Packards

by Patricia Burns

  He took her hand and placed it over the bulge in his trousers, making her work on him. Isobel looked again at the cabby’s head. She was sure his neck was even redder. He did know what was going on. If they could just get back to the house, she did not care what was done to her or what she had to do, just as long as there was nobody else there.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s good, isn’t it? The motion makes it even better. We’ll do it right here, in the cab.’

  Isobel gasped with horror. That was all he needed. He made her kneel astride him and, grasping her buttocks, pulled her down onto him. Her head hard against the leather upholstery, Isobel tried to muffle her sobs as he drove into her resisting body. Acutely aware of the driver, of the vehicles going by, of people crossing the road, she felt as exposed as if she had been doing it in the middle of a park. Every eye must surely be upon them, condemning her for what she was, a fallen woman. She knelt, her hands fisted, waiting for it to be over. After what seemed like for ever, he shouted in time with the last, punishing strokes, and was still. Isobel stole a look at his face. He seemed happy and relaxed, all the cruelty drained away. Carefully, she eased off him.

  They were turning the corner into Elmer Road, the street where Isobel now lived. Edward stirred and grinned at her as she attempted to straighten her clothes.

  ‘Well, what a brazen little hussy you are. Doing it in a hired cab in broad daylight. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  Scalding tears gathered in Isobel’s eyes. She concentrated on untangling her petticoats and tucking in her blouse. The cab pulled up at the door of number forty-eight.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother coming in. I have an important call to make this afternoon,’ Edward told her. Perversely, Isobel felt rejected. He reached over and opened the cab door, patting her bottom as she climbed awkwardly out.

  ‘Remember, I shall want to see you in your new things when I next call.’

  Isobel nodded, unable to answer.

  ‘Aren’t you going to thank me for them?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘That’s better. Now off you go, and be ready for me whenever I should come again.’

  Released at last, Isobel crossed the pavement and knocked at the green-painted door of the neat terraced house. The maid let her in and at last she was safe from inquisitive eyes.

  The place to which she had been sent the day after her dreadful initiation was a flat-fronted three-bedroomed house with a basement and railed area and pretty rounded-topped windows. Looking through the lace curtains, Isobel could see an identical terrace on the opposite side of the road, each house with its polished knocker and its scrubbed steps, some with geraniums on the windowsill, others with roses growing up trellises on the wall, but all very much the same. Their inhabitants were all a similar type of people as well. Isobel spent many a vacant hour watching their comings and goings. First the menfolk would leave, all in their pressed suits and clean white collars, to catch their trams and trains into the City. Isobel knew just what they were like, for the clerks in her father’s office looked just the same. Next the children would set off for school, skipping ropes and balls at the ready, satchels on their backs, laughing and calling out to each other, playing chase up the road. Later the wives would emerge, respectably gloved and hatted, baskets over their arms, to do the day’s marketing. Sometimes they would stop and chat with each other, nodding and smiling, and Isobel would feel an ache of envy. How lucky they were, to live such simple and normal lives.

  For though her house looked just like all of theirs on the outside, inside was a different story. It shrieked ‘Love nest’. The predominant colours were scarlet and gold. There were drapes and mirrors and comfortable couches. There was a fur rug in front of the parlour fireplace. On the walls were paintings of women in various states of undress. Worst of all, upstairs in the main bedroom there was a huge bed with diaphanous hangings and a mirror set into the ceiling. It was not to this room that Isobel hurried, but to the smaller one behind it that was meant merely to be a dressing room, furnished with three large wardrobes, a washstand, dressing table and couch. It was here that Isobel chose to sleep, or rather try to sleep, when her lord and master was not there to command otherwise.

  At seven in the evening, there was a tap on her door.

  ‘Dinner’s on the table, miss. I’m going now.’

