Free The Cilla Rose Affair by Winona Kent

never forgave me for being an actor, and for taking your mother away to Canada—for having Ian in Toronto instead of in London—the list goes on and on.”
    “There must have been something you did right.”
    “Yes—the three years I spent back here in the mid-sixties. But then, of course, I made the mistake of renting a flat in Hampstead.”
    “What’s the matter with Hampstead?”
    “Nothing at all. But it was too far away from Mitcham to suit your grandmother. And on the wrong side of the river. In fact, about the only thing I managed to do right in all that time was conspire to produce you.”
    Anthony looked away. He’d lived in London for three years. His father had been here for almost as long, yet their visits with one another had been infrequent, their conversations strained.
    No one thing had been the cause of the distance between them. Rather, it was an accumulation of feelings: an uncertain hesitancy on his father’s part, a sullen stubbornness on Anthony’s.
    He’d been performing for as long as he could remember. He’d been a juggler. A clown. A gypsy rover in a roaming band of summer storytellers, with a bright-paint caravan and horses and a grant from the Canada Council.
    An actor.
    It had been a journey of validation, notably marked by his father’s absences.
    It hurt.
    “I was impressed by your performance this evening, by the way.”
    “I didn’t know you were there. I’d have got you a ticket.”
    “No need, Anthony,” his father said, gently.
    Anthony swallowed.
    “My performance aside,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
    His father prised the lid off a styrofoam cup full of tea he’d bought earlier at Charing Cross. “I’m trying to track down an actor, Anthony. Potter Maynard. Does the name ring a bell?”
    Anthony thought. “I met him once, didn’t I? In L.A.?”
    “You’ve got a good memory.”
    “It more or less comes with the territory,” Evan’s middle son said. “Why are you looking for him?”
    “Something to do with something else from a long time ago. Do you remember the night I went out to that pirate radio station? You must have been three…four years old.”
    “I was three,” Anthony said. “I remember. There was a gale warning and mum didn’t want you to go. She thought you’d be washed overboard.”
    “Indeed. That was the night I met Simon Darrow. Ian used to listen to him on the radio.” He stopped, and tossed the lid, and a plastic stir-stik, into an overflowing litter bin.
    “You came home with a book.”
    “ Muirhead’s Short Blue Guide to London . That’s right. God, Anthony, your memory.” He shook his head in disbelief.
    “You gave the book to me. I used to pretend I was reading it.” He thought. “It sank, didn’t it? The ship?”
    “It did,” his father confirmed.
    They had walked together as far as Waterloo Bridge.
    “One of the people we think might have had something to do with the ship’s sinking is Simon’s wife—Potter Maynard’s sister. We’re trying to establish a connection to Simon in 1966, and I was hoping Potter might be able to provide us with some answers.”
    “He’s not listed anywhere? Equity, the British Theatre Association? The Arts Council?”
    “Nowhere that I’ve looked. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if he’s still in the business.”
    His son didn’t say anything.
    Evan paused. “I wouldn’t normally ask you to get involved, Anthony, but we’ve run up against a complete dead end with this one. Would you mind?”

Chapter Eight
    Saturday, 24 August 1991
    Anthony walked across Adelaide Road and up the Bridge Approach. On the blue-walled overpass he stopped, and clambered onto a concrete planter filled with crumbling earth and shrubbery, and stood and watched as the trains rattled beneath him, clattering down to Euston.
    Long ago there had been many weekend walks like this: his mother and father, and Ian, and Anthony, in his push-chair. There had been this bridge, and Anthony