Her Ladyship's Girl

by Anwyn Moyle

  Take me now, take me now

  for to face the Summerlands

  By the earth and wind and the fire and rain

  I’m on my way, remember me.

  We went back to the house afterwards and I stayed overnight with my brother and sisters and Walter’s family and my children and the house was full of little voices and laughter like it used to be when we were young. I’m sure my mother would have liked that. Gwyneth was a qualified nurse now and living in Cardiff and Bronwyn was a teacher and the only one left living in the house, now that mother was gone. They were all talking about leaving Wales for the big new world out there, now that our parents were dead. The house was owned by the government after nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947 and was now classed as a council house and would have to be handed back if Bronwyn left. We drank some beer that night and sang some songs and remembered our childhood, and the ghosts of those ragged children stood outside on the dark street and looked in through the warm windows.

  The next day I left the kids in Bronwyn’s care and drove out to Monica Reynolds’s house. I pulled up in the gravelled driveway that I’d trudged along when I was fifteen with the green hat in my hand – nearly twenty years ago. I climbed the six redbrick steps to the front door, which was painted navy-blue now and not green, like the first time I saw it. I knocked and waited, half expecting Monica to come sashaying out, smoking a cigarette in a long black holder and sipping a Martini, wearing a backless Madeleine Vionnet dress and smiling with those big white teeth of hers. ‘What’s up, honey?’ I could hear the words, drifting down the years. But the door was opened by a dour-looking woman about my age with straight black hair and wearing a rather plain land-girl dress.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I was looking for Monica.’

  ‘Monica?’

  ‘Mrs Reynolds.’

  She didn’t seem to know who I was talking about.

  ‘She’s American, married to Arthur Reynolds, coal exporter?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you.’

  I started to walk back to the car.

  ‘You could ask at the estate agents in Maesteg. We bought this house from Mr Williams. Maybe they could . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’

  What was the point? She wasn’t here and I had to get back to London. And, anyway, she’d be sixty now, if she was still alive. I asked my sisters and brother about Monica Reynolds, but they didn’t know anything about her – except that she came to our house one snowy night when my foot was in a bad way and she sat on my bed. But they never saw her again after that, or knew where she went – back to America probably.

  Probably.

  Next morning we said our goodbyes and I drove back to London with the children.

  I was really interested in these new coin-operated washing shops. One of them had opened up at Queensway in Bayswater and I went along to take a look. It was called a launderette. It had six coin-operated washing machines and four coin-operated dryers. There was one person manning the place, to provide advice on how to use the machines and change for the customers. They didn’t offer an ironing service, just washing and drying, and this was where I had an advantage – the personal touch, which was lacking in this place. I talked to the woman who was manning the Queensway launderette, but she didn’t know much about the business side of things. She was just employed by the absent owners. So I set about investigating. There were two ways it could be done. I could lease the machines on a franchise for a five-year period, with a six-month deposit payable in advance – there would also be the expense of refurbishing the shop, installing flues and air vents and new power sockets and an extractor to remove excess water. The owners would be responsible for the maintenance of the machines and I’d get a percentage of the profits for running the place. The other option was to fit out my own launderette, which I preferred to do – but I’d need new premises and the machines were way out of my price range. With renting or a franchise, I’d be going back to working for someone else and I’d had enough of that in my life. If I was going to be a skivvy, I’d be my own skivvy and not someone else’s.

  But there wasn’t any way I could get enough money for new premises and the machines and refurbishment I needed. Alan would be no help; he was still losing all his money, even with the winners I picked out for him. But I knew I’d have to act fast. The launderette business was about to boom and I wanted to get in on the ground floor and not be left behind.

  Then Alan was killed in a road accident.

  It was January 1953 and he was driving in the Covent Garden area of the city. A double-decker bus driver lost control of his vehicle and rammed into Alan’s car, driving him towards the pavement and pinning him against a telegraph pole. He died instantly.

  Alan’s mother and sister organised a requiem mass for him at Clerkenwell’s Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul and he was buried at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground. The funeral was well-attended and there were several shady-looking characters present, who backed away from me and gave me the evil eye. The children came with me and we threw flowers into the grave. Despite his shortcomings in the husband and father department, we were genuinely sorry to see him go, especially in the way he did. He was only fifty.

  About a month later, I received a letter from a firm of solicitors in Stephyns Chambers, Chancery Lane, asking me if I could come in for a meeting. I thought it must be something to do with money Alan owed, but how could I be held responsible for that? I went along while the children were at school and was shown into an office where a tall, beak-faced man was sitting behind a large mahogany desk. He stood up and shook my hand.

  ‘Mrs Lane, how good of you to come in. Please, take a seat.’

  I sat down, worried about whatever it was he wanted to see me about.

  ‘We are acting solicitors for Mr Lane.’