  Isobel roused herself to say thank you, but did not get up. She did not want any dinner. She listened to the maid’s footsteps thudding down the stairs, to the slam of the front door, and at once felt both relieved and bereft. She disliked the maid, a dour middle-aged woman who appeared to come with the house. She was obsequious towards Edward and just short of insolent to Isobel, who felt totally unable to assert herself or issue a reprimand. Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings were her hours off, and Isobel looked forward to her not being there, but now that she was gone the house was still as a grave. Since Edward was unlikely to come again that evening, Isobel would not speak to another living being until the morning.

  Desperately lonely, she made her way downstairs to her favourite station by the parlour window. At least there was some life to look at out in the street. A group of girls in white pinafores had a long rope stretched across the road and were playing skipping games, chanting a rhyme and running in to perform complicated steps and jumps. The men were coming home from their days sitting at high desks and scratching away with their pens. They looked tired and worn, their shoulders bowed, each one walking eagerly through his front door, ready for a welcome and a hot meal. Isobel imagined the cheerful family groups inside each house, the day’s news exchanged, and knew herself to be an outcast.

  And then, miraculously, a familiar figure came into view. A young woman in a dark skirt and jacket and a white blouse, a plain straw hat on her head.

  ‘Daisy!’

  Isobel jumped up and flew to the door, opening it before her friend even reached for the knocker. She flung her arms round her.

  ‘Oh Daisy, it’s so good to see you!’

  Daisy returned her hug.

  ‘Well, there’s a welcome and a half,’ she said. ‘You going to ask me in, then?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.’

  Isobel led the way into the parlour and plied Daisy with tea and the blancmange that had been left for her dessert.

  ‘How are you? What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’m all right. You know me, strong as an ox. This stuff is lovely. Can I have some more?’

  Tears pricked at Isobel’s eyes. She had forgotten Daisy’s bottomless appetite.

  ‘Have it all,’ she said, placing great spoonfuls on her plate.

  ‘Mm, thanks.’ Daisy eyed the rest of the meal as it sat cold and congealed on the plate. ‘You get fed well here, at any rate. Why didn’t you eat that? Looks like it was good.’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling hungry.’

  Isobel did not want to be drawn into discussing herself yet.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ she repeated.

  ‘Oh – same old things, you know. That Vi in my department’s really got it in for me still. She had the best sales before I came, and now she’s second to me every week. Really put her nose out of joint, that has. Mind you, the week you disappeared she beat me. You should of heard her! Couldn’t stop crowing, she couldn’t. But I soon put her in her place again.’

  Isobel listened to the store gossip, who was courting, who was feuding, which couples had had a row, what stupid new demand the floorwalker had made. How easy, how straightforward it all seemed now.

  ‘And what – what is happening at Trent Street?’ she asked.

  ‘I got a new roommate.’

  Isobel felt a shaft of pure jealousy.

  ‘Indeed? What is she like?’

  Daisy made a face. ‘All right, I suppose. I had to get her trained, like keeping her stuff on her side of the
room and who was going to wash first in the mornings and fetching the water and all that. I mean, she don’t smell or snore or nothing, but it’s not like having you there. We don’t-sit and talk like you and me used to. She’s not my pal, she’s just someone I share the room with.’

  Isobel could not even pretend to be sorry. It meant that she still had Daisy for herself.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Gertie More. Tell you something, though, I’m going to introduce her to Arthur. I think they’d get on like a house on fire.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Isobel said. She wasn’t exactly sure if she meant it. What a perfect foursome they would make, Johnny, Daisy, Arthur and Gertie. She did not want anything to happen that might take Daisy away from her.

  ‘How – ah – how is Johnny?’ she asked.

  Daisy’s face closed. ‘He’s trying to find you.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  Isobel was horrified. ‘What do you mean, trying to find me?’

  Daisy explained, and as she did so, Isobel felt like a hunted creature. She reached out and caught Daisy’s hands.

  ‘This is dreadful. Nobody must find me. Daisy, you must stop him.’

