Before I Met You (41 page)

The doctor fixed her with a look set somewhere between delight and desire and said, ‘That is a truly awesome name. Good to meet you, Betty,’ before tucking his hands back into his pockets and sauntering away.

Betty blinked after him in surprise. She felt unsettled and not at all happy that John Brightly was being treated and diagnosed
by
a man who used the word ‘awesome’ and hit on his patient’s friends.

The next hour ticked away slowly and incessantly. Betty fiddled with her phone and managed to work out how to send a text message. She sent it to the only other friend she knew with a mobile phone, Joe Joe.

‘I’m in the hospital with John from downstairs. He knocked his head. How are you?’

A message appeared thirty seconds later. ‘I am good, baby, how are u. And poor John, kiss him from me! We all miss U!!’

Betty imagined Joe Joe in his Wendy’s uniform, typing to her from the staffroom with a large Pepsi in his spare hand and someone else sitting opposite him eating chips and reading the
Sun
. Another world, she thought, another life.

‘Miss you too,’ she replied, ‘xxx.’

She found a game on her phone, Patience, which she played until the battery started flashing at her. Then she read a copy of
Take a Break
magazine, got herself a bag of crisps from a vending machine, and had a cup of tea in a polystyrene cup. Finally John appeared in the corridor, being pushed in a wheelchair, looking sheepish and shell-shocked.

‘Hello, trouble,’ he said croakily.

‘You can talk,’ she replied.

John laughed.

‘My first day off this week and I’ve spent most of it in A&E,’ she said.

‘Then you’re a fool,’ he said.

Betty laughed then, and before she’d thought about what she was doing she’d taken his hand in hers. ‘I must be,’ she said. ‘Felt sorry for you.’

He had a row of stitches on his temple and was attached to a drip that followed them on wheels up the corridors towards the lift.

‘You look good,’ she said, as the lift doors closed and they started their ascent to the ward.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I bet I do.’

‘No, I mean it, you do. Compared to how you looked two hours ago.’

‘When I was spread-eagled on a toilet floor, covered in blood and sweating profusely, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’ She squeezed his hand and smiled. ‘Exactly.’

‘How did you find me?’ he asked.

‘Toiletries man.’

‘Micky.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Good old Micky.’ The lift doors opened and the porter pushed John down another corridor.

‘You know that’s it now, don’t you? You have to move. You cannot live in that flat for a minute longer.’

John shrugged. ‘Usual issues. No time.’

‘Well, then stay with me.’ The words were out of her mouth before she’d even thought it through. ‘I’m hardly there. You’re hardly there. It’s so convenient.’

‘Er, Betty, you live in a studio flat.’

‘Yes, I do. But I have a sofa.’

‘I’m six foot two.’

‘Well, then I’ll call your sister, you can stay with her.’

‘No way!’

‘Then stay with me. My flat is small, but it is very warm. And very dry. And I can get you things, you know, glasses of water. And bowls of soup.’

‘You’re mad,’ he said.

‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘But I’m also practical. And this makes total sense.’ The porter stopped at the nurses’ station on the ward and talked to the nurse behind the desk. Then John was taken to a bed in the corner of the ward where Betty and the porter helped him onto the bed.

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, patting her hand slightly patronisingly. ‘But listen, for now, while I’m stuck here, I need to ask you a really big favour. Could you pack up my pitch? Micky will help. The keys to my van are in my jacket pocket.’

‘Where’s your jacket?’

‘On my pitch. Under the table.’

‘Right, and where’s your van?’

‘Underground car park on Brewer Street. I’m really sorry. This is all a fucking hassle.’

‘No. It’s fine. It’s not a hassle. I can sort it all out. I’ve got nothing else to do. Honestly.’

John looked at her and then he patted her hand again, fondly this time.

‘I could store your stuff in my place.’

‘And again, I remind you, you live in a studio flat.’

‘There’s room,’ she said. ‘I can make room.’

John paused for a moment and then smiled weakly. ‘Why are you being so nice?’ he asked.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she replied. ‘I think we already ascertained that we hold each other in high regard. I’m just being a friend.’

