The Surplus Girls

by Polly Heron

  ‘Thank you,’ said Prudence, ‘but as you can see…’ She indicated Lawrence, standing beside the motor.

  ‘Of course. I mustn’t keep you. You must come in for sherry after church on Sunday. I won’t take no for an answer.’

  She bustled back indoors and Lawrence marched across the road to confront them.

  ‘Where have you been? You never go out.’

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ said Prudence.

  ‘I ought to have my own key,’ said Lawrence. ‘Then I wouldn’t have to wait in the motor.’

  ‘Had you troubled to tell us you were coming,’ Prudence answered, ‘we could have put you off.’

  She led the way indoors, where she and Lawrence heaped their coats and hats into Patience’s arms before stalking into the sitting room to carry on arguing. Patience quickly hung everything up before following. Prudence was in her usual place, looking as if she had been there all evening, while Lawrence remained standing, waiting for Patience to take her seat before he too sat.

  ‘What brings you here?’ Patience asked in a pleasant voice, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘A reporter came to my house—’

  ‘We know. We saw the result,’ said Prudence. ‘It’s gratifying to know we’re all so in tune as a family. Pa would be proud.’

  Lawrence made a derisive noise. ‘Very funny. What choice did I have? I hope you’re pleased with yourselves.’

  ‘Delighted,’ Prudence murmured.

  ‘We’ll see how long that lasts,’ said Lawrence. ‘Since you had no compunction about putting me in that position, I’ve decided to return the favour. Evelyn and I will be hosting an evening for various acquaintances – businessmen, councillors, what have you – and their wives. You’re both invited. You will attend and will sing my praises. There’ll be three aldermen there, including Alderman Edwards, who is set to retire at the end of the year.’

  ‘I see,’ said Prudence. ‘It’s part of your grand scheme to rise in the world. And you trust us to say the right things?’

  ‘If you don’t, sister dear, you’ll jeopardise my reputation and hence bring the future of your precious school into doubt; whereas if you say the right things, you’ll make me look splendid and thereby oblige me to keep your school open.’ He sat back. ‘Your choice.’

  Belinda couldn’t remember when she had last been this happy. Maybe she never had. She didn’t want to be disloyal to Ben, but loving him had been coloured by all sorts of considerations. The war had kept them apart most of the time, trapping her in the shadow of fear. This feeling she had for Richard was unfettered by any such darkness and she revelled in every tingle that shivered its way across her eager flesh. When he smiled at her or she caught his eye, her heart swelled and it was all she could do to keep her answering smile within acceptable proportions.

  As for the work, she loved it. It wasn’t as varied as she had hoped, but that was only for now. Her duties would be more interesting and responsible once Richard got things under way. At present, she was mostly typing and serving in the shop. Miss Hesketh would tear her off a strip if she knew.

  It hadn’t been easy telling her tutors she had accepted the post against their advice.

  ‘I hope you haven’t made a mistake,’ Miss Hesketh said. ‘I fail to see how Mr Carson can take charge of his uncle’s property at this stage. The will has to go through probate.’

  Belinda didn’t know what that meant and didn’t like to ask in case it made Richard look bad; but she mentioned it to him the following day.

  ‘No need to worry about that,’ he said breezily. ‘I’m the sole surviving heir, so there’s no harm done if I get the ball rolling.’

  One of the wonderful things about her new life was the working hours. She started at nine instead of eight and Richard said there wasn’t enough for her to do to remain beyond five.

  ‘It’s all right for some,’ muttered Auntie Enid.

  She did extra housework to make up for it, humming as she did so because she had so much energy now that she wasn’t engaged in manual labour for forty-eight hours a week.

  ‘I thought office work was meant to bring in more money,’ grumbled Grandma Beattie.

  ‘It will… in time,’ said Belinda. ‘This is my first position. I have to build up experience.’

  She wasn’t surprised when she had to make the same point to Dad, though at least Mum took an interest, asking her about her work while Dad grouched in the background about that ruddy business school being a waste of space.

