At Home by the Sea

by Pam Weaver

  The tea tray arrived with crumpets, home-made jam and cake.

  As Esther set the tray on the table in front of them, Izzie smiled and found herself saying ‘Yes.’

  *

  Later that evening, old Mrs Shilling’s nurse had helped her to wash and put on her nightdress. Her long hair had been brushed and the old lady hummed to herself as she massaged some cream onto her hands.

  ‘You should make it part of your night-time routine, Madam,’ the nurse had said. ‘I know it’s hard but you should try and keep as active as possible.’

  The old lady was sitting up in bed when her daughter-in-law breezed into her bedroom. ‘Hubert has just told me that you’ve decided to employ that young girl,’ she blurted out without preamble.

  ‘Yes I did Muriel,’ said old Mrs Shilling. ‘Such a delightful person.’

  Muriel Shilling glanced at the nurse. ‘That will be all, nurse,’ she said curtly.

  ‘I was just going to …’ the nurse began.

  ‘I said, that will be all,’ Muriel snapped.

  As soon as the nurse, her face bright red with anger, had left the room, Muriel Shilling rounded on her mother-in-law. ‘Hubert tells me you’re going to pay her four pounds a week. That’s far too much. A young girl like that would be grateful for half the wage.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s up to me, dear?’ said old Mrs Shilling.

  ‘It’s a third more than I pay Esther,’ her daughter-in-law snapped.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ the old lady said, ‘but Izzie and I have decided four pounds will be her wage.’

  ‘I only wondered if you fully understood what you’d said,’ Muriel said, flustered.

  ‘I understood perfectly, dear.’

  Muriel was flabbergasted. ‘Well I think you should have discussed it with Hubert,’ she snapped. ‘The amount you are proposing to pay her is, in my humble opinion, quite ridiculous.’

  ‘Point taken.’ Her mother-in-law smiled sweetly. ‘But it’s my money.’

  *

  ‘I’ve got another job.’

  Izzie was standing in the doorway of the scullery while her father was shaving in front of the cracked mirror hanging over the sink. Her father had turned towards her but showed no reaction when she told him about Mrs Shilling. Turning back to the mirror he drew his Gillette super speed razor down his soapy jaw and then shook it in the bowl of warm water in the sink before commencing the same move on the other side of his face. ‘Good money?’

  Izzie nodded. ‘Four pounds a week.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, wiping his face clean of the little shaving soap that was left. ‘From now on, you can pay two pounds ten shilling for your keep.’

  Izzie frowned angrily. ‘Dad!’

  ‘Don’t complain about it,’ he said. ‘Everybody has to …’

  ‘Pay their way,’ she chorused with him.

  He turned his head and their eyes met but he said no more.

  Izzie hesitated. ‘Dad, do we know a Mrs Sayers?’

  Her father was twisting the handle of his razor to get the blade out. As the butterfly doors on the top opened he froze. ‘Why?’ he said coldly. ‘What’s she been saying to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Izzie. ‘It’s just that she came into Mr Allen’s shop a while ago and asked if I knew her.’

  Her father’s face had clouded. ‘Did she ask about me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you tell her where I live?’

  Izzie was startled. ‘Of course not. Why should I?’

  Her father took the razor blade out of his shaver and patted it dry on his towel. ‘You stay away from her.’

  Izzie frowned. ‘Why? What’s she done?’

  ‘Just stay away from her!’ He was angry. ‘That woman is nothing but trouble, do you hear?’

  Izzie was surprised by his venom but it was obvious her father wasn’t going to say any more about Mrs Sayers. All the same, Izzie couldn’t resist one more try about the subject which troubled her most. ‘Dad … about Mum …?’

  He spun round, his face like thunder. Barging past her, he headed for the stairs. ‘Leave it out Izzie. Just shut-up about her, will you.’

  Linda came into the kitchen and put her satchel on the table. ‘What’s up with him?’

  Izzie sighed. ‘I asked him about Mum.’

  Linda pulled a face. ‘I asked him the other day,’ she confessed. ‘He went bananas.’

  Izzie frowned. ‘Why?’

