Tara (8 page)

George's philosophy of life was very simple. He believed personal happiness was the cornerstone to success and so anything that gave one pleasure was good. Eating, drinking, chatting with friends, making money, spending it, laughing and loving, these were the ingredients he thought important. He had soon found three willing disciples as far as food was concerned, and never a day passed without him coming in with some delicacy for them.

Paul had all but dropped his stutter, and he rarely flinched any more when someone moved near him. Tara said he had only wet the bed a couple of times and he had gained almost a stone in weight. Tara's figure had begun to develop, tiny buds of breasts in a chest that at Christmas had been almost concave. Her hair shone, her skin had a bloom to it. She was growing very pretty.

All this luxury was dangerously seductive.

'If you were the only girl in the world' wafted up through the floorboards. Tara and Harry were singing it together, and judging by Paul's laughter they were doing a comic routine. Tara's sweet girlish voice mingled with Harry's gruff one, and the words brought back memories to Amy of Bill singing it to her.

She knew Tara was already getting a crush on Harry. It was entirely understandable, she was almost thirteen and he was as kind and attentive as he was handsome.

There was so much Amy liked about George's son – his quick mind, generosity of spirit, courage and ready laughter. But every time her daughter laughed at Harry, gazing at him adoringly with those big amber eyes, a cold chill ran down Amy's spine. Harry had the charisma, daring and charm of Bill. But he also had the same hunger for money and a place further up the social scale.

'I want to own a nightclub,' he had admitted dreamily to Amy one evening. 'I can't spend my life out in the cold like Dad, working for peanuts. I want to be someone.'

'Don't try any short-cuts,' she'd urged him. 'It would break your dad's heart if you ended up in trouble. Find another job if you like, break away from the market, but don't be tempted to rob to get what you want.'

It was Harry who constantly brought back reminders of the past. His conversations were peppered with phrases Bill used, he loved to talk about the gangsters and villains Bill had mixed with. Without realising it, he was influencing both Tara and Paul. Unless she could get her children away from the East End now, Amy feared they would grow up accepting its double standards. Tara would undoubtedly fall for Harry. Paul would grow up to hero-worship him.

Harry had fine principles now, just as Bill had had when they first got married, but instinct told Amy that corruption was just around the corner.

And then there was Bill.

He wouldn't give up, Amy knew that for certain. He was biding his time. George was brave and kind but he failed to take Bill's cunning into account. Amy knew she had to get away, but where could she go? How would she feed the children and pay rent? Maybe she could make enough at private dressmaking eventually, but how would she live until she got established?

'Look at Mum, Uncle George!' Paul was so excited he jumped up and down on the spot. 'She's got real teeth and she's had her hair done!'

Harry patted Paul's head and grinned.

'She looks like a film star now, don't she?'

At George's insistence Harry had been her chauffeur for the day, first for the last stage of her dental treatment, then to a hairdresser's up West.

Amy blushed but she couldn't prevent herself smiling in the hall mirror. She had believed false teeth would be the only answer, but George had found a dentist who did astounding bridge work and now she looked almost like she had on her wedding day.

Her blonde hair had been cut short, layered into an elfin style that accentuated her dainty features and big blue eyes. Good food, rest and loving care had brought back roses to her cheeks, flesh to her bones and a spring to her step.

'I'll pay you back when I get work,' she insisted. 'Goodness knows how I'll ever get out of hock to you, George, whatever would I have done without you?'

'It's payment enough seeing your pretty face.' George took her coat and hung it on the hall stand. 'By the way, a letter came for you while you were out.'

George was seriously worried. Four times in the last two weeks he had seen the same car parked up along Cambridge Heath Road, watching his house. Reynolds, the butcher at the market, had been quizzed by a man who claimed to be an old army buddy of George's, and down at the snooker club someone else had been making enquiries about why Harry and George never seemed to drink together these days. MacDonald was rumoured to be working away on a road building gang, but he had obviously enlisted some help.

