like the sound of this at all, and said so.

‘Don’t try and make out you know everything,’ Josie snapped at her. ‘Mark isn’t pocketing the money if that’s what you are thinking. It takes a long time for it to come in. Besides, he gave me twenty-five pounds yesterday so I could treat you to meals and stuff.’

Ellen didn’t want to upset Josie so she said nothing. But later, when they went to a hamburger place, it occurred to her while Josie was crowing about how plain most other models were when you saw them without makeup, that her sister still hadn’t asked her anything about when she had her baby.

She waited until late that evening when they’d gone back to the flat. They had been in a pub where they’d both had three half pints of cider. That was quite enough for Ellen, but Josie had insisted on buying a flagon to take home too.

They each had a glass sitting on the bed, and suddenly Ellen had to speak out. ‘You haven’t asked about my baby,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Have you forgotten that’s why I went to work for the Sandersons?’

Josie gave her a blank look. ‘You really had one then?’ she said. ‘I thought when you didn’t say anything in your letters to me when I was still at home that it was a false alarm.’

‘I was over four months pregnant when I left, how could that be a false alarm?’

Josie had the grace to look crestfallen then. ‘Well, I told you that it was all right to say anything in your letters because Mum wasn’t reading them.’

‘I didn’t dare take the risk,’ Ellen said. ‘I put the telephone number on the letters, I expected you to ring me from a call box around the time Catherine was due.’

‘Catherine!’ Josie looked surprised and almost ashamed. ‘It was a girl then?’

Ellen nodded, waiting for Josie to ask some more questions, but instead she changed the subject and started talking about what kind of furniture she was going to buy once she got some big money.

‘I’d like a couple of those really modern big round chairs like eggs, that swivel around,’ she said. ‘They’ve got one at the model agency.’

‘I’d like to stick you in a swivelling chair and spin you round and round until you are sick,’ Ellen snapped. ‘Don’t you bloody well care what happened to my baby and me? Have you got any idea what it was like?’

Josie’s eyes opened wide. ‘Well, you had it adopted, didn’t you? It’s over now.’

‘It will
never
be over,’ Ellen said fiercely. ‘She’s on my mind all the time, she probably will be forever. You could show some sympathy. She was your niece after all.’

Josie got up from the bed and wandered off into the kitchen to fill up her glass. ‘You’ll get married before long and have another one,’ she called back through the door.

On the coach the following evening as Ellen travelled back to Bristol, she thought about how callous Josie had been, and decided it was because she was too young to comprehend the heartbreak of giving away her own flesh and blood. She’d been so callous about her own mother too; she just didn’t care about Violet’s feelings.

Ellen couldn’t find it in her to wish heartbreak on her sister so she’d discover what it was like. Josie thought she had the world at her feet, and Ellen fervently hoped she would find real fame and fortune.

Chapter Fourteen

1966

‘Come on, Jojo,’ Mark pulled back the bed covers and forced her to sit up, ‘get yourself together. We’ve got the
Vogue
shoot today.’

‘I’m too tired,’ Josie said, and tried to get back under the covers.

It was mid-November, and dark still, but Josie knew it had to be seven in the morning if Mark had come to collect her.

He yanked her up again, more roughly this time, and forced her to take the cup of coffee he’d made. ‘Drink that now and take those,’ he said, indicating a couple of bright red pills on the bedside table. ‘By the time you’ve had a bath you’ll be on top of the world.’

Josie forced her eyelids apart; they were gummed up with a combination of glue from false eyelashes and mascara. She had meant to take her makeup off before going to bed, but she’d been too drunk to bother. She reached eagerly for the pills Mark had put down, popped them into her mouth and washed them down with coffee.

Mark stood in the doorway looking scornfully at her. ‘You look disgusting,’ he said. ‘If you don’t pull yourself together I’ll drop you and find someone else.’

Josie was still too sleepy to make any retort, and besides, she didn’t believe he would ever drop her. She was too famous. Absolutely everyone wanted her, the fashion magazines and the big companies who wanted her to advertise their shampoos, makeup and perfume.

But she was worried about how horrible he was being to her these days. He didn’t even seem to want to sleep with her any more. Last night he’d brought her home drunk from a press party, carried her up the stairs, then flung her down on the bed and left without even a goodnight kiss.

He went off to run her bath, and she got gingerly out of bed and pulled on a dressing-gown. Looking in the mirror, she could see he was right. She did look disgusting. Her skin was muddy and she had dark circles under her eyes.

By the time she’d had her bath and washed her hair, she felt better, for the speed was beginning to work. She put on clean underwear, jeans and a sweater. There was no need to put on makeup or arrange her hair, they’d do that at the shoot.

‘If you’d just give me a few days’ rest, I wouldn’t need pills to wake me up and more to send me to sleep,’ she said wistfully, as she gave her hair a rough rub with the towel. ‘Let me go down to Ellen’s for a few days?’

Mark was lounging in her one and only chair, watching her contemptuously. He did that all the time now; Josie felt sometimes that he hated her. Yet she couldn’t quite see why; the maroon leather jacket and snakeskin boots he was wearing were evidence of how much money he was making from her.