‘You mean you believe she is my child?’
‘I do indeed, Mr Cameron,’ she smiled gravely. ‘I was reminded the moment you sprang in the door. What you have told me about Katy fills in the missing part.’
‘What was she called?’
‘I can’t tell you that for a moment,’ she said. ‘First you must tell me exactly what happened between you, and your circumstances now.’
It was irritating to have to explain when and how they met. Even more distressing to explain their parting and his subsequent reasons for thinking she had changed her mind. He spoke of his marriage, his other two children and all the time Sister Mary listened carefully.
When he’d finished, she poured the tea and passed a plate of hot buttered crumpets.
‘Do you know where she is now?’
Sam had this terrible feeling the woman was going to give him a name but nothing more. He hadn’t much time left now. How many years did it take to find a missing person?
‘I know who she is,’ Sister Mary said dropping her eyes from his. ‘And it’s because of this I feel I have to tread with caution.’
A dozen different things ran through his mind. Was she in trouble? Had she been taken by someone who’d brought her up as their own?
‘So bad, huh?’ he said, sipping his tea.
‘Oh no,’ she smiled and shook her head. ‘Your daughter is everything you could want. Beautiful, talented. But let me explain first.’
Sam listened to the story about how this woman called Celia Anderson took her away.
‘I have to admit I loved that child more than any other, even if I should feel ashamed for admitting favouritism.’ She smiled as if the memory was very dear to her. ‘I missed her so much. She was on my mind constantly. But I was happy because she was. Sometime after her fifteenth birthday I went to Blackheath on an errand, and taking a welcome chance to see her again I stopped off at her house.’
‘Did you see her?’
‘No, but what I did see worried me greatly. I’d never met her foster father until that day. He came to the door wrapped in a blanket. He looked ill, and he had been drinking. I asked for Mrs Anderson and he snapped at me. He said she had left him. I asked about the girl and he flew into a rage. He pulled up his shirt and showed me a fearful scar. He claimed she had stabbed him, then run away.’
Sam just stared. Nothing had prepared him for this.
‘I met Mrs Anderson on several occasions,’ Sister Mary said gravely. ‘She was a fine, honourable woman and I knew if she’d left that house, it was in disgust at something he had done to the girl. I believed at that time they were together somewhere. I tried to find Celia myself later on when I had given the matter more thought. Only then did I discover she’d left her job to search for the girl.’
‘Why do you keep calling her the girl?’ Sam said gently.
‘Because her name is a household word now, and I have to be sure you can handle a reunion properly.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Your daughter changed her surname. She has never given anyone details of her background. Her foster father had a knife wound in here,’ she touched her stomach. ‘I’m not a worldly woman Mr Cameron. Yet I managed to reach an understanding of what happened in that house.’
Sam’s eyes shot open wide.
‘You mean,’ he covered his eyes with his hand.
‘Yes,’ she said, softly lowering hers. ‘I found out from the police that an incident had taken place.’ She blushed furiously, her hand reaching for her rosary. ‘No charges were ever made because she refused to speak about it. Mr Anderson claimed it was someone else and that she attacked him out of spite when he chastised her. Days later she ran away and was never found.’
‘But you have found her?’
‘I know who she is now, and follow her life with love, admiration and a sense of guilt that I was party to a child being placed with such a man. I believe she kept quiet in a misplaced sense of honour. Not for him so much, but her mother, and the boyfriend she had at the time.’
‘The b –’ Sam stopped short, his early upbringing reminding him he couldn’t say words like that in front of a nun. ‘I’ll swing for him.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she said firmly. ‘I want you to be rational about this. Your daughter has kept that secret for six years. All her life she has thought she was an abandoned child. She doesn’t even know which of her parents was black. I believe the shock of hearing you are her father could unbalance her. Fathers to her may still mean pain.’
‘What would you have me do?’ He felt humbled by this little woman’s understanding and strength of character.
‘You are well placed to get close to her,’ she said. ‘Try to get closer still and win her confidence. Be there for her, because she is surrounded by people who may not have her best interests at heart. God will guide you then.’
