Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (31 page)

And this, of course, was the continuing worry, for none of this brought her any closer to the conclusion of her search. None of the George Browns was the right one, or could even so much as give her a clue as to where or how he might be found.

And then one day it happened, but it was not she who succeeded - it was none other than Mr Schreiber. He came home one evening and summoned her to his study. His wife was already there, and they were both looking most queer and uneasy. Mr Schreiber cleared his throat several times ostentatiously, and then said, ‘Sit down will you, Mrs Harris.’ He cleared his throat again even more portentously. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think we’ve got your man.’

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this abrupt, and though not wholly unexpected, but still startling piece of news, Mrs Harris leapt from the edge of the seat she had taken as though propelled by the point of a tack, and cried, ‘Blimey - ’ave you? ’Oo is he? Where is he?’

But Mr and Mrs Schreiber did not react to her excitement and enthusiasm. Nor did they smile. Mr Schreiber said, ‘You’d better sit down again, Mrs Harris, it’s a kind of a funny story. You’ll want to take a grip on yourself.’

Something of the mood of her employers now communicated itself to the little charwoman. She peered at them anxiously. She asked, ‘What’s wrong? Is it something awful? Is ’e in jyle?’

Mr Schreiber played with a paper-cutter and looked down at some papers on his desk before him, and as Mrs Harris followed his gaze she saw that it was U.S. Air Force stationery similar to the kind she had received, plus a photostatic copy of something. Mr Schreiber then said gently, ‘I think I’d better tell you, it’s - ah - I’m afraid, someone we know. It’s Kentucky Claiborne.’

Mrs Harris did not receive the immediate impact of this statement. She merely repeated, ‘Kentucky Claiborne little ’Enry’s dad?’ And then as the implications of the communication hit her with the force of an Atlas missile she let out a howl, ‘Ow! What’s that you say? ’
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little ’Enry’s dad? It can’t be true!’

Mr Schreiber eyed her gravely and said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t like it any better than you do. He’s nothing but an ape. He’ll ruin that swell kid.’

Waves of horror coursed through Mrs Harris as she too contemplated the prospect of this child who was just beginning to rise out of the mire falling into the hands of such a one. ‘But are you sure?’ she asked.

Mr Schreiber tapped the papers in front of him and said, ‘It’s all there in his Air Force record - Pansy Cott, little Henry, and everyone.’

‘But ’ow did you know? ’Oo found out?’ cried Mrs Harris, hoping that somewhere, somehow yet a mistake would have occurred which would nullify this dreadful news.

‘I did,’ said Mr Schreiber. ‘I should have been a detective, I always said so - like Sherlock Holmes. I got a kind of a nose for funny business. It was while he was signing his contract.’

Mrs Schreiber said, ‘It was really brilliant of Joel.’ Then her feelings too got the better of her, and she cried, ‘Oh poor dear Mrs Harris, and that poor, sweet child - I’m so sorry.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Mrs Harris. ‘What’s it got to do with ’is contract?’

‘When he signed it,’ said Mr Schreiber, ‘he used his real name, George Brown. Kentucky Claiborne is just his stage name.’

But there was a good deal more to it as Mr Schreiber told the story, and it appeared that he really had displayed
acumen and intelligence which would have done credit to a trained investigator. It seemed that when all the final details were settled and Kentucky Claiborne, Mr Hyman, his agent, Mr Schreiber, and the battalions of lawyers for each side gathered together for the signing of the momentous contract and Mr Schreiber cast his experienced eye over it, he came upon the name ‘George Brown’, typed at the bottom and asked, ‘Who’s this George Brown feller?’

Mr Hyman spoke up and said, ‘That’s Kentucky’s real name - the lawyers all say he should sign with his real name in case some trouble comes up later.’

Mr Schreiber said that he felt a queer feeling in his stomach - not that for a moment he suspected that Claiborne could possibly be the missing parent. The qualm, he said, was caused by the contemplation of how awful it would be if by some million-to-one chance it might be the case. They went on with the signing then, and when George Brown alias Kentucky Claiborne thrust his arm out of the sleeve of his greasy black leather jacket to wield the pen that would bring him in ten million dollars, Mr Schreiber noticed a number, AF28636794, tattooed on his wrist.

Mr Schreiber had asked, ‘What’s that there number you’ve got on your wrist, Kentucky?’

The hillbilly singer, smiling somewhat sheepishly, had replied, ‘That’s mah serial number when I was in the goddam Air Force. Ah could never remember it nohow, so Ah had it tattooed.’

With a quick wit and sangfroid that would have done credit to Bulldog Drummond, the Saint, James Bond, or any of the fictional international espionage agents, Mr Schreiber had committed the serial number to memory, written it down as soon as the ceremony was over and he was alone, and had his secretary send it on to Air Force Headquarters
in the Pentagon Building in Washington. Three days later it was all over: back had come the photostat of the dossier from the Air Force records, and Mr Kentucky Claiborne was unquestionably the George Brown who had married Miss Pansy Amelia Cott at Tunbridge Wells on the 14th of April, 1950, and to whom on the 2nd of September a son was born, christened Henry Semple Brown. To make matters completely binding, a copy of the fingerprints was attached and a photograph of an irritable-looking GI who was incontrovertibly Mr Kentucky Claiborne ten years younger and minus his sideburns and guitar.

Mrs Harris inspected the evidence while her mind slowly opened to the nature and depth of the catastrophe that had suddenly overwhelmed them. The only worse thing that could befall little Henry than to be brought up in the poverty-stricken, loveless home of the Gussets was to be reared by this ignorant, selfish, self-centred boor who despised everything foreign, who had hated little Henry on sight, who hated everything and everyone but himself, who cared for nothing but his own career and appetites, and who now would have a vast sum of money to splash about and cater for them.

