Love Forbidden Page 11

  She put out her hand for the flowers, but Aria took no notice.

  “I have come from her granddaughter, Miss Carlo,” she said. “And I am afraid I must see her. It’s important.”

  “Well, I tell you that’s impossible,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Johnson. This is my ’ouse, where Mrs. Hawkins lodges and I look after ’er, you see. And when the doctor was ’ere last week ’e said, ‘no visitors, Mrs. Johnson, not until I say so’. And so you understand, I must carry out ’is orders.”

  The woman’s voice was more ingratiating now, but there was no mistaking the determination in her general attitude.

  “You can go and ring up the doctor if you like,” Aria said. “But I have come here to see Mrs. Hawkins and I intend to see her. If she is really ill, I expect Miss Carlo would like a second opinion.”

  “Well, it’s like this,” the woman said, taking a step nearer to Aria and lowering her voice. “She’s not ’erself, as it ’appens. Senile she is. Eighty-two! You can’t expect much else, can you? I’ve looked after ’er as if I was ’er daughter.

  “Nothing’s been too much trouble for me, but when people get old, they get difficult – they get ideas in their ’eads and think people are being unkind to ’em. You mustn’t take any notice of anythin’ she says. It would be better, really, if you would just leave the flowers with me. I’ll see she ’as them.”

  “This is really a waste of time, Mrs. Johnson,” Aria said sharply. “Suppose you open the door behind you and let me see Mrs. Hawkins for myself.”

  “Well, see ’er then,” Mrs. Johnson retorted rudely. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. At that age they aren’t responsible for anythin’ they says.”

  She flung open the door and Aria moved past her into the room. It was a small narrow back bedroom with a window that admitted very little light There was an iron bedstead in one corner of the room, a chair with the upholstery torn and sagging springs that nearly touched the floor and a chest-of-drawers that had lost most of its handles.

  There was a fireplace where a fire had obviously not been lit for a very long time and no sign of any other form of heating. An old-fashioned marble washstand was stacked with dirty plates, a cracked basin and several other toilet utensils.

  The worn and torn linoleum on the floor had one little mat to cover it, which was so dirty that it was difficult to see what the colours had ever been.

  An oleograph of Queen Victoria was the only decoration on the faded wallpaper, which was peeling away in the corners from damp and old age.

  In the bed, covered by several very thin and inadequate blankets, lay an old lady. She looked very ill. Her face was the colour of old ivory and her lips were almost bloodless.

  Nevertheless, as Aria advanced across the room, she managed a little smile.

  “I heard you say as how you’d come from my granddaughter, dearie,” she said. “She got my message?”

  “Yes, she received your message,” Aria said gently. “And she sent you these.”

  She put the flowers down on the bed as she spoke and set the strawberries on a hard chair on which rested a candle in a tin candlestick and a small worn Bible.

  “That’s real kind of her,” the old lady said. “I haven’t seen a flower for a long time. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? And strawberries, too! Makes me think of when I was a girl. I always was a one for strawberries when they came into season.”

  Aria walked suddenly to the door and opened it. As she expected, Mrs. Johnson was standing just outside and listening.

  “That’s quite all right, Mrs. Johnson,” she said. “Mrs. Hawkins is quite well enough to see me. We shall not require you anymore.”

  Mrs. Johnson shot her a glance of venomous dislike.

  “If anythin’ ’appens after you’ve gone,” she said nastily, “you mustn’t blame me. ‘No visitors’ is what the doctor said. I was only carryin’ out ’is orders.”

  With a toss of her head she flounced down the stairs.

  Only when she had gone down to the turn in the staircase did Aria shut the door and go back into the room.

  “Tell me, what does the doctor really say about you?” she asked gently of the old lady.

  Ill though she looked, Mrs. Hawkins’ eyes managed to twinkle.