  ‘I can’t stop him, Iz. I can only put him off. I been telling lies left, right and centre for you. He won’t give up. When we didn’t get nowhere with the cabs, or at least, when he thought we didn’t get nowhere, he got us going round all the hotels and all the employment offices. He says we got to ask for you by name and say what you look like in case you changed your name, and he’s got maps and lists so we don’t miss any place. All planned out, it is. I said to him, you ought to be in the police, you did.’

  Isobel couldn’t help a stirring of admiration, and of something like gratitude. It was warming to know that somebody cared enough about her to go to all that trouble.

  ‘But you won’t tell him, will you Daisy?’

  Daisy sighed. ‘Oh don’t worry, I won’t let on. But that’s what I mean, Iz, about telling lies. Each time he has a new plan, I know it won’t work, and I know he’s going to be so disappointed. It cuts me to the quick, it does. And I have to go along with it. I have to pretend I’m going to all these places on the lists, and come back and make up stuff about what people have said to me.’

  ‘He’ll have to give up sometime,’ Isobel said.

  ‘Yeah, but he’ll still wonder, won’t he? He’ll never know what happened to you.’

  Yet another layer of guilt settled round Isobel like a fog.

  ‘And then there’s Miss Packard.’

  ‘Miss Packard!’ A great jolt of fear went through Isobel. ‘Has she been asking after me? What did she say? What did you say?’

  ‘She hasn’t yet. She hasn’t been in much at all lately, from what I hear. Not that I see her so much anyway up in Baby Linens. The word is that she’s got an admirer, so that accounts for it. She’s busy with him. Lucky her, that’s what I say. But she’ll find out that you’re gone sometime, won’t she? So what do I say if she does? Just keep pretending I don’t know nothing – anything?’

  ‘Yes – no – I don’t know –’

  ‘I could say as you’ve got a living-in job,’ Daisy suggested.

  Isobel was about to reject this out of hand when the sense of it got through to her. It sounded respectable. How she longed for respectability.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s a very good idea. Say that, if she asks, but don’t give her my address, will you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Daisy agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter so much about the others, but Johnny and Miss Packard are different. I hate lying to them, Iz. If you’d only let me tell Miss Packard the truth, I’m sure she could do something for you.’

  ‘No!’ Isobel cried, the queasy feeling of danger returning. ‘Look, Daisy, you have to stick to that story. She mustn’t find out about me, she absolutely mustn’t.’

  Daisy looked obstinate. ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘She’s his sister!’ Isobel almost shouted. ‘She would go to him, speak to him. There would be the most terrible trouble –’

  Daisy did not look convinced. ‘But she could help you, I know she could. Why don’t you let me say, Iz? After all, you’re not happy here, are you?’

  This was so overwhelmingly true that the tears which were never far from the surface welled up and spilled down her cheeks. Isobel could fight it no longer. She let herself be gathered into Daisy’s strong arms and wept on her shoulder.

  ‘Oh Daisy,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s horrible, horrible –’

  She could never explain to her friend just how dreadful. It was not just having to do That Thing with him, it was the constant fear of knowing that he could turn up at any time and make her do something she hated. The humiliation of it made her crawl inside with hatred of herself and what she had turned into.

  ‘Then why do you stay here?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘I have to. There’s nothing else for me, nothing –’

  For she was nothing.

  Daisy let her cry herself out. Then she found her way into the kitchen and made a pot of tea.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you listen to me. It’s just daft to say you got to stay here. This is a free country, isn’t it? And you’re not a prisoner or anything. You could walk out of here with me right now this minute.’

  Isobel shook her head. ‘No.’

  If only it were that easy. She had walked out of her sister’s house, bruised and shaken and soiled, but still able to hold on to a scrap of pride. But not this time. Now she was sunk in a mire so deep there was no washing it away ever again.

  ‘You can, Izzy. We could find you lodgings somewhere, and then look for a job.’

