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The flicker of a smile moved her thin lips. ‘Oh well you better come inside then,’ said the woman in an unexpectedly gravelly voice.
She stepped back from the door and manoeuvred slowly through the narrow corridors of her house, gently tracing her hands along the walls for balance. The living room was dominated by an old dresser. The shelves had collections of snow globes on them, miniature porcelain figurines of children dancing, and a fake bowl of fruit next to an even faker potted plant with large purple tinged leaves.
Helen and Ish sat rigidly in her sitting room, the sound of a carriage clock persistently ticking away in the background. The chairs reminded Helen of Goldilocks and the Three Bears: one was far too hard (Ish had sat in it) and the one Helen was in was far too soft, her thighs were being absorbed by the memory foam cushions like a dinosaur trapped in primordial goo.
Through the serving hatch, Helen could see the old woman moving around the kitchen and there was the sound of rattling china. She brought them a small tray of custard creams and tea, and sat primly in her chair revolving her thumbs in small circles around one another. She took a half pint of milk and poured it into the cups, Helen’s eyes widened noticing the milk was two months out of date.
‘Don’t worry love, it’s been frozen. You have to have a system when you’re my age and you live alone.’ The lady straightened her back. ‘So you want to know about Vernon?’
‘Yes, we do. Is he … still alive?’ Bad question, Helen! What if this woman was mourning him? Ish looked like he was about to choke on his custard cream. She was always so …
‘No,’ the woman smiled coyly, ‘he’s not. Died in 1958, heart attack. Not really surprising. So, I suppose you want to know who I am? I am Vernon’s daughter. His second daughter. Violet Joyce Muriel Newman.’
‘Ah, yes we saw your name on the 1939 register; you’ve lived here this whole time?’
‘I do hope this isn’t one of those scams?’ Violet’s eyes narrowed.
Helen thought any con man would have his work cut out getting anything past her.
‘No, no. My friend Helen here, her nan met your father in 1939, and …’ Ish scrunched his eyebrows together looking for the right word, ‘… they had a brief liaison, they exchanged some letters … we were just seeing if we could finish the story.’
The old lady let out a guttural chuckle. ‘Oh well, you’ve definitely got the right Vernon. My father was a terrible womaniser. Too good-looking, too much time on his hands. He never really worked; it was all my poor mother; anyway, not a week would go by without another woman’s name being mentioned in this house. Even I was christened after two of his mistresses, can you believe it? My poor mother here, ill in bed after giving birth, and he comes home after registering me, oh so pleased with himself to have given me their names!!’
‘Was he really all bad?’ Helen winced.
The woman chuckled again. ‘My dear he wasn’t bad at all, that was the problem! He loved women. Loved spending time with them, speaking to them,’ Violet dropped her voice, ‘taking them to bed. And they loved him too. We all did. He was fun and exciting, and well it was the war. Times were different then. Of course, my mother suffered having to stay with him, but you couldn’t leave in those days. He was born in the North …’
‘Where all the best lads are from …’ Ish paused awkwardly. ‘Sorry.’
‘Then he was a sailor. Covered in tattoos under his dress shirts.’ Violet reached onto her coffee table and leafed open a photo album. She opened it like a box of chocolates and turned to a page with a large black and white photo on it, showing a rangy man with thick black hair, a smirk, penetrating eyes, and a huge tattoo of a moon rising on his chest.
‘Well, that’s the full moon rising,’ thought Helen. Proof that Vernon’s shirt (at least) had definitely been off. She gave a small shake of her head to get rid of the unhelpfully graphic image her brain had conjured up. Why was she such a prude? It wasthe warafter all. No wonder she was so horrible with … Helen, do not make this all about yourself again!
‘I know this is probably the wrong thing to ask but would I be able to take a picture of that? It’s not for the internet or anything, just for my nan – she’s not feeling too well, and I think she’d love to see him …’
‘Bit of eye candy, our Vernon,’ winked Ish.
‘You see, she still talks about your dad to this day.’
Violet let out a whoop and slapped her hands down on her knees. ‘Oh he did a good job on her didn’t he? And that was our father, spends a day dropping his evacuated youngest in Cornwall, and walks away with a girlfriend. Of course, you can take a picture.’ Violet twizzled the album towards Helen who awkwardly snapped her photo like a self-conscious tourist taking pictures of pigeons in Trafalgar Square.
‘Anyway, then he was a bus driver in London. After that, did a bit of what he called ‘security work’ whatever that meant. I had to put that down as my father’s profession on my marriage certificate in 1942 so that’s how I remember. I wore a lovely A-line skirt, shortened to the knee. Not much fabric around back then. Rations and things. Anyway … my father’s work … to me that was a way of saying that he didn’t do very much, and what he did was done at night, with alcohol. Any easy excuse to slip off and visit Violet, Joyce or whoever was flavour of the week back then. And as you can imagine all those good times, and good women, eventually caught up with him. I found him at the bottom of the stairs there one day, dead as a dodo. Poor sod. It finally all caught up with him. But he was a lovely man. He was a good father, and I miss him terribly.’ Violet dabbed the corner of her eyes with a pocket hanky.
Helen could see the initials VFN sewn into the corner. The polished wooden stair banister leaned ominously in the background.
‘I have some letters he wrote … he wrote to my nan every week for months. If you’d like to see them?’ Helen slipped out the folder and handed Violet the letters. Violet gingerly began leafing through the folder, the smile of a distant memory creeping back onto her lips.
‘He wrote to her? Ah he only did that with the special ones. I imagine your nan was a lovely looking girl, just like you,’ Violet said with surprising warmth. Helen noticed Ish was smiling too. Was he standing up straighter than usual?
‘She wa-, she is. She’s still lovely.’
‘So what’s the matter with her?’
‘At the moment pneumonia, but she’s had her fair share of things …’
‘I know how that is. First it was my hip. Then my knee. Then glaucoma. I take it she’s told you it’s no fun being old?’
‘Something like that …’
