by Marie Joseph
‘That’s what Mrs Rakestraw said when she stopped me in the street to tell me that her cousin Mrs Tunstall had been round first thing sobbing on her chest because you’re taking her job from her.’
Dora sat down with a thump on the empty piano stool. ‘Charlie Marsden’s jumped the gun! I haven’t even given him my answer yet.’ Her expression was filled with anxiety. ‘He made me think Mrs Tunstall was past it and ready to retire – and all the time he was planning to cast her aside like a worn-out rag.’
‘To replace her with someone younger and more beautiful,’ Amy said, smiling – which was a mistake. The pain was no better and for the past hour she’d been wobbling a tooth with a finger, convinced it was coming loose.
‘Wesley’s there at the house with his mother.’ Dora wasn’t going to allow the suspicion that had just popped into her head to take root. Wesley Battersby might be a rotter, a villain of the deepest dye, but he would never strike a woman. He gave his seat up on the bus, for goodness’ sake, smoked Balkan Soubranie cigarettes, never missed sounding his aitches and never went without a tie except on his holidays.
‘He came here to tell me about his father. To say he’s holding his own.’ Amy gave her tight wince of a smile. ‘I’m glad he’s supporting his mother.’
Dora’s eyes narrowed. So he’d been here. Was that why he’d sat there all afternoon in the drawing room in his mother’s house, smoking and telephoning Charlie Marsden’s wife – arguing with her by the sound of it. Dora drew in her breath. What if Clara went back to Charlie? What price the housekeeper’s job then? Suppose she chucked in her job at the mill, and the afternoon cleaning, only to find herself out of work?
‘I wish Charlie Marsden hadn’t jumped the gun,’ she said, then immediately felt thoroughly ashamed of herself. Amy wasn’t fit to be bothered with anybody else’s problems just now. She looked so pale and so tired, and every time she pushed her hair behind her ears you could see her hands shaking. Dora frowned and chewed her bottom lip. How could you say to a person as proud and loyal as Amy: ‘I think Wesley did that to you.’
‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she asked again before she went. ‘Promise me you’ll go to bed right this minute.’
‘I promise,’ Amy said, sitting there just the same. As if she’d never move again.
There was no point in going back into her own house, not the way she felt. Dora knew she would never settle to anything. So after she’d closed Amy’s front door behind her, she turned right instead of left.
If Bernard was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ he teased, pulling a chair closer to the fire, lifting his jacket from the back of another one and putting it on.
‘You don’t need to do that,’ Dora told him, though she knew that he would never sit talking to her in his shirt sleeves. This man wore politeness like a second skin. Like the wonderful Wesley? No, somehow not a bit like that. She sighed deeply.
‘What’s wrong, Dora?’
‘Everything,’ she answered. ‘Life, I suppose.’
‘Ah, life . . .’ He sat down opposite to her, shook his head and smiled, ready to listen, she knew, willing to give her his undivided attention. She remembered him sitting like that with Greg in those last awful months, after she had him put away in an institution.
‘Life is a bugger,’ she said, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
There was no embarrassment between them at all. Sometimes she would wonder if she had dreamed what had happened so long ago. She remembered watching this man lift Greg up on his pillows, and the way she would follow his hands, so gentle and yet strong. She would remember the way they had caressed her, soothed her, brought her back to life at a time when she was in total despair.
Bernard waited. Dora would talk when she was ready to, never using three words when two would do. He watched her carefully, realizing she was fighting sleep, knowing it was always like this for her if she stopped running, even for a moment.
No woman should have to work as hard as Dora Ellis. She was drooping with exhaustion, grey-faced, slack-eyed, her hands, idle for once, folded on her lap, red and raw-looking as potted meat, mottled, chapped, the nails stubbed and broken. The years caring for a semi-paralysed husband, going out to work, fighting her conscience, had broken her. Now, with only herself to care for, she was still running, forever telling herself that she must get back to the house where Greg still lay, a broken body lying in bed in that downstairs front room. Dora had told him quite recently that if she sat down for a minute she could still hear her husband’s voice calling her, always needing, forever wanting.