  ‘No, no, I couldn’t.’

  The thought of even trying to go out into the world appalled her. She could not do it.

  ‘If only you’d let me ask Miss Packard –’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then – then let me get Johnny to help. You could – you could go to his family. They’d look after you until you got on your feet again.’

  Isobel shook her head. She could not even begin to try to make Daisy understand. They were respectable people. She was something contemptible. It was impossible.

  Daisy thumped the table in frustration.

  ‘You must let me help you!’

  ‘You can’t,’ Isobel told her. ‘Just – just tell me some more about Packards. I like to hear about it.’

  How she had dreaded the days when she was there. Now it seemed like a golden age which would never return.

  At half-past nine, Daisy said she had to get back to Trent Street. Isobel clung to her at the door, loath to let her go.

  ‘Promise me you’ll come again,’ she begged.

  ‘’Course I will. You’re my pal, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m so grateful, I can’t tell you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d just die,’ Isobel told her, and realised that it was the truth.

  Daisy wagged a finger at her. ‘Now then, I don’t want to hear none of that talk, d’you understand?’

  Isobel nodded. It was easy for Daisy to say. She was strong and whole.

  ‘You’re so good, Daisy. I don’t know why you still bother.’

  ‘Rubbish. Like I said, you’re my pal. Now you think about what I said, eh?’

  Isobel nodded obediently, but knew that though she would indeed think about it, she would never be able to change now. She stood at the door, waving goodbye until Daisy turned the corner. Then she went into the gaudy, empty house, to await whatever might be done to her next.

  32

  AMELIE COULD NOT make up her mind just where to stand. She did not want Hugo to find her waiting for him, but on the other hand, she did not want him to have to wait around for her in the main entrance. Well, not for too long, anyway. In the end she decided to get down to the entrance five minutes before he was due and lurk behind one of the counters just inside the glass doors through to Stationery and watch for his arrival. As it happened, she had o
nly just got herself into place when in he came through the main doors. Her heart turned over as she caught sight of him, so tall, so handsome in the formal grey and black of his morning suit. For a few moments she allowed herself the pleasure of just looking at him, then she went to greet him and had the further pleasure of seeing his smile as he saw her.

  ‘Now then, I have the whole morning free, so I hope you are going to show me all over your store,’ he said.

  ‘I shall be delighted to, but I do hope that it’s not the first time you’ve been here,’ Amelie said.

  ‘Of course not. I often shop here, and so do my sisters. But I am sure I shall see things quite differently with you as my guide.’

  It was a morning of unalloyed happiness for Amelie. Like her grandfather, she never tired of touring the store, of keeping her fingers on the pulse of the great living organism that was Packards. To have an attentive companion was an extra delight, and when that companion was the man she had fallen in love with it was sheer heaven. She took Hugo behind the scenes to the stores, maintenance and packing departments in the basements, round all the sales floors and up to the offices. Hugo took a lively interest in all of it, asking questions and making comments.

  ‘I never realised just how much was involved in the running of a store,’ he said. ‘That is, I had never really given any thought to it. And you seem to understand all of it so clearly.’

  ‘I was brought up with it. I understand the running of the store in the same way that you understand the running of an estate. Though my grandfather appears to be getting to grips with Tatwell as well.’

  ‘Am I to meet your grandfather this morning? I should very much like to.’

  Amelie longed at that moment to have her mother overhear the conversation. Here was a member of the Top Ten Thousand actually wanting to meet the founder of Packards. She saved it up to flourish before her at the very earliest opportunity.

  ‘I’m sure he’d be very pleased to see you,’ she said.

  But long before they went to see Thomas, they ran into Edward. He was talking to the Staff Manager, but broke off to greet his sister and her guest. Amelie felt a qualm of unease. She never quite knew how Edward was going to react. But she need not have worried. He was charming and friendly, shaking Hugo warmly by the hand.