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HELEN FORRESTER
Thursday’s Child
DEDICATION
When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.
Gitanjali-Rabindranath Tagore
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WORKS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
CHAPTER ONE
‘Dawn’t be a fool,’ shouted James as he slapped me hard across the face.
I stopped shrieking and began to weep, rocking myself backwards and forwards, my hands clutching at my nightgown as if to tear it.
James, with tears running down his face, was saying: ‘Now, dawn’t take on so, luv.’
His Lancashire accent, usually carefully suppressed, was homely and comforting, and gradually my weeping lessened and I lay back on the pillow. The medicine bottles on the mantelpiece changed from red blobs to definite shapes, and James’s face, so like Barney’s, ceased to be a blurred mirage and I saw how exhausted he looked.
That last winter of the war had seemed particularly long and cold. Although in Wetherport bombing raids had ceased some time before, most of its inhabitants were worn down by overwork and poor food, and Mother was not surprised, therefore, when at the end of March I caught influenza. On the morning that James called, I was feeling better, and, with the promise that on the following day I should get up, Mother had tucked me up in bed with two hot-water bottles, and had gone out to shop. She had been gone only five minutes when the doorbell rang.
I let it ring twice, in the hope that whoever was at the door would go away, but the third ring was such a prolonged one that in desperation I got out of bed, hastily wrapped myself in a blanket and pattered along the icy upper hall and down the equally icy Victorian staircase to answer it.
On the doorstep stood James, looking as white as if he had just seen the sticky result of a direct hit on an air-raid shelter. Mist had formed little globules of moisture on his red hair and on his muffler; his face was blue with cold.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked apprehensively, and shivered in the draught from the open door.
‘Get back into bed and ah’ll tell thee,’ said James.
In spite of ten days of illness, I ran up the stairs and scrambled into bed, my heart pounding with foreboding.
‘It’s Barney,’ I muttered, my teeth chattering. ‘Something has happened to Barney.’
James limped slowly up the stairs, drawing off his gloves as he came, entered my bedroom and sat down heavily on the bedside chair.
One of my hands lay on the coverlet and he took it in his.
‘Peggie, dear, Barney was killed the day before yesterday. Mother got the news this morning.’ The words came in the precise, clear tones he used when clarifying a point of law for one of his clients.
Although the news was something I had feared daily for months, I was stupefied by it and could not for a moment grasp the implication of his words. It was said that lightning did not strike twice in the same place, and it seemed impossible to me that in one war a woman could really lose two fiancés.
Jackie had gone down in the Swallow in 1939, a month before our wedding, and it broke my heart, but I was young then – and young hearts mend – so that when Barney proposed to me four years later life once more became worth living.
I had known Barney all my life. He was big, red-headed and impetuous, and I fell in love all over again. His only sorrow seemed to be that his twin brother, James, was lame and could not, therefore, join the Army with him. This had separated them for the first time in their lives – and now they were separated for ever.
‘Kill me, Lord, kill me too,’ I had shouted in my agony, as James’s words bit into my heart and mind.
I must have had hysterics; otherwise James would never have struck me, but I remember only an enveloping, physical pain. Barney was dead, and the knowledge of it killed part of me.
I clung to James’s hand: ‘Why did he have to die?’ I sobbed. ‘Why not take a useless fool like me, not a good man like him? Why couldn’t I die instead?’
James loosed his hand and put his arm around me. He smoothed the hair away from my eyes: ‘The good God must have other work for you to do,’ he said.
James was not the kind of man to talk about God, and his words stuck in my mind, but at that time I just lay in his arms with his face close to mine, and thought only of my own misery and not of his. He and Barney were identical twins, and he must have felt as if one of his limbs had been amputated without anaesthetic – yet he never mentioned his mother’s or his own suffering.
James was still nursing me against his damp overcoat when Mother returned from shopping. She could never tell the brothers apart unless she saw James limp, and she thought it was Barney sitting beside me.
‘Barney, how nice to see you. Leave at last!’
James said, ‘I’m James,’ and Mother understood.
‘My poor darlings,’ she said. ‘Your poor mother.’
In her time, Mother had faced many crises, and she was wonderfully patient with James and me that day. It was she who remembered to telephone James’s office – James was a solicitor, as was Barney – to ask his clerk to cancel his morning appointments, and it was she who later bundled him off to work, after letting him talk to her about Barney while she prepared lunch for him.
