Читать книгу The Factory Girl - Nancy Carson - Страница 10

Ezme Clancey was buried on the 7th June 1929, the same day that Ramsay MacDonald announced the Cabinet that was to form the country’s second only Labour Government. The very same day, Jesse tactfully explained to Herbert that Lizzie was going to have his baby, though Herbert had guessed as much, since his mother’s belly was swelling appreciably. At first he was piqued and told Jesse that it was indecent at their age, but he accepted it well enough when Henzey asked him why on earth he should resent it at all. Lizzie told Alice and Maxine, but they were predictably excited.

Billy celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday the day afterwards, a Saturday, by taking Henzey out to dinner at The Grand Hotel in Colmore Row, Birmingham. They were joined by some business friends, Harvey and Gladys Tennant, a couple in their late forties, and Neville Worthington with his very attractive wife, Eunice, who was in her late twenties. Henzey estimated that Neville was in his mid-thirties. The event was a double celebration. Billy had just invested five thousand pounds in the firm that belonged to Harvey, Tennant Electrics, which manufactured small electric motors. The investment meant that the firm could expand by broadening their range, to meet the new demand for small electric motors to drive windscreen wipers. Billy was to become a sleeping partner, and he would have a greater incentive to sell their products to the big motor manufacturers. He could not fail to make even more money.

Neville Worthington was the eccentric owner of a family firm producing commercial vehicles, and Billy had recently won a contract to supply Tennant Electric’s wiper motors to him. He thus felt inclined to nurture the relationship with this new client, and saw this occasion as an ideal opportunity. It turned out to be a very successful and interesting evening for Billy. Henzey, however, was overawed by the extravagance of their guests, by the way they spoke so beautifully, and by the obvious trappings of wealth. She was all of a sudden immersed in another world, far removed from the whitewashed scullery walls, the blackleaded grates and the dilapidated brewhouses of Cromwell Street. But her outward appearance would have fooled anybody; she was wearing an expensive, red, silk pyjama suit that Billy had chosen and paid for; and she looked the very epitome of young feminine beauty and sophistication.

She was, however, a little subdued. Seated at Billy’s right, with Neville Worthington to her own right, she gazed with eager interest at the haddock with shrimp sauce that had been set before her. She watched Eunice Worthington, waiting for her to take the lead, to ascertain what cutlery she should use for this course.

Talk at first was about Ramsay MacDonald’s new Labour cabinet.

‘The only glimmer of hope,’ said Neville, ‘is that there are no radical extremists there. At least he seems to be attempting to maintain some credulity.’

‘Except for that woman he’s appointed Minister of Labour,’ Harvey Tennant scoffed. ‘I mean, a woman in the Cabinet, for God’s sake…’

‘You mean Margaret Bondfield,’ Eunice said evenly.

‘That’s her. I mean, really! She’s a damned trade unionist.’

‘Yes, she’s the chairman of the TUC,’ Eunice added.

‘Precisely. What does she know about government? What does she know about the problems facing employers and factory owners like ourselves, eh, Neville? She’s a trouble maker, mark my words. Neither your business nor mine will prosper while the likes of her are in such elevated positions. Baldwin should have held on to the reins, I maintain, and parleyed with Lloyd George for the Liberals’ support. Frankly, I rue the day women were given the vote.’

Billy astutely perceived tension arising from this political discussion. Eunice Worthington had said little, but he could tell she was a suffragette in spirit and would be at odds with Harvey if the debate allowed to progress. He wished to avert trouble. ‘How did you do at Epsom, Neville?’ he asked astutely. ‘Did you back the winner?’

‘Trigo?’ Neville replied. ‘No. Didn’t even see the race, Billy. Still dining. Met Peter Bennett of Lucas down there.’

‘What? The Peter Bennett? The Managing Director?’

‘Joint Managing Director, isn’t he?…Thought so…Talked for ages. Missed the race completely.’

‘I see that Douglas Fairbanks’s son has married,’ Gladys said irrelevantly, directing her comment at Henzey, who so far had said little, guessing that it would bring her into the conversation.

This was more in Henzey’s line. She took advantage of the prompt, and swallowed her piece of fish. ‘Yes, and he’s only nineteen,’ she replied as if she were an authority. ‘That girl he’s married, though, Joan Crawford, is much older. Twenty-three, according to the paper.’

