‘Nat!’
‘Alan. Good to see you.’ Nat shook his hand. ‘Is this yer first leave? Sit down. I’ll get yer a beer.’
‘Dad’s sending two over,’ Alan said. ‘Yes. My first. I’ve got four days. Can I come up to Rainow on Monday?’
‘Aye. Be glad to see yer. What are you doing tonight then?’
‘I’m taking my girlfriend out. To the theatre. To Manchester.’
‘Oh. This is something new,’ Nat laughed. ‘Who’s the girlfriend?’
‘Rose. Rose Kennedy.’
Nat stared for a moment then felt the colour rise to his face. What a fool he’d been, imagining all these years that one day he might stand a chance. He must not let Alan see his disappointment. He’d have to put all thoughts of Rose Kennedy from his mind. What a good thing he hadn’t asked her. He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.
‘What about you?’ Alan said. ‘Are you fixed up for the evening?’
Nat stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I’m going to ask your barmaid out as soon as I’ve had another pint.’
Mona was looking at him, eyebrows lifted in questioning. ‘Another two pints, Mona,’ Nat called to her. Then he gave her a wide smile and a broad wink. ‘Please.’ He’d have to mind his manners with Mona if he wanted her to go out with him. She wasn’t an ordinary sort of girl.
Chapter Sixteen
Outside, in the market square, Carrie shopped for some vegetables for the weekend. ‘Two pounds of carrots, please,’ she said to the stallkeeper. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any Spanish onions?’
Already she could see what rationing was going to be like if things got worse. Some shopkeepers were acting as if they were the masters and the customers the servants. And you had to keep a civil tongue in your head or they’d never give you anything that wasn’t on show. One or two had taken to keeping stuff under the counter for their favourites.
Good. The woman had found her some onions off the back of the stall. ‘And ten pounds of potatoes,’ Carrie added. She handed over the brown Rexene bag Mary had made for her. ‘Put them in here.’
Mary was no trouble. She had taken a job at the mill, making army shirts. Mary was the one most like Jane had been. It was lovely having Mary around; it made up in a way for the loss of Jane, to whose death she had not yet become reconciled. It was peculiar, the way she thought Jane was still there.
‘And a white cabbage, please,’ she said. She’d told Mrs Chenko she’d get her one. They seemed to use a lot of cabbage. Mr Terry Chenko had turned out to be a lively, talented man. He was musical. He had taught music at an academy in Danzig. When the piano had been brought from Wells Road and set up in the lodgers’ dining room he’d asked if he could play it. He was a good pianist, playing by ear. And he could play the fiddle too. You only needed to hum a tune and he’d got it. It was as if he knew every piece of music that had ever been written. It was a gift, like singing was.
Vivienne wanted to ask him to play tunes for her to dance to. But she’d told her, No. She didn’t mind Mr Chenko playing music for singing to. But she wouldn’t encourage Vivienne to keep her head full of that dancing nonsense.
Vivienne was a thorn in her side. If she’d had charge of her from the start, Carrie knew she would never have been so wayward. Still, she could leave school soon; go to work in the mill; use up her energies. She was nearly fifteen. Jane and Danny wanted them to take their school certificates but Mary and Vivienne weren’t clever. There, she was doing it again, thinking Jane and Danny were alive. Was she going mad?
Sometimes she believed that she was. The strain between her and Rose was destroying her. Since the night she could hardly bear to remember, when she’d told Rose the truth, she had not been able to sleep properly. She lay, hour after hour, her thoughts in confusion, asking herself if she had been right to tell her.
Jessie Burgess, a chapel acquaintance, was coming across the square to talk to her. She had on the brown coat and hat she’d worn for years. Carrie went towards her. ‘Hello, Jessie. Where’s your Ronnie?’ she asked. ‘Is he still in France?’
‘As far as we know, Miss Shrigley,’ Jessie answered.
‘It must be a worry for you.’ Their Ronnie was the apple of Jessie Burgess’s eye. She had three more sons but Ronnie was her favourite. ‘He’s always in our prayers at chapel.’