‘Is someone with your mother?’ she asked.
‘My aunt is with her.’
‘Then when you have eaten this, go away and work. Work is a good opiate.’
When he had gone, she came and sat on my bed and talked to me. She did not talk about Barney, but about James, of his brilliant brain, his sensitiveness and the sorrow he must be feeling. She said firmly that Angela, who is my younger sister, and I must help to comfort him and his widowed mother.
I listened dully. At that moment I did not care about anybody except Barney, and every time I thought of his lying, blown to pieces, in a German field, sobs shook me and I writhed in my bed, so that the pillows grew damp and the sheets became hopelessly twisted.
When Mother realised that it was too soon to divert my thoughts to other people, she sat quietly by me until Father and Angela returned from work. Perhaps she knew what I had not realised, that James loved me more than Barney did; and maybe she hoped that when the pain had worn off, I would transfer my love of one brother to the other.
Father came in and stared down at me with pitying eyes.
‘I am sorry, child,’ he said.
He bent and kissed me: ‘Have courage, little girl.’
He went away to eat his dinner, and I heard the quiet murmur of his and Mother’s voices in the room below.
I heard also Angela’s key in the lock of the front door, and the patter of Mother’s slippers as she went to meet her in the hall. I heard Angela give a little cry of anguish; Mother must have told her the news immediately, so that she did not blunder when she came up to see me.
There was a pause and then Angela’s dragging footsteps up the stairs. Enwrapped in my own misery as I was, even I thought how tired she must be to come so slowly.
Angela came into the room. She had taken off her hat and coat, but still wore the slacks and the overall she used in her work as a ‘back-room girl’. She had studied electronics, but none of the family really knew exactly what she did in the closely guarded Government laboratory where much of her life was spent.
She shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Her face was an unearthly white and, despite the heat of the sickroom, she was shivering.
‘Pegs.’ Her voice was only a whisper.
She looked so stricken that I motioned her to come to me. I had not imagined that my elegant, sophisticated sister had so much feeling in her, and I was jolted out of my self-pity.
She came and sat down on the bed, her shoulders hunched and her hands dangling hopelessly between her trousered knees. This ugly posture was enough to tell me how deeply she had been affected by the news of Barney’s death; usually she sat very gracefully, with straight back and ordered hands.
Suddenly she flung herself across me and wept, her breath coming in harsh gasps. I said nothing, feeling too full of grief myself to speak.
‘Dinner’s ready, Angela,’ called Mother.
‘Give me a handkerchief,’ said Angela, looking up quickly, her sobs hastily stifled.
I gave her a very wet handkerchief and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She tried to smile at me, as she said: ‘Woman must eat as well as weep.’
She went across to the dressing-table and powdered her nose with my puff, then came back to the bed, and in almost motherly fashion, straightened my top sheet and kissed me on the forehead. I could feel her lips trembling as they touched my skin, although she looked fairly composed as she walked to the door.
As she went out, she said: ‘I’ll come up after dinner and keep you company while you eat your supper.’
‘I can’t eat,’ I said.
‘My dear, you must. In times like this, one must keep strong – and you have a long way to go yet.’
‘I wish I was dead,’ I said.
After Angela had gone downstairs, I lay for a long time, thinking of Barney. I had always had a great affection for him, hot-tempered and ruthless as he often was; when we were younger, I had imagined that he preferred Angela to me as he had taken her out frequently, but it was to me that he proposed during the last Christmas he had spent at home. I had been so happy; it seemed as if the war could not possibly last much longer, and we planned to be married as soon as Barney was demobbed. He had survived the invasion of France safely and had enjoyed one more leave when his badly mauled regiment was brought home to be reformed. He had been tired and morose during that last leave, as if he had a premonition of what was to come, but after he was rested he became more cheerful and we spent two or three happy days together before he went back to his barracks.
I had begun to collect linen and china for the small flat we hoped to find. I wanted Barney to enjoy all the comforts I could scrounge for him in a tightly rationed country. I had bought sheets on the blackmarket, made pillowcases out of bleached flour bags, begged old curtains from Mother, and had bought from auction sales pieces of painted china and prewar silverware. Even now, on the bedside table, lay a half-finished tablecloth, which I was contriving by faggoting together tiny pieces of linen left over from the manufacture of aeroplane wings.
