This year’s annual staff outing was the first since the tragic death of William Whiteley. His sons Frank and William were there, but it was not the same. They were respected, but not feared like their phenomenal father, with his demanding discipline. Because he was feared, he had been loved.
Leonard, who had to organize the excursion, went with more than two hundred employees by special train from Fenchurch Street to Southend-on-Sea. It was the usual let-down-your-hair gathering. Some of the men broke out into striped bathing costumes and the women into short dresses and bloomers to frolic in the cold shallows. Beer was drunk, and easy laughter thrown back at the crude jokes of the concert party on their wobbly platform on stilts. The fat man always fell backwards off the edge and smashed a sandcastle, and it was just as big a scream every year.
‘Not the same without Him though, is it?’ One of the salesgirls saw that Leonard was not laughing. ‘Remember how he used to call out, along of us, “Step back, step back!”? Like a boy.’
Leonard enjoyed seeing his well-drilled assistants cast off their obsequious restraint and become real people for the day. Even Mr Jenkins, who had walked the Whiteley’s floors and answered the call of ‘Jenkins, forward!’ for twenty years and brushed beach sand off his hands with the same gesture with which he rubbed his hands at customers, unbent far enough to eat shrimps out of a paper bag.
‘P-poor Mr Whiteley always loved these,’ he stammered by way of excuse when he saw the General Manager’s eye on him. On the way home, Leonard’s carriage on the train sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. They thought they were singing it for Mr Morley, but perhaps it was really for the old vanished Chief.
All the carriages sang all the way home. The outing was a rare release for everyone from the giant emporium that controlled their lives: from long working hours and fatigue and, for many of the young women, from the restrictions of living in the dormitory terraces of Moscow Road and Poplar Place. For Leonard, it was a relief from the constant anxieties of his passionate attention to detail and doing the Right Thing, from customer complaints about everything from unflattering hats to the price of fruit and vegetables, and from the increased scourge of shoplifting during the crowded July sales.
Not by the poor. It was usually a pair of middle-class ladies, one of whom would distract the assistant with fuss and questions, while the other shovelled small goods into voluminous clothes and bags. The Chief had always prosecuted, so Leonard nearly always called a policeman, who would stamp up the main stairs in uniform and treadmill boots and upset everyone.
But it was the Right Thing to do. Society was increasingly lawless. The more you pampered the public with the bounty of the world laid out for their delight, the more they took advantage.
How would the store manage without him when he took his two weeks’ holiday? He wondered this every year, and every year, Whiteley’s managed. The new Assistant Manager was working out very well. ‘But if you would rather I delayed ...’ Leonard offered to Mr Frank.
‘And have us prosecuted under the Shop Hours Regulation Act? Mr Morley, please stop being indispensable, and go!’
Leonard went with his family to North Croft, the country house he had leased near Chipping Norton. There was golf nearby, a croquet lawn, rounders, bicycling, rambling, motoring along narrow dusty lanes in Vera and Charles Pope’s green Renault.
Vera had learned to drive. When she unwrapped herself from her dustcoat and veil and goggles, she always pronounced it ‘the thrill of my life!’, even if she had only been down to the village to buy a newspaper.
‘Why can’t we have a motor, Leo?’ Gwen pestered.
‘Not yet.’ Leonard would want to know a lot more about motor cars before he owned one.
‘You said we couldn’t afford it. Well, now your salary’s increased and we can. I could learn to drive, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’
Austin guffawed. His mother was well known for being unable to operate even a gramophone or a clockwork toy, but to prove her point, she persuaded Vera to let her drive in the quiet lane that ran by the house. Almost immediately, she hit a bank on one side and a hedge on the other.
‘You are foolhardy.’ Leonard helped to push the car back on to the road before Charles could see it.
‘It’s because I’m so relaxed here.’ Gwen leaned on his arm as they walked the few yards back to the house. ‘And so happy.’ The children were blissful. Elizabeth and Austin’s fat baby rolled about on the lawn with his young nursemaid. Dicky strove to beat everyone at croquet and diabolo and was active from early morning until he collapsed, fighting sleep, after endless after-supper games with the indulgent grown-ups. He and Austin whistled about the place, which they were not permitted to do in the London streets. Little Laura followed Dicky everywhere, whistling bravely but breathlessly.
