by Lizzie Lane
Frances ate her fill and managed to clear her plate, but declined pudding. ‘I’m off into town this afternoon. Will I be in time for the bus?’
She already knew what time bus she needed and that indeed she would be in time, but it didn’t hurt to make Mrs Kepple feel she was helping.
By the time she arrived in town, her stomach was doing somersaults. Newspaper vendors were shouting about successes in Europe as the allies thrust onwards, gaining a bridgehead.
‘Victory is in sight!’
And then Declan would return.
Just as an afterthought, she wandered into Woolworths. The back of the building was a bit battle-scarred, but not nearly as badly as the buildings at the end of the road which had been very badly bombed and would have to be replaced.
Everyone seemed to be busy and so many women seemed to be pregnant. She’d heard Bettina Hicks say there would be lots more babies born once the men were coming home.
She found Emily serving behind a big counter selling ribbons, cotton, knitting needles and balls of wool on one side, and stockings and scarves on the other.
‘We’ve even got knicker elastic,’ Emily exclaimed. Frances blushed because she’d said it so loudly.
Different goods were for sale at each end of the rectangular counter, and although there wasn’t much variety, Frances detected an eagerness to buy, understandable after years of there being less on offer than there was now.
Frances waved goodbye.
‘Wait,’ Emily called. She managed to get to the edge of the counter, lean over and speak to her. ‘How about you come here to work? We’re run off our feet.’
Frances bit her lip. She’d told everyone at the boarding house that she was here looking for a job. Only Mrs Kepple knew her true reason for being in Bristol, and she was keeping it to herself. Just her luck that somebody would take her at her word and offer her work.
‘I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m off to see about one now.’
‘Yeah? Where to?’
‘The Busy Bee Tearooms. I’ve got to be there by four.’
It came out all in a rush. She hadn’t meant for it to, but there was no going back.
Emily looked surprised and not terribly impressed at the news. ‘That’s in Old Market.’
Frances was suspicious of the way she said ‘Old Market’. What did it mean? Was it a bit rough and ready up there?
‘I think I might have a cup of tea while I’m there.’
A customer was calling for Emily’s attention so there was no chance to discuss Frances’s supposed appointment any further. Emily gave a brief wave before Frances lost herself in the crowd and headed for the rear exit out from the store.
There was also a lot of manual labour going on, the remains of buildings being pulled down to make way for new ones. There were no plans in place as to what those buildings would be, though Mrs Kepple had told her that it was rumoured a new shopping centre would rise from the area around Penn Street and Fairfax Street, all the way up to the Horsefair. The medieval heart of the city had borne the brunt of the bombing. It was somehow fitting that a shopping centre would rise on a site named after a medieval horse fair.
On her way to Old Market, she paused to window shop. Not all the shops were open, some still boarded up after their windows had been blown out during bombing raids.
By the time she got to Old Market, she wished she’d eaten more lunch. Her stomach was rumbling, though it wouldn’t have surprised her if it were due to apprehension as much as it was to hunger.
Old Market was crammed full with double-decker green buses that had replaced the trams after bombs had destroyed the rails at the beginning of the war. As fast as one bus pulled out at a bus stop, another pulled in.
Conductors hung from the rear platform, ringing the bell and shouting out, ‘Move further down the bus, please!’, and ‘Plenty of room on top!’
Frances swallowed her nervousness before hurrying across the wide expanse where a street market had thrived many hundreds of years before. Now there were just buses.
‘Hello, love,’ somebody shouted. Another conductor whistled and made an obscene remark.
Frances felt her face reddening. No wonder Emily had turned up her nose. Old Market was a minefield of saucy bus drivers and conductors. The conductresses wore trousers and turbans and didn’t look friendly.
The Busy Bee had a small frontage squashed between an old pub named The Stag and Hounds and a shop advertising handmade corsets.
