“Aren’t we all? Do you know, this is the first time I’ve been to Blackpool. I’ve only ever been to the seaside at home, in the south of England.”
“Where are you from again? I feel as if I ought to know.”
“I grew up in Wells, in Somerset. We’re only twenty miles or so from Weston-super-Mare. Mother and Father and I used to go for a week every summer. It was lovely there, and the water was so warm. I can still remember how it felt.”
“It won’t be warm here, that I can tell you. We’ve some nice beaches near South Shields, but the water is always freezing. You’d best brace yourself before we go in.”
Rosie and Norma came running back a few minutes later, their goose-pimpled skin providing ample proof of the Irish Sea’s hardy charms, and hurriedly wrapped themselves in the linen towels Mr. Dunbar had provided. Rather than change straightaway, however, Norma perched on one corner of the blanket and declared her intention to have a “sunbath” before getting dressed again.
Rather than grumble at Norma, as Rosie was sure to do once she emerged from the changing tent, Charlotte beckoned Mabel to come with her for a swim. It was a long walk to the water, for the tide was only just beginning to come in, and as soon as she was ankle-deep in the sea she began to doubt whether she did want to swim after all. It really was every bit as cold as Mabel had said, so much so that her legs were numb before the water had even reached her waist.
“My goodness, Mabel, you were right about the water.”
“It will get better,” her friend promised. “Only give yourself a moment to get accustomed to it. You’re almost there—just crouch down and let it go over your shoulders. After that it’s lovely. Watch out for your spectacles, though.”
“Yes, of course. I ought to have taken them off, but then I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.”
Charlotte forced herself to go neck-deep, and once her teeth had stopped chattering and she could breathe properly again, she decided the water was actually refreshing, if quite bracing, and exactly what she needed after those long, dusty hours in the charabanc. It had been years since she had last gone swimming, and she didn’t trust herself to go out any farther, but fortunately it seemed that Mabel felt the same way. So they simply stood in the water, their feet only just touching bottom, and let the gentle waves of the incoming tide buffet them about. Before long, however, a wisp of cloud obscured the sun and they were instantly chilled to the marrow.
Once they’d waded out of the water, changed back into their street clothes, and rejoined the others, it was time for a picnic lunch. Janie had prepared sandwiches for everyone, and there were bottles of ginger beer and a basket of plums that Mabel had brought, and last of all Charlotte’s flask of hot, black tea to fortify them for the rest of the day. The sandwiches were sandy, the ginger beer was warm, and the tea was tannic by the time she took a sip, but all the same it was one of the nicest picnics Charlotte could remember.
“Where next?” she asked Norma.
“Let’s walk down to Pleasure Beach. It’s only a mile or so from here, and we can take the tram back when we’re finished.”
“But we’re at the beach now,” Charlotte protested.
“It’s not a beach, silly. It’s an amusement park. With rides and games and that sort of thing. You’ll like it, I promise.”
While Charlotte did very much enjoy the walk south along the Promenade, she realized soon after paying her sixpence admission to Pleasure Beach that she did not care for amusement parks at all. They were too crowded, too raucous, and far, far too noisy—so noisy that she soon felt a headache coming on.
While the others queued up to go on the flying machine, Charlotte found a seat on a nearby bench and drank the last of the tea, now quite cold, from her flask. It seemed to help a little, so much so that she felt able to brave the mysteries of the river caves, which promised a journey through exotic climes and darkest jungles, but in reality was a short journey in small boats through a dimly lit and quite obviously papier-mâchéd landscape.
She drew the line at riding on the Ferris wheel, slow though it was, and was relieved beyond measure when Norma declared it was time to catch the tram back into town. It was late afternoon when they landed back in the shadow of the Tower, nearly four o’clock, so they bought lemon ices and ate them under the shade of an open-sided gazebo on the Promenade.
