The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (17 page)

‘You need Personnel,’ he mumbled, pointing over his shoulder to a door at the back of the loading bay. ‘Oh, hell,’ he added, ‘I’m supposed to take you there.’

He stubbed out the cigarette and led the way up a narrow staircase to one side of the loading bay, then unlocked a door with his security pass which hung from a lanyard around his neck. The door opened into a long corridor lit by flickering strip lighting where the youth pushed open another door without knocking. ‘The new girl’s here, Mrs Deakin.’

A middle-aged woman frowned at Helen over the rim of her reading glasses, clearly resenting the rude interruption. ‘Thank you, Jim. Why don’t you come in?’ she said to Helen with a sudden smile which made her seem much more approachable. ‘We need to get a few formalities out of the way before you can start. Hope you don’t mind filling in forms?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Good, good.’

Mrs Deakin handed Helen some forms and carried on with her work. When Helen had finished, Mrs Deakin explained the job, confidentiality and security issues. Finally she handed her a coat like the one Jim was wearing and a padlock.

‘When you come out into the corridor and turn left,’ she said, ‘you’ll find a staff room. Take any locker which isn’t occupied and use the padlock. It’s unisex I’m afraid, but if you need to change your clothes, you can do it in the loo. Everyone else does.’ Removing her reading glasses, she let them dangle from her neck on a chain. ‘It’s good to see you again, Helen. You won’t remember me, of course, but I used to work with your mother.’

Surprised, Helen turned before reaching the door. ‘I didn’t think it was common knowledge that I’m sort of related to Letitia.’

‘Oh, it isn’t, no. Ms Walcott was quite specific about that, but she must’ve known I’d recognise you, so that’s why she told me. You have your mother’s chin.’

Sticking out said chin, Helen approached Mrs Deakin’s desk again. ‘Did you know my mother well?’

‘We were friendly, the kind of friends you make when you work long hours together. I was absolutely horrified at what happened to her. Everyone was. It was so awful. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like for you. You must’ve been traumatised.’

Clutching the coat to her chest, Helen felt her throat constrict. How could she answer this question without getting too caught up in the emotions which rose in her?

‘It was a pretty tough time.’

Perhaps sensing Helen’s reluctance to talk about it, Mrs Deakin put her reading glasses back on and busied herself with some papers. ‘At least you seem to have pulled through. I’m sure having your family around was a great comfort.’

Was this woman for real? She clearly didn’t know that Helen had more or less been shunted out of the family before her mother was even cold in her grave. She ought to put her right on that score, but perhaps it was better to wait until she knew where Mrs Deakin stood in relation to Letitia. If the woman was loyal, there’d be no point maligning her. Instead she smiled politely and left the office.

She found the staff room easily enough. A long narrow room, it had lockers along one wall, a low bench along the other, and a window at the end with frosted glass and security bars. In front of the window stood a Formica table and a set of orange plastic chairs in a haphazard arrangement as if everyone had got up in a hurry. Helen hung up her jacket and backpack in an empty locker and put on her brown coat. As she was locking it, Jim skulked in followed by an older man, the one who’d met her in reception the week before.

‘This is Bill,’ said Jim listlessly, showing that at least he had some manners.

‘Hi,’ said Helen.

Bald as an egg, with weathered and craggy skin as if he’d spent a lifetime outdoors squinting against the sun, Bill’s brown coat hung from a set of scraggy shoulders like a shirt on a wire coat hanger, but his hand was strong when he shook Helen’s. His face crinkled into a spider’s web of wrinkles. She recalled a ‘Bill’ from one of the newspaper clippings. If this was the same chap, he’d known her mother too.

‘I remember you from last week,’ he said in a deep and melodious voice. ‘Welcome on board. I said to Jim – didn’t I, Jim? – I said, “she’s all right, that one, I hope she gets the job”.’

‘Yeah, you did, didn’t ya?’

‘I hope you like it here. We’re a friendly bunch, except for old misery guts over there.’

‘I can be friendly.’ Jim sent him a dirty look and left the room, muttering something about ‘going for a smoke’.

Bill took Helen on a tour of the premises. They started with the behind-the-scenes bit, as Bill called it. He showed her the storage rooms and introduced her to the Shipping Manager, who nodded briefly while shouting instructions down the telephone.

