Georgia (72 page)

‘Keepin’ his head down,’ Sam smirked. ‘Snakes both of them, and if I had my way I’d do the skinning.’

‘You had a fight with Max?’ Georgia giggled, her hand over her mouth.

‘Me, a Southern gentleman?’ Sam said dryly. ‘No. I just marked his card.’

Georgia looked at Peter, who nodded as if it was time she too revealed all the things they had discussed.

‘I’m going to manage myself in future.’

‘Good idea, honey,’ Sam grinned showing brilliant white teeth. ‘Max’ll hate that.’

For a moment she hesitated, looking at Peter for support.

‘Not to punish him,’ she said softly. ‘He’s a shark. He can’t help taking big bites out of everything. Maybe I don’t want to be in the same pool as him any longer, but I can’t forget how much he’s taught me.’

‘He’ll see it as the same thing,’ Sam said, shrugging his shoulders.

Georgia shook her head.

‘No Sam, not once I’ve talked to him. He’ll always have a place in my life.’

‘What about Decca?’ Sam asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft on them too?’

‘I’ll screw them so hard they may have to wave me goodbye,’ she laughed. ‘I don’t feel any loyalty to them, it’s a good deal or goodbye.’

‘And I only thought she’d inherited my musical talent,’ Sam smirked. ‘She’s got the brains too!’

‘You’d better tell him what you’ve done about Anderson too,’ Peter smiled. ‘Maybe he won’t be so cocky then.’

‘I spoke to the police,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I told them I wasn’t going to press charges, it’s all too long ago. But I asked them to check him out, put him on to social workers if he needs help.’

‘Shit!’ Sam’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Georgia, that guy deserves hell, nothing less.’

‘Perhaps he’s already had that.’ Her big dark eyes were full of pity. ‘Don’t try and bully me, Sam?’

‘She’s crazy,’ Peter put one restraining hand on Sam’s arm. ‘But it’s a good kind of crazy. Phillips did say he reckoned the man had flipped.’

‘I’ve got so much,’ Georgia said softly, looking at them both. ‘I couldn’t bear to see him again. But by the same token I can’t pretend he doesn’t exist. At least by footing the bill to have him dried out or whatever, I haven’t just stood by.’

Sam shook his head and got up.

‘You are so very like Katy,’ he smiled down at her where she sat curled up on the settee. ‘She was a great one for lame dogs, doubt if she’d have even looked at me if I’d been like Peter. She’d have been so proud of you, honey.’

‘Don’t go Sam!’ she said. ‘There’s so much more to talk about.’

‘Not tonight,’ he smiled, moving across the room to her and bending to kiss her forehead. ‘We’ve got years ahead to catch up. You and Peter have only tonight, at least that’s the way I remembered separations when I was your age.’

She jumped up then, flinging her arms round him.

‘I love you Sam. We’re a family now. You get Jasmine and Junior and bring them back. There’s plenty of room for them here.’

‘All in good time, honey.’ He nuzzled his chin against her hair as he held her. ‘You’re one helluva daughter.’

Sam turned up his jacket collar as he walked along by the Thames. If he lived another twenty years in England he doubted he could get used to the climate. English people talked about this weather as warm, well perhaps they ought to try New Orleans. The smell was kinda the same as walking by the Mississippi, tangy and dirty, darkness turning it into a thing of beauty. But the Thames wasn’t his river, just as London wasn’t his town.

It was tempting to let Georgia take over his life. He could imagine her finding a house big enough for all of them, playing big sister to Jasmine and Junior, pushing him into the limelight. Perhaps forgetting Peter and herself as she tried to make everyone happy.

He’d learned a great deal about kids from watching Georgia. He had to go back and put all that into practice with Jasmine and Junior, win back their trust and love before he thrust them into a cauldron of new experience.

Georgia had grown up in a white world, learned the hard way how to deal with prejudice, rising above it without losing her deep understanding of human nature. His kids had been born into discrimination and segregation. By replanting them hastily, surrounded by people anxious to make them happy, they might grow up rootless, without that need to achieve anything for themselves.

He stopped for a moment by Albert Bridge. Each strut covered in lights, like a bridge to fairyland.

