THE BROOCH and smiled to myself. Things hadn’t always been like this…One of my earliest childhood memories was the Victorian brooch my mother wore, oval shaped, with three separate diamonds in it. I always thought it one of the prettiest things I had ever seen. It was Mother’s favorite possession, I think she loved it even more than her wedding ring. She wore the brooch at the neck of her one and only best silk blouse, the one she wore when she changed after lunch. She had a lovely face, my mother, oval, calm and serene. Her hair was swept back off her forehead in two wings, her eyes grey and wide apart, and her expression gentle. The only time I ever saw her frown was when my father was going through one of his bad patches, and these, I must admit, did seem to happen with alarming frequency. For my father was an actor — at least, as an actor he was more of a singer, and as a singer he was more of an actor. My mother met him while she was taking her small terrier for a walk in the local park near where she lived. The little dog had tugged sharply at the lead, and with a joyous bound raced away across the park, followed by mother running in pursuit as hot as decorum would allow in those days. Then out of the blue she noticed a tall, broad-shouldered young man chasing the little dog too. Presently, he caught up with it, and in one bound hoisted the dog into his arms and carried it back to my breathless and grateful mother. She said she’d never forget till the day she died the vividness of those blue eyes that looked into hers as he gave her back the dog. Nor how she tried to thank him, tongue-tied, how he bowed slightly and spoke to her in his lilting Irish brogue. So you can see the affair had a romantic start. “He has a way with him, Jack Donovan,” my mother would often say. He told her he was appearing at the local theatre as a solo turn, for indeed, as my mother said, he had a fine baritone voice. He would be appearing there for two more weeks, maybe longer. Perhaps, he suggested, my mother would like to visit the theatre and visit the show? He had, he explained, come over from County Kerry the previous year, in order to win fame and fortune in the theatre. Only, as he said, it wasn’t as easy as it looked, for the streets of London were certainly not paved with gold. My mother said she quite understood, and she was sure they weren’t. She took him home eventually to meet her parents, but try as they would, and much as they liked him, they felt they couldn’t give their consent the marriage. So as soon as she was twenty-one, my mother ran away to marry my father, and they lived in two poky, little rooms in South London. They were very happy, she said, though very poor. Sometimes my father would get work of a kind, but he always left after a time, because the theatre, he used to say, was in his blood. Sometimes he would do a solo turn in a small theatre or at one of the music halls, but he always longed for the sweet smell of success, with his name at the top of the bill, instead of being in small print at the bottom, where it invariably was. Mother used to travel around with him to Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow. She said in later years that looking back it had been a wonderful time, because as time went by you remembered only the good things, and forgot just how terrible it was to be really hungry. Then I was born, and my father took stock of himself and his career. He decided he had a duty to his new baby daughter and his pretty young wife, so he found a job as a clerk in a shipping office. Mother said it was pitiful to see him. He grew thin and pale in that dark airless office, and he wasn’t good at the job, anyway. “This like being in a cage,” he used to say. Eventually my mother, fretting at seeing him so listless and pining, made him leave his job and go after a small part in a company going on tour. He set off, she said, delighted and excited as any small child. And wonder of wonders, he got the part. The show was The Desert Song, and although he wasn’t playing the Red Shadow, at least he was one of the Riffs… The first thing he did with his first week’s money was to buy Mother the Victorian brooch. She said she wept at the recklessness of his spending the much needed money on such a thing. But they were tears of delight as well because it was such a pretty thing. “Eighteen carat,” she used to say proudly. “Not nine, mark you, but eighteen carats!” And it had cost three pounds. The brooch was part of my childhood, the time my little sister was born, my father had been in shows up and down the country from Land’s End to John O’Groats, but never with more than a small billing. During these hard times, my mother used to stay in South London while my father toured the country, and sometimes there just wasn’t enough money for food. At times like these my mother used to pawn her brooch. When we came home from school and saw her blouse neatly buttoned at the neck, looking so bare, we would throw our arms round her. “It’s only for a little while,” she used to say, and we would have something special for tea. That brooch must have been in and out of pawnshops all over London and every time, with a great deal of effort, it was redeemed. Until one occasion, when I was about ten years old, and my father had been going through a very bad patch indeed. He hadn’t been working since the local music hall had closed down after his last engagement, and he had nothing more in view. As he tramped around the agencies with no luck, the