Georgia (54 page)

Sam just stared at Hilda. She was counting on her fingers.

‘They said the baby was ten weeks old. That works right back to happening just before you left for Germany.’

The room was spinning. It was too hot. He wanted to run out denying what this woman was telling him.

Was this some sort of bad dream? Why should he believe this baby belonged to Katy anyway? Twenty years distorted everything.

‘What happened to this baby?’ he asked.

Hilda shook her head.

‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘Mrs Kirkpatrick would have known, and my mother too, but they both died years ago. I almost wish Dad hadn’t brought you up here. Perhaps it would have been better if you’d never known about any of this.’

A spotlight glinted on his saxophone as he raised it to his lips. He filled his lungs with air, fingers poised on the keys.

‘Watermelon man’, a fitting number for a poor black man from New Orleans. He hadn’t been prepared to sit in with the band tonight, but they’d insisted.

Scores of people sitting out there in the smoky darkness waiting to see if he could truly make his horn sing and all Sam could think of was Katy.

He tried to cut out the ugly scene Hilda had described and remember Katy how she was.

The notes came out as he pictured her running to him down the lane at Lakenheath. The fields were yellow with buttercups, she was wearing a pink dress that clung to her slim legs, her arms held out to him, hair flowing back from the small heart-shaped face. Cherry lips, cheeks pink with excitement.

‘I’ve found a place we can be together,’ she shouted even before she reached him. ‘I love you Sam.’

He didn’t know he was putting all that into his music. It was all so real he could smell the fields, feel the sunshine on his neck and face, hear her voice.

A roar washed over him, bringing him back to the present.

Out beyond the stage he could see nothing but a blur of white faces and clapping hands.

So she was dead. Yet, in a way it was kinder than thinking she stopped loving him. He was back in the country that made him a man, and by that applause he knew he’d played a great solo.

He had turned a corner in his life. So Ellie had run out on him, but how could he blame her? Hadn’t he ever only loved her with half a heart? He knew the truth at last about Katy and he had his children.

Maybe the baby found in the rubble wasn’t his, but he couldn’t rest until he found that out for certain.

‘I’m counting on you.’ Those were Katy’s last words to him, and this time he wouldn’t let her down.

Chapter 20

The headline mocked him even though he had moved away from the table where the newspaper lay. Even if he closed his eyes he could still see it.

‘Our Georgia, home again in triumph.’

‘How dare she smile like that after what she’s put me through?’ he muttered. Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to screw up the paper and throw it to one side without reading further.

Moving slowly back to the table, he bent over and tried to bring the small print into focus. His glasses were broken, and he had no money left to replace them. Dirt-encrusted fingers twitched with a kind of palsy. He was cold, his chest hurt, and now this.

‘Are you in there Mr Anderson?’

He heard the Irish voice at the door but ignored it. He could imagine Mrs Dooley’s fat face squashed against his door as she listened, vast breasts straining her overall. Swollen purple feet incongruous in furry pink slippers.

She kept in with the landlords by acting as unpaid rent collector and stool-pigeon, while taking bribes from the black tenants upstairs to keep quiet when another friend had swelled their numbers even further.

‘I know you’re in there!’ she called out. ‘You know what will happen if you don’t pay me, don’t you?’

He knew all right. Those bully boys from the landlord would come round and threaten him, maybe even throw him out on the street.

It wasn’t as if the room was worth anything. A filthy hovel in Ladbroke Grove sharing the toilet with blacks and Irish. They hadn’t mended the window since he fell against it, the gas meter was fixed to make money out of him and the sink was blocked up.

A sagging single bed. A sink and old black cooker. Hooks on the door to hold his only coat. Two fireside chairs, one with a broken arm. A table and two chairs. The proportions of the room were all wrong. A giant black marble fireplace. An eight foot ceiling and a long narrow sash window covered in grey net curtain, in a room twelve foot long by six foot wide. Once the room next door had been part of it, until the landlords hastily erected a thin plasterboard partition. To Brian Anderson it seemed almost coffin shaped.

