Down an English Lane

by Margaret Thornton

  When she had been working at Galaxy for over a year she persuaded Henry Galloway to allow her to act as guide on one of the city tours. They ran both coach tours and walking tours, usually employing qualified guides. Maisie, however, having been on a couple of the tours, was convinced that she would be able to do just as well. With Trixie’s prompting, he agreed to give her a try. The guides, on the whole, were elderly, and Maisie had her youth and a winning personality on her side. He insisted, though, that Trixie should accompany her at first; after all, she was only eighteen. But Trixie soon realised that she was very competent and sure of herself. Besides, she looked several years older than she really was, well able to deal with clients’ questions or with any ‘awkward customers’. There were very few of those, though, all the tourists seeming happy to lap up the information handed out to them.

  The city coach tour was easy. The driver knew his way around and Maisie, standing at the front with her microphone, pointed out the various places of interest. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see Micklegate Bar, and this is where, in olden times, they used to hang the heads of traitors… The bars are really fortified gateways into the city, as you can see, but in York the gates are called bars, and so we have Fishergate Bar, Monk Bar, Bootham Bar… And the streets, contrarily, are known as gates, and so we have Stonegate, Ousegate, Coppergate…

  ‘And now we are crossing the River Foss. This was dammed by William the Conqueror – I mean to say that he built a dam, not that he condemned it…’ and she would wait for the polite laughter, ‘…to protect his castle, provide power for his corn mills, and to create a fishpond for his personal use…

  ‘And over that wall, if you look quickly to your left now, you can see the gravestone of Dick Turpin…and here, on Petergate, is the house in which Guy Fawkes, York’s most infamous citizen, was born…’

  Such titbits of information, the more ghoulish the better, she found pleased the customers and as time went by she grew more confident and revised her spiel accordingly.

  Walking tours could be a little more difficult as some people – usually the middle-aged women – tended to loiter behind, looking in shop windows. Maisie led them through the old streets of York; the Shambles, originally known as Fleshammels, the street of the butchers; Swinegate, once called Swynegaill, dating from the thirteenth century when pigs were kept there; Stonegate, Petergate, Deangate… ending at the Minster with a tour of the ‘largest medieval Gothic church in England’. She held a small Union Jack flag aloft as she led the way through the streets, and then around the hallowed aisles and transepts of the church, which her little crowd was meant to follow. She was relieved that she had never yet lost anyone.

  Her work was flexible and that was what made it the more interesting. And so she was delighted when, soon after her nineteenth birthday, Henry asked her if she would act as courier on a five-day coach tour to London. The regular courier had fallen ill and Henry knew that she would be a very capable replacement. Part-time staff would be only too pleased to take over her office work in her absence. There was never any shortage of these as Galaxy had earned a reputation for fairness and reasonable wages.

  It was great, she had enthused to Henry after her return, and she had enjoyed every minute of it. She had stayed with the clients at a small hotel in South Kensington, and as the driver knew the city like the back of his hand, it had all been plain-sailing. Please could she go again, she begged, if a stand-in was required? She did two more tours that year, one more to London and another to Edinburgh. This was foreign territory to her, but she swotted up the facts before she went. And the capital city of Scotland proved to be another fascinating old city.

  Galaxy was unusual in that they provided couriers as well as drivers on some – though by no means all – of their tours, especially those which were advertised as ‘cultural tours’. It was Henry’s view that drivers had enough to do to keep their eyes on the road without, at the same time, trying to give a running commentary. This was common practice with many firms, but Henry had been determined never to cut corners at the expense of the customers’ safety.

  He reminded Maisie, however, that she had been employed first and foremost as a booking clerk, at which job she was proving most efficient. No more tours came her way for the rest of the year, apart from the York excursions which she did once a week. And then, six months ago, had come her transfer to Leeds…

  She knew that she had to buckle down and concentrate on her position as manageress. She could not leave her post to go swanning off to the other end of the country. Maybe one day…she often mused. They had recently started booking air tickets for independent travellers, to Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens, even New York…although they did not, as yet, organise air tours on behalf of Galaxy Travel. Maisie made up her mind that one day she, too, would visit such places. In the meantime she would do the very best job she could in the place where Fate had placed her.