‘Do you not condone a man marrying a girl some years older than himself, Henzey?’ Neville asked, evidently preferring this conversation.

She looked at him, with his unfashionable long hair and thick, full beard, and their eyes met momentarily. In that brief instant she saw such an appealing look of soulfulness in his eyes. ‘Well, I just can’t see what contentment she would find marrying a boy so much younger than herself, that’s all,’ she remarked. ‘I prefer men a bit older than me. Younger men always seem so boyish.’

‘I see. You seem to have a very mature outlook for someone so young. So…how long have you known Billy?’

Neville was regarding her keenly; it seemed he could not take his eyes off her and she found it disconcerting.

‘Oh, quite a long time now, but we’ve only been courting about three months.’ She smiled politely, then finished her last piece of fish, placing her knife and fork together neatly on her plate, ready for it to be collected. She still felt the urge to gather everybody else’s empty plates and stack them in a heap, as she had done on a previous visit to a restaurant. But Billy had told her firmly not to demean herself again by doing the waitress’s job.

Henzey was not sorry when dinner was finished and they retired to the hotel’s lounge to take coffee. She made for one of the settees which, with another similar one and a couple of armchairs, were grouped convivially around a low, round table. She hoped that Billy would settle beside her, but Neville was too quick and eased himself into the same settee before Billy had even thought about it. Fortunately, Neville was affable and Henzey found him easy to talk to. They spoke politely about this and that and she asked him about his family. He had been married to Eunice for four years and had a young son, he told her as a wine waiter approached seeking orders for brandies.

‘You’re a lucky man, Neville,’ Henzey commented, ‘having a lovely child and a beautiful wife who, I imagine, thinks the world of you.’

‘Yes, I am a lucky man to have a lovely child…’ He paused deliberately. This lack of acknowledgement of Eunice made Henzey curious, although she ventured no further comment. He continued: ‘Have you and Billy talked of marriage?’

She shook her head and smiled. ‘After three months? Anyway, I’m too young yet.’

‘Sensible, Henzey. Very sensible. Lately, I take a dim view of marriage.’ He spoke quietly, intimately, only to her. ‘I see so many people unhappily bound by its restrictions. I see so many people hurt by the consequences of marital foolishness.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame. I’ve never looked at it like that. I’ve only ever known people happy in their marriages. Where they love each other I mean.’

‘Oh, love’s a different thing altogether, Henzey. You mustn’t think I take a dim view of love – I certainly do not. To love passionately and be loved in return is a gift of God. But marriage isn’t always like that. Romance can quickly disappear from marriage. It can end up a sham – as nothing more than trying to be nice to each other for the sake of peace and quiet. If you’ll pardon me for being blunt, love-making can degenerate to merely satisfying one’s basic physical needs, usurping the romance and passion you enjoyed before, that you never dreamed would slip away so insidiously.’

Henzey blushed. ‘I think that’s a cynical view, Neville.’

‘Maybe it is…But real passionate love is something quite different, wouldn’t you say? Real passionate love is what makes life worth living. Without it we might as well be dead.’

‘I suppose.’ She felt his eyes burning into her again, and she felt uneasy. It was evident he found her appealing, and now it seemed he was sounding her out, assessing his chances. Perhaps love was lacking from his life, inducing him to say these things.

The wine waiter returned with a tray of brandy glasses, each with an inch or so of the deep amber liquid swishing around.

‘What I miss more than anything in my marriage, Henzey,’ he said after he had taken a glass and sipped it, ‘is love. I mean real physical, ardent, energetic love…The sort of love that leaves you breathless and utterly exhausted. But totally satisfied.’

She avoided his eyes. What was he trying to say? She glanced guiltily at Billy but he was too deeply engrossed in conversation with Eunice to notice. Henzey felt naked under Neville’s scrutiny and felt inclined to cross her legs. It seemed an appropriate thing to do. But, to her surprise, Neville’s words did not offend her. Rather, she found them stimulating. It was a change to hear a man be so direct about love and passion without sounding either sloppy or apologetic.

‘You know, you’re a fine-looking girl, Henzey. I hope you don’t mind me saying so…’

She looked at him and smiled. ‘No, I don’t mind you saying so at all, Neville. I’m very flattered.’