‘Sure is pretty,’ he said aloud, looking out over the dark river. At home in New Orleans the place would be jumping now with music and people. Here it was silent and empty, just the odd man, out with his dog, and a pair of lovers further on the bridge, arms around each other. It was a good place to come to terms with his thoughts.

‘Finish the album. Then go home. There’ll be holidays, time for us all to get acquainted. You’ve come this far without climbing on someone’s back Sam, Jasmine and Junior have to learn that too.’

Maybe he should have told Georgia about Celia. He had planned to. In long telephone conversations he’d come to care deeply for this brave little woman who’d given his daughter so much. But too much emotion in one day didn’t make for restful sleep and tomorrow morning would be soon enough to break the good news.

‘Only another hour and we’ll be landing.’ Tania the stewardess stopped by Miss Tutthill’s seat to reassure her.

All the crew knew who this lady was and where she was going. Tania just hoped she could get off the plane herself quick enough to see the reunion.

‘Maybe I should have waited another day or two?’ Celia Tutthill looked up at the tall, willowy redhead, elegant in her cream blouse and skirt. ‘I mean suppose she hasn’t got back from her holiday yet?’

‘But you said her friend would make sure she did?’ Tania perched on an empty seat across the aisle.

‘I know,’ Celia smiled, her greeny-grey eyes wrinkling up with pleasure. In her telephone conversations to Sam Cameron she had heard so much that pleased her. All she could do was hope he did manage to engineer getting her home, and telling Georgia the truth about himself, without giving her daughter more anxiety. ‘I’m just being an old worry-guts. I’m even worried Georgia won’t recognize me!’

She was two stone lighter than she’d been for much of her life, something that started with African tummy and she never put back on. Her light brown hair was longer too, waving at her neck with streaks of gold from the sun. Gone were the days when she wore tailored suits, now her wardrobe consisted only of shorts and shirts. The green floral dress she wore today was new, bought hastily in Nairobi before flying out.

‘Of course she’ll recognize you,’ Tania chuckled.

Nairobi had been buzzing about this woman.

According to the gossip she had arrived in Africa with only the sketchiest idea of what was ahead of her. Everyone had expected her to last a year at most, before the heat, flies, disease and lack of equipment sent her running home. But Nurse Tutthill took one look at Africa, rolled up her sleeves and adapted.

Tania was surprised to find Celia so small. The image the gossips had created was one of a big fierce woman who scorned bureaucracy, fought tooth and nail for supplies of medicine and almost singlehandedly had vaccinated thousands. When that dark tan faded she would be just another apple-cheeked middle-aged lady, just like her own mother, the sort of woman equally at home in church garden fêtes manning the cake stall.

‘I’ve got a lot more wrinkles,’ Celia’s eyes twinkled as she touched her face tentatively. Out in the bush there were no luxuries like mirrors. Faced with herself in a hotel room she had been shocked to see the changes. Crows’ feet round her eyes, cheek-bones where once had been pads of flesh. Even her arms and legs seemed to belong to someone else, muscular, sinewy and an indecent dark brown. Yet despite the passing years she liked herself better. Even as a girl she was never pretty, but now at least people described her as striking.

‘If I look like you at your age I’ll be delighted,’ Tania smiled, teeth like an advertisement for dentistry. ‘You look ten years younger than that old picture in the paper. But don’t you think you should try and sleep for a while? It’s going to be a long, emotional day for you.’

‘I think I’ve forgotten how to,’ Celia said thoughtfully. ‘Since the day that message came I haven’t had more than a couple of hours’ cat naps.’

‘You look good on it,’ Tania got up and straightened her uniform. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘No thank you,’ Celia grinned. ‘You can’t meet your daughter with alcohol on your breath!’

The message had come third hand. It had been relayed first by telephone, then by radio and the final few miles by a man on a pushbike.

It was early in the morning, already very warm, the sun rising up from behind the mountains when she saw the messenger.

He was young and lanky, wearing nothing but a pair of baggy khaki shorts. His skinny brown legs stood out like paddles as he came blundering down a track to the hospital.

She watched as he put his feet down to stop himself, threw his bike down on the bare earth and disappeared from her view.

It hadn’t meant anything. Every day people flocked to the hospital. When she looked out over the bush for as far as the eye could see there was nothing but waving yellow grass, a few thorn trees, no sign of human habitation, yet day after day an endless procession of the old, the sick, the lame and the blind made their way here for treatment.