He looked at her curiously, as if he was trying to work out a puzzle. Then he smiled again and nodded. ‘That would be brilliant,’ he said. ‘Totally brilliant. Thank you.’ He squeezed her hand and Betty felt her stomach roll over unexpectedly.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

‘And talking of being friends, I did something for you earlier. I went to the library. Did some research. I was going to tell you about it when you got back from work. But I decided to faint in a public toilet and split my head open instead, so –’

‘What?’ said Betty, excitedly. ‘What did you find?’

‘I found Gideon Worsley’s nephew.’

‘What. How?’

He shrugged. ‘It was easy. I looked up Gideon in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
and saw that he had a brother called Toby
who
was a major-general, brought a battalion through the Battle of the Somme, and it said that he had a son called Jeremiah. I thought, well, how many Jeremiah Worsleys could there be in the world, so I looked him up in the phonebook and there he was, running an antiques shop in World’s End.’

Betty stared at him.

‘The address is in my jacket pocket.’

‘Under your pitch?’

‘Under my pitch.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘No. I thought I’d leave that treat for you.’

A nurse appeared inside the curtained cubicle and took John’s temperature. She consulted a clipboard at the foot of his bed and smiled and said, ‘Much better. It’s right down to normal.’

‘Go,’ said John.

‘What?’

‘Go home. Sort my pitch. Get down to World’s End. He’ll be shutting up his shop soon.’

Betty looked anxiously between John and the nurse. ‘Is he going to be all right,’ she asked. ‘I mean, if I go?’

The nurse nodded. ‘He’s going to be absolutely fine. Someone’s bringing up the anti-bs. We’ll keep him in until they’ve done their job, and to monitor his temperature, but then he’ll be fine to go home.’

‘So, what, tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ said the nurse. ‘Maybe. Probably.’

Betty squeezed John’s hand one more time. ‘You’ve got my mobile phone number. Call me, if you need me. But I’ll be back later. At visiting hours.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I’m not being daft.’ She kissed his forehead, firmly, maternally. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘I won’t be expecting you.’

She left the cubicle then, through the curtains, and was
halfway
to the door when she heard the nurse say to John, ‘She’s very pretty, your girlfriend.’ And then she heard John reply, ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’ Betty stopped, to hear what he would say next, but he said nothing, so she carried on towards the door.

Jeremiah Worsley’s antiques shop at World’s End was the most enchanting shop Betty had ever set foot in. It still had its original ornate Victorian shop front and was filled in every square foot with beautiful objects: tables made from swirling green marble and gleaming gold, oversized chandeliers, candlesticks held aloft by pewter ladies, exquisitely detailed marquetry cabinets, and immense oil paintings of bosomy gentlewomen posed with spaniels. It reminded her, almost, of Arlette’s boudoir and the atmosphere was complemented by a crackling 78 playing quietly on a gramophone player, a cut-glass English voice singing a sweet song about swallows and swifts and sweethearts.

Behind a large mahogany and marble desk sat a man who looked a little like a toad, or possibly a sea lion. He was large – very large – his girth straining against a striped waistcoat, his hair a mass of oily white curls, his face a terrifying scarlet boil. He was humming gently along with the music and slowly turning the pages of a book about Edith Piaf.

He glanced up at Betty as she entered and said, ‘Good afternoon’ in a booming drawl that pulled out the last syllable to an almost comical extent.

She approached his desk and he eyed her again from over the top of his book. He sighed, almost imperceptibly, and laid the book down on the desk top. ‘Yes, dear lady, can I help you? I’m not hiring at the moment. In fact, I’m probably going to have to sell up and then throw myself from a bridge onto a motorway, given the current economic climate. So …’

Betty smiled, glad that she was not about to add to his woes. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not looking for a job, I’m looking for Jeremiah Worsley.’

‘You have found him.’ He smiled, a touch facetiously.

‘Good. Excellent. My name’s Betty.’

‘Oh,’ he smiled, ‘a Betty. I have not met a Betty in a very long time. The last Betty I knew was my char. Back in the days when I could afford a char.’ He raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘So, Betty, what can I do for you?’

‘Well, I’m doing some detective work,’ she said. ‘My grandmother just passed away and she left a substantial amount of money in her will to a mysterious beneficiary. I’ve got as far as working out that she was part of the jazz scene in Soho in the early twenties and that she was friends with your uncle, Gideon Worsley. In fact, he painted her.’