‘I look at you and imagine you to be a very passionate young woman, you know. You have that look about you…I don’t mean to offend…It’s just that I do find you extremely attractive. Extremely attractive. Billy’s a jolly, lucky chap. I hope he appreciates you.’

She shrugged, and smiled. ‘I hope so, too.’

Neville Worthington picked up his bottle of Exshaw’s No. 1, his favourite brandy, poured himself a last one and took it upstairs to his bedroom. He sat on the bed and loosened his bow-tie with his free hand before taking a sip and placing the glass on his bedside table. As he bent over to untie his shoelaces he sighed heavily. Henzey Kite was occupying his mind. He wanted her, and such ardent desire for a woman had not taken him like this since his first encounters with Eunice. He sighed, kicked off his shoes and stood up again to put away his bow tie and unfasten his cuff-links.

‘Don’t forget to put your shoes in your wardrobe, Neville,’ his wife said as she drove a brush through her stylishly cut hair.

‘In a minute, when I’m undressed.’

‘…Otherwise you’ll fall over them and wake me up if you have to get up in the night.’ Eunice was at her dressing table in her white silk pyjamas. A shop-full of beauty aids stood randomly on top of it. She took one small dainty pot, dipped her fingers into it and proceeded to rub a creamy substance over her face. ‘No doubt you’ll forget them altogether.’

‘Well if I do happen to fall over them and wake you in the night, rest assured I shall not tumble into your bed.’

She made no reply. Neville removed the coins from his trouser pockets and let them tumble onto his tallboy. Then he undressed himself, and took the clean pyjamas the maid had placed on his pillow while he was out.

‘I enjoyed this evening, Eunice. Didn’t you?’

‘Towards the end. Not during the meal.’

‘Actually, I found it all rather stimulating.’

‘I suspect you found talking to that young girl rather stimulating. More so than talking to that other woman. What was her name?’

‘Henzey.’

‘Not Henzey, the older woman.’

‘I’ve forgotten.’ He pulled his pyjama trousers on.

‘Strange how you can remember Henzey’s name but not that other woman’s.’ Eunice began removing the cleansing cream with a damp face towel.

Neville tied the cord of his pyjamas. ‘It’s hardly strange, my dear. You also remembered it, evidently. Anyway, Henzey was by far the more interesting of the two.’ He sat on his bed again and reached for his drink.

‘And by far the more attractive.’

‘That as well.’

Eunice turned to address him. There was an earnest look on her face. ‘But Neville, you’d never attract a girl like that until you altered your style.’

‘Oh, and I thought she seemed quite taken with me.’

She laughed scornfully. ‘You fool yourself, Neville. Look at your awful beard and your disastrous hair. Do you realise I have never, in all the years I’ve known you, seen you without that damn beard? You had it when we were first introduced, and you’ve had it ever since – all through your Oxford days.’

‘So what? That’s me. That’s how I am.’

‘But you’re only twenty-nine, dammit, and you look forty-nine. Young ladies nowadays go for the smooth, clean-shaven look in men – short, neat haircuts. I mean, look at that Billy fellow she was with…he’s fashionable…typical of the type of young men women go for. I can understand why she finds him appealing.’

‘Surely girls prefer someone more masculine?’

‘On the contrary, girls today prefer a more feminine-looking man…Not that he’s feminine…Not by any stretch of imagination.’

‘And some girls try to look like boys with their flat chests and short haircuts. It’s a strange world we live in.’

Eunice continued peering at her moistened face in the mirror of her dressing table. ‘The point I’m trying to make, my darling Neville, is that if you altered your style I might find you more attractive. What is it that compels you to want to look so…so eccentric?’

‘It’s how I want to look, no more, no less. It pleases me. I dislike shaving. I dislike having my hair cut more than is necessary. And anyway, people remember me all the easier for it. And that’s good for business.’

‘But you look like somebody from the last century. It makes you look so old. Whom are trying to emulate, for God’s sake? Leon Trotsky? It’s not as if you have a poor physique. You have an excellent physique.’

He pulled back the covers of his single bed and slid between the sheets. ‘I’d like to invite Billy and Henzey over to dinner one evening. Can we fix a convenient date?’

‘I…I think not. I have no wish to entertain them here.’

‘You said a minute ago Billy was very appealing. Do make up your mind, Eunice.’