The grown-ups had become tiresomely keen on golf. One morning, Dicky had woken to the familiar feeling of exciting promise.
‘Let’s explore in the car!’
But Aunt Vera and Uncle Charles and Austin were dressed in their knickerbockers, and Dicky’s mother and father and Elizabeth were going to waft round the nine-hole course. His mother liked to take one of Aunt Vera’s clubs to ‘have a shot’, but, so far, she had never hit the ball.
Uncle Charles offered Dicky money to carry his clubs, but Dicky thought that too boring. When the Renault had conveyed its dust cloud down the lane, he mounted his bicycle and set off in the other direction, to pursue the exploration with which the new day had tempted him.
He was soon on roads where he had not been before. Turning towards the hills, he came to the level crossing where the North Croft maids said a train had hit a motor car last year and smashed its passengers to bits. Dicky dismounted and looked cautiously right and left before wheeling his bicycle across. ‘A train was coming,’ he would boast to Austin later, ‘but I simply whizzed across.’
The road wound uphill, not steep, but hard-going. He stood on the pedals and ground them round, and could feel the muscles of his legs growing bigger. He would take the next side turning and then coast back downhill at speed. There were no side turnings. Dicky went on and on, pushing his bicycle now, sure that every bend was going to show him the top of the hill, plodding on when it showed him nothing but another bend ahead. He would not turn back. When he panted to the top at last, fields and hedges and neat villages were spread out below.
Where did you go, Dicky?
Up to the very top of the hill. It’s miles and miles. You can see the whole of England. I could see our house like a white speck. I bet it’s the highest hill in Oxfordshire.
It felt so glorious that he rode along the ridge for a while with the wind behind him and the world at his feet. On the left, a huge high stone stood by itself. A marker? Ancient sacrifices? A highwayman hanged here? Not liking the look of it, Dicky turned away down a short cart track which opened out to a different view, on the other side of the ridge of hills. There were more great stones here, a rough circle of them, odd-shaped, worn and pitted, not lying in the long grass, but standing crookedly upright like contorted gateposts. He did not like the look of them either. Stones should not stand about for no purpose, looking inscrutably over the valley.
But what sort of stones, Dicky old lad? You mean, you only gave them a look and ran away?
He dropped his bicycle on the ground and ventured into the circle of strange shapes, cautiously feeling the dry lichen, gaining courage to poke his fingers into crevices and holes which had been worn away like a honeycomb. I am exploring a secret place, he thought.
‘This your bike?’
He jumped at the voice behind him. A small old man was on the cart track, stooping under a sack of wood on his shoulders.
‘I’m sorry.’ Dicky went quickly to pick up his bicycle. ‘Shouldn’t I be here?’
‘Why not? Them stones don’t mind. Been here a lot longer than you ‘ave. Nor even me. Heh-heh.’ Dicky laughed politely. ‘Ar, you can laugh at it. But ‘tis true.’
‘What is?’
‘The old king. Come to invade, he was. Didn’t know about the witch. She turned him to stone, you see, on t’other side of the road, him and his soldiers here behind him. One day, young lad, them stones will come alive again.’
‘Bosh.’
‘They been seen to move down to drink from the stream at night.’
Dicky backed away from the nearest stone, a top-heavy monster that seemed to have a craggy nose and eye socket. ‘Why doesn’t someone knock them down?’
‘Ar, you couldn’t do that. Mustn’t touch ’em. Might get turned to stone and all.’ The bent old man moved on.
Golly! This was a much more exciting story than the recounting of golf strokes, which was what the grown-ups would be doing back at home. Dicky stuck his tongue out at the sinister stones and rode away fast. Downhill it was exhilarating, coasting between the ruts, back-pedalling frantically at the corners, putting his feet down where it was perilously steep, in the forbidden scraping that could ruin your boots. He would be late for lunch. The others must have been back for ages. At the level crossing, he did see an engine in the distance, and had to wait until its endless line of goods wagons rumbled by. Back at North Croft, he hurtled into the drive and dropped his bike, wheels spinning. Where was the Renault? His mind reeled into scenes of dreadful crashes, an express train bearing down, the motor exploding, falling off a cliff, his mother screaming.
