‘Thank you, Mrs McAllister,’ Bess said, hugging her now ex-landlady. ‘I wouldn’t want to stay anywhere else.’
Mrs McAllister was clearly moved and turned away to blow her nose.
‘You will write, won’t you, Bess?’ Molly asked, tears welling up in her big blue eyes.
‘Of course I will, Molly. And you must write to me too. Keep me up to date with your career.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Molly said, brightening at the thought of having a career. ‘But what shall I do without you to help me learn my speeches?’ she wailed. ‘I shan’t understand half of them.’
‘You’ll be fine, Molly. Mrs McAllister and Miss Armstrong will help you.’
‘Oh, that reminds me,’ Mrs Mac said. ‘Miss Armstrong asked me to give you this.’
Bess opened the prettily wrapped package to discover a beautiful turquoise and green silk scarf and a small card wishing her luck and happiness in the future.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Molly said, taking the scarf and putting it round Bess’s neck. ‘It suits you a treat, Bess, really it does,’ she beamed.
‘Does it, Molly?’ Bess lifted the scarf to her face and felt its silky softness on her cheek. ‘I’ll write to Miss Armstrong when I get home. In the meantime will you thank her for me? Tell her I have never had such a beautiful scarf.’
At the front door, Mrs McAllister said again, ‘Don’t forget, dear, you’ll always be welcome at number seventy-nine Arcadia Avenue.’
‘And I’ll write,’ Molly said through black mascara tears.
Bess ran for the shelter of the bus stop with her satchel over her shoulder, her suitcase and handbag in her left hand, and holding the Daily Mail above her head with her right. The sudden downpour had taken everyone by surprise.
The queue for the bus going into town seemed endless. The hardy, or foolhardy, were getting soaked as they jostled to keep their place. Some people took shelter beneath the awnings of nearby shops while others huddled together in doorways.
‘Excuse me, do you have the right time?’ Bess asked an elderly man who had stopped next to her to let someone pass.
‘Yes. If you’ll bear with me?’ he said, lifting his left arm and looking over the top of his glasses. ‘It’s just turned eleven.’
‘Thank you.’ She looked along the road. If she didn’t catch a bus within the next fifteen minutes she was going to miss the train to Rugby.
‘You’ll have a long wait for a bus, Miss,’ the man said, giving Bess shelter beneath his umbrella. ‘Hyde Park Corner’s flooded. I was on the last bus to come through. They’ll close the road soon, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Will they? Oh dear. I need to catch a train at Euston.’
‘You’d best get a cab, then!’
As her elderly adviser went on his way, Bess began to hail a cab. ‘Taxi! Taxi!’ she called as one black hackney cab after another flew past her. Every taxi heading down Kensington High Street was either taken or someone beat her to it. She had decided to walk to the nearest Underground station and catch a later train when a cab pulled up on the opposite side of the road. This was her last chance to get to Euston in time to catch her train, so she made a bolt for it.
She dragged her suitcase through the oncoming traffic to the other side of the road and waited while the cab’s elderly occupant picked through her change for the correct fare. At last, drenched and out of breath, Bess collapsed into the back of the taxi and asked the cabbie to find an alternative route to Euston – as quickly as he could. She sat back on the big black leather seat. Her clothes were soaked – a small price to pay to be on her way home.
After what seemed like an age of crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, the taxi turned off the main road and into a side street. Bess looked out of the window. The street was unfamiliar.
‘How far are we from Euston?’ she asked.
‘About ten minutes.’
Bess looked at her wristwatch. ‘My train leaves in fifteen.’
‘Hold on!’ the taxi driver shouted, yanking the steering wheel to the left. The taxi mounted the pavement and Bess gasped. She gasped again a few seconds later when the taxi cut across a traffic jam of hooting vehicles and red faced drivers making fists. ‘I know a short cut!’
And he did. Bess was about to ask again if they were nearly there when she saw the sign for Euston Station. She had five minutes to buy a ticket and board the train. She jumped out of the taxi, thanked and paid the driver, grabbed her luggage and ran.