  “I haven’t seen a doctor,” she said in a whisper. “But don’t tell Mrs. Johnson I said so. She’s angry with me at the moment. The lady as lodges next door, ever so kind she is to me, caught her reading her letters yesterday. So she’s left a message outside her door and locked it. It’s upset Mrs. Johnson.”

  “So I heard,” Aria said drily. “But why do you stay in this place?”

  “She’d never let me leave,” the old lady replied. “The money comes regular.”

  “But your granddaughter told me that she was paying six pounds a week,” Aria said. “Is that true?”

  Mrs. Hawkins nodded.

  “Yes! She’s real good to me is Maggie.”

  “Maggie?” Aria enquired.

  The old lady chuckled.

  “Lulu Carlo is what they call her on the films, but Maggie Hawkins is her real name. Margaret, she was christened and an ugly little baby she was too. I never thought she would turn out as she has. Strange, isn’t it, when you come to think of it? You never knows when they’re born what they’ll grow up to be like.”

  ‘Maggie Hawkins! What a name for a glamorous film star!’ Aria thought. No wonder Lulu Carlo wished to keep her grandmother a secret. At the same time surely she wouldn’t countenance the old lady being treated in such a manner?

  “How did you come here in the first place?” Aria asked.

  “Oh, it wasn’t always like this,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “When my daughter was alive, it was very different. She lived next door, you see, at least, about three doors down, and when she was expecting her fifth she says to me, ‘Gran, we’ll have to have your room, we shall really and there’s a place up the street with Mrs. Roberts, where you’ll be ever so comfortable’.

  “Well, I knew Mrs. Roberts, a really decent woman she was, and clean – well, you could have eaten any of your meals off her floor! I came to see her as I could get about in those days and she let me have the front room on the first floor. A beautiful room it was and nicely furnished too. I moved in and I was very happy there. Nothing to complain about, nothing at all.

  “And then comes the Blitz. My daughter was killed. You knew about that, didn’t you?”

  “No, I am afraid I didn’t,” Aria said.

  “A direct hit,” the old lady said.

  “The whole lot of them killed – my daughter, her husband and four of my grandchildren and a friend as they had staying there. Maggie was the only one that was all right. She was working in an office then and had stayed the night in the air raid shelter.

  “Well, it was shortly after that Mrs. Roberts felt her nerves going. She couldn’t stand them doodles coming over night after night and so she sold the house and the lodgers in it, so to speak. Not that there were many of them then! Most of them had gone away.”

  “And Mrs. Johnson bought it.” “Yes, she bought it. Then about three years ago she said I couldn’t have the front room any longer. I tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t listen and I hadn’t got anyone I could ask to help me.

  “Maggie was my only relation and she had gone to Hollywood. I couldn’t worry her with my troubles and she was sending me money regular. At first it was only two or three pounds a week, and then she put it up to six. A lot of money for a girl to part with when she’s earning her own living!”

  Aria said nothing. She had a sudden vision of the diamond necklace that Lulu had worn at dinner last night, of the aquamarines flashing in her ears at luncheon, of the tales she had read of her fabulous house in Beverly Hills, of the platina mink stole which she had flung carelessly down in the hall yesterday evening when she had come in from a drive.

  “Yes, she’s a kind girl,” she said with an effort.

  “That’s what I
always says,” Mrs. Hawkins murmured. “And look at all those cuttings about her. Open that drawer over there.”

  Aria did as she was told. The badly fitting drawer was hard to pull out. When she managed it, she found it crammed full with newspaper cuttings,

  “Lulu Carlo hits the headlines.” “Lulu Carlo walks away with the film.” “Lulu is mobbed by her fans.” “Lulu – ” “Lulu – ”

  Aria shut the drawer again.

  “A wonderful collection,” she said.

  “They all know in the street what I feel about her,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “There’s quite a lot of people as cuts bits out of their papers for me and sends them up. But not as many as there used to be,” she added with a sigh. “They forget about me now they can’t see me.”

  “Don’t you ever get out of here?” Aria asked her.

