by Sheila Riley
Grace felt she had talked to the whole street at one time or another tonight as they came to say ‘hiya’ and ‘welcome home’ and have a look at her engagement ring, but thankfully they had all gone now, Susie included, and she was ready for her bed.
‘I will turn in if it’s all the same to you,’ Grace said.
Her thoughts turned to Bruce as she ascended the wine-coloured carpet that ran up the middle of the stairs, secured by the same brass rods she used to clean every Saturday morning when she was younger. She was missing him already and she only saw him a few hours earlier.
At the top of the stairs, she turned left up another stair onto the landing and pushed open her bedroom door. Flicking on the electric light switch, the pale-yellow light did not touch all corners of the alcove but was bright enough to show off the new flowered wallpaper that had not been there when she left this room several months ago.
The room smelled of fresh paint and disinfectant and she knew her mother had gone to a lot of trouble and expense for her return to the family fold. Dropping her suitcase onto the yellow counterpane, she caught her reflection in the oval mirror inlaid into the wardrobe door and her hand automatically rested on her still-flat abdomen. Thank goodness there was no sign of the expectant mother in her hourglass figure yet.
The large room, with its high ceiling was spacious by local standards but nowhere near as opulent as her stateroom cabin on board the Spirit. Nor did her feet sink into the rag rug at the side of her bed as it did into the plush carpet on board. But it was home and she was glad to be here. She had a lot to think about, and plans to make.
However, Grace knew the first thing she must do tomorrow was to visit the doctor. There was no point in wasting time worrying if her monthly ‘visitors’ were late if there was another innocent reason.
Although if, as she suspected, she was in the family way, she had to make some very quick plans. She could not resume her singing career looking like a landed whale, and nor could she continue to live round here. What would people say? Her mother would be mortified. Susie’s mother would say ‘I told you so.’ She would have to go searching for a place to rent. But that would be easier said than done given the housing shortage since the war.
‘Damn!’ Bruce D’Angelo said when he replaced the handset of the telephone after a long- distance call regarding his father who had been taken ill and was in Saint Bartholomew’s hospital in London having emergency surgery. Bruce had to leave Liverpool immediately. But first, he needed to telephone Grace and explain.
Dialling the number she had given him; his fingers drummed the desk listening to the constant ring which nobody answered. He tried the second number and a woman’s voice on the other end sounded somewhat surprised when he asked to speak to Grace.
‘Grace who?’ the woman asked, and he told her once more. ‘Well, I’m new ’round ’ere an’ I don’t know no Grace ’Arris. Are you sure you got the right number? This is a public telephone box, you know.’
No, he did not know, and Bruce realised he didn’t have time to argue, when the office manager Mr Walton told him the next train to London would leave in half an hour. Luckily, Lime Street Station was only five minutes away by car, he knew having been here many times before, so that would give him time to buy his ticket and ring Grace at the station.
When Bruce got to the station, there was a long queue at the ticket office, which crawled slowly to the small ticket office window.
‘Do I still have time to catch the London train?’ Bruce was rarely annoyed by much, but his patience had grown thin. Everywhere he looked, there were queues for this and queues for that. A guy could spend his whole day queuing in this country!
‘Only if you hurry, sir, it’s due to go out in three minutes.’
‘Damn!’ Bruce exclaimed as he ran past the red telephone box, he knew he had no time to telephone Grace and tell her he couldn’t make their dinner date.
Grace knew she'd fallen long before the doctor confirmed the rabbit died, and her test had proved positive. Her mind was in turmoil. Bruce hadn’t called and she felt a right idiot. Humiliation flowing through her veins she now realised the only man she ever loved had hoodwinked her, and Grace knew she couldn't have this baby if she was to continue her singing career.
How was she supposed to cope with no man to depend on? Vowing not to return to another cruise ship, she heard her name being called.
‘Grace, over here!’ She recognised Susie’s voice immediately and the sinking feeling of dread returned.
Turning, she flashed a practised smile. Susie was the last person she wanted to see right now. She would want to know every tiny detail of her consultation.
‘What brings you here?’ Susie asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘I’ve come for a sick note, so I get paid for taking time off. Serves Skinner right for taking Evie on as office manager over me. So what’s wrong with you, then?’
‘An upset stomach, that’s all,’ Grace said cagily, desperate to tell someone what she was going through, but Susie was not that girl. ‘I’ve got to be off, see you later.’
When she reached Reckoner’s Row, Grace went into the telephone box and picked up the receiver. She needed to speak to Bruce. But her courage deserted her as the heavy door edged to a squeaky close, and she noticed a tired-looking mother pushing a coach-built pram that had probably been an enviable sight in its day, but now it looked like it had been in the war and lost.
A little girl in a knitted pixie hood was standing on the dented, rusting mudguard, while a young child, barely able to walk judging by the size, sat on the pram’s canopy. Unseen, deep within the black and silver carriage, the piercing cry of a newborn was making its angry presence known.
The mother was a girl Grace remembered from her class at school, yet she looked ten years older. No make-up to brighten her woeful expression, a headscarf tied under her chin could not hide her limp hair snatched back off her face, and her clothes draped from her hungry-looking body.
