The Girl Now Leaving

by Betty Burton

  ‘I said, Can you imagine: double-breasted suits, navy blue, with an inch of petticoat showing; lisle stockings; crocheted jumpers and hair shingled half-way up the back. I said…’

  She lost Lu, who could see no way out except to make her way along to the toilet compartment, then stand in the corridor until the train reached Bournemouth. It could not be too long. The last station had been Boscombe. She tried to remember the order of the stations, but could not.

  She picked up her handbag and scarf and made a move to leave the compartment. The man shuffled his irritable feet and untidy newspaper. Lu smiled a brief apology and slid back the compartment door. Was he smiling? Or smirking? Had he seen through her sudden elevation in class?

  In the toilet compartment, she stood for a minute looking at herself in the mirror, seeing what the reporter had seen. Louise Wilmott, a young woman invented by an ambitious factory girl from the slums of Pompey. She smiled slightly at her own reflection. That woman thought that I was her own sort. Then she looked into her own eyes and quickly looked away, concentrating on the tip of the lipstick as it outlined her mouth. Who am I, then?

  For so long now she had been switching from one Lu to another, trying out various roles. I could invent a whole fictitious background, she thought.

  She combed her new bouncy hairstyle and wondered how the two of them appeared to the man who had been sharing their compartment. Did he see two fashionable modern young women of the same class? He probably couldn’t care two tics whether I’m working class and she’s middle.

  What was that performance all about then? Who was it for? Not for the man. Not for Malou French – she was the worst sort of snob, ridiculing women who are more concerned about getting better working conditions than about fashion. She would probably ridicule Ray because he didn’t wear the right tie or something and wore his work shoes to meetings.

  Suddenly, she felt quite ashamed, then angry. There was nothing wrong with making the most of yourself, but nobody had the right to poke fun at people who had better things to do. She was the sort who would gang up with her snobby friends as they had done at the grammar school and ask, I say, you’re the charity girl, aren’t you? Her shame at not having stood up for herself then – and just now – was revealed to her in the reflection of her eyes. To let yourself be put down by some posh cat who’s never so much as seen the inside of a factory. You rat!

  Lu brushed her shoulders fastidiously, sprayed her ears with 4711 and went to stand in the corridor deep in thought. I don’t want to be like my own sort, and I certainly don’t want to be like them. How does Miss Lake manage it? She can be on the side of poor people, yet she still talks lovely and she’s not ashamed of being interested in clothes and fancy things like painting, and she doesn’t think reading is a waste of time. She’s just herself.

  But then, she didn’t start out being born in the slums; nobody can be proud of that. Hanging on to the window rail, Lu watched the steam from the engine stream past, much like the thoughts that were streaming through her mind. Can I be myself? No. The world’s set up to keep top people up, and low people down. Therefore, if people at the bottom want to get heard, we have to be like them. No, we have to appear to… we have to fool them by talking and dressing like them, but we don’t have to think like them. Join them and beat them at their own game, Kenny had once said that. He probably didn’t think like that now, but it was the way to do it. She was sure that she was worth two of Miss Malou Whatsit. Miss Lake had explained the great difference between compositions and essays, and Mr Matthews had encouraged his classes to practise debate, discussion and discourse. Mr Matthews loved his three Ds. Her two mentors would probably be quite pleased at how she was learning to sort things out for herself.

  What am I doing skulking in a corridor?

  Malou French was inspecting her own features in a powder compact mirror. When Lu returned to the compartment she looked up and smiled briefly at Lu standing, about to reach for her grip. A little cough was the only sign of Lu’s lack of confidence. ‘Miss French, can I ask you… Do you think my style is all right?’

  ‘My dear, love it. Holds together beautifully. I just love that new coffee colour with the cream. Ach, and so totally right for your lovely auburn colouring.’

  ‘Oh, good. Ah, you said you wanted to write about lady comrades’ style.’ She held out her hands in an attitude of presentation. ‘This is it!’ As Lu went to retrieve her grip from the rack, the man in the corner threw down his newspaper, jumped up and took it down for her, but Lu was hardly aware that he was carrying it until he stopped outside an empty compartment and asked, ‘Will this do?’