  “No dearie! I haven’t been out for nearly two years. It’s my legs, you see. I can get down the stairs all right, but I can’t get up again.”

  “But how do you manage?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Johnson does sometimes bring me up a bit of something to eat and the lady next door is ever so kind. She carries up my breakfast and usually my supper. I manages all right. I’m a bit hungry at times, but then, when you’re old it, doesn’t do to get fat, does it?”

  “Fat!” Aria exclaimed, looking at the blue veins on the thin bony hand resting on the worn blankets.

  She remembered that harsh bullying tone in Mrs. Johnson’s voice and she remembered her threat that she would do nothing more and then she recalled that shifty manner in which she had tried to prevent her from seeing Mrs. Hawkins.

  She looked round at the room and made up her mind.

  “Well, you are going to go down these stairs once more,” she said “And you will never have to come up them again. I am taking you away.”

  “Taking me away?” Mrs. Hawkins exclaimed “But where to, dearie?”

  “I am taking you to see your granddaughter,” Aria said gently.

  Chapter 7

  Aria knocked on Lulu Carlo’s bedroom door.

  It was a timid rather hesitant knock, for suddenly she felt apprehensive and afraid, unsure of herself and almost regretful of having the courage to act in the way she thought was right.

  She entered the room a second later to find, as she had expected, that Lulu was nearly ready for dinner. She was wearing a dress of soft aquamarine blue chiffon, which made her skin look very white and her blonde hair like gleaming gold.

  She was in the very act, as Aria entered, of clasping a fabulous necklace of diamonds and aquamarines round her neck, while already similar stones glittered in her wide bracelet on her wrist and in the lobes of her ears.

  “What is it, Miss Milbank?” she asked with a sharp note in her voice.

  “I came to tell you about your grandmother, Miss Carlo,” Aria replied.

  “Oh, yes! I hope she was pleased with the flowers and fruit,” Lulu said carelessly.

  She clasped the necklace rewind her neck and then gave an exclamation of annoyance as she noticed that the varnish had chipped from the tip of one of her long red fingernails.

  “Really, it’s impossible to get decent varnish in this country,” she said. “I brought some from America with me, but it’s all finished now.”

  “I think you will be worried to hear about your grandmother,” Aria said in a low voice. “The place that I found her in was horrible. She had no comforts of any sort and the landlady, who was perfectly prepared to take her money, was bullying her unmercifully. In fact I actually heard her tell Mrs. Hawkins that she did not intend to carry her food up to her any longer!”

  “If she doesn’t like it, I suppose she can always move,” Lulu replied indifferently.

  “Mrs. Hawkins is eighty-two,” Aria answered. “She has no one to speak to her and it is very difficult for an old person to take the initiative or to move anywhere when she is really bedridden.”

  “Well, I can’t do anything about it,” Lulu said positively. “And I hope you told her so. She used to bombard me with letters about all sorts of things until she realised that I hadn’t got the time to answer them.”

  Aria’s feeling of nervousness and apprehension had left her. She stood for a moment looking at the pretty petulant face bent over the chipped fingernail and then she said,

  “I think something has to be done about Mrs. Hawkins. I don’t know how anyone with any decent feelings could stand by and see an old lady badly treated.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s as bad as you are making out,” Lulu replied.

  “I assure you that I am not exaggerating,” Aria answered. “So perhaps you will tell me what action you would like me to take on your behalf.”

  Lulu Carlo put the brush back into the bottle of nail varnish and then looked at Aria.

  “I think you are taking a great deal upon yourself, Miss Milbank. I don’t care for the tone of voice you are speaking to me in. I suggest that you don’t interfere in things that do not concern you. Or else, if my grandmother’s affairs trouble you so greatly, you had better find some other lodgings for her to go to.”

  “That is exactly what I have done,” Aria said quietly.

  “Oh, well, you have been very quick about it,” Lulu remarked. “I hope at any rate she will be more satisfied with these lodgings than the last ones.” .