Georgia’s face in the paper tormented him. She was wearing a ridiculous cowboy outfit, with a Stetson, fringed jacket, indecently short skirt and even cowboy boots. They said she’d taken America by storm and London airport was besieged with fans waiting for her arrival home.

‘They wouldn’t like you so much if they knew what you’d done to your father!’ he muttered, forcing the scissors between swollen, twisted fingers.

His room was full of her pictures. Glossy, glamour shots of her running along a beach in a red and white sarong, the wind catching her hair and holding it out behind her like a black flag. Another one and she was curled up sensuously in a white armchair, a hint of brown cleavage and those long, slim legs tucked round her. In sequinned evening dress, regal and beautiful. On stage, her hair sticking to her head with perspiration, that wide mouth open, head thrown back. Walking through fallen leaves in a park wearing jeans and a man’s jacket over her shoulder, laughing as though interrupted in some private moment of fun.

He had them all. Each mention in the press. Every picture no matter how tiny. A private collection which gave him no pleasure. She was responsible for his plight and one day he would ruin her.

Sometimes he had dreams when he saw her coming for him with a knife. He would wake up sweating and shaking. But it soothed him to look at the pictures. She was the evil one, not him. He must never let himself forget that.

He picked up a thin, worn donkey-jacket and put it on. He had to go and collect his money from the post office, he couldn’t risk Mrs Dooley calling the landlord again. Perhaps just one drink to warm him and stop the shakes.

The wind outside was icy. The soles of his shoes had holes in them and he had no socks left.

Was he going mad? He knew there had been a better life before. He could see himself mowing a lawn, or sitting in a sweet-smelling room listening to a piano. He imagined opening a drawer and taking out a shirt fresh from the laundry, putting gold links into the cuffs and slapping cologne on his smooth shaven face. But if he had that life once, why was it he ended up here?

Most of the time his mind was stubbornly fixed in Ladbroke Grove as if the startling memories that came to him were nothing more than something he’d seen on a film. Except for Georgia. Her face remained constant in his mind, only the details of how and why she made him suffer hazy.

Down the grey street he shuffled, eyes down in the gutter. Past dustbins spewing out on to the path. Black faces everywhere. Standing on steps gossiping, lounging on corners with malice in their dark eyes.

Where had they all come from? Surely there was a time when everyone was white?

He crossed the road at the lights, turned left and into the post office.

For once it was quiet. Only two people before him. Sometimes the queue stretched right to the door. Black women with prams, out-of-work youngsters, all the old, sick and poor people of Ladbroke Grove waiting for their state benefits.

‘Have you got your book Mr Anderson?’

He liked the post office. They treated him properly here. Remembered his name and gave him respect.

He felt inside his coat and pulled out the crumpled yellow book.

‘You haven’t signed it.’ The big woman with red hair smiled at him. She was tapping her nails on the counter with impatience, but then she was a busy woman. ‘Have you got a pen?’

‘Of course,’ he said, feeling in his pocket again.

The snotty-nosed brats in his street called him ‘The Banker’. He couldn’t always remember why this was, but the pen was a clue.

He signed the book and pushed it under the grille. She counted out the notes and pushed them back to him.

‘Good morning,’ he said, and shuffled off to the door, his money still in his hands.

His mind was cloudy again. It was like that most days now. Like the grey net at his window had got inside his head. It stopped him from thinking or planning and each day it grew thicker. He knew he needed to buy something but what was it?

A bus stopped in front of him, then another right behind it. He was caught in the middle of a human whirlpool, trapped by women with pushchairs, old ladies with shopping baskets, young men in leather jackets and a group of school children.

He didn’t see who pushed him, just a sharp thump in his chest, and the next thing he was on his back.

‘Are you okay?’ A male voice was speaking to him, but he couldn’t see anything but a blur of white above him.

For a moment he thought he’d just tripped, as he often did these days, yet why was he on his back instead of on his knees?

‘My money,’ he clawed at the air, suddenly aware his hand was empty. ‘Who’s taken my money?’

The man was leaning over him, touching his shoulder, but he was talking to someone else. Something about a black man who pushed him and stole his money. He was urging another man to telephone the police.

