September Morning, page 27
‘What new manager?’ Skye said, starting to feel like an echo as her daughter faltered.
Wenna sniffed back the tears and linked her arm in her mother’s as they went up to the flat with her suitcase.
‘The one Fanny called among all the other people she’s been calling. It seems tasteless to me, but she keeps saying it’s what Georgie would have wanted, that he hadn’t built up this club from nothing to see it all fall apart, so she sent for Martin Russell, an agent-manager, who comes here often, and asked him to take over the running of the club in the new year. We shan’t reopen until then.’
‘And you don’t think it’s right for Fanny to have contacted this Martin Russell so soon?’ Skye said, ignoring the rest of it.
‘I think it’s awful. Why couldn’t she have waited? Georgie’s not even buried yet and I’ve even heard her laughing with this other man.’
Skye sensed her outrage. Youth had such fixed ideas. She had known Fanny a very long while and knew that laughter could also hide tears and heartbreak.
‘Honey, everyone faces grief in their own way, and no single way is the right one. Remember how Adam turned inwards and became almost a recluse after Vera died, and how Lily furiously cleaned her mother’s house until no speck of dust would have dared to enter it? If this is Fanny’s way, then it’s the only way for her, and we have no right to question it. Now then, dry your tears and stop letting your resentment show, while I go and find her.’
She left Wenna sitting on the bed and sought out the sitting room where the noise was coming from. Fanny was surrounded by a small group of people, but the moment she saw Skye she turned to her and held out her hands.
‘I knew you’d come,’ she said simply. ‘Come and have a drink, fer Gawd’s sake. You look fair perished.’
Only someone who knew her well would have seen the anguish in her eyes and recognised the tremor in her voice. Fanny was suffering all right, thought Skye, but she’d never show it. She was a real trouper and if the show didn’t have to go on until the new year, it would bleedin’ well go on then, she thought in Fanny’s style.
‘This is Martin Russell who’s takin’ over the management of the club,’ she said next. ‘I ain’t a businesswoman, Skye, so I need somebody I can trust, and me and Martin go back a long way. He’ll be handling Wenna’s future, too – I should say Penny Wood’s, o’ course. Me mind plays tricks these days.’
Skye wasn’t surprised. As the moments passed and the chatter resumed with no mention of Georgie at all, she began to feel as if she was in a kind of charade. Fanny was acting out the part of hostess so well, talking too loudly, making sure everyone had a drink, and putting people at ease. It was more like a social occasion than a pre-wake, and it alarmed Skye. Despite what she had said to Wenna, it wasn’t natural. It wasn’t right.
It was only when they had all gone and it was just the two of them sitting together on the sofa, that Fanny’s shoulders drooped and she looked old for the first time since Skye had known her. Gone was the brashness and the brittle tarty look, and in its place was a broken woman who had just lost her husband and didn’t know how to handle it except by surrounding herself with people.
‘I know Wenna thinks I’m wicked and that I don’t care,’ she said, pouring herself another drink with shaking hands. ‘But she don’t understand, Skye. It’s because I care too much about Georgie that I can’t just sit back and weep. I daren’t even let myself think too much. I just have to go on. You understand, don’t yer?’
‘You know I do. We went through too much together during the war not to know how grief affects different people.’
‘And I can’t cry in front of ’er, can I? She’s too young to know how it feels. And I can’t cry in front of anybody else, neither. I ain’t cried at all yet, Skye. It’s like I was waitin’ fer somebody’s shoulder. It used to be Georgie’s, but now there’s nobody.’
‘Yes there is, Fanny,’ Skye said softly. ‘There’s me.’
She held out her arms, and as she did so, Fanny gave an agonising cry like that of an animal in pain.
It went straight to Skye’s heart as Fanny leant heavily against her and cried her heart out. It went on and on, while she poured out all the details of her personal and passionate life with Georgie that Skye didn’t need to hear but couldn’t avoid.
