The Dressmaker's Daughter

by Nancy Carson

  She turned away, and edgily began clearing things from the table, feeling hot, aware she was blushing. ‘Good Lord, no,’ she said scornfully. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Oh, just a feeling. I calculated that it was about the right time, after what I heard. And I remember we were never especially careful.’

  She had to pull herself together; she had to appear calm. ‘You flatter yourself, Stanley.’ She smiled, turning to him with an assurance she didn’t feel. ‘No, the child I lost was Ben’s all right. Conceived and born in wedlock … You can rest assured. She was the image of him.’

  ‘Ah, well. I’m pleased about that.’ He took his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. ‘I’ll go then if you’re not coming out to play. But I hope I’ll see you again before I go back. Would you mind if I called again?’

  ‘I can hardly stop you, can I? But what’s the point?’

  He smiled once more, that enchanting, dangerous smile. ‘Perhaps just to get to know your children better. They are my relatives, after all.’

  *

  Stanley did call again. It was on the Sunday after New Year’s Day. He arrived unexpectedly at about half past three. Outside it was cold and raining, so all four children were in the house, occupying themselves. They welcomed Stanley, made a great fuss of him, and thanked him for their Christmas boxes. Lizzie was less enthusiastic at his presence.

  Henzey sat beside him, looking at him in wide-eyed admiration. He was eminently suitable as an eventual new husband for her mother. He had all the attributes. He was handsome, congenial, generous, always smart, even in the civilian clothes he wore now, and altogether well-groomed; qualities that all appealed to her own awakening sexuality. If only he didn’t have to return to Southern Rhodesia.

  They all squeezed companionably around the scrubbed table, which was wearing its best tablecloth today. As the time flashed by the small talk developed into something more serious, about Stanley’s adopted country. All four of them wanted to know about Southern Rhodesia, and Stanley relished the opportunity to enlighten them.

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ he began. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of miles of savanna, without a city in sight. It’s a new land of opportunity, of endless sunshine, of wild animals roaming free …’

  ‘What sort of animals?’ Alice interrupted.

  ‘Oh, impala, hartebeest, water-buck, bush-babies, monkeys …’

  ‘Aah!’ the girls chorused soulfully, recalling these appealing creatures from pictures they’d seen.

  ‘Any lions and tigers?’ Herbert asked.

  ‘Lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs. Oh, and elephants, hippos, giraffes.’

  ‘Does it get very hot, Uncle Stanley?’ Henzey enquired.

  ‘It’s pretty warm most of the time, Henzey, but although it’s in the tropics, most of the country’s on a high plateau, so it actually stays quite cool. Salisbury’s nearly five thousand feet above sea-level, so it’s never too hot. The warmest season is spring, between July and October when it’s very dry.’

  ‘July and October ain’t spring,’ Maxine mocked.

  Stanley shook his head and smiled. ‘No, no, it’s spring, Maxine. You see, that part of Africa is in the southern hemisphere. Right now it’s midsummer over there – the rainy season.’

  ‘Cor, it’d seem funny being warm at Christmas,’ Herbert conjectured.

  ‘We usually eat Christmas dinner outside, on the verandah in the shade.’

  ‘Even in the rainy season?’

  ‘Even in the rainy season we get at least six hours of sunshine a day. Not like here, where it drizzles for days on end.’

  ‘Do you live in a nice house, Uncle Stanley?’

  Henzey felt warmth in his smile, and when he matily rubbed shoulders with her. ‘I do now. You see, my secondment to the colonial government ended when my British army service finished. That was earlier this year. I’d been able to save a lot of money in the army so I decided to buy a house there, with a good sized piece of land – about a thousand acres.’

  ‘A thousand acres?’ they sang, in unison.

  ‘That’s not such a big area over there, and land is cheap.’

  Lizzie joined in this conversation for the first time. ‘So you intend to stay there?’

  ‘There’s no place on earth I like better.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with all that land?’

  ‘I shall try growing tobacco and coffee. Perhaps cotton. The climate’s ideal.’

  ‘Have you got servants?’ Alice wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, everybody’s got servants, Alice. I’ve got a cook, a housekeeper, a maid, a lad I call my batman, besides all those who work on the plantation.’