  Linda shrugged. ‘I dunno.’ She turned towards the stair door. ‘I still miss her.’

  ‘You and me both,’ said Izzie.

  *

  Izzie enjoyed her work with old Mrs Shilling almost immediately. It was difficult to say exactly how old her employer was but her hair was steely grey and she had rheumy eyes. Although she looked fairly robust, Mrs Shilling tired easily and the nurse asked Izzie to make sure she didn’t overdo it. Izzie arrived at the house each day by nine-thirty and stayed until four, which gave her the opportunity to do some of the household chores at home before she left for work in the morning. Linda still did very little to help.

  ‘Linda would you—’

  ‘I would if I could but I haven’t got time right now,’ Linda said airily as she pin-curled her hair. Izzie had asked her to peel some potatoes. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’

  ‘Oh Linda!’

  ‘Don’t keep on at me!’

  ‘I’m not,’ Izzie protested, ‘but I get fed up doing everything.’

  ‘I took the bin out last night,’ Linda protested, ‘and you didn’t even notice.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me,’ cried Izzie. ‘Next time, remind me and I’ll give you a medal.’

  Her sister walked out of the room, slamming the door.

  *

  The house was much more of a home now, even though everything they had was second hand or hand-me-down. Izzie had no intention of staying at home anyway. She was convinced that life was passing her by and she was becoming old before her time. If her job with Mrs Shilling hadn’t been so fascinating, she would have been tempted to clear off altogether, like Mum, and leave them to it.

  According to the policy makers, things were finally beginning to look up as far as the country was concerned. What they had called The Great Depression after the war was coming to an end and small signs that things were going to get better began to emerge. In March the previous year, the clothing rationing had ended so Izzie was able to wander around the shops knowing that only lack of money prevented her from buying something new. Her father still demanded that she hand over two pounds, ten shillings of her four pounds wage for her keep. She had protested of course and tried to bargain with him but he was adamant. What a chump she’d been telling him the truth. She should have said she was only getting three pounds ten shillings.

  In fact, everything seemed to be conspiring against her. The new National Health Service, which had begun in 1948, meant that Izzie also had to pay her National Insurance stamp and her taxes as well. That didn’t leave a lot for her to spend or save. She and Patsy went to the pictures sometimes and occasionally Linda would tag along as well, but thankfully their father always paid for Linda’s ticket.

  Izzie tried going to the dances at the Assembly Hall but they were noisy crowded affairs where she got too hot and couldn’t afford the soft drinks so she didn’t enjoy them very much. The prevailing fashion was for up-beat music like jazz but Izzie preferred the more romantic ballads like ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ or jolly songs like ‘Powder Your Face with Sunshine’, the sort of music they played on Family Favourites on the BBC Light programme. Hosted by Jean Metcalfe in London and Cliff Michelmore in Germany, the broadcast was aimed at families who were separated; husbands in Germany as part of the British Forces Overseas, and the wives and children who were left at home. Izzie particularly liked the programme because the thought of people who loved each other aching because they were apart was something close to her own heart. Even after all this time, she still ached for her moth
er.

  Linda wanted to go dancing too but their father deemed her too young. For that, he said, she would have to be sixteen. There were a few rows about it but for once Linda didn’t get her way.

  Six

  After the heatwave in 1949, which turned out to be one of the hottest years on record, the summer months in 1950 looked as if they would be much more moderate. All the same, old Mrs Shilling decamped to the summer house in the garden and the pair of them plodded on with her book. Izzie loved it there. It felt like a tiny taste of Dial Post and she was often distracted by a blackbird bathing in the bird bath or a pair of quarrelsome pigeons fighting over what was left on the bird table. Throughout the summer they trained a squirrel to come ever closer to the doorway after Mrs Shilling had thrown some of her tea time scone in his direction.

  As well as helping old Mrs Shilling with her memoirs, Izzie would occasionally push her employer in her wheelchair for a stroll along the promenade and on to a tea room in the town in the afternoons. Mrs Shilling’s all-time favourite had been Mabel’s in South Street, near Lawley’s the china shop, but it had closed down.