‘I’ve come about Amy,’ she said at last. ‘Not me.’
‘So it’s her life that’s a bugger, not yours?’ She was like a tiny cockney sparrow, he thought, the way she put her small head on one side and beaded her eyes at him.
‘Nothing’s troubling me, Mr Dale.’
‘Bernard. Surely Bernard. Why can’t you say it, Dora?’
She considered this for a moment. ‘Because to me you’re Mr Dale. Always was and always will be. Sometimes I have to stop meself calling you Sir.’
‘Dora! That’s an insult!’
‘No, it’s not. It’s a compliment if you set yourself to think about it.’ She sat forward in her chair. ‘Amy has to find a job. I mean that if she doesn’t find one quick she’ll starve. There’s no money going into that house, Mr Dale, not a brass farthing. She worked part time for years and years and handed her wage packet over to the wonderful Wesley every Friday night.’
Bernard hid a smile. ‘You don’t like him much, do you?’
‘I could stamp on his face and not bother to wipe the blood off me shoe. I could snatch the last drop of water from him when he was dying of thirst and pour it away.’ She glared into space, savouring her dislike. ‘Amy told me a long time ago that apart from a bit she had put by she had never had a penny piece to her name. Can you believe that?’
Bernard nodded. He could believe that all right. Down in London, not far from where he’d been born, women had chained themselves to railings for issues such as this. For the right to have at least a say in how the money they had earned was spent. Some of them had even died fighting for what they believed to be no more than a fundamental right, but up here in the north a woman like Amy Battersby still walked in her husband’s shadow, echoing her husband’s opinions, quoting him as if she had no mind of her own, handed over her wages as if she had no right to them. He wondered if this fiercely loyal friend of Amy’s would have retained her independence if her own husband had been in a position to assert himself. He doubted it somehow.
‘Has she any qualifications?’
‘You mean certificates? Exams?’ Dora gave a short laugh. ‘Not a one. Amy is like me in that respect. Well, worse than me. I left school the day I was thirteen to go to work, but Amy was clever. She was going to try for college, go in for a big job like teaching, till you-know-who came along and kyboshed any hopes she’d ever had. His father frogmarched him to the altar from what I’ve heard, with Amy five months gone, and her future ma-in-law sobbing her socks off in the front pew.’
She was flushed now, certainly more animated. Sparring in this good-natured way had always been a bonus of their unusual friendship. Bernard could see she hadn’t finished with him yet.
‘And before you go on about night school, further education, adult training schemes, remember you tried that tack on me once. I told you then what I’m telling you now. As far as I was concerned it was a dead horse you were flogging. I’ll go uneducated and ignorant to the grave, but Amy’s got a better chance than me. She’s got more up top than I’ll ever have.’
‘Oh, Dora, Dora . . .’
‘It’s true! She’s always reading when she gets the chance. She’s never away from the library.’ She glanced at a book on the table. ‘Ernest Hemingway. I bet she’s read him, whoever he is when he’s at home. None of your rubbish for her. Books about great lives, p
oetry even. And she does the crossword in the evening paper quicker than I could turn to the page. She’s sharp is Amy.’
‘You’re fond of her, aren’t you?’
The ‘fond’ was too much for Dora to cope with. ‘What I admire about Amy is the way she’s just carried on in spite of.’
‘In spite of what?’
‘Two babies born dead, and umpteen miscarriages, all because the Battersby line looks like ending with the wonderful Wesley.’
Bernard felt a physical jolt at her words. ‘I knew about one baby but not that there were two.’ He looked stricken. ‘And certainly not about the other . . . the others . . . Oh, no wonder she has that defensive air about her. As though she’s daring you to say anything kind to her.’
When he talked clever like this Dora lost the thread. ‘So you see, she does deserve some help in the right direction. I don’t want Amy to go down the same road as me. She deserves better.’
Anyone deserved better than Dora Ellis. Bernard wondered how long it had been since she’d had a cup of tea put into her hand, or eaten a meal she hadn’t cooked, slept in sheets she hadn’t washed. What was he supposed to do about Amy Battersby? What Dora had just told him about her was filling him with an illogical anger. He could see now why the two of them got on so well, had so much in common. On the surface nothing, but deep down everything.