  ‘I’m glad for you, Bel,’ said Mum. ‘If it gives you a step up, it’s worth it. Is our Sarah speaking to you again yet?’

  There had been a rumpus when Sarah found out she wasn’t going to be offered the position of tenter. She had accused Belinda of not bothering, while Dad had yelled the odds about disobedient children who didn’t pay attention when they were told to stick at the jobs they had already got. Fortunately, Sarah saw sense after Auntie Enid assured her that Belinda had done her best.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m not earning more, Mum,’ said Belinda. ‘You know I’d help out more if I could.’

  ‘Course you would, love, and I don’t mind.’ But Mum’s eyes said otherwise.

  She cleared her throat in case the crack in her voice betrayed her guilt. The truth was that she had less money now. Richard had offered to match the mill’s hourly rate, but she wasn’t working as many hours. By the time she had given Grandma Beattie her housekeeping, and handed over the usual to Mum, she had hardly anything left.

  But who cared? She had taken the first step along her new path – and she was with Richard. Richard! He was so handsome with his dark good looks and engaging smile. Oh, that smile. It came so easily to his face and melted her bones every time.

  He wasn’t at the shop all the time, which was disappointing, but at the same time it gave her the chance to prove herself. He still had to go to work, but he had arranged to have what he called leave of absence for five half-days each week to sort out his uncle’s affairs.

  ‘We need to make the shop more hospitable if you’re to spend your days here,’ he said. ‘Judging by the lack of creature comforts upstairs, my uncle never took the weight off his feet. I’ll bring a few things here from the cottage. I’ll take you there tomorrow morning and we can look round. Mr Parker at the confectioner’s tells me Jim the window cleaner will ferry large items on his cart, but we can carry a few small things ourselves.’

  ‘We’re going to Mr Tyrell’s cottage?’ She mustn’t sound over-eager.

  ‘To my cottage,’ he corrected gently. Then he smiled. ‘I don’t mind telling you that it will make a big difference to me to have my own home.’

  ‘I’ve never met anyone before who owns their own place – apart from Mr Tyrell, of course, but I didn’t know he did.’

  She turned back to the inventory of history books she was working on. She mustn’t betray her excitement at the prospect of seeing Richard’s new home.

  ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that,’ Auntie Enid said that evening. ‘A young single girl going to a man’s house: it’s not decent.’

  ‘It’s part of my job. Mr Carson expects it.’

  ‘As long as work is all he expects.’

  The next morning, she borrowed Grandma Beattie’s wicker shopping basket. It was a mild day and she admired the daffodils’ golden trumpets and the blue drifts of grape hyacinths in the gardens on Edge Lane as she passed. Arriving at the shop, she took out her key, but the door was already unlocked.

  ‘Good. You’re here,’ said Richard. ‘Leave your coat on.’

  To her surprise, he started along the route she took to go home. When they passed St Clement’s Church in its treeshaded grounds, she couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  ‘This is my way home.’

  ‘Really?’ But he didn’t ask where her road was. Well, of course not. He must be thinking about his late uncle. Going to Mr Tyrell’s cottage must make his uncle feel very close.

  A
long Edge Lane, on the other side of the road from Longford Park, he guided her round a corner.

  ‘Limits Lane. So called because on one side, you’re at the outer limits of Chorlton and on the other, you’re at the outer limits of Stretford.’

  Thatched cottages stood behind privet hedges along one side, each cottage standing alone in its small garden. Richard walked all the way to the end. Go any further and you would trot down the slope onto the meadows.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said.

  Like the rest, Mr Tyrell’s cottage was behind a privet hedge. Belinda couldn’t see it until they went through the gate. Its thatch hung low and sections had had to be cut out to accommodate the upstairs windows. Downstairs, there was one window to the right of the front door and two to the left. Close by stood a shed – very close by. You’d expect a shed to be tucked away in the corner of the garden; not that this garden was of any size.

