Читать книгу Better Days will Come - Pam Weaver - Страница 8

Bonnie woke with a start. She heard footsteps outside her door and someone was banging a gong downstairs. It took a couple of seconds to realise where she was. She glanced at the clock on the top of the dresser: 7.30. When she’d arrived here ten days ago, the receptionist had told her breakfast was between 7.30 and 8.15 and she knew she couldn’t afford to miss it. Her meagre wage packet and holiday money wouldn’t keep her much longer. She had fallen into a pattern of eating as much as she could in the morning and making do with a tuppenny bag of chips and a cup of tea at lunchtime. It was all she could afford.

George had never shown up. Bonnie couldn’t understand why. Something must have happened to him. Was he ill? Had he had an accident? He wouldn’t have deserted her; he wouldn’t. Every night she worried about him and cried herself to sleep. The obvious thing was to go back to Worthing, but what if he’d just been delayed for some reason and she missed him? Bonnie had gone over and over what he’d told her, and their plans together. Everything was crystal clear in her mind – so why wasn’t he here?

As soon as the footsteps had gone she nipped across the hallway to the bathroom and gave herself a quick wash. She was dressed and downstairs by eight.

The dining room looked rather tired. It was wallpapered but, probably because it was so hard to find several rolls of the same wallpaper, it was a mish-mash of non-complementary paper, giving the room a rather confused look. The only empty table was next to the kitchen door and Bonnie preferred to keep herself to herself.

‘Here we are, dear,’ said the waitress as she put a pot of tea and some hot water on the table. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Bonnie poured herself a cup of tea and when she was sure no one was looking, she palmed a couple of slices of bread into her handbag for later. The waitress came back and plonked a plate in front of her. Bonnie stared at the greasy pile and her stomach churned. She tried to force it down but even before she’d left the room she was feeling decidedly unwell. She wasn’t used to big fry-ups in the morning and right now it was the last thing she wanted to eat.

Every morning as they left the dining room the guests were told they had to leave their rooms by 10am and that they couldn’t return before 2pm in order to facilitate the cleaning. Dinner was at 6pm sharp. Having forced down as much of the greasy breakfast as she could manage, Bonnie booked herself in for one more night. George was bound to turn up at the station tonight. He wouldn’t let her down. Would he?

As usual, her first port of call was Victoria station where she enquired if anyone had left a message for her. It didn’t sound right for a respectable young woman to be chasing a man so she pretended she was married. ‘I was supposed to be meeting my husband,’ she told the station master. ‘Mr George Matthews.’ The station master shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’ She was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps it was time to accept the fact that George wasn’t coming. She didn’t want to think of a reason why he wasn’t coming and she really couldn’t go back to Worthing, so she’d have to make another plan. She was positive that George wouldn’t have let her down if he could help it. He wasn’t that sort of man. He loved her. He wanted their baby as much as she did. True, the baby wasn’t planned, but George was fine about it. She remembered the moment he’d given her the locket.

‘One day we shall put a picture of our baby in it,’ he’d smiled.

Tears pricked her eyes but she wouldn’t give way to them. What good would that do? The obvious thing was to find Honeypot Lane and the job George had lined up for her; but then another thought crossed her mind. If he had let her down, then perhaps the job in Stanmore didn’t exist either. She hated herself for thinking like this, but should she risk going all that way and using some of her precious resources for nothing? She had to be practical, didn’t she? Her stomach churned. She didn’t want to be practical. She wanted George.

Once Bonnie had lost her fight to keep her breakfast down, she decided to set off to find a job of her own. She remembered that when she’d scanned the evening paper she bought on that first night, she’d come across an advertisement for an employment agency. She had left the newspaper on her chest of drawers and whoever cleaned her room had never moved it. Bonnie now made a careful note of the address.

The offices of the London and County Domestic Employment Agency left much to be desired but it was very close to the station. From the roadside, she could hear the trains thundering in and out. The façade of the building was grimy with soot and, walking up the stone steps and wandering through the open door, she noticed that the walls themselves were still pockmarked with bomb damage. The paintwork was badly in need of a new coat and the colour scheme in the hallway, dark brown and cream, was from a bygone era. Clearly Harold Macmillan and his Ministry of Housing and Local Government hadn’t got this far yet. When she took her hand from the guardrail even her glove was covered in smut. Should she go in? What if they asked too many questions? How much should she tell them? After twenty minutes of pacing up and down the street, Bonnie climbed the outer steps.