  “I think she will be,” Aria answered. “You see, I have brought her here!”

  Lulu Carlo stared at her for a moment in silence.

  “What – what did you say?” she asked at length.

  “I said that I had brought your grandmother, Mrs. Hawkins, here,” Aria replied.

  “Are you mad?”

  Lulu rose to her feet as she spoke and walked towards Aria with her face almost contorted with anger.

  “You have brought her here?” she questioned. “Here to this house? How dare you do such a thing? You will take her away at once, do you understand? Now, this moment!”

  “I shall do nothing of the sort,” Aria answered. “I don’t think you understand. Your grandmother was being not merely harshly treated, but criminally treated. She is ill – not mentally, old though she is, but physically. I couldn’t go away and leave her, whatever you might feel or think about it, so I put her in the car and brought her back here.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Lulu Carlo cried. “How dare you do such a thing? How dare you interfere? You beastly, sneaking, stuck-up servant, worming your way in here and daring to try to insinuate your ideas and your opinions into my life. But, anyhow, you won’t get far over this sort of game. I give the orders in this house, do you understand? And out my grandmother goes, now and at once!”

  She walked towards the bell as she spoke, but Aria’s voice arrested her.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I have told you that I have brought Mrs. Hawkins here. Nobody else knows who she is. I have told no one but you of her arrival. I have put her in the room downstairs that is known as the garden room because it is on the ground floor and it opens into the rose garden.

  “At this moment she is in bed sleeping off the effects of the journey. She is very old and frail. If you move her now or even if you upset her, she won’t stand it. It would, in my opinion, be deliberate murder!”

  Lulu’s hand fell from the bell.

  “You say that nobody knows that she’s here?” she asked, the furious expression on her face lightening a little,

  “No one!” Aria repeated.

  “Very well then. I will not disturb her tonight,” Lulu said. “But she goes tomorrow. You have taken this on yourself, so you can go and find somewhere else for her to go to. I don’t care where it is as long as it’s out of here, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Aria replied. “I won’t attempt now to tell you what I think of you, Miss Carlo, but perhaps your own conscience – will do that.”

  She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She knew it showed lack of self-control, but
her temper had got the upper hand.

  She was angry, as few people had seen her angry in the past, with a slow smouldering anger that was fanned by her sense of justice and the pity she felt for the poor old woman who had no one to care for her.

  Mrs. Hawkins had been quite happy to let Aria make decisions for her. She had made no protest about being dressed and half-carried down the stairs by Aria and the chauffeur.

  Aria had settled her comfortably in the car and then gone upstairs again to collect the poor old lady’s pitifully few belongings into a battered suitcase that she had noticed under the bed.

  “And the newspaper cuttings about Maggie,” Mrs. Hawkins had whispered when Aria told her where she was going. “I can’t leave those behind, they are very precious to me.”

  “You shall have them all,” Aria promised, and having nothing to pack them in she was forced to wrap them up in a woollen shawl.

  It was only then, when she was taking a last glance round the room, that she remembered the flowers and fruit she had brought for Mrs. Hawkins. She carried them and laid them outside the door of the room next door and, taking a piece of paper, she wrote on it,

  “To thank you for your kindness to an old lady.”

  Then she went downstairs and found Mrs. Johnson waiting for her in the hall.

  “Where are you a-takin’ ’er?” she had asked truculently. “I don’t know as ’ow I ought to let you go junketin’ off with someone who’s committed to my charge.”

  “If you have any complaints to make, I suggest you make them to the Police,” Aria said. “I shall very likely be seeing them on Miss Carlo’s account. I have seen how you treated Mrs. Hawkins and I don’t believe that people like you are allowed to cheat and defraud the public indefinitely.”

  She walked past Mrs. Johnson as she spoke and only as she climbed into the car did she hear the landlady, having finally recovered her breath, begin to shout at her.

  But by that time it was too late!