She picked up her rosary and held it between her worn red hands as if gaining strength from it.
‘Your daughter is Georgia James.’
For a moment the room spun round. The girl he had seen at the airport. That beautiful mulatto with the voice of an angel.
‘Are you absolutely sure of this?’ he whispered. Tears were welling up in his eyes, he brushed them away almost angrily.
‘Look,’ she said gently, pulling out of her habit a worn old photograph of a child with short curly hair.
‘This was my Georgia. I loved her as if I was her own mother. Can you tell me I’m mistaken now? She kept her real Christian name too. She dropped the Anderson because of its connections, but she couldn’t change the name her mother gave her. She sang to me so often as a little girl. I recognised her voice on the radio, even without a picture of this new star. I knew her from the voice Sam, but her face confirms it.’
Sam took the picture in his hands. She was so thin, yet he could see Katy, and even Jasmine in the face before him.
‘Celia Anderson sent this one to me with a Christmas card.’ Another picture appeared in her hands. ‘She was almost fifteen then.’
Sam gasped. The face before him now was a dark-skinned version of Katy’s. Her hair was past her shoulders, the dimple in her cheek, the heart-shaped face, all served to confirm her parentage. But her eyes were his, and the chiselled cheek-bones, like looking in a mirror and seeing his own reflection.
So many times he’d stopped to look at this same face in the record shop windows, idly wondering if she would get back to sit in at Ronnie Scott’s before he left to go home. He’d listened to her records on the radio, even written to his kids and suggested they buy her latest album. Now this sweet little nun was telling him it was his daughter!
‘She’s in the States now,’ he whispered. ‘I may have to go back. I’ve only got a contract for six weeks.’
‘I checked on you, too,’ she smiled. ‘You’ve been getting some startling reviews yourself. Surely you can engineer something to keep you here till she gets back?’
‘But how do I get to see her?’ he whispered. ‘No one gets near her from what I’ve read.’
‘I believe in good coming out of evil,’ she said simply. ‘Something made you come to England, then you went to check in the East End. Did you plan to do that before you came?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But –’
She stopped him with a touch on the hand. ‘The hand of God,’ she said. ‘That same hand will bring her to you. Pray for his guidance when it happens.’
Sam had Georgia’s address in his hands now. His daughter had come to him, just like Sister Mary had said. If he was a man who truly believed in the power of prayer he would get down on his knees and thank Him. But right now he was going to go back on the stage, get her to come up and do a number or two with the band.
‘Georgia,’ he hummed the tune as he turned to go back into the dressing room. Sam remembered now, that was the number he’d been playing when he got his first glimpse of Katy back at Lakenheath.
Chapter 23
‘Fever, fever when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight.’ Georgia stood under the shower, singing at the top of her lungs, wet corkscrew curls like seaweed over her slender brown back.
Six weeks ago, making the album of her dreams looked impossible, but at last all the problems had been overcome and today they were starting recording.
March’s weather had mirrored what was going on around her. Meeting Sam was like an early spring day. So much promise of good things to come, an unfolding of new leaves and flowers, unexpected warmth and sunshine. Max roared in like the March wind, laying waste all her plans. The press was Jack Frost, nipping at tender shoots, threatening to kill everything.
Rows, bad feeling, criticism. Roots put down years earlier, torn up. So much opposition to something she knew was right.
Speedy and Les were heavily into drugs and behaving like a pair of deprived, vacant louts. Norman sniping at his lost opportunities. Max turning into a demented, jealous old woman. Good pianists seemed extinct, even the press turned against her. There were times when she almost backed down.
‘If it hadn’t been for Sam,’ she said to herself as she stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a towel. ‘You’d have cracked up.’
*
The night in Ronnie Scott’s was the beginning. Up until then the album had been a hazy dream. When Sam asked her up to sing with the band in the second half she felt a little presumptuous singing the old Billie Holliday number, ‘That ole Devil called Love’. Yet she found her voice had the maturity and Sam’s horn inspired her. Even though Max sat glowering at her from the audience, she didn’t care.
