Diamonds at the Lost and Found Read online

  DIAMONDS AT THE LOST AND FOUND

  A Memoir in Search of my Mother

  Sarah Aspinall

  Copyright

  4th Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.4thEstate.co.uk

  This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2020

  Copyright © Sarah Aspinall 2020

  Cover photographs © Sarah Aspinall. Design by Ellie Game.

  Image of Louis Jourdan © Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo

  Image of Ronnie Carroll © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

  All other images provided by the author

  Sarah Aspinall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

  Source ISBN: 9780008375195

  Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008375171

  Version: 2021-04-13

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1: Hong Kong

  Chapter 2: Star Quality

  Chapter 3: The Grand House

  Chapter 4: The Riviera of the North West

  Chapter 5: Bookie’s Runner

  Chapter 6: Goodbyes

  Chapter 7: America, 1965

  Chapter 8: The Kill Devil Hills

  Chapter 9: True Love

  Chapter 10: The Further Adventures of Audrey

  Chapter 11: Palm Springs

  Chapter 12: Sally and Audrey at Sea

  Chapter 13: I Yabba Dabba Doo!

  Chapter 14: The Antipodes

  Chapter 15: Pearl of the Orient

  Chapter 16: A Cold New Year

  Chapter 17: The Midnight Kiss

  Chapter 18: The Young Eve

  Chapter 19: Crashing into Gateposts

  Chapter 20: Further Afield

  Chapter 21: High Hopes

  Chapter 22: What’s Good for the Goose

  Chapter 23: The Wedding

  Chapter 24: Breaking Away

  Chapter 25: Rebellion

  Chapter 26: A Journey North

  Chapter 27: Arrival

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  1

  Hong Kong

  I AM EIGHT YEARS OLD and it is 1965.

  I look around the softly lit bar. A man sits across from me on a high stool, well dressed, alone, drink in hand; I notice him straight away. The air is smoky and the distant lights glittering below us could be those of Tokyo or Cairo or San Francisco, or any of these cities that we find ourselves in. The glitzy decor, rich smells and leather dinner menus give no clues as to even what country we are in, only what level we are currently at in International Hotel Land. This week it is Hong Kong, the hotel sumptuous, and we are hopeful this may be one of our winning streaks.

  ‘I’ve got you under my skin …’

  A pianist is playing Sinatra songs. He drifts seamlessly from one to the next –

  ‘… In the wee small hours of the morning …’

  I know the songs; they play everywhere we go and my mother sings along to them all.

  In the hotel lobby is a Chinese emperor’s throne that you can sit on to be photographed. A kindly American couple takes a picture of me sitting on it, lifting me onto the scarlet cushion, putting the Mandarin hat with tassels on my head and telling me to smile. They scribble down the address that my mother gives them, promising to mail a print of it to my ‘home’.

  I keep thinking about this, and wondering if one day we will go to a place called home. Will this photograph be waiting for me, lying on a doormat in an envelope with an American stamp? I try to picture ‘home’, and to remember the gloomy tiled hallway in the big Victorian house in the damp seaside town, but it only feels like somewhere that I’ve once visited, and not much liked.

  Tonight we eat dinner in the dining room off the lobby and bar, and for once my mother can find little to say. Around us is the usual hotel mix of tanned tourist families and businessmen having serious conversations, or off duty with a beer, chatting about golf. I’m not allowed to read my books at mealtimes, so I look around the room trying to find something to be interested in.

  ‘… do be do … the lady is a tramp …’ The pianist drawls, Audrey joins in.

  ‘Why is she a tramp?’ I ask.

  ‘She wants to be free, do her own thing,’ she says, ‘you know,’ then she croons about having the wind in our hair and being without a care. As she sings she does the thing she calls table jiving, her hands criss-crossing through the air, fists thumping each other, thumbs pointing over her shoulder as if she was hitch-hiking right out of the restaurant.

  ‘So why won’t she go there in erming and pearls? What is erming?’

  She sighs. ‘It’s ermine, min, fur, you know like my mink coat.’

  She doesn’t like these sorts of questions. Sometimes she will give me a number, like ‘OK, three, two more’, and hold three fingers up, taking each finger down as I ask her something.

  She takes out one of her menthol cigarettes and smokes it slowly, then tries to be kind.

  ‘Have an ice cream, sweetheart? You’ve hardly eaten anything.’

  But I don’t want an ice cream and I feel sick. I know she is bored, and I shouldn’t ask anything else.

  ‘Shall I get myself a Coke then?’ I offer. Audrey looks over at the bar again, at the man sitting there.

  ‘OK then.’

  This is code and we both know what is going to happen next.

  I get up and make my way across to the bar; I manage to wedge myself right next to the man sitting on his stool and I can feel the rough cloth of his jacket against my arm and smell that faint male smell of aftershave and car leather and five-pound notes. The waiter fills my glass with ice and I turn to the man with what I hope is a cute smile.

  ‘Hello.’

  He looks down at me from his bar stool. ‘Hello, princess.’

