The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  Mrs Wallis tapped the cigarette on a small silver ashtray with a sharp rap.

  ‘And this was in …?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, before the war. And during.’

  ‘I meant, where was this? What place?’ Mrs Wallis asked as if inquiring after some distant land one had heard of only in fairytales or in newspaper reports.

  ‘Stepney,’ said Jean.

  Mrs Wallis nodded slowly. No doubt she had heard of Stepney.

  ‘And afterwards I cared for Mrs McIlwraith’s two little ones. Mrs McIlwraith was our neighbour. Her husband having left.’

  (‘Be precise, Miss Corbett. And at all times stick to the point in hand,’ advised Miss Anderson from the distance of their interview that morning.)

  ‘Mrs McIlwraith’s children were a boy aged seven and a girl aged five. I looked after them for some years, provided their meals and made sure they got to school.’

  ‘I see. My own children are, of course, a little older than that.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Jean, understanding that by ‘older’ Mrs Wallis was only partly referring to their ages and was in large part referring to their social standing.

  ‘Therefore I require someone who is able to provide general home-help duties as well as nannying. The agency will have explained that?’

  The agency had not explained that.

  Jean nodded vigorously.

  ‘And your own family have no further need of you, Miss Corbett?’

  ‘I’m afraid my family were all killed by a V2 rocket that landed on our house, in 1945. February. I was out, you see, that day so—’ Jean made herself stop.

  There was a pause. She ought not to have said that. A flicker of panic began to rise in her stomach. Stupid, stupid to say that.

  ‘Oh, my dear, how simply ghastly for you,’ said Mrs Wallis and she leant forward, gave a slight frown and flashed a quick smile of sympathy in Jean’s direction.

  It was so unexpected, such a complete reversal of her earlier detached coolness, that Jean replied with a somewhat stiff smile of her own.

  She hadn’t intended to mention the bomb. Had told herself she wouldn’t under any circumstances—well, you didn’t, did you, not to a prospective employer? And not if you intended to present yourself as a calm and emotionally unencumbered person capable of taking charge of some stranger’s precious offspring. But there, now she had mentioned it, it had just popped out and perhaps, if Mrs Wallis’s smile was anything to go by, it was all for the best.

  There was a silence that began to stretch for longer than was entirely comfortable.

  (‘Your credentials, Miss Corbett—do not forget to present your credentials. They are your passport to employment.’)

  Jean held out the two sheets of paper, one typed, one handwritten, that contained her reference from Mrs McIlwraith and another from the head teacher of the small local school she had attended during the war.

  ‘My references,’ she explained as Mrs Wallis merely stared at the outstretched pages as though they contained lewd pictures.

  ‘Ah. Quite.’ Mrs Wallis took them and leant back in her chair. A moment passed as she read first one page and then the second. She took a sharp pull on her cigarette and her eyes narrowed dramatically as she read and Jean felt herself slowly tensing. What could she see? What error had Mrs McIlwraith made in her reference? Were the dates wrong? Was her name misspelt? Did they, perhaps, look fake?

  Just as the moment seemed stretched to breaking point, Mrs Wallis looked up.

  ‘And you are how old, Miss Corbett?’

  ‘Twenty. Last birthday. April.’

  ‘And have you a young man?’

  (‘Your prospective employer will no doubt enquire as to your status vis-à-vis a young man, Miss Corbett.’ Miss Anderson had paused significantly at this point. ‘Naturally she will wish to be reassured regarding your long-term loyalty, and, of course, as to the welfare of the children she places in your care.’)

  ‘Oh no, no young man. Nothing like that.’

  Mrs Wallis made no response other than to smoke silently for some moments. Had she got her heart set on employing someone who was twenty-one? Or nineteen? Someone respectably betrothed to a steady young chap instead of dangerously unattached and flighty?

  Mrs Wallis smiled with alarming suddenness. ‘Well. No doubt you will wish to meet the children?’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ said Jean smiling brightly in reply.

  Did this mean she had got the position? Or was it part of the interview? A test to see how she got on with the children?