“What does everyone want to do next?” Norma asked. “Do we want to visit the Tower? It’s sixpence entrance to the building and another sixpence for the lift to the top. There’s an aquarium and a menagerie, and there’s a greenhouse sort of garden, too.”
Charlotte would have been content to stroll farther north along the Promenade, but Mabel and Rosie were both in favor of the Tower, and not wishing to be a spoilsport, she followed her friends into the grand entrance hall, though she declined to purchase a ticket for the lift.
“I’ve never been one for heights, so I’ll stay here while you go up. I don’t mind—really I don’t.”
And she didn’t. It was nice to sit on a bench in the hall, in the shadow of an enormous potted palm, and think of all the lovely things she had done so far. When was the last time she’d had so much fun?
Had she ever spent an entire day having fun? She sifted through her memories, but couldn’t recall a single instance—not when she was at university, not when she was Lilly’s governess, not in all the years with Miss Rathbone, and certainly not during the war. There had been afternoons at the park, evenings out with friends, the occasional lazy hour or two reading a book that was entertaining rather than improving, but she’d never felt she could spend an entire day simply enjoying life.
She was thirty-three, and in the course of her adult life, she now realized, she had never, not ever, allowed herself an entire day of fun without being overcome by guilt or anxiety or the fear that there were worthier things to do. Having fun was for other people—people who had earned the right to be carefree.
Even as a child, she’d been set on proving her goodness to others, her parents in particular. Not because they didn’t love her, for their affection was abundant and genuine, but because she had always felt she needed to earn that love. In adopting her, they had taken an almost incalculable leap of faith. And so she had decided, when she was very young, that she would never give them cause to regret their decision. She would become the daughter they deserved.
Yet such strivings hadn’t made her a better person. In fact, they had done quite the opposite. Without ever meaning to do so, without really noticing, she had become—oh, the shame of it—she had become a bore. She was a high-minded, tedious, and entirely tiresome bore. “Saint Charlotte,” indeed.
She was so boring she couldn’t even follow her friends to the top of Blackpool Tower. They hadn’t asked her to climb the Matterhorn, only ride a lift with them to the top of a perfectly sturdy structure and enjoy the view. So what was stopping her from joining them?
Nothing.
Before she could change her mind, she paid the admission to the observation decks and joined the queue for the lifts. The ride to the top was slow and creaky and Charlotte’s knees were weak with nerves by the time the doors finally opened, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself out of the lift and onto the glassed-in expanse of the main platform.
There was no sign of her friends; they must have gone to one of the upper platforms. A short flight of steps led her to the first, which a sign told her was a full 390 feet from the ground, and there she found Mabel. Here it was open to the elements, with nothing but a high wrought-iron railing to keep her safe, and in the end she decided to leave a good five feet between herself and the edge of the platform.
“Mabel?”
“Charlotte! You changed your mind.”
“It seemed a shame to come all this way and not go up the Tower. Where are the others?”
“They went up to the higher decks. Do you want to join them?”
“No, thank you. I’m quite happy here.”
; “You don’t look it, I have to say. Can you see anything from where you are?”
“Oh, yes. The view is wonderful.”
“Let’s walk around the perimeter, shall we? If we walk to the southeast corner we can see Liverpool, even if you’re quite far from the railing.”
The view really was extraordinary. It seemed as if most of Lancashire, and a good deal of the Irish Sea, was spread out around them, with Liverpool a smoky blur in the distance. If a great city like that could be reduced to a smudge on the horizon, then what was she in comparison?
By the time Rosie and Norma rejoined them, she was feeling much steadier on her feet, though no more inclined to stand at the edge of the platform, not even when they pleaded with her to come to the rail so she might look down and see the town below.
“Thank you, but I had better not risk it. Not unless you wish to carry me back to the lift after I’ve fainted,” she joked.
It was nearly six o’clock by the time they returned to solid ground. For supper they had fish and chips, eaten straight from their newspaper wrapping, and then, with only a half hour remaining before the charabanc’s departure for home, they started back for the station.