‘Last week,’ he said quietly, ‘there was a vacancy for a shorthand typist to work downstairs in General Office. We had ninety-nine applications, out of which we short-listed six. I had sorted through the applications myself, and found forty with School Certificates, most of them with credit passes, the vast majority able to type, some with diplomas from the Technical College. Ninety-nine hopefuls for the job of office girl whose main task would be to answer questions at the inquiry window.’
‘So what chance is there for Amy? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘I was thinking aloud.’ He shrugged. ‘The way things are going you’ll need a First Class Honours Degree to work on the sweet counter at Woolworths, but I’ll give the matter some thought. I don’t suppose Amy can type?’
Dora relaxed. Now she had got Mr Dale working on Amy’s problem there was bound to be a solution.
‘She can learn,’ she told him. ‘Amy can learn anything she sets her mind to.’
Dora was just considering whether now was the right moment to tell him about her own incredible good fortune, when the telephone rang, almost jumping her out of her skin.
‘Oh, no,’ Bernard said when he answered it. ‘Oh no. Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He turned to Dora. ‘Mr Battersby is dead,’ he said. ‘He died in his sleep at seven o’clock.’
8
PHYLLIS HOPED THAT Amy’s face would have healed up in time for the funeral. She knew that Amy would understand that the family must present a united front on such a sad occasion. There was a second cousin and his wife coming from Dorset, a first cousin in the shape of Ethel from St Helens and three Yorkshire relatives, all coming to pay their respects.
Amy said she understood perfectly, adding that by next week the plaster could be left off her forehead so that with a coating of Max Factor make-up no one would be the wiser. She wasn’t being weak or lacking in spirit, she explained to Dora, just refusing to be difficult at a sad time like this.
‘I can’t think of anything more obscene than families quarrelling about funeral arrangements,’ she said. ‘So I’ll go and stand with Wesley and his mother in the church and make everyone believe that there’s no trouble between us.’ Tears came into her eyes. ‘For Mr Battersby’s sake.’
‘It’s going to be a posh affair,’ Dora said. ‘No ham and tongue funeral spread – that wouldn’t be grand enough. Old Ma Battersby’s seeing her husband out with mushroom vol-au-vents. She’s having all the food sent up from town. She’s asking the Masonic lot and the Rotarians, not to mention her Inner Wheel friends and the staff from all three shops. I’m just waiting for her to ask me to wear a frilly pinny and cap, but since I told her I may be leaving to work for Charlie Marsden at the end of the month, I’m less than the dust.’
‘I used pancake make-up once before and came out orange,’ Amy said.
Dora knew she hadn’t been listening, so there was no point in telling her that she was going round to Charlie Marsden’s house that evening to square things up and get everything on a proper footing. Amy had taken it badly about losing her father-in-law. One thing on top of another, Dora supposed.
‘I fell on the hearth. Tripped over the rug,’ Amy had told Mr Dale, not taking the news in at first. ‘I must go. I must go up to the house. Now!’
‘The message was that you are not to do anything,’ Bernard had told her gently. ‘They’re at the infirmary, anyway. It was just that they felt you ought to know.’
‘I’ll stop with you if you like,’ Dora had offered, but Amy had refused and Mr Dale had agreed with her that there was really no need.
He had touched Amy’s swollen lip with his finger and said that rugs were dangerous things, he’d always thought that. But Dora had suspected that he knew the truth.
Charlie Marsden apologized for his house being in such a mess. Apparently Mrs Tunstall had taken the huff and marched out with her pinnies and her slippers in a bag, refusing to work out her notice, saying that it would never have happened if Mrs Marsden had still been living there.
‘I don’t suppose it would,’ Charlie had answered darkly, flummoxing poor Mrs Tunstall more than ever.
Lottie was doing her biology homework at one end of the dining-room table. ‘This is Lottie,’ Charlie said, just as the telephone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, going into the hall and closing the door behind him.