  ‘Worthing has changed so much since the war,’ Mrs Shilling complained sadly as Izzie pushed her past the boarded up shop. They crossed the road and headed towards Hubbard’s or Marine Parade and The Dome Tea Rooms. ‘It’s just not the same; pleasant but not the same.’

  Just by the bus stop, someone running for the bus dashed in front of the wheelchair.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing,’ said an angry voice. The woman turned to glare at her as she boarded the bus and Izzie took in a breath. It was that Mrs Sayers again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Sayers,’ Izzie apologised, though it was hardly her fault.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked Mrs Shilling.

  Izzie nodded. ‘I keep bumping into that woman and she’s always so angry with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  Izzie shrugged. ‘I haven’t the foggiest.’

  *

  The rest of the Shilling household had little to do with Izzie. Young Mrs Shilling (Muriel) had a very busy social calendar so she only popped her head around the door to say goodbye. Izzie sensed a tension between them but the two women kept up the pretence of polite concern for each other. Mr Shilling was usually gone to work before Izzie arrived. He was a bank manager somewhere in Brighton. She had seen him a couple of times when he came home early to get ready for some function or to entertain a client for dinner. A nondescript man in a grey suit, balding and with deep set eyes under very thick and bushy eyebrows. He would smile affably at Izzie and say something like, ‘Mrs Shilling keeping you busy, eh?’ as he planted a kiss on his mother’s cheek.

  Esther, the maid, kept them both well furbished with tea or cold drinks throughout the day and while the two Mrs Shillings ate their lunch together in the dining room on the days when she was at home, Izzie sat with the other members of staff at the kitchen table. It was opportunity to chat with Mrs Dore the cook and Esther in between her duties serving at table. Mrs Dore, a plump woman with a florid complexion had worked for the Shillings for ten years or more. She liked old Mrs Shilling and her son but her opinion of Muriel Shilling, she declared with a pinched expression, was best left unsaid. Izzie could easily guess why.

  ‘How am I expected to stretch that squitty bit of meat between the seven of us?’ she heard Mrs Dore say on more than one occasion. ‘There’s hardly enough there to feed the cat! Oh, she can spend money like there’s no tomorrow on clothes, but she’s as tight as a dog’s bottom when it comes to the housekeeping.’

  Her outburst gave Izzie a shrewd idea that Mrs Dore was expected to manage the household on a rather meagre budget. Certainly the meal portions in the servant’s kitchen were very small although Izzie didn’t mind too much. It helped her to get a trimmer figure.

  She and Esther soon struck up a friendship and on the odd occasion when their off duty times coincided, Esther joined Patsy and Izzie at the pictures.

  By the end of July, the first draft of the memoir was finished and old Mrs Shilling finally admitted that she was exhausted.

  ‘I’m going to take a break,’ she announced. ‘I shall go down to Bournemouth to see my sister.’

  Izzie nodded sagely. So this was it. Her nice little job was at an end. ‘Would you like me to come back when you return to Worthing?’ she asked without much hope of a favourable reply.

  ‘I should like you to come with me,’ Mrs Shilling declared stoutly. ‘Do you think your father would let you?’

  Izzie couldn’t hide her delight and excitement. ‘I’d like to see him try and stop me!’

  Later that day, as Izzie came back from her lunch, the dining room door was still open and she heard the two Mrs Shillings having a heated discussion.

  ‘Have you any idea how much all this is going to cost?’

  ‘Not really, dear.’

  ‘A chauffeur driving all the way to Bournemouth, the two of you staying in the Royal Bath, and that’s not cheap; a nurse to come in twice a day … Good God mother, you could go to New York on the Queen Mary for the same price.’

  ‘Muriel,’ old Mrs Shilling said firmly, ‘I don’t care. Why shouldn’t I have a little pleasure in my old age?’

  Izzie didn’t hear any more. The dining room door suddenly closed, leaving only the sound of angry muffled voices.

  *

  Little did Mrs Shilling know but Izzie faced the same kind of reaction from her father. He did his best to put his foot down when she told him but when she said if she gave in her notice she would earn a lot less in a shop and would probably only be able to give him half as much money for her keep, he relented. ‘Well, I suppose it’s only for a week,’ he said grudgingly.