  I give him an innocent look. ‘I don’t suppose you can look after my Mummy when I go to bed?’

  He seems taken aback, but then laughs and turns to glance behind him. ‘So which one is your mummy? And are you quite sure she wants to be taken care of?’

  I nod and point across to her. Audrey gives a puzzled smile as she gets up to come over, pretending she doesn’t know what is happening. She transforms herself in those few moments, into someone happy and fascinating.

  ‘Oh dear, is my little girl being a pest?’ she says, and puts her arm around me.

  She has a voice that sounds excited and drowsy at the same time, and an accent she has invented for herself, a trace of her parents’ Irish Liverpool mixed with something faintly American. People are intrigued and ask her, they always do … ‘Where do you come from?’

  Now with the man there is that sudden shift, a change in the atmosphere, and in him. He suddenly looks younger and more alive as he takes in the strands of red hair that fall across her face, the look she has, bright-eyed and as if there was some joke goi
ng on that no one else knew about, a joke just between them. It makes a room feel like the chandeliers have just been lit and everything sparkles.

  He responds as they so often do, with that look of keen, warm interest. ‘This little princess was just telling me that she was going to bed?’

  I decide then that I don’t think he is very nice, not really. I think he might be what my Auntie Grace, who doesn’t like my mother, would call ‘one of her smooth smoothies’. Audrey gives me what she believes is her motherly look.

  ‘She certainly is off to bed. Come on, Miss Flip!’

  I get up and say goodnight to my catch of the evening. She is pleased with me. She has a hundred names for me: Miss Doodlemepop is my favourite.

  Then, just as we are leaving, he takes the bait as they always do. He leans in towards her.

  ‘Maybe we could have a little nightcap?’

  His voice is full of meaning. He smiles down at me.

  ‘So this little lady won’t have to worry about Mummy being all alone?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she says modestly, thinking about it, wondering if it would be OK. Then, with a ‘what the heck’ air as if throwing a lifetime of caution to the wind, she gives in.

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt, I suppose, just a quick one. I’ll settle her down first.’

  Back in the room ‘settling me down’ means that I pull on my nightie, guiltily ignoring the flannel and toothbrush that Auntie Grace had presented me with. She’d been horrified that I’d never had a toothbrush, let alone been told to use one. Then I get into bed to watch the delicious routine of Mummy ‘freshening up’: the grey-green eyeliner smudged along her eyes, the coral lipstick blotted with a Kleenex, and lastly the squirt of the perfume bottle and the cloud of Youth Dew which she will lightly step into. In that moment I am entranced with her. It is like a special dance, swirling into a haze of fragrance as it curls around her, settling on her hair, her skin, as if a magical dew. Hers is the smell of the fresh early evening, black taxicabs and Martinis, mink coats and diamonds. Sometimes she will let me step into that perfume cloud and I fantasize about what my own grown-up special scent will be. I imagine honeysuckle and bluebell woods, and try to remember what these things smell like. Does England smell this way after summer showers? It should, but all I can remember is the cold sea air and rain on the windows of that sad, faraway house.

  She’s ready, and there’s the feeling of her cheek brushing mine and the click of the door closing behind her. I lie in the dark, listening for the reassuring sounds of other hotel guests running baths and the murmur of conversation. Tonight I feel that she won’t be back till morning, but I know she will come back. She always comes back.

  I switch the light back on and reach for my book.

  The random books I collected as I passed through childhood had become, at this time, my entire guide to life. Bought in haste at airports, found abandoned in hotel lounges or given to me by sympathetic strangers, this odd library system yielded up occasional gold. Some of the content was baffling, or dull, or written in impenetrable language, but I kept going just for those precious moments of illumination when something in the story gave me a key to understanding the strange situations that I found myself in. One current favourite was called Coffee, Tea or Me?, which followed air stewardesses Trudy and Rachel as they engaged in a daily battle to ward off the attentions of the airline pilots, drunk passengers and ‘love ’em and leave ’em guys’ travelling the world. We met a lot of these ladies, who seemed so kind and elegant. We would see them again after our flight, crossing the airport concourse or hotel lobby, as they walked behind the captain and co-pilot, in their trim uniforms. But I now realize that behind that poise was a struggle for survival. A hunt of their own, the same hunt we were on.

  Tonight I would struggle on with a book I’d found: Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. It begins with the hero Philip as a child, sleeping safe and loved in his mother’s arms, and then being told, ‘Your mamma’s gone away. You won’t ever see her any more. Your mamma’s in heaven.’ The sense of panic and abandonment that he felt is exactly how I had felt at the death of my father. I was still unable to think of his sad, kind face without a frozen sense of misery.

  As a guide to how adults love each other this story couldn’t be more shocking. Philip has a deformed back, and is terribly sensitive; he falls in love with a waitress called Mildred who is cruel to him, and who he seems to find repellent with her ‘common nasal voice’, but he cannot think about anything else. Love was my chosen subject of study, and the feelings of Philip for Mildred were so different from any childish idea of love that I felt some trick was being played on the reader.

