Free The Gigantic Shadow by Julian Symons Page B

voice and a kittenish sense of comedy, who seemed nervous of her own daring in entering a prison, and yet had something sexually flirtatious in her manner. ‘I remember now. She came down once, took part in a show I saw in prison.’
    ‘She was a star, a real star. In musical comedy, I mean. She was beautiful.’
    Beautiful? He suppressed the words on his lips, that she had not been nearly so beautiful as her daughter, and said humbly, ‘But I don’t remember your father.’
    ‘He was a producer. Norman Hales Productions. The Girl from St Louis, Song of the Clans, The Girl from Way Back, Esmeralda Went Dancing.’ She spoke the names reverently. ‘Mummy starred in some of them. They were all successes. He had a magic touch. Everyone said so.’
    Hunter remained silent and she went on talking dreamily, as though he were not there.
    ‘Norman was a most wonderful person. I always called him Norman, he didn’t like being called daddy, said it made him feel old. We had a marvellous life, the three of us. They took me about with them everywhere. All over England, France and Italy, once to America. Lots of different hotels, restaurants, always gay, exciting people.’
    And you say this room is the nearest thing to home you’ve ever known, Hunter thought in pity. When he spoke, it was to ask a question. ‘You said he hurt you. How did that happen?’
    Her face was turned away. ‘He never meant to hurt me.’
    ‘You said that too.’
    ‘But he was attractive, you know, attractive to women. He had lots of affairs. Sometimes he would go off, we wouldn’t see him for a month perhaps. Mother used to cry.’ She said rather fiercely, ‘I never cried. I knew he’d come back.’
    ‘He loved your mother.’
    ‘He loved me,’ she said emphatically. ‘When he came back he’d just come into the flat – we stayed in lots of flats then, or that’s the way I remember it – throw his hat on to a peg and say, “Hallo, Chip, remember me?” That’s what he called me, Chip. He’d always come back loaded with presents for both of us, and it would be just as though he’d never gone away.’
    ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
    ‘He was killed in March, 1941. He was walking along during a raid, and a warden told him to take cover. He said – the warden told us about it afterwards – “Thank you for your advice, my dear sir, but I’m already late for an appointment, and I’ve made a private arrangement with the Germans that they won’t bomb the particular district I happen to be visiting. They keep a note of my movements, you know, Lord Haw Haw looks after me in person.” He was killed two minutes later by a piece of flying shrapnel. They thought it was from one of our own guns.’
    The picture she was building up, of an amorous Peter Pan who didn’t like being called daddy, and was facetious and foolhardy during air raids, seemed to Hunter thoroughly dislikeable. It would, he knew, be unwise to say so. ‘What did your mother think?’ he asked. ‘I mean about his affairs, and so on.’
    ‘She accepted them. You just had to accept them. That’s the kind of man he was.’ They had been drinking in a little club called the Low Down and she sat there now, legs thrust out in front of her, arms hanging loose, head sunk, a picture of clownish dejection so complete as to be comic. ‘I was only seven when he died, but I’ve never got over him. I don’t suppose I ever shall.’
    ‘We imagine things,’ Hunter said, out of the depth of his own experience. ‘Especially we imagine happiness. It’s always something past.’
    She shook her head. ‘Not this. It was real. Sometimes I think nothing since then has been real in the same way.’
    ‘Then your mother married again.’
    ‘Two years after Norman died, yes. Daddy was mad about her, went to the theatre every night, sent her flowers, took her out, all that sort of nonsense.’
    ‘That must have been painful for you.’
    ‘Oh, I didn’t mind. I was only a kid, you know,