The attendant in the ticket booth put his hand up. ‘I’m sorry, Miss, the train’s about to depart.’ Bess pretended she hadn’t heard him and ran onto the platform.
‘Stop!’ he shouted and, abandoning his booth, he gave chase.
Bess reached the last carriage as the ticket attendant reached the buffers. Somewhere in the distance she heard a whistle blow and the train began to move. Without thinking she opened the nearest door, threw her bags in and leapt in after them. As the door swung shut, Bess looked out of the window. The ticket collector was standing with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. She turned back to the train’s interior and sighed with relief. The train was gathering speed and was almost out of the station.
‘Goodness knows what all the fuss is about,’ she said to her fellow passengers as she entered the compartment. She looked for somewhere to stow her case. It was too heavy to lift onto the overhead rack, so she stood it on its hinges and pushed it flush against the vacant seat in the middle of the row. She put her satchel on the seat behind the case but held on tightly to her handbag.
There were two passengers in the compartment, both women. The older of the two was a smart, tweedy, middle-aged woman with a pinched face and steel grey hair cut in the style of a man’s short back and sides. The other woman was younger, probably in her late twenties, and by the look of her thick stockings, sensible shoes, and the triangle of starched white pinafore that showed beneath her navy blue belted mackintosh, she was a nurse.
Neither woman acknowledged Bess’s whirlwind arrival with more than a cursory nod before returning to their respective reading material – Country Life and Woman Magazine. Bess’s newspaper had long since disintegrated because she had used it as an umbrella, so to occupy herself she looked out of the window. What a dark and dreary day it was turning out to be. London was usually warmer than Lowarth, but it was duller, seemed to rain more, and was often foggy. Too many chimneys puffing out too much smoke, so the air was never fresh. The air at Foxden was always fresh. The sky was clear and the only fog, other than on exceptionally cold winter mornings, was just mist hovering above the marshes.
Bess was looking forward to spending the summer at home in the country, to spending time with her family and to riding Sable out every morning. Butterflies began to stir in her stomach when she thought of James. She had hoped to see him, but now … In Tom’s last letter, he’d said that both he and Ena would be home for her twenty-first birthday, but he hadn’t mentioned James. He’d also said some of her old school friends were hoping to see her while she was home for the summer. Most of her friends were courting or engaged, a couple were married – and they all still lived locally. Nothing wrong with that, if that’s what you want. She’d have been living locally herself, if she’d married Frank Donnelly. She smiled, remembering how fond she’d been of Frank. He went to secondary school with Tom and was by far the best looking of all his friends.
‘Will you marry me, Bess?’ he blurted out some years later, while walking her home from Lowarth Picture House. ‘I’ve asked your father--’
‘You’ve done what?’ She was outraged.
‘Asked your father, for your hand… I know it’s a bit old fashioned these days, but I thought with you and him being so close--’
‘Who I marry is nothing to do with my dad, Frank.’
‘That’s what he said. He said he’d be pleased to have me as a son-in-law, but didn’t think you were ready.’
‘He was right! I’m not ready!’ She had already
won a scholarship to attend teacher training college and nothing was going to stop her. ‘I’m not ready to marry you or anyone else, Frank. I’m going to college in London.’
‘I’ll wait for you.’
‘For three years? I couldn’t ask you to do that. Besides, I don’t want to be tied. I’m going to be a school teacher when I finish college, and I have no idea where I’ll be working. I’m sorry, Frank, but it’s what I’ve dreamed of for as long as I can remember.’
Frank’s handsome face crumpled and they walked the rest of the way in silence. Bess kissed him goodnight at the front door and said again, ‘I’m sorry, Frank.’
‘Me too,’ Frank said. And with a hangdog look, he walked down the path to the gate. Once through it, he turned and said, ‘Good luck, Bess. Knock’em dead in London.’
Bess shook her head. Recalling how generous Frank had been when she turned him down made her feel guilty.