In a paroxysm of rage, I sat up and flung the tablecloth and the coloured embroidery silks across the room. Unfortunately, I flung the water glass as well; but the explosion it made when it crashed released the tension in me, and when Mother came running into the room, I was crying with steady, hopeless sobs.
Mother picked up the cloth and folded it carefully. It was to be a long time before I would spread it on a table, and if some, self-appointed prophet had told me where the table would be, he would not have been believed.
CHAPTER TWO
When I was seven, my father, Thomas Delaney, came to Wetherport to work in the Income Tax Offices. In order to be near his work, he bought a Victorian house not far from the middle of the city. It had a walled back garden, in which my father managed to grow the daffodils for which he was famous locally. In spite of the heavy fall of soot and the fact that the surrounding houses had long since deteriorated into apartments or boarding houses, the family was very fond of its home and we refused to be dislodged from it, even during the heaviest bombing; and when we surveyed it on Victory Day, five weeks after Barney’s death, we were happy to find that it was in as good condition as when we first entered it.
From this house, I had gone out to school and later to the University; and now when my long day’s work was done, it was the place to which I thankfully returned each night.
About half a mile from home there was a very old part of the city, which bordered upon the docks, and it was in this area that, after taking a degree, I took up social work amongst unwanted and neglected children. A scar on my lung kept me out of the Forces during the war, and I was left undisturbed by the Ministry of Labour and National Service to continue my work. Most of the prostitutes of Wetherport lived in my district, and the place swarmed with troops and sailors of every nationality. Many of the residents were coloured – part West African Negro, part Arab and part Chinese, with a few Indians scattered amongst them. Their poverty was great and was intensified by the bombing which they bravely endured. They knew me as ‘the lady from the Welfare’ and I was classed with ‘the man from the parish’, that is, the Relieving Officer, as someone to whom the front door could be opened without hesitation. The war brought work to those who were dock labourers and seamen, and the young men were called into the Army, so that their fighting cocks tended to languish in their backyards, but games of fan-tan and crown and anchor flourished, and betting and drinking carried away much that was earned; the poverty and filth of their homes remained.
As the war progressed, illegitimate children seemed to be born faster than I could cope with them and my work was always far behind. I therefore returned to the office a week after James’s visit, still feeling shaky from the effects of the influenza.
The elderly voluntary workers, who were my staff, were horribly kind. They had seen Barney’s name in the ‘Killed in Action’ column of the Wetherport Telegram, and they handled me as if I was a delicate ornament, liable to breakage. They tiptoed in and out of my room, brought me specially made cups of tea, and murmured that I was looking better or looking worse. I felt like screaming at them to stop, to be normal, to make some vulgar joke, so that the automaton that was me could try and laugh.
One day James rang me up and asked me to join his walking club – it was surprising how far his lame leg could carry him over rough country. By the end of the summer, I had become, at his instigation, an unprotesting member of a music club and an opera society. He kept me in circulation firmly; every time I showed signs of slinking back to the family fireplace to weep he hauled me out again.
Very few of our friends came home from the war, and, in the topsy-turvy world in which we found ourselves, Angela also seemed glad of James’s company, and she frequently came with us on our outings. She was witty and she often made James laugh; he had the same throaty chuckle as Barney – and it hurt me to hear him. I love to hear merriment, but a dead man’s laugh is saddening, especially when you still love him.
Occasionally it was very like torture to have James striding along beside me, looking just as Barney always did, and then to catch his eye and see a different soul, a strange mind, peering out at me; but he was an old friend and I did not have to make a special effort to be pleasant in his company, so I clung to him, and for nearly three years saw him from time to time, either at the various clubs to which he had introduced me or at his mother’s home, which I visited occasionally. His mother welcomed my visits and, presumably, hoped that I would marry him. This solution had not occurred to me and James gave no hint that it had occurred to him; he continued to behave in his usual silently courteous manner and asked nothing except my company. He had other women friends, with some of whom I was also acquainted, but he never showed any particular preference for one of them.
I gradually picked up the fragments of my life and stuck them together again as best I could. The sickening reaction from the effort entailed by the war had, however, set in, and like many others I felt low and dispirited. I had been the only young woman left in our organisation at a time when our work was increasing; the war itself had brought many problems which were not the concern of any particular authority and I often found myself doing work far removed from the care of children. Many were the days when there was no time to eat and many the nights I spent on an old sofa in the office rather than waste time by going home. Once the Japanese war had been brought to a horrifying finish by the atom bomb, however, new social workers were recruited and my hours of work became normal. I should have been grateful for a life once more returned to a peaceful routine, but I found myself intolerably bored and very tired of solving other people’s problems.
