by Pam Weaver
‘Forgive me,’ he smiled pleasantly. ‘I only ask because I can see you look concerned. I don’t normally approach young women like this.’
Bonnie began to tremble. Oh, where are you, George …
‘Could I perhaps offer you a cup of tea in the tea bar?’ He was very persistent but that was what the News of the World said they were like. Men like him duped girls into going with them and corrupted them into a life of prostitution.
She shook her head. Even though she was tired and sorely tempted, Bonnie didn’t go with him. She had seen the man watching her from behind a pillar for some time and she didn’t like it. She picked up her suitcase and walked towards the newspaper vendor to buy a paper.
Eventually she stopped a passing policeman and after explaining that she had missed her friend, he at first directed her, then, having heard her story about the man who kept pestering her, decided to walk with her to a small hotel just around the corner. Bonnie booked a room for the night. It wasn’t until she got undressed that she realised that the locket George had given her was no longer around her neck. Her stomach fell away. Where had she lost it? Had it come off when she was in that horrible factory? What a ghastly day it had been. Everything was going wrong. Bonnie climbed into bed and cried herself to sleep.
Two
Bonnie woke with a start. She heard footsteps outside her door and someone was banging a gong downstairs. It took a couple of seconds to realise where she was. She glanced at the clock on the top of the dresser: 7.30. When she’d arrived here ten days ago, the receptionist had told her breakfast was between 7.30 and 8.15 and she knew she couldn’t afford to miss it. Her meagre wage packet and holiday money wouldn’t keep her much longer. She had fallen into a pattern of eating as much as she could in the morning and making do with a tuppenny bag of chips and a cup of tea at lunchtime. It was all she could afford.
George had never shown up. Bonnie couldn’t understand why. Something must have happened to him. Was he ill? Had he had an accident? He wouldn’t have deserted her; he wouldn’t. Every night she worried about him and cried herself to sleep. The obvious thing was to go back to Worthing, but what if he’d just been delayed for some reason and she missed him? Bonnie had gone over and over what he’d told her, and their plans together. Everything was crystal clear in her mind – so why wasn’t he here?
As soon as the footsteps had gone she nipped across the hallway to the bathroom and gave herself a quick wash. She was dressed and downstairs by eight.
The dining room looked rather tired. It was wallpapered but, probably because it was so hard to find several rolls of the same wallpaper, it was a mish-mash of non-complementary paper, giving the room a rather confused look. The only empty table was next to the kitchen door and Bonnie preferred to keep herself to herself.
‘Here we are, dear,’ said the waitress as she put a pot of tea and some hot water on the table. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Bonnie poured herself a cup of tea and when she was sure no one was looking, she palmed a couple of slices of bread into her handbag for later. The waitress came back and plonked a plate in front of her. Bonnie stared at the greasy pile and her stomach churned. She tried to force it down but even before she’d left the room she was feeling decidedly unwell. She wasn’t used to big fry-ups in the morning and right now it was the last thing she wanted to eat.
Every morning as they left the dining room the guests were told they had to leave their rooms by 10am and that they couldn’t return before 2pm in order to facilitate the cleaning. Dinner was at 6pm sharp. Having forced down as much of the greasy breakfast as she could manage, Bonnie booked herself in for one more night. George was bound to turn up at the station tonight. He wouldn’t let her down. Would he?
As usual, her first port of call was Victoria station where she enquired if anyone had left a message for her. It didn’t sound right for a respectable young woman to be chasing a man so she pretended she was married. ‘I was supposed to be meeting my husband,’ she told the station master. ‘Mr George Matthews.’ The station master shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’ She was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps it was time to accept the fact that George wasn’t coming. She didn’t want to think of a reason why he wasn’t coming and she really couldn’t go back to Worthing, so she’d have to make another plan. She was positive that George wouldn’t have let her down if he could help it. He wasn’t that sort of man. He loved her. He wanted their baby as much as she did. True, the baby wasn’t planned, but George was fine about it. She remembered the moment he’d given her the locket.
