The Tangling of the Web (22 page)

Sally hung up, but not in time not to hear Flora scream, ‘Is there a story here that I should know about? Sally, Sally, you tell me now. Knowing Josie I bet it’s juicy and …’

Before Sally could go any further with her enquiries, the doorbell rang. Thinking that Luke had made good progress in bringing Josie home from Glasgow Airport, she skipped along the corridor.

‘Gosh that was quick,’ she said, yanking the door open.

‘Clairvoyant are you now,’ Ginny quipped as she brushed past Sally and proceeded towards the living room.

‘Thought you were Luke,’ Sally explained when she caught up with Ginny.

‘Don’t tell me that the two of you are being civil to each other? Now that is a turn-up for the books.’

‘He is just away to Glasgow to pick up Josie. She’s been on holiday in Menorca.’

‘But why would he bring her here? She has a home of her own now.’

‘Just a wee family problem we have to get straightened out.’

‘And I hope by the look of your face it will not end up in any more blows.’

Fingering her swollen nose and bruised cheek, Sally replied, ‘This mess. Och, you know how it’s a hazard of the trade. But you should see the other guy – came off worse, he did.’

‘Hmm,’ observed Ginny, who wasn’t convinced by Sally’s excuse. ‘Now what I’m here for is I’ve got this great idea.’

Sally groaned. Ginny, she knew, did get good ideas, but today, with the Angela affair to be straightened out, Sally could do without any further proposals for consideration.

Ignoring Sally’s reluctance, Ginny sallied on. ‘Now Sally, just listen. I’ve just been to see this wonderful house in Joppa.’ She paused. ‘Okay, it’s not wonderful just now, but it will be once you’ve spent time and money on it. Honestly, Sally, it has so much potential and it’s a snip. Or it will be once you’ve beaten the greedy woman – American she is – down.’

‘But I have a nice home here. I love it. Why would I want to move?’

‘Because, my dear Sally, as I’m always pointing out to you, it’s easier to make your money between the sheets than it is in a bar in Leith – where you are in danger of having your face rearranged.’

Sally shrugged.

Ginny continued, ‘Believe me, this house is just crying out to be developed into a bed and breakfast, and it could also be your stepping stone to starting up your own hotel empire.’

Sally knew she should argue, but she just didn’t have the energy or motivation to do so. Ginny was a dear friend and she knew she had her best interests at heart. It was true Sally could have more time to herself if she hadn’t the two bars to supervise, but she liked working in the trade. Not wishing to hurt or alienate Ginny, she found herself saying, ‘Ginny, I promise you that I will look at the house. Leave the details, but today I just have to get a family problem straightened out.’

Ginny, who was one never to let an opportunity pass by, responded, ‘And while you’re about it, get rid of PC 49. He has an ailing wife.’ Sally made to interrupt, but Ginny silenced her with a wave of her hand, ‘And yes, I know, because I know you, it’s platonic, but since they introduced the birth control pill who ever believes any relationship is not sexual?’

‘The problem I’m dealing with has nothing to do with David. It’s …’

The door opened and a tousled, half-slept Angela, carrying a teddy bear, sauntered in.

‘Oh. Now aren’t you the dark horse? Here was me thinking I would put you on track to becoming a hotel owner and here you have already started by taking in paying guests.’

‘I’m not a visitor,’ an indignant Angela said defensively. ‘Am I, Aunt Sally?’

Sally shrugged and waved her hands. ‘No. Ginny, this here is Angela. She’s …’ Sally just didn’t know what to say, because until Josie confirmed that she had had a child, nobody could be positively sure she had.

‘Josephine’s daughter,’ Angela informed her.

Not sure if she had heard right, Ginny exclaimed, ‘Are you claiming that Josie, when she was a scatterbrain, gave birth to you?’

Angela nodded.

‘And you are also asking me to believe that she scooted off on holiday and left you behind?’

‘No. She doesn’t know that I’ve managed to track her down. It will be as big a surprise to her as it was to you when she comes in and finds me here.’

Lifting her handbag, Ginny began to make for the door. ‘Sally, I think as you appear to have your hands full I’ll take off for now, but …’ She paused whilst pulling on her gloves, ‘… don’t forget the house in Seaview Terrace, Joppa. You really must consider it – especially now you have relatives popping out of all sorts of holes in the woodwork.’

Two hours passed before Luke came back into Sally’s.