Her second beau was Henry Green – although their relationship was more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend. Henry was a painter, an artist. He was also very clever, winning a scholarship to Oxford and ending up with a first in mathematics. While he was there he met a young man, a hopeful artist like himself, and he didn’t pursue an academic career; instead he moved to live with his friend in a small village near Northampton.
As the train pulled out of Bletchley station, Bess remembered that the last letter she’d received from Henry had a Bletchley postmark. He hadn’t said much other than he had moved temporarily because of a job, and to write to him care of Bletchley post office for the time being. It must be a good job, Bess thought, to entice him away from his idyllic life with his friend in the country. But if it was only temporary, he probably wouldn’t be there long. She’d write to him after her birthday, she decided, and ask him why he’d moved.
James Foxden was the first boy Bess had had a crush on. From being the hoity-toity boy from the Hall, who never had holes in his shoes and wore real swimming trunks instead of someone’s hand-me-down short trousers, he became her “knight in shining armour”. And there hadn’t been anyone since to take his place. Bess felt the colour rise in her cheeks as she remembered the first time she’d seen James. Everywhere Tom went during the summer of 1924, while their mother was nursing their new baby sister, Ena, he had been made to take her. Their mother thought Bess, at the age of six, was old enough to go with her big brother while Margaret and Claire, four and two, stayed at home. Bess didn’t realise at the time how much of a sacrifice Tom had made that summer. She bit her lip and stifled a giggle as the memories of those days, of the trouble she got into, came flooding back.
Tom was about twelve, and had asked his mother if he could go to the River Swift with some of the boys from the village. His mother had said yes, on condition he took Bess with him. ‘But don’t let her out of your sight, and don’t let her go near the water. If anything happens to her, Tom, you’ll be for it!’ she threatened.
Bess remembered clearly, sitting on the crossbar of Tom’s old bicycle while he cycled along the main Lowarth Road, and how her bony little bottom had hurt every time he steered the bike into a pothole. Instead of getting off the bike and pushing it up Shaft Hill, which he did whenever he gave someone a croggy, he stood on the pedals and forced his skinny legs to keep pushing down so the wheels kept turning. Bess, not daring to complain, gripped the centre of the handlebars until her knuckles were white while Tom moaned and groaned his way to the top of the hill.
It was a scorching hot day. To cool down the boys were jumping into the river at Bonn’s Hole, and then swimming across to the other side.
‘You can go and play with the boys if you want, Tom. I’ll be good, honest I will,’ Bess promised. Tom’s reply was to turn his head very slowly and glare at her. ‘I’ll sit here like a good girl and watch you,’ she said angelically.
Ignoring his sister, Tom bent down and picked up a small flat stone. He hurled it at such an angle that it skimmed the surface of the river, bouncing several times before disappearing beneath a circle of ripples.
‘I’ll collect some stones for you, shall I?’
Tom didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at her. He was watching his friends having fun. The sun was directly overhead and Bess could see bobbles of sweat on Tom’s forehead. His face was so red, she thought he would explode. ‘If I go for a swim, do you swear on your life you’ll stay here and not wander off?’
Bess nodded. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
Unable to resist the cool water any longer, Tom took off his shirt and trousers and ran to the high bank above the river at Bonn’s Hole, discarding his shoes along the way. When he reached the edge he launched himself into the air, tucked his knees under his chin, and plunged into the river with such force he drenched the boys who were watching. Bess clapped as he swam to join his friends and squealed with excitement when several other boys followed suit. For a time she had been content to sit and watch the boys dive-bombing each other, but the fun was theirs, not hers, and it wasn’t long before she was bored.
She had been good, very good. She had been sitting quietly for ages getting hotter and hotter while the cool river flowed inches from her feet. It wasn’t fair that the boys were allowed to play in the river and she wasn’t. She stood up and waved to Tom, but he was having so much fun he didn’t see her. “What you don’t see can’t hurt you” was one of her mam’s favourite sayings, so she kicked off her old play shoes, sat on the grassy bank and dipped her toes into the river. The cold water flowing against her hot feet took her breath away.