Frances pushed open the door to be met with the smell of cigarette smoke, the clinking of teacups and the stickiness of toasted teacakes and iced buns. She found a table squashed up in the far corner, from where she had a good view of the door. Her heart was beating like a drum. People were looking at her. Did they know why she was here? Could they see the reason etched on her brow?
A waitress asked to take her order.
‘Tea and an iced bun, please.’
She doubted the iced bun would be a patch on those they made at the bakery, but she had to have something to help fill the nervous void in her stomach. A little food might stop her heart from racing.
The windows of the teashop were misted up, thanks to the cigarette smoke and condensation from the giant tea urns sitting on the counter. The other tables were mostly taken up with bus drivers and conductors, some of the latter being female. All of them blew smoke into the air, a cigarette held lazily in yellow stained fingers, eyes narrowed, lips pursed in readiness to take their next puff.
The eyes of the men left her to go back to their newspapers or conversations with others of their like.
Frances breathed a sigh of relief, confident now that they wouldn’t bother her. After she’d paid the waitress, she sipped at her tea and chewed on a sliver of bun.
Just for a moment, she dropped her eyes to the consistency of the bun. It felt dry beneath her fingers and dry in her mouth and the icing was watery and not properly set.
A draught of fresh air sent the cigarette smoke twirling like dancers as the door opened.
She’d prepared herself for meeting her mother again. What she hadn’t prepared for was the uniform, the masculine jacket and trousers, the white-blonde hair tucked beneath a plaid headscarf tied turban style. Her make-up seemed more heavily applied than yesterday and a cigarette dangled from one corner of her crimson lips.
‘All right, Joan?’ she called to the last woman to shift her gaze from Frances’s face.
‘I’m okay, Mildred. How’s the old man?’
‘Same as ever,’ Mildred replied.
Frances continued to stare, and this time not just at the powdered face, the rouged cheeks, the petulant mouth smothered in lipstick. Her mother had not warned her that she was a bus conductress, one of the women who shouted at people to move down the bus, swung around the bar on the platform at the end, ringing the bell, shouting at people in a nasally, nicotine voice! She could hardly believe it. There she was wearing her mannish uniform, a ticket machine hanging heavily at the end of a long leather strap around her neck.
She nodded as she sat down on the other side of the table to her daughter.
A waitress asked her what she wanted.
‘Cup of tea and a toasted tea cake, love,’ said Mildred. Immediately following the woman taking her order, Mildred took the cigarette stub from her mouth and ground it into an ashtray. She got out a packet of Woodbines and selected one, tapping it on the table between them before placing it between her lips.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a light, have you?’
Frances shook her head. She didn’t smoke but saying so was blocked by her surprise and feeling of apprehension.
Mildred turned to the man behind her. ‘Got a light, Arthur?’
The man took out a lighter from a ragged leather case. The flame flared into life momentarily until a red glow appeared.
‘So,’ said Mildred, turning back to face Frances. ‘How come you’re here in Bristol? Why ain’t you at school?’
&nbs
p; Frances paused before responding. Was it her imagination or had her mother’s accent altered since yesterday. Alone in the front room, she’d spoken without a significant accent. Now, in the company of bus crews and the people in the tearoom, her accent was more noticeable, as though she was trying to fit in with the people around her.
It had also surprised her that her mother thought she was still at school. As her mother, surely she should know that.
‘Well?’ said her mother. She sounded annoyed that Frances hadn’t answered straightaway. ‘Are you going to tell me why you’re here and not at school?’
‘I’m sixteen. I’ve left school. I work in the bakery.’
‘Do you, now?’ A surprised and oddly speculative look crept over her mother’s features.
‘And I look after Charlie. He’s cousin Charlie’s boy. Cousin Charlie’s ship got torpedoed. Charlie got killed and the baby’s mother died in an air raid.’
Mildred nodded. ‘That’s a shame.’ Her eyes were stone hard and didn’t leave her daughter’s face.
Frances felt uncomfortable. Neither meeting with her mother had been terribly positive. It came to her that she didn’t know her mother at all.