  Richard caught her looking. ‘There used to be a lean-to attached to the cottage. It was leaky and rotten, hence the new shed. I don’t mind telling you, Miss Layton,’ and Belinda drew in a happy breath that he was about to confide, ‘my inheritance includes some money; not a huge sum but I rather think I’ll purchase a motorcycle and it can be stored in the shed. What do you think of the cottage?’

  ‘It’s a funny mixture. It’s an old cottage, and there’s the thatch, but it has a fresh look about it.’

  ‘I had it painted last year.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I wanted to take care of my uncle. Besides, if you knew a property was going to be yours one day, wouldn’t you be happy to contribute to its upkeep and improvement?’

  ‘I suppose it’s like being your own landlord.’ She examined the cottage again. If she lived here, she would have windowboxes filled with brightly coloured flowers.

  Richard unlocked the door. ‘After you.’

  Walking inside made her feel obscurely ashamed of End Cottage, which seemed poky and dark by comparison. In this cottage, the rooms, though low-ceilinged, were larger and the furniture was better. Not only that but downstairs there were two separate rooms, not like in End Cottage, where the whole of downstairs was crammed into one room.

  There was space for a chintzy armchair and small matching sofa by the fireplace, above which was an imposing over-mantel arrangement of no fewer than three shelves, covered in a mishmash of ornaments and books. A basketwork chair stood in one corner, a drop-leaf dining table under one of the windows. There was an abundance of fussy touches. Had Mr Tyrell been a collector of coloured glass and figurines? And there were enough lacy mats and antimacassars to open a market stall.

  ‘My late aunt,’ said Richard.

  Embarrassed to have been caught gawping, she held the wicker basket in front of her. ‘What are we taking?’

  ‘What do we need to make life more bearable?’

  ‘The tea-caddy, sugar bowl, a jug for milk. Cups and saucers. Plates, cutlery, if we’re going to eat our snap there.’ She would eat on the premises. Would he? Would they get to know one another during dinnertimes?

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘What about a table? I don’t mean the dining table, but perhaps that small one, and a couple of chairs.’ Had she gone too far? ‘You said you wanted to be comfortable.’

  ‘We’ll take the armchair and that one in the corner.’ He nodded at the basketwork chair.

  She had only meant the dining chairs. It seemed like taking advantage to waltz off with the good furniture, but if Richard wanted it, then why not? She pictured cosy chats as they sat together over a pot of tea. Grandma Beattie would probably let her take some home-made shortbread to work.

  ‘May I look for a tablecloth?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  All the tablecloths were decorated with embroidery. The late Mrs Tyrell must have had a lot of time on her hands. Belinda chose one, then took what she wanted from the pantry, adding a box of Carr’s Assorted Creams, and packed her basket.

  ‘What else?’ asked Richard. ‘We’re going to be there for some weeks and you’ll be there more than I will.’

  ‘It would be nice to be able to hang up my coat.’

  Richard homed in on the hat-stand and removed a jacket and an old mackintosh and drew an umbrella out of the space beneath. Belinda wanted to stop him. It didn’t seem respectful to set aside Mr Tyrell’s things. But they were Richard’s things now.

  ‘What do you think of my new home, Miss Layton?’

  She wanted to enthuse but must be careful. ‘If it was mine, I’d call it Huh Cottage, because that’s what Mr Tyrell used to say – at least, he did to me.’

  Richard smiled. ‘He wasn’t good at talking to the opposite sex.’

  ‘Huh was all I could get out of him. It reminded me of our neighbour’s cat. Mr Austen swears blind it has one meow for food and another for fuss and another for playing. If I’d worked for Mr Tyrell for longer, I might have worked out what each different huh meant.’ She cringed inwardly. Stop babbling. She pounced on a figurine of a shepherdess. ‘Was this your aunt’s?’

  ‘Aunt Victoria liked pretty things, as you can see.’ He smiled and her heart twisted happily before springing back into position. ‘My uncle liked fine things too, but they had to be practical, like this silver letter-opener.’ He picked up it from the desk and handed it to her. It was a slender knife with a fancy, engraved blade. He looked through the desk’s contents. ‘Here’s the companion piece.’

