“I can laugh now. Him in the bed there and me standing there in my dressing-gown—and we made terms. He wanted me out of the house. I understood that. He couldn’t have me there all the time reminding him. And he wanted me out at once. He would give me a large sum of money as the price of my silence. He became quite human in his fear, and, by God, Caroline, he was afraid. He could see what I could see. ‘Philanthropist Robert Tressidor discovered in a brothel …’ Well, we made an amicable arrangement. He would pay me well and I should leave at once. I should go to an hotel for the night … at his expense, of course, and stay there until something could be arranged for me. He owned a great deal of property in London and he would see what could be done about accommodation for me. He gave me all the money he had on him and promised to pay me a large sum. That would be an end of it. He had no intention of giving way to further blackmail. I did not want that either. It’s a dangerous game. All I wanted was a good start in life—just what some people get by being born into it and others have to fight for. He quite understood my desire to break away from a life of service—my ambition, he called it, and he had a great respect for ambition. After all he had a good deal of it himself. He was frank in a way, and do you know, I liked him better lying there in bed naked and being a bit humble … and in a way understanding … than I ever had the virtuous philanthropist. I said, ‘Look here, Mr. Tressidor, you play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you. I could expose you to the papers. There’s nothing they’d like better than that sort of scandal. You’d be ruined.’ He admitted this, and said that he would honour his promises to me. But I was clever enough to understand he would not endure perpetual blackmail. He would pay the initial amount but that must be the end of the matter. I agreed. I’m not a blackmailer by nature, but I’m a girl who has to fight, and when you’ve got all the odds against you, you can’t be over-nice. There! What do you think of that?”
“I can’t stop thinking of him … always pretending to be so good … the way he behaved to my mother. Is the world full of deceitful people?”
“Quite a large number of the population, I shouldn’t wonder. There! Was I right to tell you?”
“It’s always best to know everything.”
“You’ve got to fight through life as I have had to. It’s better to know people. The world is not always a pretty place. Oh, I reckon some go through and never see the seamy side. But look at your father … I mean Robert Tressidor. He was a man who had desires like most men. I know the sort. There were a lot of them like that at Crawley’s. They’re what they call sensual, and they can’t get what they want at home. They have to play the gentleman there and maybe are ashamed to do what they really want, so they go for girls like me. Then they can do what they like. They don’t have to worry about showing themselves for what they are. That’s what it’s all about.”
“I’m glad you told me, Rosie. I want to know everything. I never want to imagine things are not what they seem again. I think I hate men.”
“Oh, there are some good ones among the bad. Hard to find, it’s true, but they are there.”
I shook my head. I kept seeing my father—why did I have to go on calling him my father?—I kept seeing Robert Tressidor cowering in that bed.
“It upset him terribly,” went on Rosie. “I reckon it killed him really. He had that first stroke soon after that. He must have been almost out of his mind … when he thought what it could mean. I wouldn’t have gone that far, though. I reckon I’ve been paid fair and square. Didn’t stop him changing that rotten will about you, though, did it?”
I shook my head. “Why should it?”
“Oh, he was very pompous and sanctimonious about your mother. We heard quite a bit when that little thing was going on. Such a great good man with such a naughty wife! How could she? And all the time there was sir, going to Crawley’s for a little bit of slap and tickle on the sly.”
“It’s so horrible,” I said.
“Do you think I’m awful?”
“No.”
“A woman who sells her body, who’s not averse to a little blackmail?”
“I’m glad you got something out of him, Rosie. It’s the hypocrisy, the deceit, I can’t bear. You were never like that.”
“Open as the day, that’s me. Well, I had to leave that night, you see. That’s why I wasn’t there to let you in. I had to pack up and be right out of the house by the time he came back. It was part of the bargain.”
“I understand, Rosie.”
“It took me a long time to decide whether to tell you or not. Then I heard you were going to France. How did I know? Servants! They talk. I mix a bit on the edge of society, too. There’s gossip. They were all talking about you being cut out and not his daughter and all that. That’s common knowledge. And I thought, ‘Poor Caroline. She’s got a hard row to hoe.’ And I thought I’d ask you to come and I’d tell you this. If ever you wanted a friend, Rosie’s here to help you. I’d ask you to stay here, but that wouldn’t be right for you. I do have the occasional gentleman friend … my own choice though this time. And I’ve got a bit of a reputation. One of these days I might settle down. I saw a little fellow the other day playing in the Park with his nanny. I thought … I dunno, there’s something about kids. Who knows, your old friend Rosie might fall for that lark one day. And when, and if, I do, I’ll have the right sort of place to bring it up. There! But remember this, if ever you think I could be of any help to you, you know where I am.”
“Thank you, Rosie,” I said.
She rang for the tea to be cleared away. I watched her with faint amusement mingled with awe.
She was a very clever woman, and in spite of the fact that she had been a part-time prostitute and was confessedly a blackmailer, she seemed to me to be a better human being than quite a number I could name.
I made my way thoughtfully back to the house.
Yes indeed, I was growing up fast.
NIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS
I had come to Paris with the Rushtons as we had arranged, and they had very kindly seen me onto the train which was to make its journey to the South of France.
It was difficult to believe that so much was happening to me. The journey did not bother me. Going away to school had given me a certain self-reliance, and this was not my first visit to France, although I was scarcely a seasoned traveller.
As I looked out of the train window I kept telling myself that I must put behind me all that had happened. I must start a fresh life. I might well discover that my true place was with my parents. I was romancing again.
I think what had shocked me almost as much as the knowledge that it was not me but my inheritance that Jeremy had wanted, was what I had just heard of the man whom I had believed to be my father. I could not keep out of my mind the picture of him on that bed. I could understand his need for sexual satisfaction but not his hypocrisy. How could he make those speeches about fallen women when he himself was indulging in the practices he pretended to deplore?
“There’s lots like him,” Rosie had said, and Rosie knew men.
And Jeremy? I would never forget opening that letter and realizing that I had been living in a fantasy world.