In the autumn of 1948, however, James’s love of chocolate caused a sharp change in my life. We were attending a first night at the Royal Theatre, and I had elected to wait in the foyer, while James carried on a delicate negotiation with the girl in the sweet shop next door, for the purchase of a box of rare, handmade chocolates, for which he had not enough ration coupons. I stood idly watching the people arriving for the show. Every tram that stopped outside unloaded a fresh mass of shabby humanity; a few small private cars added their quota of patrons. Dressed in old sweaters, tweeds and raincoats, the women hatless like myself, they poured into the theatre. They certainly did not care much about outward appearances, but I knew they would form an attentive and critical audience.
I had just seen a Duchess slip quietly into the auditorium, chivvied from behind by two students who were afraid of being late, when a voice behind me gushed: ‘My deah, where have you been all these years?’
The voice was familiar, and I turned round quickly, to face a middle-aged woman who was extending a black-gloved hand to me.
‘Bessie,’ I cried, overjoyed at meeting someone I had known before the war. The last time I had seen Bessie she had been in khaki uniform – a sort of female brass hat – but there was nothing of that about her now. Her black suit and frilly, red hat made her completely feminine.
‘My deah, you are just the woman for whom I’ve been looking. Can you dance?’
‘Yes,’ I said blankly.
James came up to us, triumphantly bearing his box of chocolates, and was introduced. The foyer bell rang, and Bessie said hastily: ‘Come and see me, my deah, tomorrow evening at 42 Belfrey Street – the McShane Club. Come at seven.’ She looked about anxiously. ‘Please excuse me – I must find my party.’
She waved one plump hand vaguely in the direction of the front door and tripped across the hall, her high heels clicking merrily on the marble floor, and to my amazement, joined a party of Negroes. She greeted them gaily and vanished with them into the auditorium.
James’s eyebrows lifted, as he asked: ‘Who are they?’
‘No idea,’ I said.
‘Have a chocolate,’ said James, tearing off wrappings.
James had invited a young married couple to join us, and as soon as they arrived we went in to see the play. It was a good play about the escape of a prisoner of war from a German stalag – but my mind was on Bessie.
Bessie Forbes used to live in a flat near to us. Her husband had been a lieutenant in the Regular Army and had been at Wetherport Barracks for nearly a year before the war broke out. He had been sent to Norway and had been posted as Missing. Bessie waited for further news but none came, and, as she had no children, she enlisted in the Army Territorial Service. I knew she had done very well in the Service, but presumably she had now taken her discharge. I wondered if she had married again. And what was she doing in the company of Negroes? Negroes were an everyday part of my working life – but that was unusual. It was not reasonable to suppose that a woman of Bessie’s station in society would be well acquainted with any – the colour bar still functioned in England quite effectively in respect of Negroes.
At the end of the second interval, as the audience was surging back to its seats, I was tossed against Bessie, and she smiled at me.
‘Who are you with?’ I whispered, nearly dead with curiosity.
‘Nigerian chieftains,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow,’ and she was swept away from me.
The mystery was beyond me, so I ate James’s chocolates and tried to concentrate on the play.
James and I walked leisurely home together. The night was clear and there was a sweet smell of rotting leaves in the park. We did not talk much on the way, knowing each other well enough not to have to make conversation. He lingered at our gate and I asked him in.
‘No, I – I won’t come in tonight,’ he said.
He made no move to depart, however, and leaned awkwardly against the gate pillar, his fingers drumming on its dirty, granite sides.
He said abruptly: ‘Peggie, will you marry me?’
My mind was on Nigerian chieftains, but the answer came without hesitation, and I surprised myself with the certainty of it.
‘No, Jamie,’ I said gently, ‘I can’t.’
James stopped drumming on the gate pillar and gripped it hard.
‘Why not, Peggie? Ah love thee.’
‘I know, dear, and I’m sorry.’ I paused, and looked at him in the light of the street lamp. ‘You are so like Barney, Jamie, that I would love you because of the likeness and not because you are you. It would not be fair to you.’
He stood there, silently biting his lower lip, just as Barney used to when puzzled.
‘Ah might’ve guessed it,’ he said at length. ‘Are you sure, Pegs?’ The light-blue eyes gleamed suddenly in the poor light and there was pain in them.