Sitting by the river dangling her feet in the water was wonderful, but it wasn’t enough. Surely it couldn’t hurt if she paddled. After all, she’d promised Tom she’d collect some stones for him and the smoothest, roundest, flattest stones were in the river. Having decided that as long as she stayed in the shallows, within grabbing distance of the riverbank, she’d be safe – and as no one was looking – she slowly slid into the water.
It was fun collecting stones for Tom. The small pretty ones she put safely in the skirt of her dress, holding it tightly with her left hand so she could collect more stones with her right. The big, less attractive ones she put back in the river, throwing them up in the air first so they plopped and splashed when they hit the water. Bess was having so much fun she hadn’t noticed how far downstream she’d drifted, or how deep the water had become. It wasn’t until she tried to pick up a large stone that was stuck on the river bed that she realised she couldn’t bend down because the river was up to her waist. She tried to turn, to walk back to the riverbank, but the current was too strong.
She didn’t know what to do. Her feet were numb from being in the cold water for so long, and her legs felt like jelly. She was frightened but she knew she mustn’t panic, or she might fall over. The stones in her skirt were heavy and made her arms ache, so she let go of her skirt. She watched the shiny treasures fall to her feet, but she was no better off. Without the weight of the stones the current swept her forward. She lost her balance and fell headfirst into the river.
Boys on the bank opposite had seen Bess fall but they were too far away to help so they shouted to Tom, who was already in the water. Tom began to swim towards her but it was James Foxden, having just arrived at Bonn’s Hole, who jumped into the river and pulled Bess out.
‘Ouch!’ she yelled, as the boy from the Hall dragged her out of the river and set her down on the bank with a thump.
‘You little fool!’ Tom shouted, scrambling out of the river some minutes later. ‘You could have drowned. What do you think you were playing at?’
‘I didn’t mean to fall over,’ Bess protested. ‘It wasn’t my fault--’
‘You promised to be good. You promised me you wouldn’t go near the water. Now look at you! Your clothes are soaking and you’re half-drowned. Mam’ll kill me.’
A crowd gathered. Someone threw Tom a towel, which he used to dry Bess’s hair. He rubbed her head so hard she thought it wou
ld come off her shoulders, but for the life of her she daren’t complain. Huge involuntary tears welled up in her eyes and she began to cry – not because she had almost drowned, or because she was being stared at by a crowd of older kids who were tutting and sniggering, but because Tom was angry with her, again. And he had every right to be, Bess thought, because Mam would be furious with him. She didn’t care about herself – she expected a spanking from her mother – but Tom would be in trouble too, and that meant her mother wouldn’t let her go anywhere with him for the rest of the summer holiday. She would have to stay at home with a squawking baby, which wasn’t Bess’s idea of fun. ‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she sobbed. ‘I wanted to please you, to collect some stones for you. I didn’t mean for you to get into trouble, honest I didn’t.’
‘All right,’ Tom said, ‘but for God’s sake shut up and stop bawling!’
Bess forced herself to stop crying and said nothing more until Tom ordered her to go behind a bush, which was in clear view of the onlookers, and take off her wet dress.
‘I will not!’ Bess said, but changed her mind when she saw the look of fury on Tom’s face. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, and she ran to the far side of the bush. It wasn’t easy to get undressed behind a small bush and an even smaller towel, which Tom was holding up in front of her. Eventually she wriggled out of her wet dress and stood shivering, with embarrassment more than with the cold, in her knickers.
Tom threw her dress over the bush to dry and picked up his shirt. ‘Here, put this on, or you’ll catch your death.’
Bess slipped her arms through the short sleeves of her brother’s old shirt and pulled it down, before drawing the front edges of the shirt across her thin body and folding her arms to hold it in place.
‘Thanks, James,’ Tom said, handing the wet towel back to the boy who had been first to Bess’s rescue and who Bess now recognised as the boy from Foxden Hall. ‘You probably saved the little idiot’s life.’
Foxden Acres (The Dudley Sisters Quartet Book 1) Page 7