  ‘Darkies?’

  ‘Yes, darkies.’

  ‘And do they live in your house, Uncle Stanley?’

  ‘All except the plantation workers.’

  ‘Then it must be a damn big house,’ Lizzie remarked.

  ‘It’s a damn big house, Lizzie.’ He turned to her, pleased that at last she was showing some interest. ‘A typical colonial house, big and spacious.’ He felt in his inside pocket and drew out a folder containing some photographs. He passed them first to Henzey, and winked at her. ‘And all the young girls out there, Henzey, have their own horses, and ride to other plantations and farms, to parties and gatherings. It’s a great life for colonials …’ Secretly, familiarly, he squeezed her thigh under the table. ‘Especially for the girls.’

  Lizzie wondered why Henzey had blushed and had given Stanley a dewy-eyed look as she turned to smile at him.

  Alice looked at Henzey and sighed as they scrutinised the photographs together, asking who this was, what building that was, and a host of other questions, before passing them, one by one, to their mother.

  ‘D’you go hunting wild animals?’ Herbert asked.

  ‘Sometimes. You might get a rogue lion, or a hyena, that preys on farm animals, so you have to destroy it. Sometimes you go on specially organised hunts, just for the sport.’

  ‘You’ve got a gun then?’

  ‘Oh, certainly, Herbert, I’ve got a gun. All young lads learn how to use a gun.’

  ‘And fishing?’

  ‘Fishing galore!’ Stanley was aware he was enthralling them with his descriptions of the country he loved so much. ‘Fishing in the Zambesi in the north, or the Limpopo in the south, and any number of rivers in between. Massive fish. Absolute whoppers. Loads of ’em. And you should see the Victoria Falls …’

  The very names conjured up pictures of warmth and sunshine, of wide open spaces and the freedom to explore them, of blue skies, and of an endless round of jolly parties.

  ‘Oh, I’d give anything to go fishing there … on the Limpopo,’ Herbert decided, enjoying the sound of the name on his tongue as he spoke it. ‘Or hunting wild animals with a gun. Can I go back with you to Southern Rhodesia, Uncle Stanley?’

  Stanley glanced at Lizzie, but she avoided his eyes, pretending to concentrate on his photographs. He knew, and she knew, that her children were on the hook. Now he had to draw them irrevocably into his net.

  ‘You could all come if it were up to me. I could use some extra help – some personal assistants to help run the place. I’m fairly new to it, even though I get plenty of help and advice from friends out there. I have some good friends out there now – some very influential.’

  ‘You should ask our mom to marry you, Uncle Stanley,’ Alice suggested innocently. ‘Then we could all go and live with you in Southern Rhodesia. We’d all love …’

  ‘Alice!’ Lizzie snapped. Then, with greater composure, she said, ‘I don’t really think Uncle Stanley would appreciate having us lot round him all the time.’

  ‘On the contrary, Lizzie. I’d enjoy having all five of you there.’ He winked at Henzey. ‘You’re all so damn beautiful, it’d be like having a muster of peacocks around me.’

  ‘Peahens, if you don’t count Herbert,’ Henzey chuckled.

  They all laughed, except Liz
zie.

  ‘But far be it from me to try and persuade your mother.’ He looked at Lizzie tauntingly. ‘I think her roots are far too entrenched in the Black Country.’

  ‘Yes, they are, so let’s get back down to earth.’ Lizzie was anxious to change the subject. ‘I’ll get the cake and jam, and butter the bread. Henzey, you make the tea. When we’ve eaten you can get on learning your catechisms, else the Bishop of Worcester will never confirm you.’

  *

  Lizzie made sure that Henzey and Herbert stayed with her till Stanley had gone. Aware that he wouldn’t easily get rid of her unwitting chaperones, since they were so drawn to him anyway, Stanley decided to leave at about nine o’ clock; time enough for a couple of pints of home brewed at The Shoulder of Mutton. But when he’d gone, the conversation about Southern Rhodesia continued, to Lizzie’s frustration.

  ‘It sounds beautiful, Mom,’ Henzey said dreamily. ‘I’d love to go … away from these drab streets, away from all this cold and rain.’