Suddenly Jeremiah Worsley’s entire demeanour changed. He drew himself up straight in his capacious chair, pulled his slouching shoulders up to his chin, slammed his hands down upon the table top and shouted out, ‘
Arlette
!’

Betty gasped. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

‘An
educated guess
, dear girl. So, good grief, you’re her granddaughter, you say?’

‘I’m her step-granddaughter. But we were very close.’

‘Oh my goodness, my goodness. Arlette’s granddaughter! This calls for a tipple. Can I get you one?’ He pulled a decanter from a drawer inside his desk and held out two tumblers.

‘Yes, please.’ Betty had no idea what she was about to be given, but agreed with Jeremiah that this seemed absolutely the right moment for a stiff drink. This was it, she thought, she was right on the cusp of finding Clara Pickle.

He passed her something brown and fumy and she took a sip. She suspected it might be brandy.

‘Well, well,’ he said, smiling broadly now, revealing brandy-ravaged teeth. ‘So, tell me more. Tell me what you need to know.’

‘Everything,’ said Betty, her throat burning against the drink. ‘I need to know everything.’

‘Well, dear oh dear. All I know is family lore. All I know is that Arlette was my uncle’s muse, a lovely-looking girl, it would seem, going by his portraits of her.’

‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘Oh, no. Good grief, no, she was long gone before I was even born.’

‘Gone where?’

‘I have no idea. Wherever you found her, I presume. The story goes that my uncle Gideon fell madly in love with her, pursued her, but she was in love with another man. I think, possibly, one of the jazz musicians they were comporting with. And then all of a sudden she had a change of heart, ditched the musician and married Gideon. And then, it seemed, she simply disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And Uncle Gideon went rather mad after this. Rather unhinged. Stopped painting. Was made to marry his cousin, rather against his will, and then topped himself the night before the wedding.’

‘I thought he fell from a horse.’

‘Ah, yes, well, that’s what it says in the NPG. Yes, the official line. The family history, though, says that he drank himself into a stupor, took some terrible opiate and then took off over the hills without any saddlery on a horse that everyone knew was not to be trusted. Seeking oblivion. Knew that if the booze and the drugs didn’t wipe him out, the mad horse would.’

‘So Gideon had no children?’

‘None that we know of. Although, of course, the lore could be wrong, Arlette might have fallen pregnant with his child – maybe that’s why she disappeared. What was the surname of the girl named in the will?’

‘Pickle.’

Jeremiah guffawed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘really?’

‘That is it. Really. Clara Pickle.’

He stopped laughing and furrowed his brow. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that makes no sense whatsoever. I think, in that case, the connection ends here. There is no one called Pickle in our family and I have never even heard of the name before. There is obviously another strand to this story that does not involve the Worsley family.’ He sighed. ‘What a terrible pity.’

‘Are there any other portraits?’ asked Betty. ‘That you know of?’

‘Of Arlette? Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘gosh, yes. Plenty. The estate has them.’

‘The estate?’

‘Yes, what was formerly our family home in Oxfordshire, and is now a tourist attraction and wedding venue. Gideon’s portraits live there now. In the Gideon Worsley Room. Lots of Arlette. You should head up there, take a look.’

Betty blinked. ‘Really?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. About five or six, I’d say. Including quite a famous one. Here, hold on just one minute …’ He turned in his swivel chair and hooked a large hardback book out of a shelf with a fat finger. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘this is one of Uncle Gideon’s most famous paintings.’

He opened the book up in front of him and then turned it to face her. He tapped the picture with his finger. ‘It’s called
Arlette and Sandy
. Imagine that, sixty inches square.’ He described a large square with his hands. ‘It’s utterly mesmerising.’

Betty leaned forward to look at the painting.

It was composed of Arlette, looking very young and delicate, seated on a chaise longue in a loosely buttoned chiffon blouse, leaning with her head against the shoulder of a very handsome black man. The man had a long face, large eyes, a roman nose and was wearing a white shirt under an unbuttoned waistcoat, staring lustily at the artist. It was a picture full of passion and yearning. The sitters looked as though they had just been caught in the act of undressing each other by the artist.