  ‘Oh, yes… thank you.’

  He put the grip on the rack, raised his bowler-hat and said, ‘Thank you, miss. Bucked me up no end you have. Should you mind if I joined you? I gather we’re going to t’same place.’

  Lu was almost gushing in her gratefulness for his friendliness. He offered a hand to shake, and with amusement in his eyes, said, ‘Aye, a brother… one o’ the comrades.’

  ‘Oh. Louise Wilmott, and I’m not really one of them, I just said that… I’m only a visitor.’

  ‘Aye, I thought you might be.’

  ‘You did? Why?’

  ‘You’ll likely not remember me.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Sidney Anderson. I were at sea with your dad. I lost a good shipmate. When I came to the funeral, I had not a notion that there had been a double tragedy. A terrible thing. I were right wrung out for you all.’

  ‘I do remember you. You’re the man who carried a wreath and put it by the graveside.’

  He nodded. ‘Aye, I shan’t forget that day in a hurry. I stood there thinking how proud Art would a been to see the three of you like that. A credit to the Wilmott family. I said to my sister later, I’ve seen more dignity in Art’s children than you’d find in a carriage-load of dukes and duchesses.’

  ‘I’ve never met anybody outside the family who knew my father, except for neighbours and that.’

  ‘I’ve often thought how hard it must be for the wives and children of a man always at sea.’

  The grey-haired man and the golden-haired girl sized one another up and wondered what was going on in the other’s head. What did he mean, he thought how hard it must be? Was she as hurt as her eyes showed?

  ‘It was hard… it certainly was hard. If it hadn’t been for Ray, I don’t know what we would have done. I didn’t realize it when I was young, but I see now that my mother had been slowly dying for years.’

  Yes, she was even more hurt than she showed.

  He decided to take the plunge: after all, it had been on his mind for long enough. ‘I dare say you won’t have a deal of time for men who join the Navy and leave their families?’

  ‘If there’s no work sometimes it’s the only thing they can do.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘What I don’t have time for are sailors who don’t write home, don’t ever send their children a message, let alone a letter. I’d have given anything to have got a letter from him.’

  What could he say? He remembered odd, tawdry toys that Art had bought from some downtown market when he was maudlin drunk. A fan, a paper-knife, a kite; nothing that travelled well. He remembered a little silk baby’s bonnet embroidered lavishly. Art had held it up on his fist. ‘Look, it’s for my little Lu.’ ‘Art, your little Lu is going to school now.’ Sid Anderson could have told it amusingly if it hadn’t been such a tragic little story. He felt that he had to do something, say something to help her to have some kind of a father. Children needed that. He remembered years ago thinking, Most men make damned poor fathers, yet families needed them in the same way that a bit of canvas needs a pole if it’s ever going to be a tent.

  ‘It’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to know him.’

  Lu noticed that he was leaning forward, his fingers laced, his knuckles white, as though he was straining to prompt her to remember something. I might have really
hated him if I had had a chance to know him. Yet, instinctively she liked this man in much the same way as she had grown to know and like Mr Matthews. Mr Matthews, whose radical ideas were hidden behind old-fashioned glasses and a stammering way of speaking. Mr Anderson spoke quietly in his northern way, but he had what Pompey people would have called ‘sea-dog eyes’ that could see over the horizon. If her dad had been anything like this…

  ‘Tell me something about him.’

  His blue gaze wandered to the steep banks as the train ran into a cutting. I must give her something. She’s so splendid herself that she needs to know that her father was not weak and neglectful. She must sometimes wonder about herself, how much of him she has inherited. There was no doubt that she would have quite as devastating an effect on the opposite sex as Art had always had. Would that be a plus for a young woman of this modern age? For sure he wasn’t going to test that. ‘I reckon my last memory of him was the best in a way. Aye. We’d been together since we were lads, and as far as I knew, Art never had a political bone in his body.’

  He saw her eyes widen with interest. ‘That’s the last thing I’d expect anybody to say about him. I thought you’d say he was a bit of a lad, like his brothers and sisters do. I know he had that reputation.’