At one point during the hours of sorrowing, she saw Wenna’s frightened face over Fanny’s heaving shoulders, as she stood hesitatingly at the door, and she shook her head as she motioned her daughter out of the room. This was Fanny’s time, and one that she desperately needed.
* * *
The following day Fanny was nearly as brash as ever. Only her shadowed eyes showed evidence of a night’s releasing weeping. Wenna made no more criticisms of her behaviour, and simply put her arms around her.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘I’m glad Mom’s here.’
‘So am I, duck,’ said Fanny crisply. ‘So when are yer goin’ to show her the poster?’
‘Oh. I thought after – you know—’
‘After we’ve seen Georgie on ’is way to the sweet bye-and-bye? Nah. He wouldn’t want yer to miss out on yer bit of excitement. Go on now.’
‘What’s all this?’ Skye asked, when Wenna had gone hurrying to her room.
Fanny smiled faintly. ‘There’s no point in making the poor little bugger suffer on account o’ Georgie’s passing, is there? She’s been dying to let yer know what’s happening in the new year, and we was goin’ to spill the beans at Christmas, but now seems as good a time as any.’
‘You’re still coming to Cornwall, aren’t you, Fanny?’ Skye said urgently. ‘I’m not going back until you agree.’
‘O’ course I am. Me and Georgie are looking forward to it.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Bugger it. I’ll have to get out of the habit of speakin’ fer two, won’t I?’
Wenna came back into the room, relieving Skye of finding a reply that didn’t sound trite. She turned to her daughter quickly as she unrolled the poster and held it up.
‘My Lord!’ Skye exclaimed.
Wenna grinned. ‘I thought you’d be surprised. There’s going to be a bigger one outside the club, and these smaller ones are going to be distributed around the area. This one’s a souvenir for you. Are you impressed?’
Skye scanned the words surrounding the photograph of her daughter – a sensuous, yet still tasteful photograph, showing the glowing sapphire eyes to best advantage, the mouth half-smiling, and the dark hair curling provocatively around her heart-shaped face.
‘Celebrate the New Year of 1939,’ she read, ‘with the opening Saturday evening debut of the beautiful Cornish songbird, MISS PENNY WOOD.’
‘My Lord,’ Skye said again, as if they were the only words she knew.
Fanny chuckled. ‘Are yer praying, or just thanking the Almighty fer giving yer such a luscious daughter?’
‘Both,’ Skye said at once.
‘Oh Mom,’ Wenna said, embarrassed. ‘It was all down to the photographer’s skill, though Georgie was as flattering as usual and said it didn’t even do me justice.’
She clapped her hand over her mouth at once, her eyes full of dismay, and Fanny wagged a finger at her.
‘Now look here, my gel. If yer goin’ ter stop using Georgie’s name, it’ll be as if he never existed at all, and I won’t have that. My Georgie was a good judge of yooman nature and he loved yer like ’is own.’
‘I know,’ Wenna said, her voice catching.
Already Skye could see that they had moved on from the depths of shock and sorrow that should have drawn them together, but had instead driven them temporarily apart.
She asked about the plans for the new-year opening, and learned that Martin Russell would play a big part in promoting, as well as managing, the club in future, which clearly went some way to mollifying Wenna to his existence.
* * *
‘So when is Mother coming home?’ Oliver said resentfully to his father, on hearing the news that Skye had gone rushing up to London.
‘Soon. As soon as the funeral’s over, and Fanny feels ready to travel.’
Nick looked at his son through narrowed eyes. He was only fifteen, but there was already a hardness about him that reeked of David Kingsley’s influence. David was constantly reiterating that a newsman had to be hard-headed and unemotional, no matter how harrowing the story, and God knew it was the same for a lawyer, but sometimes Nick thought his son was taking the advice too far.
‘They’ll still be suffering from shock after Georgie Rosenbloom’s death,’ he went on. ‘We must make this Christmas as comfortable for Fanny as possible in the circumstances.’
‘I still think I could ask her to give me some comments on how she sees the German situation,’ Olly said.