  ‘Another letter-opener,’ she said. Why have two?

  ‘Look again.’

  This item was heavier and the blade was sharper.

  ‘It’s a page-cutter,’ said Richard.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘The sign of a smart new book is that its pages are fastened together. You use the page-cutter to slice them open.’

  ‘Oh. I get all my books from the library.’

  Picking up the letter-opener, Richard held out his hand for the page-cutter. ‘They make a good-looking pair. I’ll finish going through the desk, then we’ll leave. Feel free to look at my aunt’s ornaments.’

  Fancy being paid to admire figurines and vases! Soon Richard was ready to go. Belinda found her basket weighty. Richard didn’t offer to carry it and she didn’t expect him to. Wicker baskets were for women.

  The items from the cottage made the shop a more congenial place, especially when the window cleaner brought the pieces of furniture on his cart. The first time she hung up Mrs Harrison’s coat on the hat-stand, Belinda felt brisk and professional. But meeting Miss Hunt in her daring mustardyellow mackintosh at the Miss Heskeths’ garden gate that evening reminded her how dowdy her borrowed togs were.

  Was she shallow to set store by appearances? She still had her pretty hatband and scarf, though she felt shifty putting them on as she reached Chorlton in the mornings and taking them off again at the end of the day, but she couldn’t bear to hurt Grandma Beattie and Auntie Enid.

  She arrived one morning to find Jim the window cleaner outside with his cart piled with tea-chests. She wasn’t expecting them but did her best not to appear fazed.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind having them dumped on you,’ Richard said when he breezed in later.

  ‘Of course not.’ Would he see that she could take the unexpected in her stride? But he was already delving inside one of them.

  ‘Some items to sell.’ It looked like a lot more than merely some. ‘Here, unwrap these.’

  Everything was wrapped in newspaper. She unwrapped a musical box, a pair of candlesticks and a figurine.

  ‘To be sold in the shop?’ She would love handling and selling these things.

  ‘Some of the bigger pieces can be sold individually, but most of it isn’t valuable. The smaller things can go into boxes of bric-a-brac and customers can buy a whole box. We’ll have to advertise.’

  ‘I can put postcards in shop windows.’

  ‘I’ll put an advertisement in the paper, but you can put up a few postcards as well, if you like.’


  Richard produced a heap of cardboard boxes of various sizes and she enjoyed compiling the collections to fill them. She was surprised to find not just Aunt Victoria’s things, which she could understand Richard’s not wanting to keep, but also some of his uncle’s possessions, such as a slide rule and a telescope, as well as the matching letter-opener and page-cutter. Surely he didn’t want to dispose of Mr Tyrell’s personal items.

  ‘Did these get into the tea-chests by mistake?’ she asked, all set for him to pour out his relief that she had spotted the error, but he shook his head, hardly sparing them a glance.

  She couldn’t understand it. Her locket from Ben was her most precious possession, even though she had now met someone else. Should she put Mr Tyrell’s things to one side, so she could produce them when Richard was sorry he had sold them? How grateful he would be.

  But he came across them in the cupboard and took them out.

  ‘Don’t forget these.’

  So she had no choice. She popped the slide-rule into one box, the telescope into another, then hesitated over the letter-opener and page-cutter. Together or separately? She kept them together.

  Richard made it a rule that nothing was to be sold in his absence.

  ‘It’s because we’re selling my uncle’s things. As his heir, I ought to be present.’

  ‘Perhaps we could let customers view the boxes when you aren’t here,’ she suggested. ‘That would make the selling process much quicker and – well, less upsetting for you.’

  He glanced at her. ‘You have a kind heart, Miss Layton.’

  A kind heart! He thought she had a kind heart. She almost took a step closer, but he returned to checking through Mr Tyrell’s stock ledger. Still – he thought she had a kind heart.