He didn’t know he was crying, just a damp feeling trickling down his face.

‘Poor old chap,’ the man said. ‘How could anyone be low enough to rob him?’

Through the grey mist he knew he must regain his dignity.

‘Help me up please,’ he asked. ‘I can’t see very well, but I’d like to get in somewhere warm.’

A hand went under his elbow and hoisted him up, he could see the man’s face now. It was young, fresh and even kindly.

‘Would it be too much to trouble you for a cup of tea?’ Brian asked. ‘I need a moment to get over the shock.’

‘Of course,’ the man said. He turned to someone behind him. ‘I’ll just take him into the café. Tell the police to come in there.’ He took Brian’s arm and led him into warmth. ‘Sit down and I’ll get you some tea.’

It was odd that the grey mist floated away suddenly. One moment confused, the next aware of everything. Just as if someone had opened curtains on a darkened room. Aware how shabby his clothes were, his dirty hands and the stubble on his chin. His tongue flickered across dry, cracked lips and he averted his eyes from a mirror on the wall.

He looked at least seventy. So thin, the skin on his face just hung in bags. Little hair left on the top of his head, but round his ears it sprouted out, grey/brown and greasy. His mouth appalled him most. It was sunken, his lips drooping at the corners and when he opened it his teeth were stained brown.

It wasn’t tea he wanted, but whiskey. He looked across the café at the man who brought him in and wondered if he’d be good for a handout.

The man was young. Arty looking in his leather-patched tweed jacket. A long, serious face and his hair hanging over his collar. He could be a social worker or a teacher. Not someone with money.

The café was one he often had lunch in when he first came to Ladbroke Grove. They greeted him like a friend then, telling him about specials on the menu and chatting about the news. He liked the red and white tablecloths, the smell of ground coffee and baking. It reminded him of his old home.

For some reason that eluded him, they asked him to leave. Was he drunk, or perhaps they didn’t like his shabby clothes? Whatever the reason was they seemed to have forgotten it now, for the two plump women behind the counter were looking at him as they spoke to his rescuer, nodding in sympathy.

The man came back, putting down two teas on the table and sat opposite Brian. He was frowning, a kind of impatient look, as if he wanted to leave hurriedly, but couldn’t bring himself to.

‘Are you feeling better now?’ His brown eyes were gentle. A soft, generous mouth with a cleft chin. His light brown hair had a shine to it, flopping down to his eyes. ‘The police will be here soon. They’ll help you.’

‘I didn’t see anything.’ Brian felt confused now, the present mingling with the past. ‘I felt someone push me, then I was on the floor. Did you see who did it?’

‘Two young black men,’ the man frowned again. ‘I saw you just standing there. I was just going to make you put the money away and they pounced. They moved so quick I couldn’t do anything.’

‘Blacks!’ Brian almost spat out the word. ‘The place is overrun with them.’

‘I picked these up for you.’ The young man dug into his pocket, and pulled out Brian’s payment book and a couple of photographs.

‘Thanks.’ Brian snatched up the book, but left the photographs on the table. Just the sight of them made his shakes come back. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not well. You must excuse me.’ This clarity of mind was far more painful than the grey mist and it was unreliable. He could start a conversation, think things out, then suddenly he could be thrown back to the confused man the children laughed at.

The photographs had been in his good overcoat. It wasn’t until he tried to sell it that he found them. He must have had them all this time tucked into the back of his payment book.

‘I saw your name is Anderson,’ the young man smiled, glancing down at the pictures. ‘I’m John Adams. Who’s this?’ Adams picked up one of the photographs. It was one of Georgia in a swimsuit, taken on the beach at Hastings the summer before she ran away. ‘What a pretty girl. She looks like Georgia, the singer.’

Brian felt a hot flush creeping up his neck.

‘It is Georgia. She’s my daughter.’

He had often wondered what it would be like to tell someone. He expected ridicule, laughter and questions, but he didn’t expect the shock he saw in this man’s eyes.

His jaw dropped. He blinked hard, picked up the picture and looked again. Lowering the picture he looked right into Brian’s eyes, the sort of look that meant he wanted to believe it, but couldn’t.