The London and County was three doors along a dingy corridor. As she knocked and walked in, a middle-aged woman with tightly permed hair and wearing some very fashionable glasses looked up from her typewriter. Bonnie introduced herself stiffly and handed over her references.

‘Do take a seat, Miss Rogers,’ said the woman, indicating some chairs behind her. ‘I shall tell Mrs Smythe that you are here.’

Taking Bonnie’s references with her, she stepped towards a glass-fronted door to her left and knocked. A distant voice called and the woman walked in and closed the door behind her.

Bonnie looked at herself in the wall mirror, glad that she had stopped crying. If she’d turned up with red eyes and a blotchy face, it wouldn’t have helped her cause. She looked smart. Her hat, a new one she’d bought from Hubbard’s using the staff discount, suited her. It was a navy, close-fitting baker boy beret, which she wore slightly to the left of her head. Her hair had a side parting with a deep wave on the right side of her face and was curled under on her shoulders. To set off her outfit, Bonnie always carried a navy pencil-slim umbrella. She liked being smart. One of Miss Reeves’s little remarks came back to mind. ‘Smartness equals efficiency; efficiency equals acceptance; and acceptance means respect.’

She unbuttoned her coat to reveal her dark blue suit with the cameo brooch George had given her pinned on the lapel. It was only from Woolworth’s, she knew that, but it looked very pretty, especially next to her crisp white blouse. She absentmindedly smoothed her stomach and pulled down her skirt to get rid of the creases. Thank goodness the baby didn’t show yet. Turning towards the chairs, Bonnie had a choice of three, one with a soft sagging cushion, a high backed leather chair and a wooden chair with a padded seat. Lowering herself carefully onto the wooden chair, Bonnie placed her matching navy handbag on her knees, checked that her black court shoes still looked highly polished, and waited anxiously.

Presently, the secretary came back with a tall languid-looking woman in a tweed skirt and white blouse. She introduced herself as Mrs Smythe and invited Bonnie to step into her office.

Mrs Smythe, as would be expected of the owner of a highly respected agency, had a cut-glass English accent. She had a round face with a downy complexion and wore no make-up apart from a bright red gash of lipstick. The woman examined Bonnie’s references carefully. ‘These are excellent, Miss Rogers,’ she said eventually. ‘But shop work is very different from working in the domestic setting.’

‘I want to train as a nursery nurse,’ said Bonnie, ‘but I am not quite experienced enough to be accepted. However, I am a hard worker and I am willing to learn.’

‘When did you cease your last employment?’

‘Just over a week ago.’

‘May I ask, why did you leave Hubbard’s?’ Mrs Smythe was going back through her papers again.

‘Personal reasons.’

Mrs Smythe looked up sharply. Bonnie held her eye with a steady unyielding gaze and didn’t elaborate.

‘I see,’ said Mrs Smythe, clearly not seeing at all. She waited, obviously hoping that Bonnie might explain, but how could she? Bonnie’s heart thumped in her chest. Mrs Smythe wouldn’t even consider offering Bonnie employment if she knew the truth.

Bonnie cleared her throat. ‘It has absolutely no bearing on my ability to work with children.’

Mrs Smythe stood up and went to the filing cabinet. ‘What sort of post were you looking for?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Bonnie, swallowing hard. ‘Anything at all.’

‘Here in London,’ Mrs Smythe probed, ‘or further afield?’

‘Really,’ Bonnie insisted, ‘I have no preference.’ Why should she care where she lived? Without George, what did it matter?

Mrs Smythe hesitated for a second before taking a yellow folder from the drawer. ‘Tell me, Miss Rogers, would you be willing to travel abroad?’

Bonnie blinked. It took a second or two to let the idea sink in. ‘Abroad?’

Could she really go abroad without George to lead the way? Rationing was still being enforced in Britain but in other parts of the world they said people had plenty of everything. She tried to imagine herself as nanny to an Italian prince, or an American film star or perhaps nanny to the child of someone in the diplomatic service. ‘Abroad,’ she said again, this time with more than a hint of interest in her voice. Yes … abroad would be exciting. ‘Yes, I might consider that.’