‘Mrs Deakin’s office you’ve seen,’ said Bill as they entered what was known as the packaging hall.

‘Hall’ was a rather grand word for what was really a large, square room lit by a skylight and a few strip lights. It was a bright working space, yet stuffy at the same time, and smelt of dust and pine resin from the wooden packing crates.

Three men, dressed in coats identical to her own and white cotton gloves, were packing a large painting depicting a man on a horse with his sabre raised, set in a heavy gold frame. They gave her a cursory nod, but concentrated on their delicate task.

‘The Duke of Wellington,’ said Bill, ‘from the studio of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Or so the story goes. We’re sending him home to his new owner today.’

He led Helen down another wide corridor to the auction room. Several steel trolleys, some designed to move large items, others for smaller artwork, stood against one wall. He pushed aside a pair of thick, olive-green velvet curtains, and it was as if Helen had gone through a magic portal to a different world.

In contrast to the shabbiness of the back rooms, the auction hall glittered. Gold-painted chairs with red velvet seats were arranged in neat rows on either side of an aisle, a plush red wall-to-wall carpet covered the floor, and the room was lit by four large crystal chandeliers and a row of candle lamps on the walls. The back wall was hung with the same olive-green curtain as the one which hid the entrance to the back rooms, and in front of it stood a raised dais with a mahogany lectern and a state-of-the-art microphone. The auction hall had an air of unashamed opulence and unimagined wealth.

Helen’s jaw fell open. She’d seen Letitia’s office, but it was nothing compared to this.

Bill chuckled. ‘Impressive, isn’t it? Can’t blame you for being a bit overwhelmed, but just remember the old saying, “all that glitters is not gold”.’

Helen wasn’t really listening. The place was empty at the moment, apart from a large suit-clad bloke sitting on a chair in the far corner, and whom Bill whisperingly referred to as ‘Ms Walcott’s chauffeur’, but it didn’t take a lot of imagination to see it full of eager collectors, to hear the auctioneer’s rapid chant as he sold item after item to the highest bidders. To fantasise about the astronomical sums changing hands here.

In India the contrasts between rich and poor had been staggering, but for the first time since she’d returned to England she realised that they existed here too. She tried to picture Charlie’s reaction, but found it difficult, perhaps because she couldn’t imagine this kind of wealth herself.

And yet she was associated with it. That was the hardest part. One of the clan, she had her feet firmly under the table now. So why did it feel so wrong?

‘Wow,’ she said, for want of something more appropriate.

‘Come on, love, let’s go back and see if Jim’s finished his coffin nail.’

Bill was quiet when he took her back to the staff room, and after they’d collected Jim from his illicit cigarette break, she returned with Bill to the packaging hall. She spent the rest of the day helping the men unpack crates shipped from a private collection and marking the items with sale tags.

One oil painting caught her attention. Christ on the crucifix, it was done in brown, burnt umber, gold and sienna, with a touch of royal blue in the dress of the Virgin Mary kneeling with her hands folded in prayer. Helen guessed the age to be Renaissance, but the most remarkable feature of the painting was the light that seemed to flow from a source inside Christ himself, bathing the faces of those who beheld him. Set in a gilded frame, there was no signature, but she thought she knew who the artist was.

‘Rembrandt?’ she asked, a little breathlessly, as Bill placed the painting on a trolley in preparation for an auction that afternoon.

‘School of, I should think.’ He turned the painting over carefully with his cotton gloves to inspect the small white label at the back. ‘Yep, just like I thought.’

Jim laughed. ‘Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this place what doesn’t meet the eye.’

‘Easy, son,’ said Bill. ‘Remember, the walls have ears.’

Jim rolled his eyes and continued to work in silence.

Helen was still wondering what he’d meant by that when she left at five that evening. Everyone else had already gone, but there was a lot to learn so she’d spent the last hour reading up on various things. Mrs Deakin had said something about her mother working long hours; if she could do it, so could Helen.

Using her own, shiny new security pass, she released the lock on the loading bay door and let herself out. A sharp gust of wind tossed a bundle of wood shavings used for packing across the yard and behind a car. Helen caught up with it, but when she bent down to pick it up, she found herself staring at a pair of shiny black shoes.