‘One day we shall put a picture of our baby in it,’ he’d smiled.
Tears pricked her eyes but she wouldn’t give way to them. What good would that do? The obvious thing was to find Honeypot Lane and the job George had lined up for her; but then another thought crossed her mind. If he had let her down, then perhaps the job in Stanmore didn’t exist either. She hated herself for thinking like this, but should she risk going all that way and using some of her precious resources for nothing? She had to be practical, didn’t she? Her stomach churned. She didn’t want to be practical. She wanted George.
Once Bonnie had lost her fight to keep her breakfast down, she decided to set off to find a job of her own. She remembered that when she’d scanned the evening paper she bought on that first night, she’d come across an advertisement for an employment agency. She had left the newspaper on her chest of drawers and whoever cleaned her room had never moved it. Bonnie now made a careful note of the address.
The offices of the London and County Domestic Employment Agency left much to be desired but it was very close to the station. From the roadside, she could hear the trains thundering in and out. The façade of the building was grimy with soot and, walking up the stone steps and wandering through the open door, she noticed that the walls themselves were still pockmarked with bomb damage. The paintwork was badly in need of a new coat and the colour scheme in the hallway, dark brown and cream, was from a bygone era. Clearly Harold Macmillan and his Ministry of Housing and Local Government hadn’t got this far yet. When she took her hand from the guardrail even her glove was covered in smut. Should she go in? What if they asked too many questions? How much should she tell them? After twenty minutes of pacing up and down the street, Bonnie climbed the outer steps.
The London and County was three doors along a dingy corridor. As she knocked and walked in, a middle-aged woman with tightly permed hair and wearing some very fashionable glasses looked up from her typewriter. Bonnie introduced herself stiffly and handed over her references.
‘Do take a seat, Miss Rogers,’ said the woman, indicating some chairs behind her. ‘I shall tell Mrs Smythe that you are here.’
Taking Bonnie’s references with her, she stepped towards a glass-fronted door to her left and knocked. A distant voice called and the woman walked in and closed the door behind her.
Bonnie looked at herself in the wall mirror, glad that she had stopped crying. If she’d turned up with red eyes and a blotchy face, it wouldn’t have helped her cause. She looked smart. Her hat, a new one she’d bought from Hubbard’s using the staff discount, suited her. It was a navy, close-fitting baker boy beret, which she wore slightly to the left of her head. Her hair had a side parting with a deep wave on the right side of her face and was curled under on her shoulders. To set off her outfit, Bonnie always carried a navy pencil-slim umbrella. She liked being smart. One of Miss Reeves’s little remarks came back to mind. ‘Smartness equals efficiency; efficiency equals acceptance; and acceptance means respect.’
She unbuttoned her coat to reveal her dark blue suit with the cameo brooch George had given her pinned on the lapel. It wasonly from Woolworth’s, she knew that, but it looked very pretty, especially next to her crisp white blouse. She absentmindedly smoothed her stomach and pulled down her skirt to get rid of the creases. Thank goodness the baby didn’t show yet. Turning towards the chairs, Bonnie had a choice of three, one with a soft sagg
ing cushion, a high backed leather chair and a wooden chair with a padded seat. Lowering herself carefully onto the wooden chair, Bonnie placed her matching navy handbag on her knees, checked that her black court shoes still looked highly polished, and waited anxiously.
Presently, the secretary came back with a tall languid-looking woman in a tweed skirt and white blouse. She introduced herself as Mrs Smythe and invited Bonnie to step into her office.
Mrs Smythe, as would be expected of the owner of a highly respected agency, had a cut-glass English accent. She had a round face with a downy complexion and wore no make-up apart from a bright red gash of lipstick. The woman examined Bonnie’s references carefully. ‘These are excellent, Miss Rogers,’ she said eventually. ‘But shop work is very different from working in the domestic setting.’