  Middlebeck seemed not only miles but light years away at times; although when she went home, every six weeks or so, she soon picked up the threads again with her friends and family. Audrey was in her second year at a college not far from Leeds and would leave there in the summer of this year. She hoped to obtain a teaching appointment somewhere in the north of Yorkshire. Audrey was still very much a home bird and Maisie wondered if she had ever really settled down to college life; she certainly did not say very much about it. Audrey was still not inclined to give much away about her private life and thoughts. Maisie met her now and again in the city centre, to look at the shops or to enjoy a snack together, and their friendship was still as firm as ever.

  Doris was married to Ivan Delinsky, the Polish farmer. Maisie and Audrey had been bridesmaids in the summer of 1948, when Doris was a young bride of eighteen. The couple now had a nine-month-old baby boy and lived in their own little cottage, near to the Nixons’ farm, where Ivan still worked. The farm was now a family concern, owned and worked by Ada, Joe and his wife, Irene, who also lived there; and Doris and Ivan.

  Ted, also, was married to Celia, and they were expecting their first child in the summer… Maisie held no hard feelings towards the pair. She knew that Celia was far more suitable as a wife for Ted than she would ever have been. They, too, had their own little place, and Ted worked the remainder of the land which still belonged to Archie Tremaine. There was talk of Ted buying it eventually, as Archie was set on following a political career.

  He had thrown in his weight – and considerable funding – with the local Labour party, and had been selected as the candidate for the forthcoming election; which would take place very soon, towards the end of the present month, on the twenty-third of February. The last time Maisie had visited Middlebeck there had been posters a-plenty in evidence. ‘Vote for Archie Tremaine, your local Labour candidate’, decorated in the party colours of red and yellow. The title ‘squire’ was not used at all. Archie was now, ‘One of us; a man of the people’. It did not mean much to Maisie as she would not be able to vote until the next but one election, by which time she would have reached the age of majority, twenty-one. She had not really sorted out her own political persuasion, but she hoped that Archie, for his own sake, would be successful.

  And what of her love life? Thinking of Archie led her thoughts automatically to Bruce. She knew that his marriage had come to grief, but that news, strangely enough, had not caused her to indulge in wild imaginings. She had scarcely seen him over the past few years. Their visits home had rarely coincided, and when they did they had not sought each other’s company, except to say hello and exchange a few pleasantries. Her infatuation with Bruce, which she had convinced herself it must have been, now seemed ‘long ago and far away’, as the words of the song said.

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend down there in York? (or Leeds),’ people asked her whenever she went back home. Or ‘Are you courting yet?’

  ‘No…’ she would answer. ‘I’m far too busy…’

  She had been out with one or two young men. Olwen’s s
on, Mike, had taken her to the pictures recently and was anxious for another date. He was nice enough, but she was not sure about him. And in York she had been friendly with one of the tour drivers, until she had discovered he was married; and she had had a ‘fling’ with another booking clerk who had joined the staff for six months. But there had been nobody so far who had ignited a spark of anything but friendship and liking; certainly not love or the feeling that, ‘This is right; he is the one for me.’

  She was young and happy and fulfilled in her work and, as her mother kept reminding her, she had ‘all the time in the world to think about marriage.’ Her mother, in fact, was very proud of Maisie’s achievements. She had not reached the scholastic heights that she could have attained, but she had worked hard and made great progress in the career she had chosen, and that was enough for Lily, and enough for Maisie, too, at the moment.

  By mid-morning a pale sun had followed the early rain and the last vestiges of grubby slush and snow were fast melting in the gutters. It had been a quiet sort of morning in the office with no more than a handful of customers. Olwen had gone through to the little kitchen at the back to make the coffee, and Barry was busy sorting out a pile of invoices, so it was Maisie’s turn to attend to the couple who had just entered the shop.