Mrs Harris in her romantic fancy had envisioned the unknown, faceless father of little Henry as a man of wealth who would be able to give the child every comfort and advantage; she was shrewd enough to realise that unlimited wealth in the hands of such a person as Claiborne would be deadlier than poison, not only to himself but to the boy. And it was smack into the fire of such a situation and into the hands of such a man that Mrs Harris was plunging little Henry after snatching him from the frying pan of the horrible Gussets. If only she had not given way to the absurd fancy of taking little Henry to America. With the ocean between, he might still have been saved.

Mrs Harris left off inspecting the document, went and sat down again because her legs felt so weak. She said, ‘Oh dear - oh dear!’ And then, ‘Oh Lor’, what are we going to do?’ Then she asked hoarsely, ‘ ’Ave you told ’im yet?’

Mr Schreiber shook his head and said, ‘No, I have not. I thought maybe you’d want to think about it a little. It is you brought the child over here. It’s really not up to us. It is you must decide whether you will tell him.’

At least it was a breathing spell. Mrs Harris said, ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll have to fink,’ got up off her chair and left the room.

When she entered the kitchen Mrs Butterfield looked up and gave a little scream. ‘Lor’ love us, Ada,’ she yelped, ‘you’re whiter than yer own apron. Something awful ’appened?’

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Harris.

‘They’ve found little ’Enry’s father?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Harris.

‘And ’e’s dead?’

‘No,’ wailed Mrs Harris, and then followed it with a string of very naughty words. ‘That’s just it - ’e ain’t. ’E’s alive. It’s that (further string of naughty words) Kentucky Claiborne.’

Into such depths of despair was Mrs Harris plunged by what seemed to be the utter irretrievability of the situation, the burdens that she had managed to inflict upon those who were kindest to her, and the mess she seemed to have made of things, and in particular the life of little Henry, that she did something she had not done for a long time - she resorted to the talisman of her most cherished possession, her Dior dress. She removed it from the cupboard, laid it out upon the bed and stood looking down upon it, pulling at her lip and waiting to absorb the message it had to give her.

Once it had seemed unattainable and the most desirable and longed-for thing on earth. It had been attained, for there it was beneath her eyes, almost as crisp and fresh and frothy as when it had been packed into her suitcase in Paris.

Once, too, the garment had involved her in a dilemma which had seemed insoluble, and yet in the end had been solved, for there it was in her possession.

And there, too, was the ugly and defiling scar of the burned out velvet panel and beading which she had never had repaired, as a reminder of that which she knew but often forgot, namely that the world and all of which it was composed - nature, the elements, humans - were inimical to perfection, and nothing really ever wholly came off. There appeared to be a limitless number of flies to get into peoples’ ointment.

The message of the dress could have been read: want something hard enough and work for it, and you’ll get it, but when you get it it will either prove to be not wholly what you wanted, or something will happen to spoil it.

But even as her eyes rested upon the garment which she had once struggled so valiantly to acquire, she knew in her heart that these were other values, and that they simply did not apply to the trouble in which she now found herself. In the dilemma which had arisen at the last moment and which had threatened collapse to the whole adventure of the Dior dress, she had been helped by someone else. In this dilemma which faced her now, whether to turn a child she had grown to love over to a man who was obviously unfit to be his father, or send him back to the horrors of his foster-parents, Mrs Harris knew that no one could help her - not die Schreibers, certainly not Mrs Butterfield, or even Mr Bayswater, or her friend the Marquis. She would
have to make the decision herself, it would have to be made quickly, and whichever, she knew she would probably never have another moment’s quiet peace in her own mind. That’s what came of mixing into other people’s lives.

For a moment as she looked down upon the mute and inanimate garment it appeared to her almost shoddy in the light of the work and energy it had cost her to acquire it. It was only she who had felt pain when the nasty little London actress to whom she had lent the gown in a fit of generosity one night, had returned it to her, its beauty destroyed by her own negligence and carelessness. The dress had felt nothing. But whichever she did with little Henry Brown, whether she revealed him to this monstrously boorish and selfish man as his son, or surrendered him to the hateful Gussets, little Henry would be feeling it for the rest of his life - and so would Ada Harris. There were many situations that a canny, bred-in-London char could by native wit and experience be expected to cope with, but this was not one of them. She did not know what to do, and her talisman provided no clue for her.

The dress broadcast superficial aphorisms: ‘Never say die; don’t give up the ship; if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again; it’s a long lane that has no turning; it is always darkest before dawn; the Lord helps those who help themselves.’ None of them brought any real measure of solace, none of them solved the problem of a life that was still to be lived - that of little Henry.

She even saw clearly now that she had over-emphasised - others would have called it over-romanticised - the boy’s position in the Gusset household. Had he actually been too unhappy? Many a boy had survived kicks and cuffs to become a great man, or at least a good man. Henry had had the toughness and the sweetness of nature to survive. Soon he would
have grown too big for Mr Gusset to larrup any further, he would have had schooling, vocational perhaps, got a job, and lived happily enough in the environment into which he had been born, as had she and millions of others of her class and situation.

She became overwhelmed suddenly with a sense of her own futility and inadequacy and the enormity of what she had done, and sitting down upon the bed she put her hands before her face and wept. She cried not out of frustration or self-pity, but out of love and other-pity. She cried for a small boy who it seemed, whatever she did, was not to have his chance in the world. The tears seeped through her fingers and fell on to the Dior dress.