  He smiled. ‘Ah well, all sailors have that hanging round their necks. Take it from me, lass, most of it’s talk. There’s good and bad in sailors, tall and short, hard-workers and loafers, same as men everywhere. Now there’s something Art Wilmott never was – a loafer. He was as good and reliable a sailor as you’ll find in the British Navy. People these days laugh, but a good job well done is still something to be admired, in my book.’ He expected that she would turn that back on him; instead she said, ‘Tell me about that last memory you had of him.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you about that all right. Look, is it all right if I call you Lu? Good, thanks, I spent a good many years practically knowing you, as you might say. Look, Lu, there’s a refreshment carriage. Should you like to have a spot of tea?’

  They made their way to the refreshment car. Sidney Anderson watched her as she delicately sipped her tea and used a cake fork. Funny how things can happen. If Art hadn’t died when he did, how would this girl have turned out? She caught him looking at her and smiled.

  ‘We’d stand there for hours keeping each other company for a spell, me and Art drinking Bovril, the old Augusta’s bow dipping and rising. When it was dark, you could imagine you were alone in the world.’

  ‘Did you do that on your last trip?’

  ‘We did. We’d both been a bit quiet like. I was trying to break it to him that I was thinking of packing it all in. You see, I wanted to get into this lark.’ He pointed to his briefcase.

  ‘It had been a long tour, that last one, we’d been too long away. We both knew we were running pretty close to t’finishing tape. I knew that if I didn’t get out, it would be too late.

  ‘We were sailing north, and with luck would be in Pompey before October. He was on watch, and as usual I fetched us both some Bovril.’ His gaze went inwards, and unconsciously he took a sip of tea. ‘You know about the Invergordon strike?’

  ‘Vaguely. It’s why the Augusta was late home that year.’

  ‘They were going to cut our pay, only three per cent for officers, but a twenty-five-per-cent cut for ratings.’

  ‘A quarter reduction, I didn’t realize.’

  ‘Well, it was obvious that the country was going down the pan fast. All those Navy ships whose home ports were in the south were diverted to tie up alongside in the Invergordon dock. I always reckoned we were as near to a revolution then as we’ve ever been since Cromwell. There were over two and a half million out of work, and the dole was being cut. The Stock Exchange was in one hell of a mess, and t’government about to chuck its hand in. Aye, there could a been revolution, it was touch and go.’

  ‘How did my father react to that?’

  ‘Well you know, it was strange. He’d never taken the slightest interest in politics or current affairs, but he seemed to change overnight. All the way until we reached Scotland, he was asking me a lot of stuff. It was as though he was trying to catch up on twenty years of ignoring what was going on. He seemed to soak it up like a sponge. I tell you one thing about Arthur Wilmott, he was nobody’s fool. His head was screwed on the right way.’ He knew that she was watching him like a hawk, ready to pounce if he said something trite. ‘The trouble with Art, as I always saw it, he was a bit of a sybarite.’

  Lu seemed to relax, probably because she knew that at least was the truth.

  ‘Only a bit?’ she said.

  He made a gesture, rocking his hands. ‘Well, by the time we reached Invergordon we were really steamed up. I mean how, on ships at sea, can you dissipate the resentment of thousands of sailors? We all streamed ashore. The commanders were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. You see, if we’d have been kept on board ship until new orders came to sail, they’d have been hard put to contain their crews, yet if they let us ashore, we would be bound to feed one another’s hostility to the admiralty. The worse evil of the two was to keep us aboard – like as not they’d have a mutiny on their hands. In the event, the officers didn’t have any choice; we simply walked off.

  ‘Arthur and I attended a meeting being held in a canteen. Men were standing shoulder to shoulder and overflowing through the doorway. The atmosphere was that explosive, a spark could have set it off.

  ‘Ah, there were some good speeches made there, bar none. We had a good leader: he went to Russia after he got out of the brig. There was a lot of wild talk too. Well, at this particular meeting we were all standing there listening, fired up to anything, then out of the blue your father jumped up on the rostrum. Now I have to admit this about him, there were times when he could go off like a penny fire-cracker, sometimes get himself into a scrap, but never over politics. But that day… I don’t know… it just seemed to come to him.’