‘I know. I haven’t been to chapel for a week or two,’ Jessie said. ‘We’ve got me mother with us now. She’s a lot of work.’
‘It’s six weeks,’ Carrie said, ‘or more, since you were at chapel.’
‘How are you managing, Miss Shrigley? It must be hard for you. Bacon and butter being rationed. They say it’s only a matter of time before meat will be, but I expect that you and Mr Ratcliffe being promised-like – he’ll be a help.’
‘I manage,’ Carrie said. So. All their tongues were wagging. Cecil must have let it slip. When Jane and Danny died she told Cecil that the wedding plans would have to be set aside, at least until the war was over. He’d agreed. ‘I can remember the last time.’ She looked Jessie Burgess straight in the face. ‘I paid twenty-two and six for a chicken in 1918.’
‘Well, I suppose . . .’
Jessie looked worried sick. Carrie was sorry for her. ‘They’re being fair, Jessie. My knowing Mr Ratcliffe makes no difference. They’ll ration everything fairly. No one will get more than their share.’
‘I hope so,’ Jessie said. ‘I wanted to get some oranges.’
‘They’ve got some in Marks and Spencer’s,’ Carrie said. ‘Hurry up. There was a queue an hour ago.’
Jessie hurried away. Carrie watched her go, fast as a little mouse she was, her shopping bag bobbing along, nearly touching the cobbles. Carrie took off her glasses and looked again. Her eyes were improving. She could still see Jessie Burgess. She had stopped for a word with someone. It was Cecil. He was coming towards her now. Carrie fought down the sudden impulse she had to turn her back; to walk away; to pretend she hadn’t seen him.
‘Aha! Miss Shrigley.’
He always called her Miss Shrigley when they were out. She had asked him not to use her Christian name in public. It seemed petty even as she’d requested it but he’d taken it well. He’d think it was more highfalutin’.
He stood before her, hand outstretched. She put her own out and he took it. His hand felt limp. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’m off to buy our tickets for tonight’s concert,’ he replied. ‘You hadn’t forgotten that we are going to the town hall?’
‘I remembered,’ she answered. ‘But you won’t need to buy tickets in advance.’
‘I have other work to attend to as well,’ he said. ‘Consignments of rationed goods are coming. I’m in charge of allocations.’ He was smiling all over his face; that knowing smile that she distrusted.
‘I hope you are fair and even-handed,’ she said. ‘You have to be careful. You have to be seen to be careful as well.’
‘Of course. Of course,’ he assured her. The smile left his face. ‘You don’t think ill of me, do you?’ he asked quickly and anxiously.
He seemed to be more, not less, dependent on her good opinion of him. Sometimes he got all worked up if he thought she was not pleased with him. And, at the same time, he appeared to be more fanatical in religious zeal and more involved with the affairs of the town. She did not understand him. ‘I’m sure you’ll do right, Cecil.’ She gave him a frosty smile. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Cecil was a help. You needed permits for everything. She’d wanted two sinks and two lavatories put into the hotel and, without his interceding for her at a planning meeting, she’d have had to wait years. He’d prevented the requisition of the house in Wells Road. She should be grateful. He’d let a ministry take over his shop. He didn’t know if he’d want it back after the war he said. He’d see. He’d see how she felt about it. About him and her running it.
He was kept busy these days
on committees. There was going to be a Ministry of Food he’d told her. They’d open a Food Office soon. And he wanted her to buy a house in the town centre and rent it to one of the ministries until after the war. He’d see she ‘came out smiling’, he’d told her. She snapped at him and asked if the war effort was meant to be a golden chance for opportunists.
They weren’t alone so often since she had the girls with her but she didn’t mind. She was glad they weren’t often alone. He came to the Temperance Hotel, dropping by before or after the meetings, to let her know about the civic decisions. It embarrassed her though – the way Rose behaved when Cecil came into the kitchen. She’d look at him as if he had a nasty smell about him.
Carrie knew that they didn’t like Cecil, though he tried to make them like him. He gave them presents. Shoes – old stock admittedly – but they were ungrateful. Cecil did his best to please them. He offered them lifts in his car. And they said they’d rather walk.