  ‘Good. I shall fetch them. Please wait there, Miss Corbett,’ and Mrs Wallis uncrossed her legs and arose from the chair in one fluid movement. Hastily Jean half rose, then gingerly lowered herself down again on to the rich crimson velvet, realising just how tired her thighs were becoming.

  There were voices outside the door. A man’s voice, quite deep and speaking from a distance, but becoming more distinct as he approached.

  ‘…devil’s going on? We’re supposed to be at Leo’s at twelve.’

  ‘Don’t be tedious, Cecil. He’s hardly going to miss us for half an hour. And if you care to cast your mind back approximately two hours you may recall my mentioning to you that I intended to interview a new nanny this morning.’

  The man now moved away from the door so that Jean could not make out his reply, only the tone, which was cross.

  Mrs Wallis, however, was evidently still standing beside the closed door:

  ‘Oh heavens, Cecil, I really haven’t the faintest idea who she is. Some wretched orphan from Stockwell. Family wiped out en masse in the war—no danger of this one running off home to nurse an elderly parent, at least.’

  In the drawing room, where Jean sat, a chrome-plated clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarter-hour then fell silent. On the small occasional table Jean’s credentials and the letter of introduction from the agency lay discarded. One of the references had slipped down between the chair and the table and lay on the thick pile carpet.

  Jean released her aching thighs and sank down into the crimson velvet of the settee waiting for something to break or rip, but nothing happened.

  Stepney, she thought, not Stockwell.

  She looked down at her feet. Her shoes had been Mum’s shoes once. A new pair of wartime shoes when new shoes in wartime were as scarce as good news. They had survived the blast. It had been surprising what had survived, considering so much of the house, so much of the people in it, had been destroyed. But Mum’s shoes had survived. Navy, they were. Stout, practical. Low-heeled. Not fashionable, even when new, but built to last. Built to withstand a V2, at any rate.

  Against the chaotic pattern of the Wallises’ drawing room carpet and the rich crimson velvet of the lop-sided settee they looked indecent. Jean stared silently at her feet and on the mantelpiece the chrome-plated clock ticked discreetly.

  The door opened and a girl came in.

  She was, if Miss Anderson’s information was correct, a child of nine though she had a smallish frame and the rounded face and nose of a younger child. She was neatly dressed in a tartan pinafore that was tied with a bow at the waist and beneath which she wore a pressed white blouse. Her hair was tied in a ponytail with a matching tartan ribbon and she wore knee-length white socks and highly polished navy shoes fastened with a buckle. They were the exact same shade of navy as Jean’s own shoes but they looked as though they had never ventured beyond the front door of number 83 Athelstan Gardens, let alone survived a V2.

  The girl stopped about a foot inside the door and put her head on one side, narrowed her eyes and surveyed the stranger on the lopsided settee with a scrutiny that belied her youth.

  ‘I’m Anne,’ she announced loudly and decisively as though to scotch a nasty rumour. ‘I suppose you are going to be our nanny.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Of course, we don’t need a nanny, you know. We’re far too old.’

  Jean got to her feet and offered a smile, one that was intended to project authority
and competency with a hint of warmth and the possibility of friendship.

  ‘Well, your mother seems to think that you do,’ she replied.

  Anne appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘Oh, I doubt it,’ she replied airily, though she did not then go on to explain why she doubted it. Instead she announced: ‘Julius will be here in a minute.’

  Julius was presumably the older child.

  ‘He’s doing his Latin prep, so he can’t be disturbed.’

  Jean had a sense that she had somehow lost the initiative in this meeting, and meetings—‘first impressions, Miss Corbett’—were crucial.

  ‘How do you do, Anne? My name is Miss Corbett, Miss Jean Corbett. I’m very pleased to meet you.’

  Anne dismissed this and went across the room to the large sash window, which was wide open. Clearly unimpressed by the arrival of a potential new nanny, she leant precariously out until her feet left the ground. Alarmed, Jean took a step towards her, ready to spring into action should the child decide to tip right over and fall out.