  Lu did know. ‘Looks like I got one thing from him then. I could go off like a penny fire-cracker too when I was at school. You needed to know how to use your fists.’ She smiled. ‘Not so much now, I’m trying to be lady-like.’

  He smiled warmly. ‘I can believe that, seeing how you set about our reporter friend, but I’m glad you’ve given up fist-fights.’ He watched with pleasure as laughter bubbled up in her. My, she was a cracker and no mistake. If I had a daughter, that’s the one I’d choose.

  ‘What makes you think I’ve given up? It would have been difficult to have given her a right-hander to the shoulder. Best done standing up, it throws your opponent off balance.’ She held her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. ‘I’m sorry, please go on.’

  ‘Art was good, I have to give him that… I reckon you’d have been proud of him. I was.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I can remember it nearly word for word, because I was so amazed. It’s like the old story about a dog walking on its back legs: the surprise is not that it does it so well, but that it can do it at all. I’ve thought since that he must have caught politics in the same way as those Holy Joes who catch religion. You can hear them in Hyde Park, spontaneous and natural because they speak from their guts. Not like me, I speak from reason and my head.

  ‘Any road… He said, “I’m no speaker, I’m just an ordinary seaman, but I just feel I’ve got to say something. What’s happening at home isn’t of our making. How many of us got a vote in the last election? I didn’t, I was down in Hong Kong, obeying orders… some of you were somewhere off Sydney, or patrolling off the Med. None of us got a say in anything. Did you? Right! Yet we’re expected to suffer for the mess made by a bunch of nincompoops elected without our say-so.” (I’m just saying it as I remember.)

  ‘He said, “Maybe it wouldn’t be quite so bad if we were treated equal. Or if we worked under officers who had scrubbed a deck or slung their own hammock. Do the gold lace know what it means to live on a rating’s pay?” he said. “Is the wife of a
n officer expected to keep house on fourteen shillings a week?”’

  Sid Anderson made a long pause. Lu watched him frowning as though searching for something. ‘I’m afraid there’s no climax to this story… well, it’s not a story, it’s the truth: I suppose that’s why it doesn’t round off as it would if it was a story. It’s a queer thing, many a time I’ve thought about it. There he was, in full flow as you might say. He had them in the palm of his hand; you could have heard a pin drop. Then, just as sudden as he jumped up and took over the meeting, so he jumped down and pushed his way out of the canteen. I never had a chance to ask him, because it was just after that he got the message about Vera.’

  Bournemouth turned out to be as Sidney had promised, ‘a nice sort of place’. Lu need not have worried about not knowing how to behave at the hotel. The first meal, dinner, turned out to be easy to handle; even the soup, which at home they always drank from mugs, was served exactly as she had seen it scores of times in films. The hotel was full of delegates, so when they gathered in the bar, Lu slipped away, changed into a floral dress she had made from the cheap remnant of an expensive fabric (spoiled by an easily-dealt-with pulled thread), and went out to take a look at Bournemouth on a summer evening.

  It was wonderful.

  The beautiful public gardens, the ornate streetlights, people in holiday dress wandering on the promenade, some men wearing dinner-jackets with women in filmy dresses, the imposing sea-front hotels, and the Winter Gardens where the conference was to be held, a modern building glittering with lights. She was seventeen – the age she had always wanted to be – in the kind of glamorous setting she had always wanted to be in, and with some spending money in her purse. In the window of a tobacconist, some of it was wooed from her by a Ronson Ladies’ Special, a pretty, slim little cigarette lighter, and a little more when the shopkeeper offered to engrave her initials on it. She settled on a curly ‘L’.

  It was just so wonderful!

  The sound of dance music spilled out on to the promenade and she suddenly longed to be in there. She had been going to quite a few dances recently, and Sonia, Kenny’s hairdresser girlfriend, who after work was a professional partner at a ballroom dancing school, had taught her a lot of new steps which Lu had practised at every sixpenny hop in town. She was drawn to the brightly lit foyer of the dance hall. She would love to go inside. If only Kate had been there.