  ‘My husband?’

  ‘Mr Joshua Lane, your late husband’s father.’

  He shuffled some papers on his desk and adjusted his spectacles.

  ‘With the sad demise of your husband, the inheritance from his father’s last will and testament passes to you.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘Yes, you.’

  ‘What about his mother and sister?’

  ‘They have independent incomes from the estate. Mr Lane junior’s inheritance passes to his next of kin, which is you, Mrs Lane.’

  He explained that the terms of the will ensured that Alan could only take his inheritance as a monthly allowance and not as a lump sum. On his death, however, those terms altered and I could either continue to receive the monthly allowance or take the entire amount of the legacy.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘The monthly allowance is, at present, fifty pounds.’

  ‘How much is the lump sum?’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand pounds.’

  It was a fortune!

  ‘I’ll take it all.’

  Thank you.

  I skipped out of the solicitor’s office in Chancery Lane and did mental somersaults along the street. I was rich! My skivvying days were over. I could get a new premises and kit it all out as a proper launderette and let the people do their own washing and drying and I’d pay someone to do the ironing. I’d be a lady of leisure at last, like Miranda Bouchard and Monica Reynolds and all the others I’d slaved for over the years. I opened a business bank account and employed an accountant to look after all the paperwork. The children and I moved into a three-bedroom house in Holborn, like the ones I used to clean a few years earlier. I opened my first Wash ’n’ Dry shop in Ilford Street in July 1953 and I sold my old Vauxhall Velox and bought a brand-new Humber Hawk.

  But there was still one other thing I had to do.

  I drove along the quiet street in Hampstead until I came to the house. I got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Mr Ayres didn’t answer it this time, but another, younger butler. And he wasn’t wearing the usual butler’s at
tire, just an informal-looking suit.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Lane. I’d like to see Mr Harding.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure he’ll see me. Tell him it’s Anwyn.’

  I looked down the flight of stone steps behind the black railings that led down to the basement at the side of the house. And I remembered coming here on that first day I arrived in London with all my naive hopes and expectations. The butler came back.

  ‘Follow me.’

  I didn’t need to follow him. I knew every inch of this house, from top to bottom. He showed me into the library and I ran my fingers across the leather bindings while I waited. They were still there, the books on history and politics and exotic places around the world, the books about philosophy and gold mining, the memoirs and encyclopaedias and novels and volumes of poetry. I was still in love with this room. The dark reddish stain on the bookcase hadn’t come back – or maybe it had and been removed again several times since I came to clean it.

  I turned and he was there.

  ‘Do you remember, Anwyn?’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  He came closer, until I could feel his breath on my face, smell the scent of sage and cedarwood. I took an envelope out of my pocket.

  ‘I’ve come to return the money you loaned me.’

  ‘Can you afford it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took the envelope and put it into his pocket, without counting the money, then he went over to the library door and looked back at me.

  ‘Should I lock the door, Anwyn?’

  ‘In case someone should come in?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  I nodded my head. My legs felt a little trembly as he turned the key in the lock and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he came back across the room – slowly, deliberately – smiling with the same straight teeth and seductive scent and the words that were blown like kisses. And I felt like I was beautiful and glamorous and drinking from a stemmed glass with a green berry and smoking a cigarette from a long black holder and he was seduced by the situation – entranced by my aura – overcome by my all-pervading presence. Then his hands cupped my face, gently, caressingly. His green eyes looked deep into mine, and mine looked back and into his soul. His lips were as gentle as before, barely touching mine, brushing mine, while his right hand moved slowly down my body to my breast. His left hand moved to the nape of my neck and then down along my spine to my waist. I whispered something he didn’t understand and had no need to – words that meant the same thing in any language.

  William Harding was in his mid-fifties now, but he still had a powerful presence and I wanted him to know me, who I had become – better than all the others. He made me feel those emotions again that I’d felt for the first time back then in this library. I felt alive – really alive, not just going through the motions. I felt eternal – part of everything, here in the library again with him.

  He was less of a man than before – slighter, and without the light that shone from his eyes back then. He seemed to be carrying some sorrow and I knew it was for the loss of Miranda Bouchard. But he was still more of a man than any other I’d met and I was now a real woman. Not a fragile, incomplete avatar of someone I once was, but a woman with a more profound identity, with a soul that any man could float away on. A woman who needed no man to make her complete.

  Despite the years, there was still something about him, not just the charisma or style or charm or the scent of sage and cedarwood – something else. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly but he had it and I wanted it. Or maybe it was just my fantasy and there really was nothing for him to give – nothing of him to give. Just something in my mind, what I wanted him to be. Was he nothing and was I something? What could there be between us, apart from a memory? I tried to tell myself that, not to be stupid, to push him away and remind him he was married. But I couldn’t. I wanted to be here with him because there was nowhere else worth being right then. I knew of his erstwhile reputation – the old rumours. But there had to be more to a man than his reputation – maybe he didn’t even know what he was himself any more. And that didn’t make it any less there. The thing about him.

