control. Their mother had managed, just, to keep them in check, but they took no notice of Bessie. The flat was just as much theirs as hers, as they kept telling her, but she paid the bills for it. They stole cars and car parts to get money for their needs. Bessie might come into her home and find it full of young men, drunk, or stoned, the place a pigsty. She regularly had to clean it up. Her bedroom she kept locked, to stop her brothers and their friends stealing her money, but these were not youngsters likely to be deterred by a locked door. The police knew these lads and from time to time took one or two of them off. ‘They’re going to end in prison,’ Bessie said to Victoria, who did not contradict her.’ Then perhaps I’ll get my flat back one day,’ Bessie might be thinking, but did not say. Phyllis’s death had left an absence that told them continually that sonic people are much more than a sum of their parts. Her influence had been enormous, in this building and beyond it. People were always coming tip to tell Bessie how much her mother had done for them. ‘I wish she was here to do something for me,’ Bessie would think, but did not say. There was a laboratory technician from Jamaica she would have invited to share her flat and her life, had it been possible. He was a sane, sensible person of whom Phyllis would have approved - but he did not have a place of his own and neither did Bessie. That was why she and Victoria were sharing a bedroom again.
Bessie said to Victoria that she ought to arrange for a DNA test. Victoria had never heard of it. The two young women made draft after draft of a letter to the Staveney’s, thought safe and correct by Bessie, but stiff and unfriendly by Victoria. The letter Thomas eventually did get had been written by trembling and weeping Victoria, surrounded by all the torn-up drafts. She went down to post it, at four in the morning, daring the dangers of the dark estate, thinking that any muggers or thieves she was likely to meet were bound to be Bessie’s lay-about boys or their friends.
‘Dear Thomas, I am so unhappy thinking that you are thinking I might be trying to put something over on you and your family. I can’t sleep worrying. I would like it best if you and Mary could have the DNA test, the one that proves if a child has a real father. Please write or telephone soon and let me know how you feel. I don’t want to impose.’ This letter too had been torn up more than once, because the first one ended ‘Love’, No, surely, that was a bit of cheek? Then she thought. But what about that summer, how can I put, With good wishes? Love and good wishes alternated and then, worn out with it all, she wrote, ‘With my very best wishes’, ran out to post the letter - and fell into bed.
As soon as Thomas read this, he rang Edward and read it to him.
‘So what do you have to say now?’
‘All right, you win, but I was right to warn you.’
Jessy read the letter and said, ‘Good girl. I like that.’
‘Do I really have to go and have that bloody test?’
‘Yes, you do. We’ve got to keep Edward happy.’
Thus she allied herself with her erring son. ‘A little girl,’ she said. ‘At last. And she seems such a sensible little thing.’
The test was made, but before the result came, Thomas had telephoned to ask what Victoria’s bank account number was. She didn’t have one. He then said she must open one at once, it would make things easier. ‘Things’, it turned out, was an allowance for Mary, of so much monthly, ‘and we’ll see how we all go along’. The money was from Jessy, but when Lionel was informed, he said he would contribute.
There was another afternoon tea, this time with Lionel. Mary was told she was going to meet her grandfather, and went along without fear, thinking of Jessy’s kindly smiles.
Lionel Staveney was a big grand man, in style rather like Jessy, who always seemed to take up the space of two people. He had a mane of silvery hair and wore a shirt of many colours, again like Jessy’s. They sat at either end of the big table, reflecting each other.
Lionel took Mary by the hand and said, ‘So, you’re little Mary. Very nice to meet you at last.’ And he bent to kiss that small brown hand, with a solemn face, but then he winked at her, which made her giggle. ‘What a delicious child,’ he remarked to Victoria. ‘Congratulations. Why have you kept this treasure from us for so long?’ He held out his arms and Mary went up into them, burying her face in the rainbow shirt.
So that was that afternoon, and soon there was another.
‘Here’s my little crcme caramel, my little chocolate eclair,’ was Lionel’s greeting to Mary, and Lionel saw Victoria’s face, whose nervous look was because she was remembering Sam’s culinary endearments. ‘I say I’m going to eat you all up,’ Lionel said to Mary, ‘you must not take it as more than a legitimate expression of my sincere devotion.’
When Victoria and Mary had gone home, Edward said to his father, ‘If you can’t see why you shouldn’t call her a chocolate anything, then you are a bit out of step with the times.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Lionel, ‘dearie, dearie me. Is that what I am? Well, so be it.’
‘Lionel,’ said his ex-wife, ‘I think you sometimes scare her a bit.’
‘But not for long. What a little sweetie. What a little - I’m in heaven. Now, if we had a little girl, do you think we’d have stuck?’ he enquired of Jessy.
‘God only knows,’ said Jessy, giving the Almighty the benefit of die doubt.
‘Certainly not! said Edward, but this was as much a warning for the present as a judgement on the past.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Thomas. ‘Happy families.’
‘I’m claiming visiting rights, that’s all. Aren’t grandparents encouraged these days?’
‘You’re welcome to visit,’ said his ex-wife. ‘But let’s not push our luck,’
Thomas telephoned Victoria to ask if he could take Mary to his swimming pool. Victoria said the child didn’t know how to swim, and Thomas said he would teach her.
Then it was the 200, the planetarium and a trip on the river-boat to Greenwich.
Meanwhile Victoria was thinking, ‘But I have two children. What about Dickson? ‘What was happening was unfair. Yes, Dickson was still tiny, just three, but he knew his sister was getting treats that he didn’t.
Jessy had remarked that it was not right, when there were two children, if one got more than the other.
Edward said at once, Don’t even think of it, Mother.’ ‘Perhaps we could take him out sometimes with Mary?’