‘That’s exactly what you are not going to do,’ Nick snapped. ‘Do you have no sensitivity at all? If you can’t be tactful then I suggest you stay away.’
‘That’s just what I’ll do then,’ he shouted. ‘Lily said I can have Christmas dinner with them if I wanted to, and I jolly well will. It’s not going to be much fun here, is it? Adam’s going there for the day too, so you can all stew in your own juice for all I care.’
‘Oliver, come back here,’ Nick raged, incensed, but his son banged out of the house and went pedalling furiously away on his bicycle in the direction of Truro.
So much for a family holiday, Nick fumed. Not that it would have been any easier with Olly around. They constantly rubbed one another up the wrong way lately. It was probably better like this, though he wasn’t at all sure that was how Skye would see it. She was a great one for family get-togethers and it looked as if this one was going to consist of just themselves, Wenna and Fanny Rosenbloom.
Theo’s family were also spending the holiday in their own home, with Justin coming down from London. There had been a time, thought Nick, when this old house had been bursting with people at the least opportunity, but all that was changing. He regretted the fact his elder daughter seemed to have no inclination to come home at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Fanny Rosenbloom, née Webb, was nothing if not resilient. However much crying she did in private she did none of it in public. She had been born illegitimate, living hand to mouth with her feckless mother in London’s East End, and learning how to survive. Once she was alone in the world she had clawed herself up from nothing, through good times as well as bad, and meeting Georgie had been the best thing of all. They had made a good and respectable life for themselves, and she wasn’t letting go of it now. She owed it to him to follow his dream, and to make the Flamingo Club a success.
But if Georgie had been a dreamer, Fanny was also a realist. Throughout the funeral service, eyeing the men, in their bespoke tailored black suits, who had come to honour and remember him, she noted that they were of a class who wouldn’t have given her their nose-droppings in her early years. It was all due to Georgie’s modestly warm and generous personality, of course, and together with Martin Russell’s management and her new star in the making, she vowed that it would continue. There was work to be done.
By the time she and the protective Pengelly women were on the train bound for Cornwall, Fanny’s eyes had lost much of their haunted look, and she was already thinking positively about the future. Yesterday was gone, but a brighter tomorrow was just around the corner, she thought cheerfully. You had to bleedin’ well believe it or go under.
‘I want ter say something, Skye,’ she announced, after they had all dozed for a while as the train clattered westwards. ‘I don’t want gloomy faces on my account, and Georgie wouldn’t have wanted it neither. If yer planning parties and suchlike, yer must go ahead wiv ’em.’
‘We weren’t, actually,’ Skye began.
‘Why ever not? It’s Christmas, ain’t it? Bleedin’ ’ell, ain’t yer planning a knees-up or nothin’, gel? I might as well have stayed at home and looked at me four walls!’
Wenna started to laugh. ‘Oh, Fanny, you’re priceless!’
‘Oh yeah? And what’s that s’posed ter mean?’
‘Just that I love you,’ Wenna said quickly, in case she thought she was being patronising.
‘We all do,’ Skye said. ‘And if it’s a party you want, then a party you shall have. Just as long as you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
Skye raised her eyebrows slightly as she glanced at her daughter. How anybody could think of a party at such a time was beyond her, but if Fanny wanted it and needed it, they would have it. It wasn’t right to spoil everyone else’s Christmas, anyway, even though she had been prepared to do it. But there were others to think about, she thought guiltily. There was her husband and her children.
* * *
‘Olly said what?’ she asked Nick, some time after they had arrived at New World late that night, and Wenna and Fanny had gone to bed.
‘Don’t worry. I put him off the idea damn quickly.’
‘I should think so, indeed. How could he think of interviewing Fanny at this time? How dare he think about dissecting her feelings? And I suppose you both argued about it as usual,’ Skye said, touchy after the endless train journey and not needing to hear any of this.