Rose was particularly disdainful. Whenever there was an opportunity to thrash it out, she chose to sit with her sisters in the bedroom. Was it because she wouldn’t tell Rose who her father was?
They heard from Patrick soon after they had buried Jane and Danny. Terribly upset he’d been. She explained their new arrangements and asked him to address his letters to herself and the girls. She wrote, ‘We are all well. Apart from those worries which the whole nation shares we have no worries. It is better if you address your letters to Miss Shrigley and the Misses Kennedy. Please make no more reference to either my feelings or my future, as you so often, gratuitously, do.’ It was a good word, gratuitous. Cecil used it.
‘You will be interested to know that I plan to marry a very respected man. Cecil Ratcliffe is an alderman and expects to become mayor of Macclesfield one day.
‘Once the girls are established in their own lives we will get married. I had to ask Cecil to wait and he has agreed to do so. It would be too upsetting for the girls, to lose their mother and father and for their aunt, who is legal guardian, to tell them that she is going to be married to a man, to bear on top of everything.
‘I got myself into the middle of a sentence there that I could not get out of. I am sure that, being a writer, you understand the meaning.’
His reply, addressed to them all as she’d requested, was full of his usual talk about Canada. What Canada was doing for the war. How Canadian boys were joining up, coming over here as pilots and everything. How he wished he could do something. Then he had put, right at the end. ‘I think I remember Cecil Ratcliffe. Wasn’t he a big noise in your little chapel? I wish you both a long and fruitful life together. May all your troubles be little ones.’
The last sentence was sarcasm though perhaps it was meant as a joke. He’d know that it wasn’t going to be that kind of a marriage
At half-past four Alan had polished the Riley inside and out. It stood behind the Swan, in front of the loose-box where Nat’s horse, Dobbin, chomped contentedly on a rack of hay. The chromium-plated headlights and radiator grill shone in the afternoon sunshine, the chrome rim of the windscreen was bright and shiny, the wooden panel gleamed and the tan upholstery had had a rubbing over with saddle-soap. There was petrol in the tank and a fringed rug for Rose’s legs if they drove with the hood down, as he’d done.
He didn’t know if she liked opera, but he thought she would. She used to know all the Gilbert and Sullivan songs and play them on his wind-up gramophone in Lincoln Drive. Rose had a good singing voice. Something deep inside tightened into a knot at the thought of her singing.
He walked across the unswept square, now littered with wilting cabbage leaves. The traders packed up early to avoid blackout and this, and the piles of sandbags, was the only change in the life of Macclesfield. It was hard to imagine that the terror of war was raging in Europe; that ships in the North Sea were being sunk, when here the tulips beamed their welcome under the trees behind the stalls.
Young boys hid behind headstones in the churchyard and dropped with wild screeches from overhanging trees to the high stone wall and on to the narrow flags. Their sisters solemnly chalked lines and squares on the same pavement and hopped and jumped as they neatly kicked a broken tile from square to square in an age-old order.
He leaned over the wall of Sparrow Park, high above the cattle market. Rose expected him at 5 o’clock and there were five minutes to spare. He looked down on to the rooftops and considered the hard struggle their aunt had imposed on the girls. He used not to be comfortable in her presence when he was young. Now he had no patience with her.
He went down the steps to Waters Green and rapped at the door of the Temperance Hotel. Carrie Shrigley answered his knock and peered at him through bottle-glass lenses that made her eyes look like pinpricks.
‘Is Rose ready?’ Alan was brusque.
‘Where do you want to take her?’ she snapped, suspicious of his intentions.
‘We’re going to Manchester. To the opera,’ Alan said, hoping that Rose would appear and put an end to this nonsense; being questioned by the old tartar out in the street as if he were a child who had broken a window.
‘In that motor car? The one you had parked outside the Swan?’ She had a high-pitched voice for such a big woman and her every word implied criticism.
‘Yes. It’s not mine. It belongs to a friend.’ Then he was annoyed with himself for explaining.