‘I want to train as a nursery nurse,’ said Bonnie, ‘but I am not quite experienced enough to be accepted. However, I am a hard worker and I am willing to learn.’
‘When did you cease your last employment?’
‘Just over a week ago.’
‘May I ask, why did you leave Hubbard’s?’ Mrs Smythe was going back through her papers again.
‘Personal reasons.’
Mrs Smythe looked up sharply. Bonnie held her eye with a steady unyielding gaze and didn’t elaborate.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Smythe, clearly not seeing at all. She waited, obviously hoping that Bonnie might explain, but how could she? Bonnie’s heart thumped in her chest. Mrs Smythe wouldn’t even consider offering Bonnie employment if she knew the truth.
Bonnie cleared her throat. ‘It has absolutely no bearing on my ability to work with children.’
Mrs Smythe stood up and went to the filing cabinet. ‘What sort of post were you looking for?’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Bonnie, swallowing hard. ‘Anything at all.’
‘Here in London,’ Mrs Smythe probed, ‘or further afield?’
‘Really,’ Bonnie insisted, ‘I have no preference.’ Why should she care where she lived? Without George, what did it matter?
Mrs Smythe hesitated for a second before taking a yellow folder from the drawer. ‘Tell me, Miss Rogers, would you be willing to travel abroad?’
Bonnie blinked. It took a second or two to let the idea sink in. ‘Abroad?’
Could she really go abroad without George to lead the way? Rationing was still being enforced in Britain but in other parts of the world they said people had plenty of everything. She tried to imagine herself as nanny to an Italian prince, or an American film star or perhaps nanny to the child of someone in the diplomatic service. ‘Abroad,’ she said again, this time with more than a hint of interest in her voice. Yes … abroad would be exciting. ‘Yes, I might consider that.’
Mrs Smythe laid the yellow folder on her desk. ‘I have a post here for Africa.’
Africa! Bonnie was startled. This was too much of a coincidence. The very continent where she and George had been planning to set up a new life and here was Mrs Smythe offering Bonnie a post there.
‘Kenya,’ Mrs Smythe went on.
Bonnie relaxed into her chair. Not South Africa but Kenya. Yet somehow it sounded just as wonderful. Kenya. She’d heard that it was a beautiful place. Didn’t they grow tea and coffee for export and exotic things like ginger, and sugar cane, and pineapples? What would it be like to eat food like that every day!
Mrs Smythe was refreshing her memory by reading the papers in the yellow folder. ‘I’m instructed to send you by taxi to meet the grandmother.’
Silently, Bonnie took a deep breath. They must be very rich. She’d never ridden in a taxi before.
‘In actual fact,’ Mrs Smythe went on, ‘the family are already out there. You would be required to escort their son from this country to his father’s house in Kenya. Do you think you could undertake that, Miss Rogers?’
Don’t be ridiculous, Bonnie told herself. How can you possibly go all that way on your own? You’ve no experience of being abroad. You’ve never even been as far as London before. And what about the baby? How on earth would you manage with a baby out in the wilds of Africa? But her mouth said something totally different.
‘Oh yes,’ said Bonnie, ‘I’m sure I could.’
‘Any news, dear?’
Elsie Dawson poked her head over the back wall that divided their houses. Grace took the peg out of her mouth and shook her head. Though the sun was weak at this time of year, it was a fine morning and she had decided to peg out some washing. At least hanging it for a while in the fresh air made it smell sweeter. Grace was glad she lived across the road and away from the railway line. Poor old Alice Chamberlain who used to live opposite was always complaining that she could never hang her stuff outside. The trains roaring by every few minutes left sooty deposits on everything.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
Grace knew Elsie was fishing for more information but there was nothing to say. Her daughter had upped and left without so much as a by-your-leave. ‘Nothing, thank you Elsie, but thanks for the offer. Pop round for a cup of tea, if you’ve got a minute.’ Grace smiled to herself. Elsie wasn’t likely to turn down that sort of invitation. She’d be round like a shot.