‘Where’s Josie?’

‘Look Sally, you know how hazardous that car trip from Glasgow Airport is. That A8 is a death trap … and okay they’re upgrading it bit by bit … but as I didn’t want to end up in bits, I didn’t mention Angela to Josie.’

Luke turned to Angela. ‘Unpredictable your mother is when she gets a shock. Don’t know how she’ll react. After all, did you not demonstrate last night how volatility runs in the family? Besides … All Josie could do was babble on about how wonderful Menorca was and – wait for it, Sally – how she might be becoming the owner of a flat there!’

The information about Josie thinking about buying a holiday home went straight over Sally’s head. ‘But I told you,’ she protested, ‘to tell her and get the initial shock over for her.’

‘Look, Mrs Righteousness, if you’re so keen on having that done and since I’ve just dropped our Josie off at her house why don’t I drive you and Angela up there and the two of you can break the good news to her.’

* * *

Luke had just dropped Sally and Angela off at Josie’s door when Angela grabbed Sally’s arm. ‘Aunt Sally,’ she whimpered, ‘what if she still doesn’t want to know me?’

Sally took a deep intake of breath and exhaled it slowly before responding, ‘The only way we’ll find that out and why she did what she did is to ring this bell.’

On opening the door and finding Sally and Angela standing there, Josie became wary. She could tell from Sally’s demeanour that all was not well. Sensing that somehow Sally had found out she had signed up to buy a flat and thinking that Angela was probably the British agent, she gulped, stood aside and allowed them to enter.

Once they had all got seated, Josie began. ‘Please don’t be angry. I can explain. And if we all work together, we will be able to sort everything out.’

Sally gasped. ‘For heaven’s sake, Josie, I know you can be feckless at times, but how do you reckon that by sitting down and talking about it you can sort everything out? You just can’t. This lassie here is your child, Angela!’

Dumbfounded, Josie started to stutter, ‘But I thought she was the British mortgage advisor?’

‘No, she bloody well is not,’ Sally exploded. ‘She is, in case you have gone deaf and didn’t hear me, the daughter you abandoned in a soulless orphanage in 1945!’

Josie slipped off her seat. Cries like those of a wounded animal escaped her. With her bare hands she thumped on the floor. Still whimpering, she slowly began to crawl towards Angela, but Angela turned away from her. All her life she had wanted to face her mother. Have her mother put out her arms to her. But this whimpering, cringing creature was not the kind of mother she had ever envisaged her mother to be. She had been hard enough to desert her, hard enough to ignore the pleas of her grandmother, and here she was cowed, frightened, grovelling.

The cries of Josie were so distressing that Sally dropped down beside her and lifted her up in her arms. ‘Sally,’ she pleaded as Sally rocked her from side to side, ‘this young woman cannot be my little girl. She’ll not be fully grown yet.’ She paused and through her tears she glanced at Angela. ‘Every night I dream of her. I know it’s not her because, oh, Sally, dreams never come true.’

‘It is her, and what you have got to do is pull yourself together and tell us why you acted in the way you did.’ Looking towards Angela, Sally softly added, ‘This lassie here, your very own child you gave birth to, deserves to know the truth.’

Unable to control her anguish, Josie trembled and sobbed. ‘I met,’ she began falteringly, ‘fair-haired, deep blue-eyed Roy Yorkston at a dance in a café on Princes Street.’ Josie now seemed to go into a storyline that she had told herself over and over again and again. ‘He wasn’t tall, but was tall enough for me. And his smile … it would have melted the iceberg that hit the
Titanic
, and see the first time he called me “babe” in his American drawl my legs felt like jelly. I’d never been in love like this before. He was my Rhett Butler and I was his Scarlett. From the moment we kissed we knew we loved each other and were destined to love each other forever. Still love him, and only him, I do.’

A strange, eerie silence filled the room. It was as if the ghost of Roy had come in and joined them. After a while, Josie felt she had to put some things right and suddenly the stillness of the room was broken by her blurting, ‘Now don’t run away with the idea we were doing … well, you know what. No, not even when he showered me with nylons, chocolate and chewing gum. Please believe we’d been going out at least three months before we … Anyway I found out I was having …’ She faltered before adding, ‘… his child, but he was on embarkation leave, so he promised to come back and make it alright for me – and I now know he would have, but when you get killed you just don’t seem to be able to keep your promises.’