‘My word, you do look hot and dusty.’ The nursemaid was sitting outside the french windows with Laura and the baby.
‘Where is everybody? Have you had lunch?’
‘Goodness no. They’ll be back presently,’ the nurse said placidly.
Dicky was bursting to tell his story, but not to this sluggish woman, and not in front of the baby. He pulled Laura away towards the shrubbery.
‘Listen.’ He backed her against a laurel bush. ‘I found a terrible place, miles and miles away, up a mountain. There are all these beastly great stones, but they’re not really stones, they’re men turned to stone by a witch, and at night they come to life.’ Laura’s eyes were round with terror. Her hands were clapped over her mouth. ‘I saw them, Laura. I saw the stones move. They were coming after me. My blood ran cold.’
Laura put her hands over her ears and squared her mouth down into a wailing cry.
‘I rode back for my life.’ Dicky fixed a stare on her. ‘But it was too late, I had louched the stones.’ She clutched her hair and stopped crying, stricken, open-mouthed.
‘And now ... and now ...’ he slowed his voice jerkily, ‘the witch has turned — me ... to stone.’
He stood like a statue with a blank face, and Laura tugged at him and beat him with her fists. ‘No! No! Come back!’ But he would not move. Her red face was flooded with tears. She shrieked and screamed, and was drowned by the engine of the car and Uncle Charles announcing their arrival on the horn.
Dicky came back to life, but Laura was running desperately across the lawn, stumbling and crying out and falling.
‘How could you, Dicky? Stuffing the poor little thing up with all this rubbish about stones and witches!’ The grown-ups were angry and did not want to hear his amazing story, which Laura had already sobbed out to them, all wrong.
‘Why did you let him go off on his own, Gwen?’ ‘He didn’t ask me.’
‘Why not, Dicky? Why didn’t you stay here as you were supposed to?’
His father was being stiff and stern, his eyes unloving.
‘There was nothing to do here.’ Dicky looked at him with the candid innocence that could usually soften him.
‘Nothing to do? You don’t know your luck, young man. When I was your age, I spent my holidays making up parcels in my father’s shops.’ The old story. Dicky looked down, and dragged the toe of his boot on the gravel.
‘Don’t be stuffy with him, Leo,’ his mother said. ‘He’s quite all right going off on his own. He’s sensible.’
‘So sensible he makes up gruesome tales and frightens his little cousin half to death.’
‘Well, he’s inventive.’ His mother put her arm round him.
Dicky leaned into the safety of her perfumed tenderness.
‘He’s wilful,’ his father said. ‘I am quite angry.’
‘My tummy hurts.’ This was another softening device, but actually it did hurt, from all the pedalling and breath-lessness and excitement.
‘You shall have a good little Beecham’s.’ His mother took him indoors.
Bella usually went with the family on their holidays, but although she was invited to join them at North Croft, she had been vague, and it did not look as though she would come. Perhaps she had gone to Biarritz with Hugo and Charlotte after all.
‘Or she might be mooning hopelessly about in London because of some man,’ Austin said, ‘like she did with that confounded Lazenby fellow. I hope it’s someone halfway decent. Bella needs a man.’
‘Every woman does, in your opinion.’ Vera laughed at him.
They could not have guessed that the man who was keeping Bella mooning about in London when Ladbroke Lodge and No. 72 were under dust-sheets was Toby Taylor.
She had been to Egerton Terrace again, at his invitation, to talk about a friend of his who was a woman professor and might be able to advise her about her academic chances.
Bella’s reaction was, ‘I’m sure she would think I had nothing to offer.’
‘Don’t say that to Dr Mary Strong,’ Toby snapped at her. ‘If you put yourself down, so will she.’
‘If I don’t, she’ll see through me.’
‘And suppose she likes what she sees,’ Toby said more gently, ‘as I do?’