  ‘I’d fish for whoppers all day in the sunshine in the Limpopo,’ Herbert added. ‘I can just imagine it.’

  ‘I’d ride around Uncle Stanley’s plantation on a beautiful white stallion,’ Henzey mused, her blue eyes glistening with an ardent longing, ‘like a lady riding round her country estate.’

  ‘And be waited on hand and foot by obedient servants,’ Herbert said. ‘It’s a dream.’

  Lizzie picked up some mending that was waiting to be done. ‘Well, you can stop your dreaming, all of you, because it’ll never happen.’

  ‘But why? Uncle Stanley would marry you tomorrow if you said yes. Just think of the life.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he makes it sound like paradise on earth, I grant you. But I don’t want to marry your Uncle Stanley. Had that crossed your mind?’

  ‘But why not?’ Henzey pressed. ‘He’s ever so handsome and smart. And he’s got plenty of money by the sounds of it. What more d’you want?’

  With one eye shut, Lizzie aimed the end of a length of cotton at the eye of her needle. ‘Henzey, I couldn’t care less how handsome he is, or how smart he is, or how much money he’s got. It’s no nearer us. I don’t want to marry him, not for all the coffee or tobacco on his damned plantation. Not if you were to crown me with gold. Besides, your father isn’t cold in his grave yet. What would the neighbours say?’

  ‘They could say whatever they liked when we were in Southern Rhodesia,’ Herbert commented astutely. ‘I bet they’d all swap places, given the chance.’

  Henzey said, ‘We all grieved over our father, Mom. There was never a man like him. I don’t think any of us have got over his death yet, but that doesn’t mean life has to stop. We know how hard you worked for our dad, and we both feel you deserve more out of life now he’s gone. This would be an ideal opportunity. A chance to get away – to start afresh – for all of us, not just yourself.’

  ‘Our Henzey, stop trying to make me feel guilty, that I’m holding you four back.’ She put her mending on her lap. ‘You’re pressing me to do something I’ve got no intention of doing. I know Southern Rhodesia sounds tempting to young folk like yourselves. So does America, Canada, Australia. But when you got there it might not be all parties and riding on horseback everywhere, and fishing in the damned Limpopo. If I know anything about life and the world we live in, it’s that nothing comes for nothing. You have to work for what you get, and the work would be hard. And there’d still be no guarantee either that we’d be any better off there than we are here.’

  ‘But it might be worth a try …’

  ‘Listen, I know your Uncle Stanley a lot better than you. If things went wrong, and they might well, we’d be cut off, weeks, months, from England where we know we belong, even if we could afford the fares back. I don’t think you two understand the risks. You only see the glamour, and I blame Stanley for trying to turn your heads.’

  ‘But it’d be better than what we’ve got, Mom. Better than all the grime, the smoke, the tumble-down buildings, the crowding – being on the breadline all the time.’

  ‘The weather might be better, I grant you, Henzey. But like I said, there’d be no guarantee of anything else. So let’s hear no more about it. We’re not going, and that’s that.’

  ‘But why? Why?’ There was exasperation in Henzey’s voice.

  ‘Because I’m not marrying him, that’s why. Not for you. Not for him. Not for anybody.’

  *

  Bitter cold weather ushered in 1927, and a continued shortage of coal meant that many families suffered miserably. The Kites burned whatever they could get hold of to keep warm and to cook. Herbert collected wood, and sneaked the odd cardboard box full of coke from the dwindling pile that still remained outside the stoke hole of the Board School. Occasionally, Georgie Malpass, the coal merchant in St John’s Street, would have a consignment, but as soon as word got round there would be a queue for it. He was generally known as Georgie Slack, because of the damp slack he sneaked in everyone’s orders to make up the weight. Herbert was often first in any queue for coal, but the stuff he was allotted was invariably blighted with bats, which spat like jumping jacks when burned.

  One inclement afternoon, Lizzie was trying to liven up the meagre fire with off-cuts from the timber yard on East Street, holding a draw-tin over the fire opening. The back door was open to improve the draught, and the fire had just started to roar when Lizzie felt two strong arms around her, and the bulk of a man’s body warm at her back. She jumped, startled, letting go the draw-tin, which slid off the hob into the hearth with a loud clang, only to be arrested with an equally resounding clang when it hit the fender at her feet.