A squeak of alarm escaped her, and she drew back to look up at the owner. He was a big guy with short cropped hair and biceps straining against his black suit jacket. Arms crossed, he stared back at her with virtually no expression on his face.

Helen felt the rush of blood in her ears. It was still light, but the office buildings surrounding the auction house were deserted, and she was alone with a gargantuan thug and only a handful of wood shavings for a weapon. Fighting back was out of the question.

Before she could ask what he was doing here, he beat her to it.

‘I am here for business purposes,’ he said in heavily accented English. Eastern European or Russian, Helen wasn’t sure.

‘What kind of business? The office is closed now.’ Surprised at herself for being so cocky when her heart was practically jumping against her ribcage, she tossed the wood shavings in a rubbish crate.

‘With boss.’

‘And where’s your boss?’ Even bolder now.

‘He is there,’ he replied and looked over Helen’s shoulder.

Helen turned. Across the yard Letitia was coming out through the loading bay with someone, a man. He whispered something in her ear, and Letitia’s husky laugh echoed in the thin evening air.

Any further words died in Helen’s throat. It wasn’t the fact that Letitia had a lover – if it was a lover – which made her stare, it was the man himself.

In her wallet Helen carried a faded Polaroid photo of her parents, the only picture she had of them together. Her father, who died before she was born, had thick dark hair, arresting eyes and a rather prominent nose.

The man descending the steps with his eyes boring into hers was a walking ghost.

Dmitri Stephanov had returned from the dead.

With several conspiracy theories racing through her mind, Helen stared at him numbly. Had her father faked his death? He couldn’t have. You could fake an accident but not dying from leukaemia …

If Letitia was annoyed at being caught out with her boyfriend, she didn’t show it. Instead she did something which took Helen completely by surprise. Putting a well-manicured hand on his, she motioned for Helen to come closer.

‘Helen, I’d like you to meet a business associate of mine. Arseni,’ she said, with an elegant movement of her wrist, ‘this is your niece.’

Suddenly – nastily – the pieces fell into place. Helen’s father had a brother, but she’d never met him, and when her mother was killed and he hadn’t come forward to claim her, she’d thought … well, what? That he’d died? That he didn’t know his brother was dead and his niece an orphan?

No.

She’d thought he’d rejected her.

Like everyone else had. Because she was a bad child who had epilepsy. Who’d want that?

‘Hello, Uncle. Nice to meet you. At last,’ she added, barely holding back a sneer.

Her uncle’s face had gone white, and he’d stopped in mid-movement as if frozen. After a few long seconds he turned to Letitia.

‘What? You wanted to meet your niece. Well, here she is.’

Arseni ran his fingers through his dark brown hair, so like her father as he was on that faded Polaroid and so like herself except for the hair colour. Then, as if remembering a role he was supposed to be playing, he spread his arms wide and grinned broadly.

‘Yelena.’ He came towards her and kissed her on both cheeks. Then, frowning, he held her at arm’s length with his hands firmly on her shoulders. ‘A young lady now. Not beautiful like you mother, but like Dmitri. You are my poor, dead brother – what you say? – come back to life,
nyet
?’

Unhappy with this level of closeness, Helen tried to move away, but his grip remained firm.

‘Well, girl, have you no kiss for your poor old uncle Arseni?’ The Russian inflection got heavier with each word.

He wasn’t old, and he didn’t look poor. Nevertheless she planted a kiss on his cheek, expecting to feel something, affection, happiness, revulsion even, but she was like a dead thing. She didn’t even have the energy to slap him for not being there when she could have done with a real flesh and blood relative, not just a step-this or step-that. She experienced no connection at all.

Then the anger came, shocking in its intensity, poison in her veins. Sensing this, Arseni let her go.

‘Why you do this to me?’ he said to Letitia. ‘Is not fair.’

‘Seni, don’t be dramatic. I didn’t know she was here. Most of my staff have normally left by this hour.’

‘I wanted to meet her when I was properly prepared,’ Arseni went on. ‘When I could give her gifts and show her my love. She is family, she deserve only the best proper Russian welcome, not like you English, so stiff and upper lip. God in heaven!’