  I didn’t want to ask my mother, as she didn’t like to talk about things in books. But if a man like Philip could love a horrid girl like Mildred, then why didn’t one of those men who my mother met ever love her, when she was so beautiful and could sing and dance and tell funny stories and make the room light up? It must just have been a run of terrible, terrible luck.

  Sometimes on our adventures, ‘our travels’, we were in luck. We could stay in lavish hotels with gorgeous lobbies and mirrored ballrooms, with long corridors and caged lifts: wonderlands that I could explore for hours. Then we would suddenly lurch into an entirely different world of cheap rooms and panic.

  Morning comes, and I wake up with hot light coming through a narrow line down the side of the curtains, cutting across the hotel room. Audrey is sitting in a chair with her wrap around her. She isn’t doing anything. Just sitting there.

  THIS IS AUDREY.

  She looks so small now.

  Today she’s made up like a doll; I can’t get past the likeness. Then I note the empty space in her oversized coffin has been padded with sparkling pink gauze.

  A doll in a presentation box.

  And yet I look at her now and that strange magnetic aura is still there. The rumble of a bus on the road outside does little to erase it. Otherwise this room is so silent, she is so still, her stories already drifting away from me, some already half forgotten.

  I see now that my mother and I lived in a land of these stories. It began back then with my own escape into books, and Audrey’s myriad tales told to strangers. Ours was a fairyland of myth and anecdote, sometimes in dull black and white, sometimes Technicolor; always a musical and often a romance. Only once or twice was it a tragedy, but we got over it.

  As a child there was this constant swirling mist around us, made up of all these fragments of my mother’s past, her thousand and one tales. Many were extraordinary accounts of ingenuity and good fortune, most were true, but even then I believed there was another, untold story, which hovered over us, a story that we were either leaving behind or travelling towards.

  I knew, even then, that my mother was many things – a chancer, a dreamer, a procurer, a delinquent, as well as a teller of tales.

  Here is one of her tales: Marilyn Monroe’s favourite bungalow was Number Seven on the studio backlot, the Norma Jean, which sat behind a dapple of succulent foliage; beyond it a path wound through tropical gardens to Bungalow Four. An assistant was taking room-service sandwiches wrapped in white linen to Clark Gable and another a tray of Martinis to Frank Sinatra in Bungalow Five. Against these tangled depths, shaded by twilight, the flames of bougainvillea match Audrey’s lipstick, and a lamp glints off her auburn hair. She has found her way to Oz, and infiltrated the magic kingdom of the movies at last. There is a patter of rain, the sky is darkening and Sinatra steps outside holding a drink – he puts out his hand to catch a raindrop and smiles.

  ‘What do you call a wet bear?’ Audrey asks him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He grins. ‘What do you call a wet bear?’

  ‘A drizzly bear.’

  He laughs, and raises his glass to her before moving back into the shadows.

  Clink.

  This is Audrey.

  Crimson lips, salty tears, the sad house and the windy dunes.

  Bougainvillea, Sinatra, warm
breeze through the Hollywood Hills.

  And me here to work out how she and I fit in between.

  There’s a thread running through our story, our harum-scarum life, and it is love; perhaps, more than that, a hunt for love?

  The love between a man and a woman was clearly everything. I think back to myself as a child and realize that this was coded into me. All the nooks and crannies, breezes and becalmings, the highs and lows that rattled us over the world and back are somehow connected to that thread.

  Love was everything to her. To us. That hunt was everything.

  I now see it drove her every day.

  My mission is to work out why it took us so long to find it.

  It made me who I am, that adventure, and those years of being her small partner in crime. I wasn’t always able to see where we were going but, like the back of a pantomime horse, I could hear, and in time I learnt so much. So my own story must now be about what I lost and found along the way.

  2

  Star Quality

  THE SOUTHPORT SEA had receded to a faraway ribbon of silver, and a ghostly view of Blackpool Tower shimmered across the mud and water of the estuary. On autumn nights this mirage would pulsate with light and colour and I was told that it contained a circus with dancing ponies and roaring lions.

  Our first house was pebble-dashed and on a dull road of bed-and-breakfast VACANCY signs. The road went down to the so-called seaside, a dark mudflat lit with pools of reflecting water as it stretched into the distance. Silt had slowly filled the bay, and the vanishing sea had already robbed Southport of its life as a genteel resort; but at the end of the 1950s it was still holding on grimly, propping up the old fairground and planting its municipal pleasure grounds with cheery geraniums.

  There was a box of cine films in the sideboard at home, labelled in my father’s careful handwriting. These were eventually lost in my mother’s endless house moves, so it is now hard to be sure what is a memory of life, and what is a memory of these flickering records of my childhood. Both have the same uneven quality, the shifts in luminosity, the haze of things that are glimpsed through gauze. My earliest childhood summers still have, in my mind, that fragile vibrancy of watercolours, and in every frame my mother sparkles. She steps out of shadows and into a transparent glow as if lit from within and fluttering with life, quivering with the next thing she wants or needs.