  ‘I had a kitten,’ Anne announced, placing her feet back on the floor and turning to face Jean. ‘Perhaps Mummy told you? A darling little ginger kitten it was. Called Nellie after our last nanny—’

  ‘Oh, how adorable!’ said Jean obligingly, glad that the girl had left the window and now appeared keen to establish some sort of rapport.

  ‘—but she died. The kitten, I mean, not nanny. I drowned her one Sunday afternoon in the kitchen sink because she had made a puddle in my bedroom when I had expressly told her not to.’

  The girl laughed, a high-pitched laugh that seemed devoid of the usual things that laughter was meant to contain—like humour.

  ‘What absolute rot! Anne, you are an utter bore.’

  Jean spun round as a second child stalked into the room. In contrast to his sister, Julius looked older than his thirteen years. Perhaps it was the open-necked white shirt he sported or the long grey flannels when most children his age and in the sunshine of a warm September morning would still be going about in short trousers. His hair was razor short at the back and around his prominent ears and remarkably long at the front so that he stood with a sideways stance to keep it from falling into his eyes. He smiled in a business-like fashion and thrust out his hand.

  ‘I’m Julius. You are the nanny, aren’t you?’ he said as Jean hesitated.

  ‘Yes. That is—if your mother—’

  ‘Oh Mother’s hardly going to send you away, not in the current climate,’ he said blithely and, as Jean had nothing to add to this, she took his hand and shook it.

  ‘I expect you want to hear that the last nanny had such a rotten time of it here that she was eventually wheeled away in a straitjacket and locked up in a loony bin, don’t you? Well, you’re quite safe. Actually she left to administer to an aged parent. All very dull.’

  ‘She returned to Leicester,’ announced Anne, darkly, from her position by the window. ‘Have you been to Leicester?’ she enquired, rounding on Jean abruptly, her eyes suddenly very bright and vivid.

  ‘No, Anne, I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘Where are you from, then?’ the girl demanded, and both children eyed her with sudden curiosity as though a nanny who did not herald from Leicester should be viewed with some suspicion.

  ‘Well, I’m from here. From London.’

  Julius dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘Yes, but obviously not from here. Where exactly?’

  ‘From East London. From a place called Stepney.’

  Jean paused. No, it was no good. No matter how you dressed it up, Stepney still sounded exactly like what it was. ‘Have you heard of Stepney?’ she added, just for something to say rather than out of any expectation that the Wallis children undertook regular field trips to the East End.

  But Anne had returned to her death-defying stance on the window sill and Julius had picked up a copy of The Times and neither showed much interest in the far-flung reaches of Britain’s Empire beyond the City of London.

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour. No one moved. Outside in the street a car pulled up and a door slammed. In the distance a small dog yapped and a child laughed. Anne began to kick the wall beneath the window with her foot with a thud, thud, thud.

  ‘Well. Perhaps I ought to just speak to your mother to make sure everything is in order,’ Jean suggested, getting up briskly from the settee. (Briskness was the key! She had an idea that nannies should do most things briskly.)

  Through the open window she could hear the latch of the gate being lifted and footsteps coming up the front steps.

  ‘It’s the police,’ observed Anne, matter-of-factly. ‘I expect they’ve come to make an arrest.’

  Chapter Two

  SEPTEMBER 1952

  ‘It’s the police,’ announced Mrs Thompson, standing in the doorway of the upstairs drawing room and rubbing her hands on her apron in a manner that suggested she had known it would come to this and, frankly, she was washing her hands of the whole lot of them. ‘An Inspector ’Arris and another gentleman,’ she added and stood awaiting further instruction.

  Harriet knew very well it was the police. She had observed the black Maria as it had cruised along Athelstan Gardens and glided ominously to a halt outside number 83. She had taken a step sideways away from the window as the two gentlemen, one in uniform, the other in a cheap grey suit and hat, had emerged from the car and consulted their notes. She had held her breath while they had exchanged a brief word and there still remained the slim, ever-diminishing, possibility that they would go up to number 85 instead. And finally she had ducked out of sight and leaned, for a moment, with her eyes closed against the wall to take a deep breath as the policemen had turned towards the gate of number 83 and lifted the latch.