money dwindled, until there was nothing left. The brooch went back into pawn. This state of affairs continued until one day it dawned on us that the brooch had been away for a very long time. We managed to drag the admission out of mother that the three months allowed to redeem the brooch had expired, and she’d lost it. My father was so upset that he went to work immediately in a factory, and with his first week’s wages in his hand, went straight to the pawnbroker’s shop. But with no success. The brooch had been sold. “I’ll buy you another, Cathie,” he’d say. But she would shake her head. “Nonsense. Don’t waste your money, Jack Donovan. Perhaps one day, when we’re rich...” “When I’m grown up, I’ll buy you a beautiful brooch,” I said. “That’ll be lovely, darling,” she used to say. Then one day, when I was twelve and my little sister ten, my father died, and less than two years later, my mother followed him. We were brought up by my mother’s parents, who were very kind to us, but as soon as we grew old enough we wanted to go away to London and discover the delights of the big city. Did I say I was like my father? I must have been, even to look at, for I had black hair and blue eyes just like his. I also had a great desire to go on the stage. The theatre had held a kind of magic for me ever since I could remember. When I was eighteen, after a long, miserable year in an office, I managed to get a small part in the local rep. theatre. There followed other parts, usually on tour, and I think, looking back, that I was no more cut out for success than was my father. Somehow or other the good roles eluded me — I was too young, or too small, or my voice didn’t carry enough. I managed, however, to get a part in a two weeks’ booking of No, No, Nanette in the part of London where I was brought up. O ne Wednesday afternoon, after the matinee and before the evening performance, I wandered around the streets trying to remember places I had once known, and the house where we had lived. As if drawn by a magnet, I found myself outside a small jeweler’s shop. Above my head hung the familiar three brass balls, and I found myself wondering if mother’s brooch had ever seen the inside of that shop. Then I saw it. In the dingiest part of the window, on a dusty, velvet tray, was a Victorian brooch just like mother’s. I could hardly wait to get inside the shop. At the ting-a-ling of the brass bell over the door, a young man appeared from the back of the shop. “Can I help you?” he asked, and almost unable to speak for excitement, I asked to see the Victorian brooch in the window. He got out the velvet tray, and I picked up the brooch. It looked like mother’s, it was oval, and it had three stones in it. It could have been mother’s — but after all those years! And then I remembered. On the back, my father had scratched my mother’s initials, sorrowfully explaining that he couldn’t afford to have it engraved. I turned the brooch over, and sure enough, there were enough scratches there to make all sorts of initials. The young main offered me a magnifying glass. “Try this,” he said. I hated to explain to him, since he was a very goodlooking young man, that without my glasses I really couldn’t see so closely. But I also hated to hold the brooch at arm’s length - and so give away my short sightedness. I held it out to him. “What do you think those initials are?” I said. He looked at me, then examined the brooch. “Hard to say,” he said, peering closely. Would they be—could they be—“C.D.?” I asked. He looked down again. “it certainly looks like a “C” he said, then glanced up at me, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eyes, and added, the other one could definitely be a “D.” “Do you really think so?” I asked. “Really?” He looked down kindly at my flushed face. “I would say so.” he stated. Quite definitely a “C”, and a “D.” I took back the brooch. “How much is it?” I asked, knowing even before he answered that whatever it was I was going to have it, even if it took me weeks to pay for it. “Not much demand for this kind of thing,” he replied. “It’s marked £4 lOs Od, but I daresay I can get something off —” “Oh, no, that’s quite all right,” I said. Somehow it didn’t seem fair to get it reduced. So I paid him one pound deposit, and went back twice again until it was mine. By then, I had learned that the young man was the nephew of the shop’s owner, and was giving a helping hand while his uncle was ill. Also that he was greatly interested in jewelry design, and was studying at the local polytechnic, while apprenticed to a jewelry designer for a large London firm. When I married him, I wore the Victorian brooch on my bridal gown. And though I now can have all the beautiful jewelry I want, I still wear the brooch and love it best of all. Because I alone know that in my excitement that day, I told him my mother’s initials were “C.D.” when in fact my father scratched “K.D.” on the back of the brooch, Kathleen being the Irish way of spelling it. And try as I will, I can’t even see one initial, let alone two. I must have appeared so eager that day for the brooch to be my brooch, that my dear husband did his best to please a young girl while showing his flair as a salesman. I felt that it gave a man a head start to be kind and good-looking at the same time… At all events, it looked like my mother’s brooch, and it may well be her brooch, although I daresay it graced many a bosom dining the lost year. What does it matter, anyway — a little sentiment never did anyone any harm… THE END