Along the way they found a souvenir shop that was still open, and Charlotte spent the last of the money she’d set aside for the day on a clutch of postcards, sticks of Blackpool Rock for Meg and her colleagues at work, a little penny bank shaped like the Tower for Janie, and a set of antimacassars, embroidered with the inscription A Gift from Blackpool, for the Misses Macleod.
It had been a good day, the charabanc excepted, the sort of day that everyone needed from time to time. From now on, she resolved, she would try to remember that life could be more than work and study and serious-minded contemplation of society’s failings. She could know joy, and light, and relief from sadness.
She could have—she would have—another day in the sun.
Chapter 14
The nineteenth of July was as fine a day as anyone could have wished, dawning clear and bright, the sort of weather tailor-made for celebration. The tea party and games organized by the families of Huskisson Street to celebrate Peace Day weren’t especially grand, not when compared to the parades and victory tableaux and fireworks displays taking place in every corner of the Empire, but she liked them all the more for that.
Charlotte, like most people she knew, had nearly forgotten that the Armistice last November had been just that—a setting down of arms. The war itself had not ended until the twenty-eighth of June, when the Treaty of Versailles had been signed. A few days later, the king’s proclamation of peace, with its promise of a day of celebration on the nineteenth of July, had appeared in all the papers, and preparations had begun for parades and festivals and parties.
No one had questioned the rightness of such a thing, of marking the end of years of death and brutality and soul-searing loss with a tea party. There had been a solemn day of remembrance a fortnight before, and churches across the land had been packed to the rafters; surely that would have sufficed.
Yet today, standing in the glorious sunshine, the laughter of her neighbors’ children bright in her ears, Charlotte wondered if she had been wrong to disapprove. What harm could it do, after all? The cost to everyone had been minimal—no more than a few shillings for the food and a share of the cost of the prizes. Charlotte could well afford it, as could most of the people around her. No one here was rich, and many families on the street had been driven to take in boarders to make ends meet, but all had enough to eat, had decent clothes to wear, and had sturdy shoes upon their feet. Riches, indeed, compared to many.
Every last table and chair in every house had been dragged into the street, which had first been swept and scrubbed so thoroughly that the cobbles fairly sparkled in the morning sun. Overhead, garlands of Union flag pennants crisscrossed the street, while white bunting softened the stone lintels of the houses’ front doors and windows.
The tables, which stretched almost the entire block between Bedford and Sandon Streets, were covered with a draper’s worth of tablecloths and bedsheets. Little could be seen of the tabletops themselves, so stacked were they with plate after plate of sandwiches, buns, biscuits, dainties, and, towering above all, the bright-hued blooms of larkspur, foxglove, and gladioli from the street’s tiny back gardens. With sugar and butter still rationed, every house on the street had been saving up for a fortnight, and the results were impressive indeed.
Any stranger wandering into their midst would have thought it was May Day, for the women and girls were arrayed in their Sunday whites, the men wore their best suits, and the boys, still stinging from the Lifebuoy soap with which they’d been scrubbed, scowled and squirmed as their hair was smoothed and their collars were straightened.
The clock at St. Luke’s a half mile away chimed the hour, eleven o’clock, and all fell silent. Philip Storey, a dentist who lived at number forty-nine, climbed upon a chair and began to speak. His only son had been killed at the Battle of Jutland.
“Neighbors and friends: today is Peace Day, and with it the end of the war. It’s a war that has cost us dearly. So dearly . . .” At this he looked to his wife, who nodded and tried to smile.
“But they are losses we are proud to bear, for we know they are shared. Let us pray, now, for our glorious dead, for our brave men who have returned to us, for our country and Empire, and for His Majesty the King.”