‘When did we not?’ Nick retorted. ‘But I made him see sense. Anyway, he’s now planning to spend Christmas Day with Lily and David—’
‘He certainly is not! He’ll be here where he belongs, and they’ll all be invited too, and so will Adam. People need to be together at Christmas. It’s bad enough that Celia will be so far away without the family splitting up unnecessarily.’
She felt angry and ridiculously tearful at that moment and dashed the feeling away. But with the recently revealed instructions about what everyone should do in case of war, and now news of the government spending an exorbitant amount of money on air-raid shelters, it made the prospect seem desperately real. She felt an urgency to gather her family around her like a mother hen with her chicks.
Nick’s arms held her close and she leaned against him. They had been apart for more than two weeks, and she desperately needed him in a way that Fanny could never physically have Georgie again.
The thought sent a wave of erotic sensation through her and, while it shocked her, it was an unchangeable fact that she and Nick were warm and alive, with normal feelings and emotions. Whatever happened to the world around them, they mustn’t lose that feeling.
‘Can we sleep on it, honey?’ she said huskily. ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’
‘Of course we can,’ he said at once. ‘I was forgetting how exhausted you must be, darling.’
‘I’m not,’ she whispered against him. ‘I just want to go to bed and to feel you holding me.’
She raised her face to his, with all the love she felt for him mirrored in her eyes. His answering kiss was very sweet on her lips.
* * *
Lily was uncertain, and openly shocked.
‘Are you sure this is what Fanny wants?’ she asked Skye, while making a duty visit and guiltily relieved to find that Fanny and Wenna had gone out. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be delighted to let your people do all the Christmas cooking, but is it right?’
‘If you mean, does she want to forget Georgie, then of course she doesn’t, and she won’t. But this is her way, Lily. She wants what she calls a good old knees-up. I don’t know that we’ll go that far, but she needs people around her, and I want to humour her before she and Wenna go back to London.’
‘Well, if you say so. I hope David will agree once I explain, and anyway, our boys love it here.’
‘They’ll make all the difference,’ Skye assured her. ‘Children make Christmas, and although Fanny never had any, she always says she enjoys other people’s, because she can always hand them back.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Lily said with a grin.
‘Oh, and one more thing, please prime David and Olly – well, I think you know what I’m trying to say.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve already warned them to walk on eggshells when they come in contact with her.’
‘Well, you didn’t need to go that far. She’s marvellous as always, and full of the big splash that Miss Penny Wood is going to make in the new year,’ Skye said, and remembered to show her Wenna’s advertising poster.
‘This is wonderful,’ Lily said. ‘You must let David see it. Wenna really is going places, as they say. And how about your plans?’
Skye looked at her blankly. What plans did she have, apart from wondering if Bokilly Holdings was really going to be the success they hoped, or if the shock of the drastically reduced china-clay orders from Kauffmann’s was going to make Bourne and Yelland wish they had never suggested the merger at all.
‘Your writing, Skye!’ Lily reminded her. ‘The booklet you were planning.’
‘Good Lord, I haven’t given that a second thought. There’s plenty of time for all that, and right now I don’t have the heart for it.’ She felt something akin to anger at even being reminded of it.
‘Well, don’t let other people’s worries eat into you the way you always do. They have to sort out their own lives.’
‘There’s no danger of that,’ Skye said dryly, hearing the raucous laughter that heralded Fanny’s homecoming. Tinged with hysteria it may be, but it was laughter all the same.’
* * *
Celia telephoned on Christmas Day, and Skye told her to wait a minute until she closed the door to the drawing room, as she couldn’t hear a thing for the noise.
‘What’s happening there, Mom?’ Celia yelled. ‘It sounds like a herd of elephants rampaging through the house.’
‘No. It’s just Fanny organising them all in a game of charades,’ Skye replied.
‘Good God. It didn’t take her long to get back on form, did it? Anyway, I can’t talk for long, or it will cost Poppa Stone a fortune – and he won’t let me pay for the call. I just wanted to wish you all a happy Christmas, and to thank you for the gifts you sent – and I wish I was there too.’
