She could hear his wheezing breath behind her. He was perspiring in the heat of the summer day, and the smell of him was rank. Gracie was already planning to sprinkle a good few drops of lavender water about the room the minute he was gone.
‘Here you are, then,’ she said, turning round with the book and the money. She hadn’t realized how close he was, and his hand closed over the rent book, enclosing hers inside it. He didn’t immediately let her go, and although she wasn’t exactly pinned against the bureau, she felt as though she was.
‘Please let go of me,’ she said. ‘I assure you the money’s all there.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ he said smoothly. ‘Your mother was always a regular payer, despite your dad’s little vices, and I’m sure you’ll be the same in due course.’
Gracie flinched. ‘I think that’s in very bad taste, Mr Hill.’
Although enraged at his callousness, she didn’t raise her voice, because the last thing she wanted was for her mother to hear her wrangling with this oaf.
He let her go so suddenly she felt weak with relief. He counted the money and marked the rent book without another word, and then he smiled sweetly, if sweetly was the word for the smile of a waiting snake.
‘Don’t worry, girl. I’ll take care of you when the time comes. You’ll always have a roof over your head, providing you pay the piper.’
He left her, and she sagged against the bureau. She couldn’t doubt the meaning in his voice. It wasn’t just the rent money he was after. It was her. It was just as Mrs Jennings had said, even though she hadn’t really believed her. Percy Hill was old, compared with her, and why would a young girl, not yet twenty, want his fumbling hands on her, and his fat lips slobbering over her? She shuddered, willing the thought of it away. And then she did what she’d intended and wafted the room with lavender-water to be rid of his smell.
Remembering what she had been about to do, she set about making the beef tea for Queenie. Once she had seen that she drank at least a little of it, she would have something to eat herself, and later she would go down to the newsagent and use his telephone and call Dolly. If anything was guaranteed to make her laugh, it was talking to Dolly. And she could make light of the fact that old Percy had taken a fancy to her, and cut it down to size.
Half an hour later, when she had calmed down properly, she took the tray into the front room and set it on the small table, preparing to spoon-feed Queenie herself if necessary, to make sure she took some nourishment. She put a smile on her face as she turned to her with the cup of beef tea.
The woman in the bed hadn’t stirred. The blueness around her mouth had spread, but the lines in her forehead had smoothed out. In sleep, she was free from pain, which was why Gracie was always so loath to waken her. She replaced the cup on the tray and watched her for a few moments more, then she stroked her hand, and pressed her lips gently to her cheek.
‘Oh Mum,’ she whispered.
8
‘It was a lovely way to go,’ Mrs Jennings remarked. ‘She never felt nothing, did she? A stroke, the doctor said, just went to sleep and never woke up again. It was a blessing really, considering the pains she went through with the other, and a sight better than fishing your dad out of the drink, all smashed to pieces.’
‘You’re such a comfort, Mrs Jennings,’ Gracie murmured, wondering if there was ever a woman with a bigger heart and less tact.
‘That’s what neighbours are for, ain’t it?’ Lizzie said, not seeing the irony. ‘Take another sip of medicinal brandy to keep your spirits up, lovey. And you don’t have to worry no more about your mum and dad. They’ll be up there together now, all nice and cosy.’
Gracie looked blank. ‘Up there?’
‘Up with the angels, gel,’ Lizzie emphasized, her face reddening, ‘’Course, they might still be at each other’s throats, but that’s just the way they carried on. It didn’t mean nothing. I ain’t too sure about such things as angels, mind, but you got to believe in something, or what’s it all for.’
Gracie took a quick sip of the brandy the woman thrust at her, trying not to notice the way it stung her throat and fuzzed her senses.
‘You think Mum and Dad are up there together, then, Mrs Jennings.’
‘Well, I ain’t saying your dad went to the other place, despite all his drinking and hollering fit to wake the dead. You wouldn’t want that for him, would you?’ she went on uneasily.