Mrs Smythe laid the yellow folder on her desk. ‘I have a post here for Africa.’

Africa! Bonnie was startled. This was too much of a coincidence. The very continent where she and George had been planning to set up a new life and here was Mrs Smythe offering Bonnie a post there.

‘Kenya,’ Mrs Smythe went on.

Bonnie relaxed into her chair. Not South Africa but Kenya. Yet somehow it sounded just as wonderful. Kenya. She’d heard that it was a beautiful place. Didn’t they grow tea and coffee for export and exotic things like ginger, and sugar cane, and pineapples? What would it be like to eat food like that every day!

Mrs Smythe was refreshing her memory by reading the papers in the yellow folder. ‘I’m instructed to send you by taxi to meet the grandmother.’

Silently, Bonnie took a deep breath. They must be very rich. She’d never ridden in a taxi before.

‘In actual fact,’ Mrs Smythe went on, ‘the family are already out there. You would be required to escort their son from this country to his father’s house in Kenya. Do you think you could undertake that, Miss Rogers?’

Don’t be ridiculous, Bonnie told herself. How can you possibly go all that way on your own? You’ve no experience of being abroad. You’ve never even been as far as London before. And what about the baby? How on earth would you manage with a baby out in the wilds of Africa? But her mouth said something totally different.

‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie, ‘I’m sure I could.’

‘Any news, dear?’

Elsie Dawson poked her head over the back wall that divided their houses. Grace took the peg out of her mouth and shook her head. Though the sun was weak at this time of year, it was a fine morning and she had decided to peg out some washing. At least hanging it for a while in the fresh air made it smell sweeter. Grace was glad she lived across the road and away from the railway line. Poor old Alice Chamberlain who used to live opposite was always complaining that she could never hang her stuff outside. The trains roaring by every few minutes left sooty deposits on everything.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

Grace knew Elsie was fishing for more information but there was nothing to say. Her daughter had upped and left without so much as a by-your-leave. ‘Nothing, thank you Elsie, but thanks for the offer. Pop round for a cup of tea, if you’ve got a minute.’ Grace smiled to herself. Elsie wasn’t likely to turn down that sort of invitation. She’d be round like a shot.

There was a bang on the front door. Grace threw a tea towel back into the washing basket and hurried indoors. Manny Hart was walking away as she opened it.

He turned around with a sheepish look on his face and raised his hat. ‘Oh, I thought you’d be out,’ he said carefully.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

He looked down and, following his gaze, she saw a newspaper parcel on the doorstep. ‘Just a couple of eggs I thought you might like,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Manny,’ she said, bending to pick them up, ‘it’s kind of you.’

‘I’m really sorry about the other day, Grace,’ said Manny. ‘I would have let you through but those men from the government …’

Grace put up her hand to stop him. ‘I probably couldn’t have stopped her anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s a big train and she wouldn’t have been looking out for me, would she? It would have taken me ages to run the length of the train as far as the engine.’

In the long night hours which had passed since Bonnie left, Grace had gone over every last detail of that day. At the time it had felt as if everything and everybody had conspired against her: missing the bus, Manny refusing to let her go without a platform ticket, Peggy being so slow to give her a penny, the machine deciding to hiccup at that very moment … But now, thinking more rationally about it, if her daughter had made up her mind to go, nobody could have stopped her. That was the rational thought, but her heart ached something rotten.

Elsie, her hair still in curlers under her headscarf, came out of her front door and followed Manny and Grace inside.

Grace Rogers always had an open house. Her neighbours knew that no matter what (and they didn’t need to be asked), they could go round to her place and she’d have the kettle on. All through the war, she’d seen them through the dreaded telegrams from the war office, the birth of a baby and the joy of a wedding.

Grace had also set up a couple of small agencies, one for people caring for their long-term sick relatives and the other for cleaners. For a small joining fee, the women she knew were reliable, could do a couple of hours’ sitting with the sick person or a couple of hours’ housework. The recipient paid a slightly larger fee to join and got some much needed free time. Elsie had used the service a couple of times.

‘How’s Harry today?’ Grace asked as she busied herself with the tea things.

‘So-so,’ said Elsie patting her scarf and pulling it forward so that her curlers were hidden. Her husband had survived the war but he wasn’t the same man. Once the life and soul of any party, now Harry struggled with depression. In fact, Elsie had a hard job judging his mood swings. When he felt really bad, he would spend more time by the pier staring out to sea. With the onset of winter Elsie was always afraid he’d catch his death of cold.

