by Maggie Ford
This year her mother would probably spend the day remembering and audibly mourning her husband. And although, with three of them working and Julia herself bringing in a little money from her own endeavours, they were by no means destitute, Christmas dinner wouldn’t be anywhere near as fine as once it had been. And nor would the company.
James was planning to spend most of the day with a friend who just happened to have an attractive sister, and might be eating at their house. Stephanie too had said that she would be going out in the afternoon and might not be home until the early hours. That left Julia, Ginny and their mother to spend the rest of the day together. It would be very different from last year, with the family apparently split apart.
Julia didn’t mind the loss of Stephanie. There had been a sullen and strained atmosphere for weeks between her and her sisters, with Stephanie dropping hurtful remarks that left Ginny feeling uncomfortable.
‘I only said I’d model for you to make you feel happier,’ she said to Julia.
‘If you don’t want to do it, I’ll understand,’ Julia told her but Stephanie’s attitude had made Ginny all the more determined.
‘I do want to! Otherwise I’ll have her putting on her airs and graces and looking down her nose at me as not being up to it. In truth I’m relieved that she won’t be here for most of Christmas Day. I can do without her!’
Julia was inclined to agree. She was glad though that Ginny would be staying loyally at home for the whole day. On a whim she’d invited Simon to come for dinner. Now she wondered if that had been the right thing to do. Stephanie was sure to be awkward and she didn’t relish her sniffing and huffing at the table and ignoring him. It was just as well Stephanie wouldn’t be there the whole afternoon.
Simon had seemed reluctant at first to accept her invitation. ‘I can hardly intrude on your family,’ he’d argued. ‘They wouldn’t relish a stranger at their Christmas dinner.’
‘You’re not a stranger.’
‘Not to you but I am to them, virtually. Better I don’t come.’
‘I’ll be the best judge of that,’ she had retorted. ‘We’re working partners and you’ll be my guest.’
‘Working partners,’ he repeated, pulling a rueful face. ‘I rather hoped we were more than that.’
Taken off guard, she laughed nervously. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
For once he didn’t laugh with her. ‘Maybe it means only what you want it to mean. If you don’t know, Julia, I’d like to make it clearer.’
As she stood there he took hold of her and pulled her to him, his lips closing upon hers. If she’d wondered about that first kiss so many weeks earlier, she was left in no doubt now about his feelings. She had melted into his arms, the moments going on and on.
* * *
With the delicious aroma of Christmas cooking filling the little flat, Julia’s insides were all a-flutter as she tried to remove the beautifully browned potatoes from the dish they’d been baked in.
She was in love. Yet beneath that wonderful sensation she was prey to tiny stabs of doubt. Was Simon in love with her, truly in love? He had to be, he was an honest man. Not like Chester who had purported to adore her, only to vanish when things had gone wrong for her and her family. Simon wouldn’t play her false. He wouldn’t lie to her. Yet this past year she’d come to know just how easily and quickly some things that appear so wonderful can turn bad. She had learned to be sceptical. Having been bitten once, she had grown wary, even hard, and she didn’t want to be hard. She wanted to be soft and pliable and in love.
‘Julia?’ Her youngest sister’s voice made her jump and turn.
Ginny was looking from her to the flat metal slice that lay idle in Julia’s hand while the baked potatoes remained stuck to the surface of the baking tray.
‘Standing there dreaming,’ Ginny went on as she resumed straining cabbage water from its black pot onto the meat juices in the meat dish to make gravy. The two pieces of pork and beef were already on their warmed plates waiting to be carved. ‘The potatoes will be cold before we know it. What are you dreaming about?’
‘Nothing,’ Julia said sharply and began almost viciously to free the adhered potatoes from the dish, piling them on to a plate to be popped back into the oven to keep warm. She still had to carve the meat and serve it on to each separate plate with the vegetables.
This would all be done in the kitchen and brought to the little table in the living room. It wouldn’t be like last Christmas, with the meat carved at a large family table covered with a variety of vegetables sitting in tureens. This year there was no maid to serve the soup course – there was no soup course. Nor were there any fine wines to be poured for them, one for each course. Today there were two bottles of cheap wine to accompany both the main course and the plum pudding Julia had made earlier in the year. And nor would there be any maid to clear away the dishes afterwards, to wash them up out of sight and out of mind. She and Ginny would do that between them.
But there was a threepenny box of Christmas crackers to add a festive air, especially if they had the courage to don the flimsy paper hats found inside each one, as Ginny and Simon did immediately.
Julia wondered if she’d have nerve enough to put hers on her head with Simon here and suddenly wished she hadn’t invited him after all. Her heart sank as she glanced across at her mother and Stephanie, both sitting there looking so alike with their firmed lips and straight faces.
She should have known it was going to be an uneasy atmosphere. Her mother sat in silence over the dinner table, leaving her struggling to encourage conversation. She felt a simmering resentment towards her, against Stephanie too, making a great play of ignoring Simon. It hurt her when within a few minutes he took off his paper hat and laid it beside his plate. It was a most uncomfortable looking gesture even though he smiled which made her feel even worse.
