‘Bloody hell, Mary, it’s your nipper.’
Mr Grant’s voice, but coming from their own doorway. A sickening feeling as the world lurches and she’s up in the air, held over Mr Grant’s shoulder. Hot skin against hers and stinky sweat.
Mum’s voice: ‘Bring her in. And for God’s sake be quiet, will you. I bet old McDonald’s down there earwigging again. Then you’d better go.’
She’s in bed, and Mum’s giving her warm milk, but it tastes bad, and Mum smells funny too: a bit like Mr Grant. And it’s all wrong anyway, because Mum is only wearing her slip, even though it’s the middle of the day.
Westminster Bridge – May 1965
‘Concentrate now, Orchid baby.’ Marcus always called her Orchid in public. He had been so pleased with the pictures he’d taken on the way to Irene’s funeral that he’d decided to do their next shoot by the river too. So she was standing on Westminster Bridge in a red silk evening gown with the Houses of Parliament behind her.
It was very early on a morning that promised to be warm, but the ground was still shining with dew, and the mist on the water sent wafts of chill air around her feet. She wore strappy silver sandals and no underwear – nothing to spoil the line of the dress – and the black feather boa the magazine had sent to go with it gave no warmth. Marcus gestured for her to stretch out one leg to emphasize the fall of shining silk.
Joycie still remembered Mrs McDonald’s address because her dad had rented the same digs every winter until her mum disappeared, so Marcus was going to drive them there after the shoot. The landlady had seemed like an old woman when Joycie was a little girl, but thinking about it now she was probably only in her forties. So there was a good chance she might still be living in the same house.
Marcus came forward and teased out locks of black hair to tumble round her face.
‘Fantastic, baby.’
But she knew it wasn’t much good. All she could think of was getting to Acton. It was likely Mrs McDonald could tell her something about Mr Grant. He was certainly living there the last time they stayed in the March before her mum’s disappearance.
Joycie wondered for a moment when she had started to think of Mum as disappearing rather than leaving them.
Marcus must have realized he was wasting his time, and in any case the milky light he loved was more or less gone, and the bridge was getting busier with commuters, hurrying along, tut-tutting as they stepped between Joycie and Marcus. He took a few snaps as a couple of bowler-hatted gents wove past, then gave up. ‘OK, let’s go.’
She struggled after him in her flimsy shoes, the red silk twisting around her legs. As he drove she grabbed her big bag from the back seat, pulling a sweater on top of the dress, wriggling into jeans, and shoving the red silk down into the waistband. The magazine would complain that the dress was creased and grubby, but sod ’em.
‘So you think this Mr Grant might have been your mum’s boyfriend?’ Marcus said.
‘I know there was something between them for a while, at least, and we stayed in Mrs McDonald’s every winter, so it could have gone on for years. Dad and Sid used to work the summer season at the seaside, but London was a good base the rest of the time. They did lots of pantos at the Chiswick Empire, so Acton was convenient.’
‘Were you living there when they arrested your dad?’
Two men smelling of sweat fill the tiny living room. They wear heavy suits, not uniforms, although they say they’re the police. One of them goes into her dad’s bedroom and comes out waving a bundle of open envelopes in the air. He grins at Dad. ‘Nice love letters from your nancy-boy pal. Charming turn of phrase he’s got.’ He chuckles, but Joycie can tell he isn’t joking.
The other man pushes Dad from behind. ‘Right, duckie, you’re coming with us.’
Dad stares at Joycie, his eyes wide, she’s never seen him scared before and she can’t breathe. He sounds like he can hardly breathe either, looking from her to the men and back again. ‘My daughter?’
They turn to Joycie as if they’ve forgotten her and one of them says, ‘We’ll get the landlady to look after her for now.’ Then he shakes his head and mutters, ‘Poor kid.’
The other man looks down at the letters he’s holding, and says, ‘Disgusting.’ She feels her armpits prickle and smells her own sweat – does he mean she’s disgusting?
‘Joycie?’ Marcus touched her knee. ‘I said, were you in Acton when your dad was arrested?’
‘Oh no, we never went back to those digs after Mum disappeared.’
‘It was disgusting …’ Marcus said. How strange to hear him echoing the policeman’s word. ‘… the witch-hunt they ran against homosexuals in the ’50s. No one could be more conventional than my father, but apparently when he was at the Ministry he met the journalist who was involved in the Lord Montagu case.’ He lowered his voice to a posh growl. ‘He said, “Seemed a decent chap. Couldn’t help the way he was made.” And decent chap was high praise from Dad. It’s ridiculous that it’s still illegal even now, but at least they don’t persecute them the way they did then.’
‘It was a while before I even realized what my dad was supposed to have done,’ she said. ‘Some of the guys in the shows were very camp, and one or two of them were obviously friendly with Dad, but I was so green I didn’t guess. And, like I told you, Dad was really popular with the girls too.’
They were passing the iron gates of a school, the playground full of children just arriving, and Marcus slowed to a crawl as a small boy in grey shorts charged across the road in front of them. As he pulled away again he said, ‘From what your aunt told you your parents were in love at the start.’
‘And they seemed to love each other when I was a kid.’ A lump filled her throat. ‘But then I thought they loved me.’
Marcus reached out and rubbed her knee, and once again she saw her dad looking back at her as the police led him away. He did love her. She couldn’t imagine what he went through in jail, but it must have been terrible to make him commit suicide, knowing it would leave her alone.
‘Did you ever find out who turned your dad in?’
She twisted to look at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well you said the only evidence they had was the letters.’ He changed gear as he turned the car into a narrow street, but he must have heard her breath catch. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘The police. When they came to our lodgings they didn’t really have to search. They seemed to know exactly what to look for and where to find them.’
‘So whoever tipped them off was someone he knew.’
‘Someone he must have known really well.’
***
You could have knocked Mrs McDonald down with a feather when she realized she had Marcus Blake and Orchid on her doorstep. She was even more astonished when Joycie explained she was Charlie and Mary Todd’s daughter.
‘Come in, come in.’
The landlady was almost quivering with excitement as she bustled ahead of them into her overheated kitchen: somewhere little Joycie had only glimpsed through a half-open door. Over tea and custard cream biscuits she told them Mr Grant – George – had been a long-term lodger until he left to get married. ‘Ooh, that must have been five years ago now. She was a widow with a bit of money and they moved