  The woman was quite young and very smartly dressed; what Maisie still in her own mind termed as ‘posh’, a favourite word from her childhood when the difference between herself and ‘posh’ folk had been very marked. She was wearing a fur coat – rich brown fur, though of which kind Maisie was not sure; she was not well up in furs, but she did not think it was mink – and a small red hat with a long feather sticking through it. Her long and slender legs were clothed in the sheerest nylon stockings, and her red leather shoes had pointed toes and ridiculously high heels for such inclement weather. Or maybe they had parked their Rolls or some such car not far away, Maisie wondered?

  As for the man, he looked as though he might be what was known as a ‘spiv’. His grey pin-striped suit, reminiscent of the old demob suits, but of a much better quality, had a long narrow-lapelled jacket with broad shoulders, after the American style. He wore a trilby hat perched on the back of his longish dark hair. All this Maisie noticed in the first minute or so as the couple approached her. Then she looked at the woman’s face, at her golden-blonde hair, beautifully coiffured, her red lips – painted, but not gaudily – and her silvery-grey eyes. It was the eyes that Maisie remembered…

  She and the woman both spoke at the same time.

  ‘Christine! It is Christine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maisie…well, fancy that! You are Maisie, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Maisie,’ she replied, smiling a little uncertainly at the woman she had thought of, at one time, as her adversary. But there was no look of hostility there now in Christine’s lovely grey eyes, only friendliness and surprise. ‘It’s…it’s good to see you again, Christine. It’s been a long time…’

  ‘It certainly has. It must be – what? – about five years since I last saw you. But you haven’t changed very much; you’re a lot more grown-up, of course.’ She turned to the man at her side. ‘Darling, this is Maisie… Jackson, isn’t it? She used to live up in Middlebeck, and what a surprise it is to find her down here. Maisie, this is Clive; Clive Broadbent, my fiancé.’

  Maisie shook hands with the man and they exchanged ‘How do you dos?’ He was quite good-looking, she thought, in a flashy sort of way, but considerably older than Christine, she guessed…or Bruce, of course. His close-set eyes reminded her of Stewart Granger.

  ‘So…what are you doing here, Maisie?’ asked Christine. ‘Working, obviously, I can see that… Have you been down here long?’

  ‘I’ve been in Leeds for six months,’ replied Maisie. ‘Before that I was in York, working for Galaxy Travel. Actually… I’m the manageress here,’ she added, unable to hide the touch of pride in her voice.

  ‘Are you, by Jove? Good for you,’ said the man, Clive. And Christine, too, to give her her due, did not stint with her praise.

  ‘Well done, Maisie! That’s a great achievement, isn’t it, at your age? You can’t be more than… How old are you now? Let me see; eighteen, nineteen…?’

  ‘I’ll be twenty in May,’ said Maisie, a little abruptly. Was there a slightly patronising tone in Christine’s words? Or maybe she had just imagined it… ‘So, what can I do for you, Christine? Did you want to make a booking, or is it just an enquiry?’ she asked in a businesslike voice. Bruce had not been mentioned, and she saw no reason to bring him into the conversation if Christine did not do so. She surreptitiously glanced at the young woman’s left hand when she removed her gloves. Her ring was a huge solitaire diamond; much grander, no doubt, than the ring that Bruce had once bought for her. Maisie had never seen that one, though; she had not wanted to know.

  It was Clive Broadbent who answered. ‘Yes, we would like to book train tickets to London, if you please, Miss Jackson. We could go to the station, of course, but I happened to notice when I was passing the other day that there was a travel agency here.’

  ‘We haven’t been living in Leeds very long, you see,’ Christine added. ‘Only a couple of weeks, which is why we haven’t seen this place before. We have just moved into a new house at Headingley, haven’t we, darling? And Clive has recently opened a new warehouse here. He’s in the retail business, you see…’

  Maisie nodded. She had guessed at something of the sort, but she mustn’t misjudge the fellow; his dealings were probably all above board.