‘What I said was, I could understand why that young girl found him appealing, unlike that other man, that Harvey. He’s an old-fashioned, bigoted, high Tory. Please don’t embarrass me by inviting them here. If you wish to meet them alone at a restaurant that’s up to you. But please don’t involve me.’

Neville lay back and closed his eyes, urgently seeking a mental image of Henzey. ‘As for Harvey and his anonymous wife,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t intended asking them.’

Neither spoke more. Neville sighed unhappily and snuggled down in his bed. He ventured no further conversation, remaining silent, trying to sleep. But sleep eluded him for a long time after Eunice had slid into her own bed and turned out the light. He tried to imagine this young Henzey Kite lying naked in bed with him; the feel of her warm soft skin against his; her silken mouth; his thigh gripped lovingly between hers; her arching back as his tongue drove her wild, probing her secret places; her appreciative vocal sighs as he thrust hungrily into her. His throat went dry just thinking about it.

But eventually the erotic fantasies were eclipsed by more mundane thoughts. Meeting Henzey Kite also focused his mind on the shortcomings of his marriage; shortcomings he regretted, but was unable to change in the short term. His marriage used to be very satisfactory, but now it was a compromise; an arrangement; a result of the marital foolishness he had spoken about to Henzey. He wondered how long it might survive in this hideous state. Eunice was a beautiful woman, and desirable. They lived together without sleeping together, and though there was seldom any open hostility between them, mainly for the sake of their son, neither was there any visible affection. Yet there was a glimmer of hope. Eunice had said that if he chose to shave off his beard and have his hair cut decently she might find him more attractive. She had said that before, but why should his beard and his hair make any difference? She married him with his beard and his hair, why should she despise it now? He would divest himself of it as a last resort; only if absolutely necessary.

For Neville took refuge behind his beard. It was a form of protection; a disguise to prevent recognition. He wore it just in case one particular person were to recognise him first. He knew it was spurious, a notion conceived in his youth that had developed and intensified over the years. He had never confided his thoughts to Eunice about it, hence she saw him merely as somebody completely out of step with fashion, and was unaware of his concern.

It was generated by the knowledge that he once had a twin brother. He could not remember him and did not even know his name, but the odds were that he was still alive, possibly round the next corner, and might even come seeking him. That being so, Neville wanted to be able to recognise his twin first, without being recognised himself. It was irrational on the face of it, he knew, but important to him. In the event, it would offer him the choice of either turning away or making himself known, depending on what he perceived in the man.

Neville only knew what Magdalen Worthington, his adopted mother, had told him: that he was the son of his father, Oswald Worthington, by one of the housemaids of the time, whose name was Bessie Hipkiss. Neville believed that Bessie had died in abject poverty when he and his brother were but two years old and that his twin had been taken into the care of a Christian family of very moderate means in the Black Country, while he was subsequently delivered, as a last resort, to the large, elegant house of his father. The intention, apparently, was that his father should rightfully be made to face all responsibility for him. The trouble was, by that time his father was dead. It was fortunate indeed that Oswald’s young widow, Magdalen, was still grieving, and was more than happy to accept the return of anything that was her husband’s, especially a son, albeit by another woman. She took Neville in as her own and doted on him, ensuring that he had the very best of everything, including the best education money could buy.

As he turned restlessly in his bed, dissatisfied with the state of his marriage, Neville’s thoughts turned to his real mother and he wondered what she was like. He would dearly love to know more about her, to see a photograph of her. But how to go about finding out? Who, twenty-seven years after her death, would remember somebody as insignificant as Bessie Hipkiss? Who would possibly remember a particular housemaid put in the family way by a male member of the family that employed her, out of the hundreds of such beguiled and unfortunate young women who littered society? If only she could have lived a year or two longer so that he might have some memory of her, however vague.

And this brother, the existence of whom Neville was so ambiguous about…He actually hoped he would like him, because he longed to talk to him about their mother, about how he felt now at their being parted. Sometimes he felt as if he was only half a person, that there was another half somewhere, waiting to make the whole. It was a strange feeling. He would love to know whether his brother felt it, too. Someday he might meet him. He would know him immediately; they were identical twins after all, or so he’d been led to believe. If and when that day came, he hoped any differences in their circumstances and upbringing would not render them entirely incompatible.