Harry was spoiling for a fight. He wanted to go straight for the jugular, find MacDonald, give him a good kicking and send him packing, so they could get back the life they had before Amy came to stay, and right now George was beginning to think that this was the only avenue left open to them.

'A letter!' Amy's face fell. 'No-one knows I'm here!'

'Father Glynn from St John's does.' George's gravelly voice grew husky. 'Maybe this is his doing.'

Panic and hope jostled for position on Amy's face.

'A new home for us?' she asked.

'Open it and read it,' George suggested.

The letter lay on the coffee table. Tara and Paul were watching Rin Tin Tin on the television. Harry had gone out into the kitchen.

'It's from Mother,' Amy's voice was so faint George could barely hear it. She looked down at the white envelope in shock. 'I recognise the handwriting.'

'Well open it, then,' George urged her.

'I can't.' She shrank back, all colour fading from her face. 'I'm scared. You open it. If it's a horrible letter don't tell me.'

George ripped open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper. He read it quickly and sighed deeply.

'It's bad, isn't it?' Amy whispered.

'No.' George shook his head. He cleared his throat and sat down on the settee to read it aloud.

"The address is Bridge Farm, Chew Magna, Somerset.' He glanced round at Amy who had moved to sit on the arm of the children's chair.' "My dear Amy, I am distressed to hear from Father Glynn that you have been badly hurt. Although MacDonald has proved me to be right about him, I take no pleasure in that. Come here immediately, this is your home and where you belong, and we must save your children from the anguish we both experienced in London. I have no money to send you but I'm sure Father Glynn will help you with the train fare.

Mabel, your mother."'

Amy stared at George for a moment, a hundred different images of her mother flashing through her mind.

The beautiful red-haired Mabel of her early childhood, the woman who painted, played the piano, laughed and sang. Later, the unkempt, wild-eyed woman who wouldn't take Amy to the shelter during the air raids, who would have let herself starve to death and her child with her. But the image Amy recalled most clearly was the stern-faced, cold-hearted person who read aloud from the Bible, who saw even a new pink ribbon on a dress as one of the Devil's hoofs coming through the door. The woman who didn't even put aside her prejudice when her grandchildren were born.

'Well?' George raised a questioning eyebrow. 'Two fingers up, or do we give her a whirl?'

Amy took the letter and read it again, lingering over such words as 'distressed' and 'anguish'.

'She must be sixty now.' She was shaken by the rush of long-buried emotions. 'I don't understand why she's at a farm, though.'

George explained all he knew. 'Didn't she ever talk about it when you was a kid?' he asked.

'No.' Amy frowned as she tried to remember. 'Dad used to say things about his childhood and the boarding school he was sent to, but Mum never did. Why do you think that was?'

'Father Glynn reckons she vowed never to go back until her old man was brown bread.' He shook his head slowly. 'That letter's summat, Amy, but it ain't exactly what I had in mind.'

'You were hoping for the return of the prodigal daughter.'

'You don't have to go,' George assured her, his forehead furrowed with frown lines. 'I only thought it might make you feel easier, to know where she was.'

'Why don't she like us?' Tara asked as Amy tucked her and Paul into bed. 'What did we do to her?'

'The word is doesn't, not don't,' Amy reproved her.

They had talked of nothing but Mabel all evening. George had made them laugh with funny stories from before the War, and Harry had chimed in with his recollections. But Amy had kept quiet.

At this stage she didn't want to sway the children one way or another. She wanted them to want to see their grandmother, but at the same time not be too shocked if she turned out to be even stranger than Amy remembered. Filling them in on the missing years would be like walking a tightrope, but she knew she must take the first tentative steps.

'Neither of you did anything, she never even saw you.' Amy sat down on the bed, tucking a teddy bear in beside her daughter. Paul bounded out and on to his mother's lap, his arms creeping round her neck.

'Tell us about her?'

'There's so much to tell.' Amy smiled down at her son and held him tightly. 'But I'm not sure it's right to tell tales on someone we might be going to see soon.'

'We won't tell her you told us.' Tara sat up in bed, pulling up her knees to her chest and hugging them. 'Tell us how she went barmy.'