  ‘And Christine and I are going to tie the knot,’ said Clive, grinning at his fiancée. ‘Aren’t we, darling? I’m going to make an honest woman of her. The last Saturday in February, that’s the time; Leeds Register Office, that’s the place… And then we’re off to London for our honeymoon.’ They looked at one another lovingly.

  It was as though there had never been any Bruce, thought Maisie. But she was startled to realise that that fact meant very little to her any more.

  ‘Very nice, congratulations,’ she said. ‘Of course I can book the tickets for you. What time of day do you want to travel…?’ She checked the times and the dates and issued the appropriate travel vouchers. Clive paid with a crisp five pound note.

  ‘How about your accommodation?’ she enquired. ‘Or has that already been arranged?’

  ‘Yes, it has for sure,’ replied Clive. ‘We’ve booked in at the Strand Palace. Honeymoon suite, no less, for five nights. We always stay there when we go to the city, don’t we, darling?’

  ‘Yes…’ she replied, smiling coyly at him, ‘but this will be the first time in the honeymoon suite.’

  ‘We will know where to come now for any travel arrangements we need,’ said Clive. ‘Thank you, my dear, for all your help.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ added Christine. ‘And all the best for the future, Maisie dear. I’m sure you will continue to do well… You found that Middlebeck was too small for you, did you? There’s not much scope there, is there, for a bright girl like you?’

  Maisie felt a little miffed. ‘I didn’t exactly outgrow it,’ she answered, ‘if that’s what you mean, but this opportunity came along and so I took it. But Middlebeck is still home to me.’

  ‘Yes, of course; there’s no place like home, is there?’ Christine’s smile was friendly enough, but Maisie was not sure whether or not it was wholly sincere. Was there still a trace of resentment there, she wondered, a harking back to the rivalry of a few years ago? She decided it would be best to bring matters to a close. She nodded.

  ‘As you say; there’s no place like home… Well, it’s been nice to see you again.’ She held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Christine… Mr Broadbent; and I wish you both every happiness.’ They all shook hands cordially and the couple left the shop.

  Maisie watched them as they closed the door behind them and then walked up the street arm in arm, their heads close together. She gave a deep sigh, shaking her head in a bewildered manner.

&nbs
p; ‘What’s up, Maisie?’ asked Olwen, as she entered with a laden tray. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Maisie smiled wryly. ‘You could say that; a ghost from the recent past, but this one’s still very much alive.’

  ‘She’s quite a looker, that woman,’ observed Barry. ‘Friend of yours, is she?’

  ‘No… I never considered her to be a friend,’ replied Maisie. ‘More of an enemy,’ she added, but under her breath and not intended to be heard. ‘I must say, though, that the years seem to have improved her, in disposition, I mean. She was always good-looking, as you say, Barry.’

  ‘That fellow she was with looked like one o’ them spivs,’ he remarked. ‘Her husband, is he?’

  ‘No; her fiancé,’ she replied. Clearly he had formed the same impression of Clive Broadbent as she had. ‘Never mind them now, they’re not important.’ She doubted that she would see them in the shop again, in spite of what the man had said. ‘Come on now, it’s coffee time. Ooh, my favourite choccy biccies! Thanks, Olwen.’

  ‘I won’t be working this afternoon,’ Olwen reminded her. ‘I’m doing the morning instead because I’ve got a dental appointment this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, that’s OK; I’ve remembered,’ Maisie nodded.

  ‘But our Michael said he might pop in and see you this afternoon.’ Olwen gave her a meaningful glance. ‘If you don’t want to see him again, Maisie, then tell him, please, would you…?’ She did not sound annoyed, just concerned. ‘He’s a sensitive sort of lad, and I’d rather he was disappointed sooner, rather than later, if you see what I mean.’