There was a bang on the front door. Grace threw a tea towel back into the washing basket and hurried indoors. Manny Hart was walking away as she opened it.
He turned around with a sheepish look on his face and raised his hat. ‘Oh, I thought you’d be out,’ he said carefully.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
He looked down and, following his gaze, she saw a newspaper parcel on the doorstep. ‘Just a couple of eggs I thought you might like,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Manny,’ she said, bending to pick them up, ‘it’s kind of you.’
‘I’m really sorry about the other day, Grace,’ said Manny. ‘I would have let you through but those men from the government …’
Grace put up her hand to stop him. ‘I probably couldn’t have stopped her anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s a big train and she wouldn’t have been looking out for me, would she? It would have taken me ages to run the length of the train as far as the engine.’
In the long night hours which had passed since Bonnie left, Grace had gone over every last detail of that day. At the time it had felt as if everything and everybody had conspired against her: missing the bus, Manny refusing to let her go without a platform ticket, Peggy being so slow to give her a penny, the machine deciding to hiccup at that very moment … But now, thinking more rationally about it, if her daughter had made up her mind to go, nobody could have stopped her. That was the rational thought, but her heart ached something rotten.
Elsie, her hair still in curlers under her headscarf, came out of her front door and followed Manny and Grace inside.
Grace Rogers always had an open house. Her neighbours knew that no matter what (and they didn’t need to be asked), they could go round to her place and she’d have the kettle on. All through the war, she’d seen them through the dreaded telegrams from the war office, the birth of a baby and the joy of a wedding.
Grace had also set up a couple of small agencies, one for people caring for their long-term sick relatives and the other forcleaners. For a small joining fee, the women she knew were reliable, could do a couple of hours’ sitting with the sick person or a couple of hours’ housework. The recipient paid a slightly larger fee to join and got some much needed free time. Elsie had used the service a couple of times.
‘How’s Harry today?’ Grace asked as she busied herself with the tea things.
‘So-so,’ said Elsie patting her scarf and pulling it forward so that her curlers were hidden. Her husband had survived the war but he wasn’t the same man. Once the life and soul of any party, now Harry struggled with depression. In fact, Elsie had a hard job judging his mood swings. When he felt really bad, he would spend more time by the pier staring out to sea. With the onset of winter Elsie was always afraid he’d catch his de
ath of cold.
‘I see someone has taken over the corner shop,’ said Elsie deliberately changing the subject. Grace vaguely remembered a good-looking man watching her as she flew down the middle of the street the night Bonnie left. ‘He’s a furniture restorer,’ Elsie wenton.
‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much call for that sort of thing around here,’ Grace remarked. She pushed two cups of hot dark tea in front of her guests and sat down in the chair opposite.
‘I have met him,’ said Manny. ‘Apparently he works on commissions.’ He looked up and noticed the quizzical look the two women were giving him and added, ‘He is a nice man. He gets on the train to Aroundel sometimes.’
‘It’s Arundel,’ Grace corrected with a grin.
‘Lives on his own?’ said Elsie. She was trying to appear nonchal-ant but it was obvious she was dying to know. Grace suppressed another smile.
‘That is correct,’ Manny nodded. ‘He fought at El Alamein with Field Marshal Monty and came back to find his wife shacked up with a Frenchy.’
Grace and Elsie shook their heads sympathetically. The war had a lot to answer for. It wasn’t only the bombs and concentration camps that had changed people’s lives. The French Canadians were billeted all over the town. On the whole, they were ordinary young men, three thousand miles away from all that was familiar and, as time went on, frustration set in. They had joined up to fight the Nazis, not to put up barbed wire on the beaches in an English seaside resort. As a result, their behaviour deteriorated and Saturday nights were peppered with drunken brawls in the town. Rumours circulated, although the story always came via a friend who knew a friend of a friend … When the war ended, a lot of ordinary people were left with very complicated lives.