Amy shook her head, not sure whether she should reprove Tara, yet at the same time knowing she couldn't avoid the subject for ever.

'Going barmy, as you call it,' she said gently, 'is often nature's way of blocking out pain. Not pain like with a broken leg or a bad cut, but a pain in the heart. Until the day Mother got that telegram about Dad, she was a happy, lively woman. She had the kind of personality that made everyone like her. She was an artist, she painted the most beautiful water-colours, she could play the piano very well, and she was very pretty.'

'Like you?' Paul asked.

'Not really, more like Tara. The same eyes and hair. Of course I was only nine when everything went wrong and I didn't know much about anything except what went on in our street, but I remember people looking up at her. One of our neighbours called her "the Duchess of Durwood Street". You see she spoke well, like a lady, she had good manners and made sure I did, too. As a child I never questioned why someone like her ended up in Whitechapel, after all I didn't know anything else.'

'It looks like she got thrown out for marrying Grandpa,' Tara said.

'Perhaps, but I know they were together for at least ten years before I was born, maybe even more than that. She told me once they had given up hope of having a child, she was thirty when I was born and your grandpa joined the Army because it was the Depression and there wasn't any work.'

Paul frowned. 'You mean he couldn't find any job except being a soldier?'

'That's right, and it must have been difficult being apart when they were so happy together. Funnily enough, though, I only remember clearly the times he was home. We used to go to Southend on the Tower Belle. Sometimes we went in a charabanc with other families and had picnics in the country. Other times it was just the three of us going to Victoria Park together, or the street parties. We had one for the Coronation of George VI in 1937 and it lasted two days! Dad took the piano out into the street and there was an old man who played the accordion. It was wonderful, coloured bunting, flags, paper hats. All the grown-ups danced and got tiddly, us kids played musical chairs and scoffed all the food.'

'Was Grandpa shot by a German?' Paul asked.

'I suppose he must have been, but up till then the War didn't seem real. We saw him off on a train, I remember, the station was packed with soldiers, kitbags, women and children. He picked me up to hug me and told me to look after Mother.'

Even now, Amy remembered it all so clearly. There must have been thousands of people crowded into Charing Cross station and from the viewpoint of her father's shoulders it was very exciting.

Her small hands caressed her father's blond hair absentmindedly as she surveyed the people all around her. There were splashes of bright colour – her mother's emerald green costume and her vivid gold hair curling on her shoulders; an old lady wearing a pink hat with an artificial rose on it. But mostly it was khaki uniforms, stretching as far as she could see. Steam belched from the waiting engines, the smells of oil, cigarettes and beer filled the air.

It was from her high perch that she noticed sadness wasn't peculiar to her own mother and father. Soldiers were hugging their wives, many women were dabbing hankies at streaming eyes.

'You are coming back, aren't you, Daddy?' Amy twisted her father's head upwards with her small hands so she could see him better, suddenly aware this was different from all the other times they'd seen him off back to the camp.

He reached up and caught her under her arms, lifting her right up above his head and down in front of him.

'You don't really think I'd leave my two best girls for long?' He looked down at her and smiled.

An icy chill ran down her spine, not because she didn't believe him, but because for the first time ever she saw fear in his face. She turned to her mother and caught her wiping away a tear.

Her parents were a handsome couple, Amy had heard that said since she was tiny. Arthur's blond hair, twinkling blue eyes and peachy skin suggested a boyish innocence, but the thin scar from his ear to his jaw, broad shoulders and rippling muscles spoke of an underlying toughness. Mabel, with her fiery colouring, hour-glass figure and beautiful face, demanded a second look. If there were ballots in Whitechapel for the most envied couple, the Randalls would have won.

Amy pressed her face into the rough serge of her father's uniform and drank in that smell of Blanko, cigarettes and Lifebuoy soap that was peculiar to him.

'Princess!' His hands gripped her sides, lifting her up into a fierce hug. 'You look after your mother for me and just be a good girl.'

She couldn't remember the train pulling out, just the image of her parents' last embrace.