Simon was her friend, more than a friend, and Stephanie and their mother could think what they liked. She was more than relieved when soon after they’d eaten, Stephanie went out, leaving her and Ginny to clear away and wash up while their mother retired to the bedroom to rest.
Ginny had been a treasure, chatting away to Simon, asking about his shop and how it was going, laughing as she said she was looking forward to being a part-time model; treating him as more than a guest, as part of the family, putting him at ease enough to help with the washing up. But for Ginny Christmas would have been a dismal failure.
‘I’m sorry about my mother and Stephanie,’ Julia apologized as they went back downstairs, both of them, she felt, glad to be away.
He hadn’t stayed long after the washing up. Her mother had risen from an oddly short nap, which made Julia suspect that she was trying to make a point, to sit in her chair and pick up her crocheting as if he were not there – and after he’d brought her a bottle of fine port too, to have after dinner.
Her mother’s wintry smile as she accepted the gift had made Julia want to throttle her, but if Simon had been put out, he hadn’t shown it. He had even thanked her for her hospitality as he left, giving the excuse of having to go on somewhere else.
It was a fib, Julia knew, and she felt embarrassed and humiliated. For two pins she would have shaken her mother.
‘It’s a shame you have to go, Simon,’ she’d said incisively, adding, ‘Would your friends mind if I came with you?’
His face had lit up. ‘Of course not! It’s a party, open house,’ he’d lied easily.
So here she was, snuggled in a warm coat, scarf, hat and gloves, arm through his as they wandered leisurely without direction through the streets, dawdling contentedly despite the bite in the air and the threat of snow.
He brushed aside her apologies for her family’s rudeness. ‘Wait till you see my family,’ he said lightly and gave her arm a warm and purposeful squeeze. It was a promise of something more permanent to their relationship and made Julia’s heart glow as they strolled back the way they’d come.
No longer did she feel ange
red by her family’s conduct. In the shop’s dim back room, with just the glimmer of a street lamp filtering through the open connecting door, they sat side by side on his bed in the alcove. With its curtain drawn across they talked of the future, what to do when the lease finally expired, the need to find other premises, how she and her family would fare, where they would go.
‘You’ll still be nearby?’ he questioned anxiously.
‘Of course,’ she said, needing to whisper in this cloistered space. ‘We’ve a business to run. It’s doing well and soon we can begin to afford something better, and for my family too.’
‘Yes,’ he said, letting conversation die away.
They fell silent, but it was a silence that was comfortable and warm. She felt his arm gently encircle her waist and she lifted her face to receive an equally gentle kiss – a kiss that became gradually more ardent, then urgent, and she let herself sink back beneath him in complete trust.
* * *
It had indeed been a strange Christmas, unusual but lovely, and life was going to be marvellous from now on. Simon had been gentle, tender, taking care of her, and her trust in him was total. Yet so far there had been no talk of engagement. Maybe it was because of the need to find other premises, but time was flying by and already it was February, the expiry date of the lease only two months away.
Each day the sense of urgency was growing. Together they scanned ‘To Let’ advertisements in newspapers and Business Premises boards in estate agency windows with growing dismay.
‘Everything’s far dearer than I thought it would be,’ Julia said as they gazed in one window.
Simon squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll find something soon, don’t worry. It took me ages to find the one I have now. And now I’m due to lose it. I suppose I’ve been spoiled by the low rent on this present one. Thinking back, I made a bad bargain there.’
‘You probably saw it as a good one at the time,’ she consoled and felt him squeeze her hand a fraction tighter.
‘Perhaps you’re right. Come to think of it, in a way it was a very good bargain, because if I hadn’t taken it I might never have met you.’
She resisted the impulse to say that he might have met someone else. Instead she reached up and kissed his cheek before again growing serious. ‘I know you’d have liked something nearer the West End, my darling, but the further west we go the more expensive it gets.’
Buoyed up by the success of their business lately, he had suggested looking for something near the West End theatres but it now seemed they’d have to be content with the cheaper Brick Lane area.
‘It would have been nice though,’ he said dreamily.
‘I know, but we can’t get too silly, darling,’ she warned. ‘Not yet. If we keep going as we are, in a year’s time we might find something better, but for now we just need something a little larger than what we’ve got. We ought to be looking for something with a kitchen and decent living room and a bedroom.’
She stopped, seeing him grinning, and realized she’d been speaking as if they were planning to marry. She half expected him to allude to it but when he didn’t, she hurried on, her gaze glued to the agent’s window.
‘Where you are now,’ she continued, taking care to allude only to him, ‘you have a back room with one chair and a table to eat off, which Betty now uses as a work bench, and that tiny alcove where you sleep, and I know you eat in there as well, sitting on the edge of the bed.’
The thought made her smile, despite the awkwardness of a moment ago. ‘That’s no way to live,’ she continued. ‘And we shall need enough room for some sort of a showroom for modelling garments and things.’