  Linda was green with envy. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said, stamping her foot and glaring at her sister with a pouty mouth. ‘You’ll be leaving me to do everything.’

  As she picked up the dirty dishes to put them in the sink, Izzie allowed herself a small smile. Just like you leave me to do everything the rest of the year, she thought acidly. Now you’ll find out just what it’s like.

  ‘Don’t you worry sweetheart,’ she heard their father say as he put his arm comfortingly around Linda’s shoulders. ‘We’ll eat at Mick’s fish and chip shop during the week and just for a treat, I’ll take you out somewhere nice on Friday.’

  Gripping the edge of the sink, Izzie felt her face flush with the unfairness of it all.

  *

  They set off a week later. When they arrived a couple of hours later, Izzie’s first impression of Bournemouth was wonderful. As they motored down from The Lansdowne, the leafy tree lined streets led them down a hill and she could see the sea glistening on the horizon. The weather was good and to Izzie’s delight and amazement, their chauffeur driven car pulled up outside a posh hotel only a few minutes’ walk from the beach. A bevy of porters descended upon the car to carry their suitcases and unload the wheelchair and her own private nurse was on hand to help Mrs Shilling freshen up in her room. On the way down, Mrs Shilling had explained that Izzie’s duties were to be quite light, mainly to push her around the town and down to the beach in her wheelchair. The old lady had also decided to replenish her wardrobe so their first day was spent walking around some amazing shops like Bobby’s, Plummer’s and Beales. The assistants had been pre-warned that they were coming so they were more than helpful. Most of what Mrs Shilling looked at was old fashioned but while she was busy in the changing rooms, Izzie got a chance to catch a glimpse of some fantastically modern clothes on the other rails. The shop assistant at her elbow pulled some out to show her but although Izzie admired them, she shook her head. Everything was way beyond her price range.

  Her employer was a gregarious woman so it wasn’t long before she’d got into conversation with the other guests and invariably they’d invite her to join them in a rubber of bridge or a game of whist. Izzie kept a weather eye on her but she also took the opportunity to take a turn around the garden behind t
he hotel or to browse the magazines on a table near the entrance. A couple of times, a young man would try to engage her in conversation, until he found out that she wasn’t some lonely heiress looking for Mr Right.

  Their evenings were spent mainly in the hotel dining room and lounge where Izzie was sometimes asked to keep Mrs Shilling company. At the dinner table, Izzie enjoyed some of the most amazing meals she’d ever had and tasted wine for the very first time.

  ‘You won’t tell my daughter-in-law what we’ve been up to, will you?’ Mrs Shilling said on the second evening when they’d just tucked into roast pheasant, pommes rissole and Brussels sprouts followed by sherry trifle (heavy on the sherry and with lashings of cream) and coffee.

  Izzie grinned. ‘Your secret is safe with me Mrs Shilling.’

  On Wednesday, Izzie had a day to herself when Mrs Shilling took a taxi to visit her sister. She walked through Bournemouth Gardens, admiring the formal flower beds before setting off for the shops. Avoiding the more expensive stores, Izzie headed along Commercial Road towards The Triangle and the more affordable shops. After an hour or so trying on different things, she treated herself to an adorable white blouse with short kimono sleeves and an imitation artist’s bow at the front. She bought it just in time as Wednesday was half closing.

  At lunch time she ate a sandwich and had a cup of tea in a small café near the pavilion but the highlight of her day, if not her whole time in Bournemouth, was her afternoon trip to the Pier Approach Baths. Here she splashed out for a ticket to see the aqua-show where swimmers and divers showed off their skills in a mixture of comic routine and dazzling displays of skill. Back in the hotel that night, she sent a postcard to her father and Linda.

  Having a wonderful time. Went to the Aqua show. I saw Roy Fransen the European champion diving from the top of the board. He was amazing.

  ‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ the old lady asked her on their last but one morning as they drank coffee on the balcony of Mrs Shilling’s room. ‘Where did you grow up? What do your parents do?’