Gracie gave an unexpected laugh, and immediately squashed the sound. But right now the house was so full of the scent of lavender that she imagined her mum was laughing at the thought as well, instead of lying stiff and cold in the front room, waiting for the laying-out woman and the undertakers.
‘I can’t imagine anything worse than for my mum to have to spend the rest of eternity with my dad,’ she snapped.
Lizzie Jennings glanced around the room, as shocked as if she had been struck by lightning—or fearful that Gracie was about to be struck down with something even more powerful for such blasphemy.
‘Gracie, you shouldn’t say such things. Have a talk with the vicar—’
‘What for? You know very well that Mum skivvied for Dad all her life until she got too ill to do so, but he was never around when she needed him the most, so why would she want to be with him now?’
She heard herself saying the brutal words, hardly knowing where they came from nor if she really believed them. They simply had to be said, to ward off the reality that within a few short weeks she had lost both parents.
‘Would you like me to stay here with you tonight?’ Mrs Jennings said, going off on another tack. ‘You shouldn’t be alone in the house with—well, with your bad memories and all—’
‘I don’t have any bad memories here, Mrs Jennings. Thank you for the thought, but I’d like to be left alone for the next few days until the funeral’s arranged. Anyway, I’m not alone. Mum’s here.’
* * *
There was no pleasing her, Lizzie Jennings reported to anyone who would listen. Not that she could blame the poor girl. What she’d gone through lately was enough to send anybody off the rails—and the sooner poor Queenie Brown was decently planted six feet under, the sooner Gracie could start thinking for herself again. But they had to respect her wishes to be alone with her mother in the house until Queenie was screwed down.
So there were only the visits of the laying-out woman and the undertaker’s men, and once Queenie was lying in her coffin ready for burial, the front room was reverently closed.
Although if they had seen Gracie’s feverish activity over the next few days, they might have been more alarmed for her sanity, as well as being scandalized that she could behave in such a way with her mother lying cold in the next room.
But there were children’s frocks to be made for the nursery school in the upper town, and there would be a decent fee at the end of it. And contrary to what people might think, keeping busy was the only way Gracie could hold her thoughts at bay from the horrific change to her circumstances. She needed to keep her hands and mind busy, to hear the constant whirr of the sewing-machine, with the knowledge of how her mum had loved hearing it, and knowing that she, of all people, would understand.
She worked each day and long into the night, cutting and pinning the cotton fabric to the pattern pieces, and stitching each little frock with all the love and care as if it was for her own child. It was the way her mother had cut and pinned and stitched for her when she was a little girl. There were memories tied up in every action. It was a labour of love as well as profit, and by the time the day of the funeral arrived, she was so tired she could hardly see straight, and the neighbours murmured how sad it was that such a young girl had to deal with all of this.
To her relief there was no sign of Percy Hill on this occasion, and the neighbours went quietly from the house afterwards, sensing her mood. She seemed numb and had no wish to talk to anyone except to thank them for being there.
As soon as the door closed behind the last of them she con
tinued with her sewing task. She had worked so hard that she had hardly given herself time to weep or mourn, and she didn’t stop until the entire set of frocks was finished, pressed, and stacked neatly for delivery. Then she went into the front room, preparing to strip the bedclothes off the bed and restore the room to normality. She pinched her nostrils together as she did so, knowing it should have been done days ago. The imprint of the coffin was still on her mother’s bed, and she stared at it silently for a few moments, her throat closing. Then, without warning, she found herself lying prostrate on the bed while she cried her heart out.
* * *
‘You’ve done an excellent job, Miss Brown,’ the wealthy client exclaimed. ‘And so speedily too. You must have worked day and night.’
Gracie said: ‘I enjoyed making the frocks, Mrs Anstey, and once I had made one I wanted to get all of them finished.’
‘I admire your diligence, but you look pale, my dear, and you have dark shadows under your eyes. You must take care not to overdo it, but since you’ve proved to be so reliable I insist on paying you a little extra for your trouble.’