This time it felt safe to allude to them both for this was essentially a business partnership. But would there ever come a time when it would grow into something more? Yes, they had made love, careful, gentle love, and he had said he loved her, but he hadn’t actually spoken of taking their relationship further, and she didn’t want to push him to do so. Suddenly she was filled with doubt as to where all this was going.
* * *
‘Julia, oh my dear, read this!’ Victoria held the letter out to her daughter. ‘It says the landlord is putting the rent up by another two shillings! For a place like this, how could he? There’s not enough money coming in that we can afford to pay so much. And there’s been no work done at all on the place since we came here. Everything is falling down around us!’
Everything wasn’t exactly falling down, Julia thought. It was true that there was a broken roof tile, which meant that a bucket had to be placed in a corner of the kitchen to catch drips when it rained, and the very ancient and faded wallpaper was peeling off in one of the bedrooms from damp. The kitchen tap too was slowly furring up and becoming hard to turn on and off. But all this was nothing the landlord couldn’t have dealt with had he a mind to do so. Julia thought of the nicer place they’d have once a new shop was found.
She took the letter, pretending to read it slowly to hide her excitement. But there was also a touch of guilt at having thought only of her quest these last few weeks. She hadn’t informed her family that any day they’d learn of a huge weekly rise in their rent or notice to quit if they didn’t pay. Nor had she mentioned anything about imminent expiry of the lease on the shop.
She had certainly mentioned nothing about moving to other premises. It would have sent her mother into a panic, wrongly imagining herself deserted. Even a year after her husband’s death Victoria was still badly affected by the shock and by the loss of the home she had known all her married life. Another upheaval might have been too much for her. Julia had seen no reason to worry her too soon.
A rent rise of two shillings a week for this place was exorbitant and unfair, but despite what her mother had said, they could now afford it with four people all bringing in money. But to Julia it was the principle of the thing. She just prayed that once they found somewhere nicer to live, her mother might stop comparing her life now to the one she’d once known.
She also needed to consider that wherever they moved her mother’s new home would have to be practically on top of the shop so she wouldn’t feel isolated. But in time all the family would depart, leaving her on her own. Stephanie was of an age for meeting someone, marrying and setting up home; James too, and Ginny, though not for some time yet of course. But that eventuality needed to be faced. For herself though she couldn’t ever contemplate the day when she would leave her mother completely alone.
She made herself frown at the letter and as if on impulse screwed the demand into a ball. ‘We’re not having this! This place isn’t worth another shilling extra, let alone two!’
‘But we’ll be thrown on to the street,’ Victoria wailed. ‘It will be like last time all over again. And where would we go? I couldn’t bear…’
‘There are plenty of places,’ Julia broke in. ‘Mummy, please trust me. It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.’
For the moment it was the best she could think of to say. She tried to sound encouraging but with little more than a month to go, she and Simon would have their work cut out to find suitable premises, for them and her family. She didn’t dare tell them that as yet nothing had been found.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ she said to Simon after another fruitless search. ‘We could all be homeless in a couple of weeks.’ She could not admit it to him but panic was beginning to set in, making her feel sick whenever she thought about it, which was most of the time now as things became more urgent.
Simon held her in his arms as they stood in the rear of the shop after Betty had gone home. ‘We’ll be all right,’ he said quietly, but there was an empty ring to his voice that betrayed his growing unease. So much for all those ambitions!
Fourteen
Ginny was all excitement as she entered the flat. She had been to the West End with a couple of friends to see an early show at the pictures.
‘Julia, I’ve just seen a shop to rent! The sign wasn’t there when we went past in the a
fternoon but when we came back it was.’
She had been keeping a constant eye out for her sister since discovering that the ending of the lease on the shop was forcing Julia and Simon to look elsewhere. ‘It could only have been put up while we were at the cinema.’
Julia glanced up casually from her book. She’d not long been home herself. She and Simon had been to the pictures too, but locally, to see William S. Hart in the new Western, Travellin’ On. They had sat surrounded by shouts of encouragement from their fellow cinema goers, as well as hissing and booing of the villain and sighs of ‘aah!’ at a love scene. The audience’s participation always helped the film along with only the pianist’s accompaniment to add emotion to a scene.
She’d developed a bit of a headache staring at the black and white screen. Simon had brought her home, saying goodnight with one ardent kiss to wish her better. She had taken a headache pill and was savouring sitting alone. James and Stephanie wouldn’t be in until late and her mother had already gone to bed, so she felt faintly irked by her sister’s noisy entrance.
‘There are lots of shops to rent up West,’ she said absently, turning back to her book. ‘Every one of them is well beyond our means.’
‘But this one might be just what you’ve been looking for.’
‘Ssh!’ warned Julia as her sister’s eager voice filled the room. ‘You’ll wake Mother.’
Ginny lowered her voice but maintained her eagerness. ‘It does look quite run down but the sign said it’s a really low rent and it’s in the heart of things.’
Julia became attentive but sceptical. ‘That could mean anything.’
‘It was on the “To Let” sign,’ Ginny said, taking off her hat and jacket to hang them on a peg on the living room door. ‘It was dark but I’m sure I saw forty-four pounds a year. That’s just over eighteen shillings a week!’