I can’t live like this. Grace replaced the receiver and the devastating notion that Bruce was just like all the other men she had known, hit her like a wrecking ball knocking her confidence for six. She had been a first-class fool. She knew that now. ‘What have you done, you stupid, stupid girl.’
Stepping out of the telephone box, she saw Connie lugging a heavy mop bucket and Grace rushed forward to take it off her and empty it down the grid, but Connie wouldn’t hear of it. They were a tough lot round here, Grace thought, much tougher than she felt right now.
‘I bet you missed all this soot and muck,’ Connie said with a glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘I imagine there’s only so much tropical paradise you can put up with before wanting to get back to the dockside.’
‘I couldn’t wait.’ Grace managed to laugh and hide her feeling of dejection. She had a fleeting thought. Should she confide in Connie? What with her being a nurse during the war. But then she thought better of it. Grace knew she would have to give her predicament a lot more thought before she involved anybody else.
They shared a bit of local chit-chat before Connie ambled off to answer the ringing telephone, and through the open doorway, Grace clearly heard the landlady say ‘Not again’ in a burst of exasperation when the ’phone stopped ringing.
Walking down Reckoner’s Row, Grace felt her stomach lurch and the bright sunshine did little to raise her spirits. She needed to get as far away from here as she could. When the child was born, she would give it up for adoption. Grace would not want to know if it was a boy or a girl. Determined she wouldn’t even look at it. Nothing must awaken the maternal feelings that she knew must be in her somewhere. Nothing must get in the way of her career.
Entering a large, soot-covered Victorian building that was the housing department, Grace was careful not to brush against the wall and dirty her blonde-coloured swing coat. She took a seat next to a harassed-looking woman with four young children and a newborn baby in a pram and Grace gave a stiff smile, knowing the post-war baby
boom was thriving.
‘Have you been here long?’ Grace asked the woman as the click-click of a typewriter reverberated round the outer waiting room.
‘Half the bleeding morning,’ the woman said, rolling her eyes to the high cracked ceiling, probably a remnant of the heavy bombing during the war. ‘Another day of begging and pleading, but where does it get yer? Nowhere that’s where. I’ve been here every day for the last three weeks and I’m still no further on. I’ve got a hole in my roof the size of a football pitch, curtesy of the Luftwaffe, and even the bugs wear wellies!’
Grace was sorry she asked, sure the woman was exaggerating until she saw a flat-capped man pretending not to listen, who nodded in agreement.
An hour later, Grace was relieved when the door of the inner office opened by a straight-backed female clerk.
‘Next!’ she called in a voice that any sergeant major would be proud of.
Grace stood.
‘Name?’ the stern one said, examining her clipboard.
Grace Harris.’
‘Have you got your green card?’ asked the clerk, going down a list of names before holding the clipboard to her flat chest like a shield.
‘Green card?’ Grace was bewildered.
The clerk gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Your doctor would have supplied you with a certificate of confinement, which you will need as proof of your entitlement to put your name down on the housing list.’
Grace wondered how this woman could possibly know she was pregnant just by looking at her. She didn’t know the first thing about having babies. That was something other women did.
‘Can’t I just put my name down and you contact me when a place becomes available?’ Grace asked and the clerk’s eyes held a mixture of disbelief and pity.
‘Never mind.’ The clerk let out a long stream of exasperated air as she opened another door. ‘Go straight in.’
When Grace presented herself to the inner sanctum of the housing office, a man with a bushy moustache was talking on the telephone.
‘Yes, that’s right, in triplicate,’ said the man down the telephone, ‘one for the ministry, one for the housing committee and one for my files… Goodbye.’ He replaced the receiver and looked up to see Grace sitting opposite him. ‘Mrs…?’
‘Harris, Grace Harris.’ She kept her gloves on to hide her naked wedding ring finger.
‘Right then,’ he said, giving her an appreciative smile, which encouraged Grace, ‘let’s see what we can do for you.’ He rummaged through a sheaf of forms and looked confused. ‘I can’t seem to locate your forms…’
‘What forms,’ Grace asked, ‘I haven’t filled in any forms.’
The housing manager’s head shot up and he looked at her as if she had just swiped his sardine sandwiches, sitting in a brown paper bag on the desk.
‘Madam,’ he said sternly, his smile disappearing, ‘you must fill in your application forms, HC1, HC2 and HC3. You can’t go on the list without filling in the necessary forms.’ He sounded incredulous that she had the temerity to enter the building, let alone walk into his office looking for accommodation. He stood up and headed towards the door and, opening it, he said in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear, ‘I should not even be seeing you.’
‘But now that I’m here can’t you just put my name down on your list,’ Grace protested. ‘I waited over an hour.’
‘Some people have been waiting ten years! You need at least four children to get on the list. Good day to you.’ And with that he slammed the office door shut.
‘Four children just to get on the list?’ Grace exclaimed, realising she didn’t stand a chance as she strode out of the building.
‘Here, wasn’t that Grace Harris?’ asked Susie Blackthorn’s mother to nobody in particular, waiting to complain about her twisted door. ‘I wonder why she’s looking for a place of her own?’