They had walked up Exhibition Road and taken a stroll in Hyde Park along the Serpentine, where Bella was proud to be seen with such a good-looking man, and wished that she had a fashionable white parasol to shelter this face which Toby pretended he liked. In the Dell below the bridge, they sat down on a patch of grass that was hidden from the path by bushes and flower beds, and Toby kissed her.
His mouth was nothing like Gerald Lazenby’s, or any of the very few pecking or puckering or whiskered lips that she had briefly experienced. The kiss went on for a long time, and by the end of it, she was lying on the grass and allowing – wanting this suddenly rough man to undo the buttons on the front of her dress. She had never felt like this, even when she had a high fever and was delirious. When she opened her eyes, the sky was reeling round the tilted earth.
‘That,’ Toby said, sitting upright, ‘was just the beginning.’
What did he mean? ‘No, no, we mustn’t.’ Bella began to panic. ‘Not in a public place. I must go anyway.’
She scrambled up, pulling down her skirt, and turned away from him while she did up the buttons of her bodice with hot, trembling fingers.
‘I said, “That was just the beginning.”’ Toby looked up at her from where he still sat on the ground, chewing a blade of grass. ‘And that’s a promise, Belle.’
Oh, my God, oh, my God, what on earth was she to do? Thank heavens her parents were not at home. She would never have been able to behave normally in front of them, with her body and spirit on fire with exhilaration and shame because she had behaved like a common servant girl and sunk to the depths while scaling the heights of fearful joy.
She could not face the maids either, and certainly not the lynx-eyed butler. When she came out of the Underground station at Notting Hill Gate, she walked about the streets for a while to calm herself down and fade the flush on her face which she thought people had been staring at on the train. When she was more herself – who was she now? She could never be the same self as before – she went through Pembridge Crescent to Chepstow Villas, and walked up its leafy, shaded pavement to No. 72. If Madge was not there, Flora would give her a cool drink. If Flora noticed that a button was torn off the front of her dress, she would not be suspicious, she would sew another one on.
A familiar figure was standing aimlessly on the Portobello R
oad corner: trousers too short above big clumsy boots, patched jacket too thick for this weather, hair unevenly cropped. It was Jack Haynes, ‘my deaf friend’, as Bella spoke of him proudly.
She walked round to face him, so as not to take him by surprise. His heavy face lifted and split into its wide grin. His eyes searched Bella’s eagerly, hoping for communication.
‘Oh, Jack – hel-lo!’ She stressed the sound and shape of the word. ‘Are you looking for Madge?’ She wrote out the letters with her forefinger in the air, which was the way he could understand the name of someone who was not there.
‘Yah.’ He nodded his head vigorously and raised his thick dark eyebrows in a question. ‘Where she?’
‘I don’t know. Come inside,’ she said, pointing, ‘and Flora will give us some lemonade.’
‘Come in, Bella.’ Flora was always welcoming, but she said uncivilly to Jack, ‘You still here?’ when she opened the door. ‘He come here earlier, wanting Madge. I thought he’d gone away.’
‘I’ll look after him,’ Bella said. ‘Could you bring us some lemonade and biscuits or something, and I’ll talk to him for a bit.’
The chandelier in the drawing room had been taken down and was lying on a sheet on the floor in a hundred pieces. The carpet was rolled up to clean the parquetry floor, and most of the furniture was covered. Bella opened the bottom of the window and they sat on Aunt Gwen’s deck-chairs on the balcony.
Bella had taken a notepad and pencil from the desk, and she and Jack had one of their almost satisfactory conversations, with signs and sounds and notes passed back and forth. She understood that he was only working now and then – hand turned over and over in a dismissive way, and helping with the boys at the Settlement.
‘W-I-L-L.’ He wrote in the air and made a sweeping outward gesture.
‘Gone?’
This was news to Bella. She did not mind, unless Madge did. She did not mind much about anything just now, in the state she was in. She only had half her thoughts on the difficult, jerky conversation, but she had to keep going with Jack, who appeared ready to stay a long time, when what she wanted to do was to shout at him, ‘Something marvellous has happened to me – I am in love!’
One of the Family Page 21