As soon as Mr. Storey had clambered down from his perch, he was replaced by Huw Williams, a retired actuary who lived across the street from the Misses Macleod. Welsh by name but not by birth, being a Liverpudlian down to his shoelaces, he nonetheless had a beautiful tenor voice and was the mainstay of the choir at the Methodist church on Princes Road.
Mr. Williams extracted a pitch pipe from his waistcoat pocket, sounded a note, and then, his arms beckoning everyone to join in, he began to sing the national anthem:
“God save our gracious King,
God save our noble King,
God save the King.
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to rule over us,
God save the King!”
With formalities observed, it was time for the party proper to begin. The children were led to their seats at the long table, and soon were tucking into their sandwiches with the single-minded attention reserved for those occasions when sweets were promised at the end of a meal. Cakes and biscuits devoured, hands and faces wiped, they were shooed away so the table might be refreshed with fare for the men of the street: sandwiches again, but filled with gammon rather than egg salad, and with mugs of ale instead of the sweet, milky tea that had been given to the children.
Only when the men had eaten and the table had been cleared and set for a third time did the women sit down to eat. There was a practical reason for this, Charlotte knew, for it was the women who had cooked and prepared the food, and they had been needed during the children’s and men’s meals to fetch and carry. Yet it stung her, as quick and sharp as a wasp, to be last once again.
Women always put themselves last. Either it was the mothers she visited in the slums of Scottie Road who only ate after their husbands and children had had their fill, or it was the women from Huskisson Street who, after cleaning and cooking for days, were left with the rag end of the delicacies, with scarcely a slice of cake to share between them.
The men were called upon at last, given the task of clearing away the tables and chairs, and then it was time for the children’s games: bobbing for apples, hopscotch, and a hard-fought tug-of-war between the north and south sides of the street. Last of all were the footraces: a hundred-yard dash for the boys and men, and a fifty-yard egg-and-spoon race for the girls. The prize for each was a commemorative mug presented by Britannia, known on common days as Mrs. Tomlinson from number forty-four, and dressed for the occasion in white robes and a coronet of aspidistra leaves.
A trill of too-loud laughter landed in a rare moment of calm, catching Cha
rlotte’s attention. She turned her head, though she already knew its author. It was Norma, once again dressed inappropriately for the occasion, once again drawing attention to herself at the most inopportune moment.
Charlotte wore her best summer frock, the same one she had worn for Lilly’s wedding, and most of the other women at the party were dressed in a similar manner. The older ladies, the Misses Macleod among them, wore rather more old-fashioned frocks, with hemlines that grazed their ankles, but the younger women—Charlotte didn’t feel especially young, but she still counted herself among them—sported hemlines that were a few inches higher.
Norma’s dress, by contrast, stopped just south of her knees, was constructed of an alarmingly lightweight artificial silk, was an eye-watering shade of pink, and had a neckline that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She wore no hat, only a diamanté clip in her chin-length hair, and her legs were bare.
How had she failed to notice what Norma was wearing? Her housemate had been dressed in a perfectly inoffensive outfit at the beginning of the day, at least as far as Charlotte could recall. But it had been so busy since then, with all of them fetching and serving the food, and in all those hours she hadn’t spared a single thought for the girl.
If Rosie had been at the party she surely would have noticed, but she was at work, having volunteered so another nurse could spend the day with her sweetheart. Charlotte alone would have to manage this.
There was nothing for it but to approach Norma and see if she could be coaxed back inside. It wouldn’t be easy, for the girl was perched on a table and was surrounded by at least a half-dozen young men, some of whom Charlotte recognized as boarders in the street’s larger houses. She was sipping from a half-pint of ale, her lipstick leaving a garish crescent upon the glass, and a smoldering cigarette dangled from her other hand, though Charlotte had never before known her to smoke.
“Hello, Norma,” she said in as friendly a tone as she could conjure. “I was wondering if you might help me with the clearing-up. I know the Misses Macleod would be very grateful.”
After the War Is Over: A Novel Page 12