She hadn’t even finished dressing when she heard feet running on the veranda towards her room.

‘What is it?’ She hastily buttoned up her shirt and opened the door to see Carmel the Irish nurse coming to a halt, panting. She was fat, her striped dress bursting across her buxom chest, her apron dangling at her waist as if interrupted in her dressing too.

‘A message from Nairobi,’ she huffed. ‘You’ve got to go there immediately. Something to do with Georgia.’

A wild ride in a beaten-up Landrover to meet her replacement at Buna, then into a mail plane as far as Archer’s Post. Two days without sleep, surviving on just adrenalin. Fear and hope mingling like a lethal cocktail.

Urgent messages to her only meant one thing. Death, sickness or disaster. By the time she got to a telephone at Archer’s Post every bone in her body screamed for rest, but until someone could reassure her that Georgia wasn’t dead she couldn’t even pause for refreshment.

‘She’s fine,’ Hilary her old friend in Nairobi said. ‘She’s a famous singer now and a newspaper has been searching for you. It seems you and I are the only two people in the world who hadn’t heard her.’

‘But –’

Hilary cut her short. ‘It’s a long story, love. I can’t tell you it all over the phone. Rest up tonight and get someone to drive you here tomorrow. She’s safe and healthy. Don’t worry anymore. I’ll tell you everything soon.’

Another two days before she flopped into a chair in the Nairobi office. Dusty hair, red-rimmed eyes full of grit, bruised from the long hours in a truck, sweat stains covering her old shirt. Yet exhaustion faded as Hilary put a large gin in one hand and the telex in the other.

There, in the same steamy office where she’d started out in Africa, life turned a full circle.

Now she hardly noticed the flies, the cane chairs which stuck in her legs, the bandages and syringes waiting for distribution, or the maddeningly slow fan that only served to churn up papers rather than air.

It was the first time she had cried since leaving England. All those years of uncertainty, all that grief held back came flooding out.

‘If you had told anyone but me about her,’ Hilary said as she comforted her. ‘They might have made the connection. But I’m as bad as you Celia, I don’t read the papers or listen to music. Just fancy, your gel a star!’

Tears turned to laughter as Celia saw the absurdity of the situation. Two old nurses, who both fled from England to forget, suddenly aware how out of touch they were.

Hilary with her white cropped hair could have been a man wearing women’s clothes. A print dress left over from the mid-forties, its demure lace trim revealing a scraggy, lined neck, and arms like a stevedore. While Celia in her khaki shorts and man’s shirt looked more feminine than she ever had at home. No wonder the young girls in the office stared at them as if they were mad, drinking gin in the afternoon, crying and laughing alternately.

Yet those same girls were the ones who found old magazines, copies of Georgia’s records and filled her in with everything that had happened in the last few years.

‘Why did you stop writing to Peter?’ Hilary asked as once again Celia read the telex. ‘I keep asking myself why I didn’t open them instead of dumping them as you told me to do.’

Even now she couldn’t explain that fully, but at the time she got the letter from Mrs Radcliffe it seemed the honourable thing to do. She was just another mother worrying about her son.

What was it she said? ‘I am begging you as another mother to let my son forget. He isn’t working as he should, each letter from you unsettles him. He has another girl now and they could be happy without reminders of the past. Please let him go, and I promise you if I ever hear of Georgia I will write immediately.’

How could she know then Mrs Radcliffe had no intention of helping? How foolish Celia was to think Peter’s integrity had come from her!

‘Oh Hilary,’ Celia sighed. ‘If only you had! But then this whole business is built on “if onlys”.’

Celia leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t finished with Africa yet. A long overdue holiday. Time to hear Georgia sing and share in her life. A chance to recharge her batteries and she’d be back. Even Georgia re-entering her life couldn’t make her stay in England.

The woman who’d left England five years ago had changed. Drought, famine, malnutrition and disease made the problems she’d encountered in London’s East End seem trivial. How could any woman who’d seen people dying for want of clean water, possibly go back to treating verrucae, weighing healthy babies and filling in forms?

‘Still can’t nod off?’ Tania was back, offering her yet another drink.

‘Silly, isn’t it?’ Celia laughed. ‘The most comfortable seat I’ve sat in for five years, all my old worries gone, and yet I’m still wide awake.’