‘It’s very kind of you, Mrs Anstey,’ Gracie murmured. ‘Thank you.’
She felt a sudden need to be out in the open air. The house was as stifling as a hothouse with the sun beating in through the long french windows, and the heavy, ornate furniture that seemed to make it even more claustrophobic. And the lady’s voice was receding further and further away …
‘Are you feeling a little better, Miss Brown?’ she heard her saying anxiously. She discovered that she was sitting on one of the elegant armchairs in the drawing-room and that a glass of water was being pressed to her cold lips.
‘You fainted, my dear,’ Mrs Anstey continued. ‘As I suspected, you’ve been overworking, and much as I’m delighted to have these little garments finished so quickly, you’re much too thin, and I’m surprised your mother doesn’t keep an eye on you.’
Gracie looked at her mutely, her face filled with anguish. Five minutes later, Mrs Anstey was still holding her hand and passing her handkerchiefs and listening to Gracie’s hysterical words about her father dying and then her mother, and how she had needed to work to keep herself busy.
‘And you’ve had to deal with all this by yourself?’ the lady said sympathetically. ‘Don’t you have friends or family to help you?’
‘I have good neighbours,’ Gracie whispered, ashamed of herself for breaking down. ‘But I needed to work to keep myself from thinking.’
‘But work merely delays the grief that we all have to go through. My advice is to grieve properly for your parents and give yourself time to recover before you think about working again. Now then,’ she said, more briskly. ‘I shall pay you for the work you’ve done, including the little extra I promised you, and then I shall send you home in my car.’
‘Oh, but that’s not necessary!’
‘Of course it is, and I won’t take no for an answer.’
* * *
If she had been up to registering it properly, she would have been tickled pink by the neighbours’ expressions behind their net curtains as the chauffeur-driven car rolled smoothly down the street and stopped outside Gracie’s house. As if she had been used to such luxury all her life, she thanked the man graciously as he touched his cap, and went into the house with a wild urge to laugh, feeling like royalty.
‘How about that then, Dolly Neath?’ she said out loud, just to break the silence in the house. Just as if Dolly was right there, eyes open wide with envy, gawping at her luck. She couldn’t bear the sound of silence, where every creak of the floorboards seemed magnified, and she still expected to hear her mother’s weak voice calling out to her as soon as she got inside the house. Quickly, she turned on the wireless set for some disembodied company.
As always, coming in from outdoors, her thoughts were momentarily disjointed. She should telephone Dolly. She still hadn’t done it, nor answered her last few letters. Dolly would think she was getting too stuck up to bother with her now, when nothing could be further from the truth. It was just that the longer you put something off, the harder it was to put it into words. She’d thought it would be easier, but it wasn’t.
As yet, until today, when she had poured her heart out to Mrs Anstey, she hadn’t actually had to tell anyone her news. It had passed by word of mouth among neighbours and friends who had known the Brown family all their lives, and a week after the funeral Davey Watkins’s mother called to pay her respects.
‘I’ve let my Davey know what happened,’ she told her. ‘I daresay you may not have felt like writing to him, but he’ll want to send you his love.’
‘Mrs Watkins, Davey and I are just friends, and nothing more,’ Gracie said.
If it was being brutally frank, she couldn’t help it, and she was too weary to care, but Mrs Watkins looked none too pleased at this stark response.
‘That’s between the two of you, Gracie, but you should never shut friends out at a time like this. You never know when you’ll be needing them.’
‘I don’t mean to offend you, Mrs Watkins, but I have a young man in London, and Davey knows all about him.’
She rambled on in embarrassment, knowing she shouldn’t continue the fantasy about a young man in London, but thinking it was the only way to quench the matchmaking gleam she could see in the woman’s eyes.
‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Well, Gracie, I always thought you were a nice girl, and you and my Davey would have made a go of it, I’m sure. You’ll be going back to London now, then?’