Sally smiled. This story was all too typical of Josie – just like an American film.

‘Anyway, Sally,’ Josie went on, ‘you know what like Mum was. She would have wanted me to abort … our baby … so I decided to run away to Morecambe, where I gave birth to her in an unmarried mothers’ home there. They wanted me to hold her, look at her, but you see I thought that Roy had deserted me. How could I look after and provide for a baby? And I didn’t want to end up with people saying I was like Mum. I knew if I had ever looked at her, I would never ever have been able to leave the home without her.’

Angela huffed.

‘For Christ’s sake, I’d only turned sixteen. I was frightened … alone … with nobody to turn to!’

‘You’re a blasted liar,’ Angela spat. ‘My grandmother wrote to you, begged you to go to her. She wanted nothing more than to be your friend, to look after us, and you didn’t even have the decency to reply.’

Josie was crying uncontrollably now. ‘And do you know when I got all those letters?’

Angela and Sally both shook their heads.

‘When my mother died … Tied up in red ribbon they were.’ Josie looked to Sally. ‘Please tell me you remember the bundle of letters addressed to me that were in her things?’

Sally nodded. She knew her mother was cruel, but what had been done to Josie by keeping the letters from her was as bad as having Peter birched. She had ruined Josie’s life. But why? Time ticked slowly by but eventually Sally said, ‘Please, Josie, don’t tell me that the old, twisted witch kept your letters from you?’

Josie nodded and began pounding the floor again. ‘She did. She did. She did. So you see, Angela, it was 1955 that I got your grandmother’s letters. You were nine years old going on ten. So how could I come into your life then?’

‘Are you saying that your very own mother hid those letters from you?’

‘Mother?’ Sally loudly exclaimed. ‘Oh Angela, don’t give her a title she has no right to. She was a fiend. How she got like that will forever be a mystery to me.’

Sally began to drag Josie to her feet, but before letting go of her, she held her close and, brushing her lips over her hair, she acknowledged that Josie had known so much turmoil and so much unhappiness. No wonder she had never really allowed any relationship to develop.

Glancing at Angela, she remembered her own miserable childhood when all she ever wanted was a loving mother. Feelings of anger, sadness and betrayal engulfed and confused her before, thankfully, forgiving comprehension dawned. ‘Look,’ she said slowly and softly to Angela, ‘I don’t want you to worry about last night when you assaulted me and knocked my tooth out. I now understand how frustrated you must have felt. And you did believe I was your mother. So I forgive you.’

‘Look, I admit I slapped your face and poured a pint of beer over your head, but I did
not
bang your head down on the bar.’

Sally looked bewildered. Her head had been bounced off the bar and someone had then pinched in her nostrils until, through lack of oxygen, she had experienced the sensation of blacking out.
But,
she pondered,
if Angela is telling the truth then who was it that wanted to hurt me?
Reluctantly she had to accept that there was no mileage for Angela in lying. She had confessed that she had slapped her and poured the beer over her. So why would she not be prepared to own up to the head-banging? But who else was there? Sally’s blood began to run cold. Luke’s words when their mother had died echoed in her head. ‘No matter how long it takes, I’ll get vengeance for my mother. You mark my words that I will.’
Oh no,
she cried inwardly,
Luke, Luke. Surely after all we’ve been through as a family … Can’t you accept that Mum had her shortcomings … ? So why would you wish to still have me pay, and for what?

The noise of sobbing broke into Sally’s reverie. While she had been thinking, she had moved about the room and she was now standing with her back to the window. The pitiful wails were coming from Josie, who was seated on the floor with her arms about Angela’s legs. ‘Please, please,’ Sally heard Josie beg, ‘since you were born I have ached for you. Could you …’ racking sobs interrupted the flow, ‘… not let me be friends with you?’

Angela, while trying desperately to extricate herself from Josie’s grasp, was also weeping, albeit quietly.

Going over to her sister and her niece, Sally lifted Josie up. Firstly she brushed the tears from Josie’s cheeks and then she stroked her hair. ‘Don’t either of you,’ she mumbled, ‘go too fast in accepting or rejecting each other. A relationship between the two of you is important. It cannot be forged quickly. Take your time. Build bridges. And eventually something may …’ Sally stopped, as Angela had stood up and had started buttoning up her coat. ‘Why did you really come here, Angela, if not to trace your mother?’ she asked softly.