  He moved his left hand inside my blouse and across my bare back. I closed my eyes. He kept speaking all the time as if to reassure me and his voice was like velvet as he lowered me down to the carpeted floor. This time there was no apprehension. I wasn’t drowning in expectation and my breath didn’t come in short gasps and my voice sounded calm and self-assured.

  It was growing dark in the library as the evening closed in and William Harding removed my clothes and I removed his. No sounds came from outside the locked door – it was as if there was nobody else in the whole house except the two of us. His hands retraced the patterns they’d made before and his body seemed to know mine from the first time they’d met. All thoughts of who we once were flowed away on the tide of sensuality that washed over us – embraced us – in its egalitarian grip. And, when it was over, he rose and lit a cigarette and poured two glasses of sherry from a decanter on the table. We sat opposite each other in the high-backed, studded leather chairs and sipped the sherry without speaking for a long while.

  Then he asked me how my little shop was doing and I told him about Alan being killed and me inheriting his money and how I’d opened my first launderette.

  ‘First?’

  ‘Yes. I want to own a chain of them.’

  ‘How ambitious.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be ambitious? It’s not the preserve of the rich and titled any more, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  He leaned over to pour more sherry, but I placed my hand over my glass.

  ‘I’m driving.’

  Then I stood up and we shook hands. He gave me the key and I walked to the door. I turned and took a last look back – at a man who represented so much to me once, but who now looked rather forlorn. Like his world that was fading into the past.

  I unlocked the door and stepped out into the future.

  I never saw William Harding again.

  Epilogue

  The Wash ’n’ Drys went from strength to strength in the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s. I opened a chain of eight launderettes all around London and I worked in the business doing service washes and ironing, even though I said I wouldn’t and I’d let someone else do the slogging. I suppose I was never cut out to be a lady of leisure. My children grew up and went to college and I found myself alone again. I still limped badly and the girls in the shops called me Limp Along Leslie after the character in the Wizard comics who had one leg longer than the other. I didn’t mind, they didn’t mean it in a nasty way – more a term of endearment. And I had many a nickname for the people I’d come into contact with over the years.

  One of the launderettes was next to an Italian restaurant in Islington and, whenever I went up there, the Italian owner would pester me to go out with him. He’d sometimes sneak up behind me and put his arms round my waist – and that was all right until once when I was standing there daydreaming and he did it and, for a split second, I thought I was back in Finsbury and it was Alan. So I reached back and grabbed him by the goolies and he howled his head off. He left me alone after that.

  I was what they called a wealthy widow and still only forty-two in 1960 and many’s the man who tried his luck with me and got nowhere. I was spoiled for them all by the two men who influenced me most – Alan Lane, who made my life a misery, but who gave me my beautiful children and then left me everything I needed to achieve my goals. Ironic, eh? And William Harding, who introduced me to a deeper passion and knowledge of who I was capable of being – until I realised that it wasn’t him at all. He was the catalyst, but ultimately he was an ineffectual man and the true measure of me lay within myself. Both these men contributed in their own very different ways to the woman I had become. Maybe if I’d met another man who was truly genuine, h
e might have changed me again. But I didn’t. They were all just cyphers with no substance. So I stayed on my own.

  My sister Gwyneth emigrated to Australia in the 1960s and my brother Walter went to Canada. Bronwyn continued to teach in Maesteg and live in our house in Llangynwyd until she got married to an Irishman and moved to County Cork with him. The house went back to the council and I don’t know if it’s still there or if it’s been demolished to make way for modernity. I never went back to Wales because there was nothing there for me any more. The rest of my life was pretty uneventful. My daughter Charlotte went to university and became a doctor of some ology or other. She lives in America and has grandchildren now.

  I went to that estate agents in Maesteg some years later and found out that Monica Reynolds divorced her husband Arthur and went back to America. She lived in New Jersey until she died at the age of eighty. On a visit to Charlotte and her family in 1979, I took a trip down to Philadelphia and found her burial place in a memorial garden. It had a headstone with the simple inscription: Thank God I wasn’t sober when I died.

  And I smiled. It was Monica.

  Daniel joined the army in 1961 and he was killed in a helicopter crash three years later. He was buried with full military honours and the army gave me a medal to commemorate him and I always keep it close to me, wherever I go. When I die, I want it to be buried with me. Estelle went into the music business and I hardly knew where she was half the time. She moved to Australia in 1972 and she lives close to my sister Gwyneth out there. They’ve asked me to come live with them in New South Wales, would you believe? But I don’t want to live in old South Wales, so why would I want to live in New South Wales?