‘I didn’t know that. I expect old Stan’s a bit upset. Still, he’s got his daughters to look after things.’
‘Mary’s married. There’s only Ruby left. And me.’
‘I dare say she’ll leave and get married too before very long. I dare say you will too. You’re pretty. Just like I was at your age.’ A look of regret flashed over her mother’s face but vanished quickly. ‘Still – that’s all in the past. It’s the present that matters – that and the future.’
Uncomfortable with the way her mother was looking at her, Frances fidgeted in her chair. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘So what do you want to know?’ demanded her mother. The hard look was back.
Frances felt flustered. Her mother hadn’t sounded so hard yesterday and it frightened her. Sensing the time was not right, she dismissed the idea of asking her to sign a consent form that would allow her to marry Declan.
Taking her courage in both hands, Frances asked for the second time, ‘Why did you leave me?’
Mildred considered her answer as she stirred her tea. The teaspoon at last tinkled into the saucer.
‘I thought you might ask me that again.’ Placing both hands around the warm cup, she leaned forward. Her gaze remained fixed on the teacup. ‘I was young and romantic. Only eighteen when I had you; did you know that?’
Frances did not. She shook her head.
‘I was born poor but didn’t want to stay poor. Sefton, your dad, offered to marry me and I jumped at the offer. Who wouldn’t? I was honest with him. I told him I didn’t love him. Who would? His legs were shattered, he could barely breathe and he still suffered from war wounds to his face and body. He just wanted company and somebody to make him feel normal. That’s all. So he provided for me and I gave him what I could. When he died, well, everything changed. I had a bit of money saved and I was free. Better off than I’d ever been in my life. And I was still young.’
Frances sucked in her lips. This was all news to her and she feared what she might hear next.
‘Sefton Sweet, your husband. He was my dad, wasn’t he?’
Mildred looked at her blankly. Frances spotted the bruise beneath one eye. Oswald. It was no surprise.
Mildred stubbed out her cigarette in a plain metal ashtray. ‘What do you take me for? Of course he was!’
Her tone was abrupt, so swiftly rendered that Frances was inclined to think she wasn’t telling the truth or at least couldn’t know for sure.
‘I knew old Stan would look after you. He’s always been a soft touch as far as children are concerned.’ A cloud of smoke blew down her nostrils and from her mouth as she turned away.
Frances felt sick. She looked down at her hands, thinking that the good person in all this was her uncle. And she’d wronged him, shouted at him and showed resentment at being a part of his family. On reflection, she’d actually resented not being his daughter, though she realised now that she’d never felt that growing up, only recently.
Her mother interrupted her thoughts. ‘So you work in the bakery and look after the little boy. I bet old Stan don’t pay you much for that.’
Frances shrugged. ‘He pays me what he can and I don’t have to give over anything for housekeeping. It’s just for me.’
Mildred flicked more of the cigarette into the tin ashtray. Eyelashes thick with mascara swooped downwards before swooping up again, her lips curving tightly over teeth yellowed by nicotine.
‘You could earn a lot more in a factory,’ she said, more brightly now. ‘Like Wills’s for instance. They pay well and you get free fags at the end of the week.’
Frances shook her head. ‘I don’t want to work in a cigarette factory. And I don’t like the smell of tobacco.’
Her mother took one long drag of her cigarette then stubbed it out in the ashtray. ‘You should have said so. Not normal, though, is it? I mean, everybody smokes. It’s only natural. Anyway, if you don’t want them I could have them.’
Frances failed to see what was natural about it, but didn’t comment.
Her mother tried again. ‘Or there’s Robinson’s, where they make paper bags. You could work there, though the money ain’t as good as making cigarettes or cigars. How about Fry’s or Carson’s? You like chocolate, don’t you?’
Frances agreed that she did like chocolate.
‘And they give you free chocolates. Brown bags at the end of the week full of them that ain’t quite perfect.’