She expected Sam to play hard to get when he came round to see her the next day. With the rave reviews he was getting, he could afford to take his time and be choosy before committing himself to any band or project. But instead she found him enthusiastic, open and straightforward.
‘I’m yours if you want me,’ his soft dark eyes glimmered with an excitement she hadn’t expected. ‘My contract runs out at Scott’s next week. As long as you can get my visa fixed up and pay me enough to send home for my kids, then I can stay for as long as it takes.’
Max’s attitude was quite the opposite when she called at his office later the same day and outlined her plans.
‘How dare you go behind my back and make arrangements? I haven’t even agreed to this album,’ he snapped. ‘You know nothing about that guy and I suppose you rushed in there offering him the moon.’
‘Not the moon,’ she said simply. ‘I just told him I wanted to do a recording with him. The only credentials I care about is how well he plays his horn.’
‘Decca won’t want to waste their time and money on an album like this,’ he roared at her, purple in the face with anger. ‘You’re digging your own grave Georgia, it’s vanity, nothing more. Stick to what you do best.’
‘There’s nothing more boring than an entertainer who never moves on,’ she shouted back at him. ‘Making this album doesn’t mean I won’t make any more soul or rock records. It’s just stretching myself, showing a new dimension. I could reach millions of new fans.’
‘The press will link your name with his,’ Max snarled at her across his desk. ‘Do you really think the public will be happy to see their golden girl with a big Yank nigger?’
‘You evil bastard,’ she hissed back at him. ‘Trust you to bring everything down to gutter level. Call anyone a nigger again, and this uppity one will walk out on you.’
Of course he gave her all the rubbish about caring for her, trying to protect her. But she had hardly left his office before he was on the phone to Jack Levy, doing his best to block her.
Then the press got a whiff of what was going on, and before she could talk to the band and outline her plans they had her stitched up.
‘Georgia goes it alone,’ was the headline. ‘No time for Samson now.’
‘Georgia is to split with Samson after six years’. ‘We’ve grown apart,’ she was quoted as saying. ‘I’m in a position now when I don’t need or want the responsibility of a full-time band. I want to experiment with other musicians and expand my career.’
‘I didn’t ever say that,’ she raged to Sam. ‘They’re making me out to be some sort of prima donna throwing off my old friends because I’ve outgrown them. Where did they get hold of such an idea?’
‘Max?’ Sam raised one eyebrow. ‘He’s scared, honey. He wants his little girl right under his wing. But don’t take too much notice of the press. The time to worry is when they don’t bother to write about you, good or bad.’
In five years there’d been many squabbles, but this time it was serious. The boys closed ranks, refusing to speak to her on the telephone, ignoring even a letter she sent them explaining her plans.
Rod and John came round after Deirdre from the office intervened and admitted she’d overheard Max talking to someone from the press. But Les, Speedy and Norman chose to use the opportunity to make a final break from her.
There were moments she doubted her own judgement. Was it just inflated ego that made her think she could compete with singers like Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald? What if Jack Levy, Max and all the other men who had been in the business for years, were right? Suppose it was a flop, what would she do then?
But the doubts were gone now. She had swept away all the opposition to her plans. Fly or fall she was getting her chance, and she had no intention of falling.
Sam finally found a pianist in a pub in Barnes. He was a retired music teacher who played just twice a week in a jazz quartet. Harold Sweeting looked like everyone’s favourite uncle. White-haired, rosy-cheeked, a jolly, roly-poly character with all the enthusiasm for music so many of the professional pianists they auditioned, lacked. He had wanted to be a concert pianist in his youth, but his wife and children had come before his own hopes and dreams. Now at sixty-five he had a lifetime of experience to fall back on, yet with a youthful exuberance that gave his playing a touch of magic.
Rod and John were joining the other session musicians too. Rod simply because he was the best drummer, and John begged to come in because he admired Sam’s playing.
Perhaps it was fortunate that Speedy, Les and Norman had refused to join her. It left her free to employ strings and a classical guitarist, without feeling guilty.