‘Oh, I expect so. There’s things to sort out here first though.’
There were things she hadn’t even begun to tackle yet. Things she had been putting off until she felt better able to face them.
Mrs Watkins seemed to read her mind.
‘If you want some help with sorting out the used clothes for jumble sales, you let me know. It’s a sorrowful job to take on by yourself, and I’ll be glad to take it all off your hands.’
Gracie couldn’t get rid of her quickly enough. The old hag, she thought furiously, already seeing how she could make a few shillings in her rummaging. She had forgotten Mrs Watkins’s eye to the main chance when scavenging for jumble-sale collections.
She had no doubt his mother would also be telling Davey a thing or two about how she considered Gracie Brown much too hoity-toity for him now, so he might as well forget her. She sighed, but it was probably all to the good, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to give him any false ideas.
But his mother had inadvertently reminded her that there was work to be done. She and Queenie had made no more than a token attempt at packing up Mick’s clothes and possessions, and now she had her mother’s to do as well. The church would be glad of them, and she would ask for the clothes to be distributed far away, in some foreign mission or other.
Although the thought of some poor dark-skinned natives sweltering in her dad’s old waistcoats and mufflers and hobnailed boots in the hot sun was enough to make her smile.
In the end, she enlisted the help of Mrs Jennings to help her sort through it all, giving her a few small keepsakes, though none of her mother’s clothes. She couldn’t have borne seeing any of the neighbours appearing in them, and thankfully most of the women in the street were much larger than her mother’s slight frame, so wouldn’t have expected to inherit any of them.
‘What will you do now, girl?’ Lizzie said at last, when everything was packed in cardboard boxes ready for the vicar to collect.
‘Do?’ Gracie said vaguely.
‘Well, will you want to keep on paying rent to old fart-face, or will you go back to London? There ain’t much to keep you here now.’
‘I’ve still got some sewing orders to complete, and it would feel as if I’m deserting Mum if I left straight away, even though she was always urging me to do so when … when the time came.’
‘Well then. You should do as she wanted.’
‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ she
asked, with the ghost of a smile.
‘Lord love you, Gracie, that I ain’t! You’re like a breath of fresh air around these miserable streets.’
Gracie laughed out loud now. ‘I hardly think so, when I’ve had a face as long as a fiddle all these weeks!’
‘Nobody would have expected anything else after all you’ve gone through, duck, but you’re still the prettiest girl for miles, and it’s a wonder to me that you ain’t got more than one young man sniffing around after you.’
Despite the compliment, she didn’t exactly make her sound an attractive proposition, Gracie thought, but she knew her heart was in the right place. And then she saw her face grow more serious.
‘Whatever you decide, Gracie, be sure to keep your door locked of a night.’
‘Nobody locks their doors around here, and there’s nothing worth stealing!’
She glanced around. The furniture was old and none too special. The only precious thing, in Gracie’s opinion, was the old treadle sewing-machine that had done such good service over the years, for her mother and herself.
‘I ain’t talking about possessions,’ Lizzie Jennings went on. ‘I’m talking about something more valuable than that. You just remember what I said about Percy Hill, and don’t give him an ounce of encouragement.’
For once, she spoke in riddles, but Gracie knew exactly what she meant. She flushed, but she hardly thought a landlord, regardless of how most people thought him a leech, would do anything to violate that position.
‘I’m hardly likely to encourage him, Mrs Jennings. And I’m sure he’d never look at me in that way. I’m less than half his age.’
‘Since when did that ever stop a man? But I’ve told you what I think and given you my advice. And remember, you only have to bang on the wall with the broom handle if you need anything and I’ll soon sort out the likes of him.’
She looked so comical with her arms folded over the enormous bosom inside her flowered overall, her chin stuck out so far that the hairs on it caught the light, and her lips clamped together so tightly that they all but disappeared into her cheeks, that Gracie had a job not to laugh out loud.
Unforgettable Page 9