‘I see someone has taken over the corner shop,’ said Elsie deliberately changing the subject. Grace vaguely remembered a good-looking man watching her as she flew down the middle of the street the night Bonnie left. ‘He’s a furniture restorer,’ Elsie went on.

‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much call for that sort of thing around here,’ Grace remarked. She pushed two cups of hot dark tea in front of her guests and sat down in the chair opposite.

‘I have met him,’ said Manny. ‘Apparently he works on commissions.’ He looked up and noticed the quizzical look the two women were giving him and added, ‘He is a nice man. He gets on the train to Aroundel sometimes.’

‘It’s Arundel,’ Grace corrected with a grin.

‘Lives on his own?’ said Elsie. She was trying to appear nonchal-ant but it was obvious she was dying to know. Grace suppressed another smile.

‘That is correct,’ Manny nodded. ‘He fought at El Alamein with Field Marshal Monty and came back to find his wife shacked up with a Frenchy.’

Grace and Elsie shook their heads sympathetically. The war had a lot to answer for. It wasn’t only the bombs and concentration camps that had changed people’s lives. The French Canadians were billeted all over the town. On the whole, they were ordinary young men, three thousand miles away from all that was familiar and, as time went on, frustration set in. They had joined up to fight the Nazis, not to put up barbed wire on the beaches in an English seaside resort. As a result, their behaviour deteriorated and Saturday nights were peppered with drunken brawls in the town. Rumours circulated, although the story always came via a friend who knew a friend of a friend … When the war ended, a lot of ordinary people were left with very complicated lives.

Manny Hart was an attractive man with broad shoulders and a lean body. He had light brown hair, cut short, a strong square jaw and grey-green eyes. Nobody knew much about him except that he came from Coventry and he was a dab hand at playing the mouth organ. He’d apparently lost all his family, and considering the pasting the city had had, nobody liked to pry too much into his grief. He was very methodical, always doing everything exactly the same way, and was obviously a cut above the rest because he spoke public school English.

‘Well,’ said Manny putting his cup down. ‘I must be going. I have got a railway to work for.’

‘Thanks for the eggs,’ said Grace as she saw him to the door.

‘He’s sweet on you,’ said Elsie as Grace sat back down at the table.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Grace. ‘You read too many romantic novels from that shilling library you belong to.’

‘You don’t blame me, do you?’ Elsie sighed wistfully. ‘There’s precious little love and happiness around these days.’

Mrs Smythe gave Bonnie some money for a taxi to the address in Aldford Street where she was to meet her prospective employer. It was just off Park Lane and in a very exclusive part of London, near the Dorchester Hotel where Prince Philip, the dashing husband of the Princess Elizabeth, had had his stag night the night before his wedding just a few days ago. She smiled as she recalled the newspaper pictures of the beautiful bride in her wedding dress decorated, they said, with 10,000 white pearls.

Bonnie knew enough about child care to know that most people in this area employed Norlanders, girls from a very exclusive training college in Hungerford. She’d once seen an article in a magazine and when she’d made her career choice, Bonnie had toyed with the idea of applying there herself; but it was totally out of her league. Only rich girls went to places like that. The fees were huge. She wondered why she had been sent to such an exclusive place when there were other girls eminently more qualified than her who could fit the bill, but then she remembered how fat the file on Lady Brayfield was and that Mrs Smythe had mentioned more than once that Richard could be ‘a little difficult’.

The house in Aldford Street was up a small flight of steps. Once inside, Bonnie was shown into a large sitting room on the first floor.

‘Lady Brayfield will be with you in a minute,’ the maid told her as she closed the door, leaving Bonnie alone.

It was a pleasant room with a large stone-built fireplace flanked by a basket on either side, one containing logs and the other a pile of magazines. Bonnie couldn’t help admiring the beautiful stone-carved surround. The house was probably seventeenth century, she guessed, maybe even older. It had a large window made up of many small panes of glass which overlooked the street, but the wooden panelling on the walls made the room rather dark. A round table stood under the window with a potted fern in the middle. A snakes and ladders board was positioned between two chairs and it looked as if the players had only just left the room.