Lottie blotted a line of spidery writing and gave Dora her full attention. ‘Do you dye your hair?’ she wanted to know. ‘It’s a funny colour.’
‘Of course,’ Dora said. ‘I comb prune juice through it twice a week. It’s a good job I like prunes, isn’t it? They keep me regular as well, which is a bonus.’
Lottie rallied quickly. ‘We’re doing the chapter on reproduction. I’m writing about the placenta.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s shed from the mother’s body as part of the afterbirth.’
‘Is that it?’ Dora leaned over the table to study the diagram. ‘Oh, look, there’s the vagina. I’ve never seen a drawing of one of those before.’ She glanced at the closed door, then nudged Lottie woman to woman. ‘If I decide to come and work for your father, there’s one thing I’d really like to know.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘What was it Mrs Tunstall did to get herself the sack? I’d like to know in case I make the same mistake.’
Lottie had already decided that she desperately wanted this funny little woman to take the job as housekeeper. Fancy her knowing about vaginas! Mrs Tunstall would have come over all indignant and walked away. Mrs Tunstall wouldn’t even have known how to pronounce it. Let alone what it was for.
‘She developed an uncontrolled passion for my father. Which embarrassed him. But don’t let on I told you.’
‘Did she tell him?’
‘Not that I know of. She kept giving him burning glances, and the top off the milk.’ Lottie picked up her pen as her father opened the door. ‘I must get on.’
Dora studied Charlie in some depth as he showed her round the rest of the house. She knew Mrs Tunstall by sight, and the thought of the hatchet-faced elderly woman in the throes of unbridled passion for this fattish, red-faced little man, with receding hair and tiny blue watery eyes, was crazy. Why, he looked like he should be wearing violently checked baggy trousers and have a red ball stuck on his nose.
‘This is the master bedroom,’ he was saying, throwing a door open with a flourish. ‘The sheets go to the laundry, but the other things . . .’ He slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. ‘Mrs Tunstall should be telling you all this if she’d stayed to work her notice.’
Dora followed him out on to the landing. ‘Perhaps she felt that you would understand
her heart had its reasons.’
Charlie whipped round from showing her the inside of the large walk-in airing cupboard. ‘What did you say, Dora?’ He shook his head as if to show he must have imagined her remark. ‘It’s a big house as houses go. Mebbe some day . . . I don’t know.’ He led the way down the stairs and into the white-tiled kitchen with its magnificent Aga cooker. ‘Only needs filling once and riddling twice,’ Charlie told her proudly, turning round and pointing to the washing machine, with its round and gleaming stainless steel tub, and its rubber rollers clamped on top.
‘There won’t be any need for the laundry man to call here any more, I can tell you that,’ Dora said. ‘Not with this beauty there won’t.’
‘Does that mean you’re going to take the job?’ Charlie’s little eyes lit up. ‘Say you are and I’ll go out and run the flag up.’
‘Try and stop me,’ Dora said, standing in the middle of the tiled floor, clasping her hands together with an ecstatic expression on her face.
She was quite a bonny woman, Charlie realized, from the depths of his sentimental heart. A nice little figure on her too.
Wesley told his mother that he thought The Cedars would be far too big for her now. He wasn’t going to be so insensitive as to talk about sordid things like money, with his father lying in the Chapel of Rest down town, but he knew his father would have wanted him to take over the financial side of things.
‘It’s the ready that’s going to be the problem,’ he said. ‘You know what Father was like about tying everything up to get the best dividends, and you know how secretive he was about his friendship with Harold Thomson. Solicitors shouldn’t be personal friends with their clients, in my opinion.’
He sat beside Phyllis on the wide chesterfield and took her hand. ‘What mustn’t happen is you worrying about the paperwork. I bet Father never took the time to explain any of that side of the businesses to you?’
Phyllis’s pointed chin wobbled. ‘It wasn’t that he didn’t take the time, son. The shops were his side of our lives together. It was only natural that he didn’t talk money to me. What man does?’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He kept any worries he might have had to himself. He didn’t want me bothered.’