  Now Mrs Thompson was standing in the doorway holding out an inspector’s card and two policemen were waiting in the hallway.

  ‘They’re here to see Mr Wallis,’ added Mrs Thompson and for a disorienting moment Harriet could make no sense of these words.

  Then she felt her jaw fall slack and instantly snap shut again loudly: they were here to see Cecil! She closed her eyes for a moment. No doubt Mrs Thompson found it amusing to withhold this vital piece of information until the very last moment.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for, Mrs Thompson? Kindly show the gentlemen into the reception room.’

  And then, belatedly, she thought, What could the police possibly want with Cecil?

  Inspector Harris turned out to be a very young man for such a senior rank—late thirties perhaps, not much more. One heard often of young men who had acquitted themselves well in the war, who had risen rapidly through the ranks and who, consequently, found themselves in civilian life at a rank much higher and much sooner than such men might have achieved before the war.

  The war had changed, and continued to change, many things.

  ‘Inspector. How do you do? I am Mrs Harriet Wallis.’

  Standing just inside the doorway was a young constable, a boy, really, in a uniform that didn’t fit him, and she smiled at him. He blushed and ducked his head then hastily removed his helmet. And that was a good sign, surely? If they were here to do anything too official surely the constable would not have taken off his helmet?

  On the other hand, you didn’t send an inspector round to deal with ‘a motoring offence’.

  ‘Good morning, madam,’ said the inspector tipping his hat but maintaining his position in the centre of room rather than coming forward to offer his hand. ‘Sorry to barge in on your Saturday morning.’

  ‘Oh dear, I do trust something dreadful hasn’t happened,’ Harriet replied. After all, this was the sort of question one was expected to ask, wasn’t it? This was the way one was expected to react to a visit from the police? She produced a handkerchief and crushed it anxiously between her fingers.

  The inspector regarded her expressionlessly.

  ‘No, madam, nothing like that, I can assure you,’ he replied. ‘
But I would be obliged if I could have a word with your husband. Is he at home?’

  Indeed, he was at home but what did the police want with him?

  ‘Certainly, Inspector. Mrs Thompson, perhaps you would be so kind as to ask Mr Wallis to join us?’

  ‘No need to bother yourself, madam. We can go up to his study and talk there. Mr Wallis has a study, does he?’

  Harriet smiled pleasantly. He needn’t think he was going to get away with questioning Cecil alone in his study.

  ‘It’s no trouble, Inspector. Please take a seat.’

  Harriet sat down on the edge of a chair and produced a cigarette.

  ‘Inspector?’

  ‘No, thank you all the same, Mrs Wallis.’

  The inspector took the chair opposite and the constable remained in his position by the doorway, his eyes flickering around the room and settling on the Graham Sutherland print above the fireplace.

  As she lit her cigarette Harriet could feel the inspector’s eyes watching her, and continuing to watch as she put down the lighter and sent a thin stream of cigarette smoke upwards. It was warm in this room. The French doors at the end of the room opened onto the back garden and sunlight flooded in. A shaft struck the carpeted floor and dust motes floated upwards, caught in its glare. Harriet felt a prickle of moisture on her upper lip, behind her knees and beneath her arms. She wanted to dab her handkerchief to her face but that would draw attention to it.

  ‘Really! This heat is intolerable.’ She stood up. ‘I must get Mrs Thompson to open these doors up and let in some fresh air.’

  No one replied to this.

  She went to the windows and looked out. It was quite likely no one had opened the French doors since the garden party late last summer. A thick layer of dust coated the door handle—what was Mrs Thompson being paid for?

  The clock on the mantelpiece indicated that it was approaching noon. The woman from the nanny agency had rung during breakfast and Harriet had agreed to an interview at very short notice. But somehow it had taken the girl two hours to get here from Kensington High Street when the woman from the agency had said she would be there in half an hour. The girl was upstairs—what was her name? Corbett, yes. Not particularly good references. Easy enough to fake—though why would someone fake a reference to get a job as a nanny? The girl would do, she would have to. There were more important things to think about at present. And they were supposed be at Leo’s at twelve. Would they go, now that the police were here?