The door opened and a middle-aged woman came in. She was elegantly groomed with lightly permed hair. She wore a soft dress of blue-grey material which clung to her stiffly corseted body and a single string pearl necklace. A cocker spaniel followed her in.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said crisply. ‘You must be Miss Rogers. The agency telephoned to say they were sending you.’ She lowered herself into one of the two armchairs and indicated with a casual wave of her hand that Bonnie should sit on the settee.

The spaniel sat on the floor next to Bonnie, its haunches on her foot. She moved her toes slightly but she didn’t complain. It didn’t matter. The animal was quite lightweight.

‘I’m not sure how much Mrs Smythe has told you,’ Lady Brayfield went on, ‘but your charge is a lot older than the children you are probably used to.’

Bonnie’s heart constricted. What was she doing here? The whole idea was an idiotic mistake. How could she possibly work for this woman? She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake. She started to panic and tried to compose herself as best she could, but already her face was beginning to flame. She cleared her throat noisily and found herself saying, ‘I don’t envisage that as a problem.’ She couldn’t bear the embarrassment of having to admit to this woman that she hadn’t exactly been honest with Mrs Smythe. No. If she was going to have to go back to the London and County for a more suitable post, she would have to get Lady Brayfield to turn her down for some perfectly logical reason.

‘Are you used to travel?’

‘No,’ Bonnie admitted. She was beginning to feel a bit sick. Instead of coming clean she was getting in deeper and deeper.

‘How do you feel about going abroad?’ Lady Brayfield asked.

‘It would be a challenge,’ said Bonnie. The dog placed his head in her lap. She felt almost comforted by it and smiled faintly as she placed her hand on his head.

‘You are between jobs …?’ Lady Brayfield ventured.

‘Yes,’ said Bonnie. There was an awkward moment when Lady Brayfield again waited for her to elaborate but Bonnie’s only response was to pat the dog’s head. What an idiot she’d been. It was only the lure of riding in a taxi and going to a posh address that had got her here. She had to get herself out of this and quickly. Think, she told her panicking brain, think …

They were interrupted by a footfall and the door swung open. A young boy about ten years old, dark haired and in his school uniform consisting of grey short trousers, a grey blazer with the school emblem on the breast pocket, a white shirt with a yellow and black striped tie, long grey socks and black lace-up shoes came into the room. His hair looked wet, as if someone had made an attempt to tidy him up. Bonnie could see the marks of a comb running through it, although on the crown of his head three spikes of hair stood defiantly up on end. The door closed behind him.

‘Ah,’ said Lady Brayfield, ‘this is Richard, my grandson. Come and say how do you do, Richard.’

Obediently but sullenly, Richard said, ‘How do you do.’

‘Miss Rogers is going to take you to your father,’ said Lady Brayfield. Bonnie’s heart sank. Oh no, she’d got the job.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Richard protested loudly. He stamped his foot and the spaniel began to bark as he kicked the closed door several times.

Lady Brayfield tried to placate the boy. ‘Richard, darling, you mustn’t get hysterical.’

‘I don’t want to go and you can’t make me!’ he cried.

This was Bonnie’s chance to extricate herself. She rose to her feet slowly. ‘Lady Brayfield …’ she began.

The boy threw himself onto the older woman’s lap. ‘Don’t send me, Granny. I’ll be good. I promise.’

‘But your father wants you out there with him, darling,’ said Lady Brayfield helplessly. ‘What can I do?’

She patted the boy’s back and looked at Bonnie as if seeking advice.

Bonnie chewed her bottom lip. ‘I’m sure …’ she began, but at the same moment Richard stood up, turned and launched himself at her, causing her to stumble backwards onto the settee.

‘No, no,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t make me. I hate it there. I won’t go, I tell you.’

Lady Brayfield was horrified.

Bonnie could see at once that he was clearly very spoiled and out of control.

‘Richard,’ his grandmother demanded, ‘stop that at once!’

Bonnie struggled to her feet and righted her hat but as she bent to pick up her fallen handbag, the boy aimed a kick at the settee. The toe of his heavy lace-up shoe made contact with Bonnie. Her hands automatically went to her stomach as she cried out in excruciating pain.

Lady Brayfield gasped. ‘Oh Richard, what have you done?’

They both stared in horror as Bonnie screwed up her eyes and fell back onto the settee with a loud cry.