Neither are you, Frances thought to herself. More importantly, she wondered what had attracted her mother to the life she was living – and that man – Oswald.
‘It sounds nice.’
She had to admit even to herself that the prospect of getting free chocolates after the deprivations of the last few years was very attractive.
Mildred smiled. ‘Very nice. Lots of chocolates and a lot more money than you’re earning now. Tell you what,’ she said, leaning forward, her accent disappearing as her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘We could both work there. What do you think of that? Mother and daughter earning lots of money, living together and eating chocolates all day!’ She laughed. ‘Now wouldn’t that be nice?’
The apprehension Frances had felt lessened. Suddenly it no longer mattered that her mother was far from being the tragic widow desperate to make her own way in the world and come back for her abandoned child once she was rich and secure. The fact that she wanted them to be together more or less came down to the same thing, didn’t it? Being together made up for everything: her mother loved her.
‘It sounds a good idea but …’ Frances sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. She was thinking of what Uncle Stan would say. She was also thinking of little Charlie. She would miss him. So far, she hadn’t mentioned that she was having a baby. What would her mother say about that? she wondered.
‘You could visit your uncle and that lot any time you liked,’ her mother added, as if reading her thoughts. ‘You’d certainly have enough for the bus fare. After all, you’d be earning decent money,’ her mother hissed, keeping her voice down and leaning close so nobody else could hear. ‘It won’t be easy. Nobody said it would be, giving up your life with them that raised you, and leaving the lad, of course, but it won’t be easy for me either. This isn’t a bad job. But I’m willing to do it if it makes you happy.’
Her red lips broke into a smile as she laid her nicotine-stained fingers over her daughter’s hand. Her mother’s touch ignited an electric shock that ran all the way up Frances’s arm. It was accompanied by a great surge of emotion welling up inside her. Her mother really did want her with her. Why else would she be willing to leave her job on the buses to work in a chocolate factory with her?’
‘Tell you what,’ said her mother, leaning even closer. ‘How about we go out there now and take a look? Out to Somerdale.
It’s at a place called Keynsham and surrounded by green fields. Do you fancy that?’
Frances nodded fervently before wondering how they would get there.
‘It just so happens,’ whispered her mother, ‘that I’m on the Keynsham run! No need for a ticket. You just get on board and if an inspector does get on to check the tickets, I’ll tell him who you are. Anyway,’ she said with an airy uplifting of her chin. ‘I know Sid Chalmers. Me and him used to be close, once upon a time.’ Regret for what might have been flashed in her eyes then was gone. ‘Well? What do you reckon?’
Frances felt sick. This was not at all the woman she’d imagined her mother to be. That woman had gone away to make a fortune before claiming her. She had not expected her to be quite like this and hadn’t accounted for somebody like Oswald. How could she live with a man like that?
Her thoughts were in turmoil. A chasm a mile wide existed between them. The warmth of Uncle Stan and the bakery was calling her. She had to go back. She had to put her trust in him to assist her in her hour of need, and somehow she knew he would.
Mildred Baxter, who had once been Mrs Mildred Sweet, rubbed at the bruise on her cheekbone. A dash of powder and rouge had done wonders to hide it, but the soreness prevailed. Her mouth was set in a grimace until Frances turned and waved to her. Mildred waved back, her grimace widening into a smile.
‘See you soon, love,’ she called out.
The driver of the bus on which Mildred was the conductress had willingly dropped the girl off at the bus stop closest to Mrs Kepple’s boarding house. He grinned at Mildred knowingly and winked. Mildred winked back, signalling that it had been a free ride that might shortly get paid in kind. Sid Chalmers, the ticket inspector, hadn’t got on the bus this evening, so there’d been no need to explain to him that she had a daughter. Yet another man she’d had a physical liaison with. He had a wife. He would do what she wanted and keep his mouth shut.
Mildred was pleased with herself. She hummed a happy tune as she collected her stuff from the locker room and prepared to go home.