‘I should think it’s not. Not yours. What’d you be doing running around like a wild thing in a sports car?’
The woman talked nonsense. The conversation might have been funny, had not every word been uttered with such bitter resentment. But Rose was behind her now and his face softened as he held out his hand to her. ‘We may be late, Miss Shrigley. Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of her.’
She moved aside. ‘Just see you behave yourself,’ she said to Rose.
Mary and Vivienne were with the Gallimore girls at the corner, by the steps. As they approached them Alan was aware of their eyes on him and aware too of Rose as she glanced sideways at him, hoping he didn’t mind their attention.
‘Let’s give them something to talk about,’ he said, taking her hand and pulling her towards him. ‘Pretend we haven’t seen them.’ He slid an arm across her shoulders and began to whistle nonchalantly. Rose returned the pressure of his hand. Mary’s eyes were big and round and Vivienne’s quick and observant as they neared the watchful group. ‘How are your sisters, Rose?’ he asked in as casual a tone as he could manage.
‘They’re fine. They’re out, somewhere,’ she replied and he saw that she was doing her best not to laugh until they reached the top of the steps. And he knew that she had been nervous, afraid of finding him changed, and that she was relieved that their shared fooling had brought them close again.
The Riley ran smooth and speedy. Macclesfield was behind them and Alan wished he could point the car in the camp’s direction and show off the pretty girl who sat beside him. Her eyes, as blue as a twilight sky, were narrowed against the sun. She’d been attractive as a child, but now . . . He glanced at her profile, her straight nose, wide mouth and the bright hair blowing against the side of her face, a sheet of bronze silk. She was thinner than she’d been before and he wondered if the changes of the last six months had taken their toll.
‘Do you like the bank?’ he asked. ‘Is it a let-down after college? It must be dull. All those old fogies.’
‘The old fogies aren’t so dull when you get to know them.’ She laughed and turned her face towards his. ‘I enjoy it. There are two girls about my own age, Sylvia Wright and Pamela Tannenbaum. They’re good fun. Pamela’s father’s a consultant at a Manchester hospital.’
‘That’s a German name, Tannenbaum.’
‘I know. But they’re English. Her father was in the army in the Great War,’ she went on. ‘Pamela keeps inviting me to tea. Only I can’t go. Not now.’
‘Why not?’ Alan asked.
‘Because I can’t ask her back,’ she said.
‘What do you do all day? Count the money?’
‘And ledger work,’ she said. ‘What about you? How’s the RAF?’
‘There’s so much to tell you but if I started you’d still be listening next week.’ There were no flag indicators on the Riley, unlike the new cars and Alan had to give hand signals as he turned off the Macclesfield Road on to the straight run into Manchester.
‘What I’d have liked is to join a service,’ Rose was saying, ‘but my eyes weren’t good enough. Then . . . after Mum and Dad died I thought I’d better stay with my sisters.’
‘How do you like living at the Temperance Hotel?’
‘Hate it.’
‘Why didn’t you stay in Wells Road?’
‘Aunt Carrie owns the house, it appears. She said she couldn’t spend any more money on us.’
Alan was surprised. His father spoke as though Carrie Shrigley had money. ‘I wonder what she’s going to do with it all?’ his father had said, when he heard that the girls were moving. Perhaps Dad had been mistaken. ‘What about your sisters?’
‘I don’t think they mind as much as I do but I want them to have something better than living there and working in a mill.’
‘Ambitious little thing,’ he teased. ‘You’re not turning into a snob, are you Rose?’ He smiled as he said it, but he saw her cheeks flame.
‘It’s not snobbish. Mum and Dad were ambitious for us. I’m not. It’s just that I can’t bear to see them changing. The Gallimore girls run wild and Mary and Viv are talking like them already. Viv’s going to work in the mill with Mary soon. Viv’s hard to keep down.’
‘It’s not your place to keep them down,’ he told her. ‘Mary has got a sensible head on her shoulders and Vivienne – I can’t see Vivienne missing out. Vivienne will get whatever she wants, rich or poor, war or no war. Is your aunt kind to you?’
Mill Town Girl Page 26