  Stanley Dando laughed at his surprising her, but Lizzie was not amused.

  ‘Stanley, that’s a terrible thing to do to a woman. It could’ve caused an accident.’

  ‘Sorry, Lizzie.’ He threw his hat on the table. ‘Just a bit of fun.’

  ‘Fun for you, maybe,’ she said acidly. ‘So what brings you here again?’

  ‘Ooh, you sound as cold as the weather. I wanted to catch you while the kids were at school. I can’t talk to you properly while they’re about, let alone do anything.’

  ‘You can forget doing anything, that’s for certain.’ She picked up the draw-tin. ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘About this coolness towards me. That’s not how I remember us. I only remember warmth and positive responses, but all that seems to have disappeared, like that smoke disappearing up the chimney. Why?’

  ‘Stanley, I lost my husband little more than six months ago, and you expect me to forget him and jump into bed with you? Can’t you get it into your head that I’m not interested anymore?’

  ‘And is it just due to Ben’s death, this change of heart?’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ The handle of the draw-tin was getting hot, so she changed hands, and leaned over for a rag by which to hold it.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it? A pity, too. I came to ask you to come to Rhodesia with me, without your family hearing. To ask you to make a new life there for yourself and your children. With me. They’d love to go. You know they would.’

  ‘Oh, I know they would. And I know who’s turned their heads. I don’t thank you for it, Stanley.’

  ‘So it’s you I have to persuade now.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘Come with me, Lizzie. You know how good it would be.’

  ‘No. I don’t want to marry you. I’m not …’

  ‘I’m not asking you to marry me. Not yet anyway. Just come with me. We can live together, as a family. Marriage could come later.’

  ‘Live in sin, you mean? I was never brought up to live like that, lowly as we were.’

  ‘Only the six of us need know – you, me, and the children. Everybody would just assume we were married.’

  Lizzie shook her head emphatically.

  ‘Look, let me whisk you away from all this … from all this drabness. From this filthy hole where you can’t even get enoug
h coal to light a bloody fire. Look around you, Lizzie. What do you see? Fog, and more bloody fog, rain, smoke, grime, dirty cobbled streets dotted with muddy puddles, row after row of bloody red-brick terraces with slates missing off the roofs and more smoke pouring out of the crooked chimneys. Just look about you. There are awful pit banks everywhere, enough to depress a saint, a million chimney stacks all belching out even more black smoke, kids with no backside in their trousers and no shoes on their feet. It’s a dump, Lizzie. There’s more out of work in this God-forsaken country than the whole population of Rhodesia. Come with me to somewhere beautiful, where the sun shines all year long, where it’s warm, and where life is easy; where there’s space. I need you Lizzie. I need you out there.’

  ‘Oh, honestly!’ She removed the draw-tin and placed it on the hearth so that it was standing up against the grate. The wood fire was burning cheerily now.

  ‘You’d live the life of a lady, Lizzie. You are a lady, you know. You just lack the money and the social connections to live like one. I can provide that for you. I’m well off. Look, you’d have all new clothes. Everything. All the years I’ve been in the army I’ve saved and saved, and I’ve invested my money wisely. Since I’ve been in Rhodesia I’ve done some unbelievable deals and made a fortune. How else could I afford this place I’ve bought out there? That’s where my future lies, and I want you to be a part of it, little Lizzie. The potential for your kids is limitless. If you wish to deny it yourself, you shouldn’t deny it them. Come with me for their sakes. But once you’re there, I warn you, you’ll love it. You’ll never want to leave. What do you say?’

  Oh, he was very convincing.

  ‘You make it sound perfect. But I’ll be thirty-seven this year – too old to think about uprooting.’

  He sensed her resistance was weakening. ‘Oh, nonsense, Lizzie. That’s a lame excuse if ever I heard one. There’s no age in you at all. You’re still in your prime. God, you’re more beautiful now, in that old black dress and that awful apron with the holes in it, than anybody I can think of in their finest silks and gold.’

  She faced him, her arms folded, amused, pleased by his flattering words. ‘Such flannel!’ She permitted herself a smile. ‘I never heard such flannel in all my life.’