‘Have you gone part-time, now?’ Evie asked a few weeks later when Susie walked into the office, late again. The girl seemed to please herself when she came in, and Evie wondered how she got away with it. Anybody else would have been dismissed long ago.
‘I had to go and get a sick note from the doctor,’ Susie said, and Evie lifted her head from the long list of figures. She had little time to take a decent dinner hour lately, with Susie taking so much time off, and had brought a potted meat sandwich to eat at her desk as she worked through the accounts.
‘Let’s see it then.’ Evie was not prepared to allow this defiance to carry on. She was sick of Susie trying to pull the wool over her eyes, knowing the girl only worked here so she could moon over Danny Harris every chance she got. Well, those days were over.
Susie’s chin jutted out and she rolled her eyes, handing over the medical certificate. ‘See, I am sick,’ she said smugly, ‘yet I drag myself in here and slave away without a complaint. Look at what it says. Look at the length of that word, I can’t even say it. I might have something deadly!’
‘You certainly have, Susie.’ Evie did her best not to laugh when she saw the colour drain from Susie’s face. The certificate said Susie was suffering from ‘dysmenorrhoea’, the same as her last three certificates. ‘If I were you, I would prepare myself for hospital.’
‘Really?’ Susie’s eyes widened. She really was ill? ‘It’s that bad?’
‘I’ve heard about this,’ Evie’s face was grim, and she slowly shook her head, ‘and to have it four times in a month is deadly, I should imagine. My heart goes out to you.’
‘You’ve heard if it?’ Susie exclaimed. ‘What happened to the patient? Did she live?’
‘Oh yes, she lived,’ Evie said, her soothing tones becoming more determined, ‘she took two Beecham’s pills and used a hot-water bottle for her period pain each month not four times a month?’
‘Period pain?’ Susie said and Evie nodded.
‘Don’t think you are getting paid for this.’ She waved the sick note under Susie’s nose. ‘You might have been able to fool Mr Skinner, but you don’t fool me!’ Evie watched Susie’s mouth open and close like a goldfish. ‘Your wages will be docked for the time you have had off. You’ll be lucky to pick up any money this week, given the amount you owe Skinner in overpaid wages.’
Mr Skinner must want his head read to hire Susie. She couldn’t run a tap, never mind sort out this tangle of accounts, Evie mused, systematically going through scraps of receipts, which looked as if they hadn’t been given any proper attention since Meggie Skinner had stopped working in the office after the war.
According to these figures, the business had been having a difficult time of it money-wise for a long while. Some outstanding bills had been paid but not all and if they weren’t paid soon, the future looked grim for Skinner and Son.
‘When was the last time we sent a reminder for a final payment to the slaughterhouse?’ Evie asked, not surprised when Susie didn’t answer because she was too busy gazing out of the window. ‘Have you sent out a reminder?’ Evie pressed when she got no answer.
There was a heavy silence and she scraped back her chair, going over to the filing cabinet. She was well aware that the other girl had heard her. And if her stony silence was anything to go by, Susie was seething at being found out.
Nevertheless, Evie was not here to make friends, she was here to do a job – and not a minute too soon if this business were to survive.
14
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Ada asked, standing on the doorstep talking to Connie’s mother, Mim, one-time landlady of the Tram Tavern.
‘Hello Grace, I saw your picture in the paper.’ Mim beamed an approving smile as she entered the house and saw Grace. ‘So, we have the top singing artist on the D’Angelo line - right here in our very own street.’
‘The best singer in the whole fleet.’ Ada said proudly. Straightening her back she stood a couple of inches taller. ‘She made headlines in The Echo.’ Ada told Mim proudly, and Grace smiled when she heard Mim’s sardonic, unhesitating reply,
‘Well, she wo
uld be wouldn’t she.’ Then, changing the subject she said, ‘your mam tells me the wedding is off?’
‘I don’t think she wants to talk about it,’ Ada replied with a heavy sigh and taking on that pinched expression, which told Grace her mother was the one who didn’t want to discuss the big white wedding she had planned and boasted about. Grace felt a bit sorry for her mother, knowing she had saved for years to be able to give her a wedding fit for a star. But there wasn’t going to be a wedding. And very soon she would be asking questions that Grace did not want to answer.
Knowing what she must do, Grace decided to go to London. Clifford had not arranged any of the meetings he said he would. In fact, nobody even knew who he was! But she wasn’t going to waste time worrying about him. She had enough money to rent a place and she had contacts. The stigma of an illegitimate grandchild would crucify her mother. She had to get away.
Taking the ring Clifford had given her, Grace decided it was time to make it work for her. She would take it to a jeweller to see if it were worth anything, knowing it was probably worthless if he was anything to go by.
In the unusual likelihood that the ring was worth something, Grace knew every penny would be needed for her new start. She also had savings from her last trip but knew she had no chance of getting cabaret work when her pregnancy started to show. Nobody would employ a girl in trouble.
‘If you are not careful, you’ll lose that grand position on the ship,’ Ada said when Grace told her she wasn’t going back, ‘you just don’t know when you are well off!’