My resolve faltered; James would make a good husband, I knew. He had a depth of character which Barney had lacked. I looked up at him again. The light was playing tricks with him and it seemed as if Barney was standing there, instead of James; like a tormenting dream, I thought bitterly.
‘I can’t, Jamie. You’re the finest man I know – but I can’t marry you – I just can’t.’
‘Dawn’t fret yourself, luv. Ah do understand.’ He lifted my chin with one hand, so that the lamplight fell upon my face. His lips were curved with pity. ‘Just remember, that ah’m always around if you want me,’ he said softly. His arm dropped to his side and he turned to go. ‘Good night, Peggie, luv.’
‘Good night, Jamie – I’m truly sorry.’
He looked back at me as I stood by the gate: ‘Ah told thee – dawn’t fret,’ he called as he limped into the darkness.
I knew I had hurt badly someone who loved me very much, and as I climbed the front steps I reproached myself mercilessly for being so foolish as to see so much of him when I had no intention of marrying him.
I let myself in. Everybody was in bed, and only the tick of the grandfather clock broke the quietness. On the bottom step of the staircase lay Tomkins, our cat, and I sat down by him and scratched his ears. He stood up, stretched, and leaped up on to my shoulder, to rub himself against my neck. The house seemed so peaceful, so normal, just as it had been since I was a little girl. Only the little girl had grown and changed into a disheartened woman.
I burst into tears, and Tomkins fled up the stairs.
A door opened and Angela leaned over the banisters.
‘What’s the matter, Peg?’
‘Nothing much,’ I whispered, ‘I am all right,’ and I picked up my handbag and went slowly up the stairs.
Angela was standing in a shaft of light from her bedroom, fairylike in a nylon nightgown, her fair hair tumbling about her shoulders. She looked tired, however, as if she had not slept well for a long time.
I smiled wanly at her and she followed me into my bedroom.
‘You look tired,’ I said.
‘Me? Oh, I am blooming. I never did sleep much.’
‘Go to bed now – there’s nothing the matter with me – I’m just grizzling – it was nice of you to come, though.’ I caught her by the shoulders and kissed her impulsively. ‘You’re a darling, Angela,’ I said.
‘Am I?’ Her lips were tight across her teeth in a wry smile.
‘Of course you are. Now go to bed and don’t worry about me.’
A look of weariness crossed her face. She seemed suddenly much older.
‘Sure you’re all right? No more tears?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll go then. Nighty-night.’ And she trailed across the passage to her own room and quietly shut the door.
I switched on the electric fire, undressed in front of it and then went to the dressing-table to take the pins from my hair. Although I was shivering a little from the clammy coldness of the big room, I paused to look at the shadowy reflection in the mirror.
My hair fell thick and brown to my waist. I lacked the courage to bleach it golden as Angela did. Large hazel eyes peered anxiously between the tousled locks.
‘You are abominably average,’ I addressed myself. ‘Stock size figure and long legs included.’ I peered closer. ‘What on earth can a man see in that?’
Tomkins meowed at my feet and I bent to stroke him.
‘Tomkins,’ I said, ‘if I was half as beautiful as Angela, I would have married a king – and he would not have had to be killed,’ I added sharply.
Why, I wondered idly, as I got into bed, had Angela not married? She must meet many scientists in the course of her work – but science is not a lucrative profession, I reminded myself, and Angela is distinctively expensive-looking.
Tomkins heaved himself on to the bed and settled down in the curve of my knees.
‘Tomkins,’ I said, ‘you’d better have some kittens to keep Angela and me company when we grow old – because it doesn’t look as if either of us is destined for matrimony.’
I turned over and Tomkins meowed protestingly, as if to say that he would if he could.
‘Well, find yourself a pretty lady pussy,’ I said drowsily, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
I was still puzzling about Bessie and the Negroes as I walked swiftly through the badly-lit streets, to keep my appointment at 42 Belfrey Street. I felt a subdued excitement at the thought of seeing her again – after all, Bessie belonged to that part of my life which had been sunlit and full of hope, when the war was still a long way off in places like Poland and Norway.
I had been unable to remember what kind of a club the McShane was, but the moment I walked through its swing doors and a gust of conversation swept round me, I wondered how I could have forgotten.
Angus McShane, a native of Wetherport and a great believer in the excellence of British culture, had at his death asked that his considerable fortune be used to build a club for the purpose of propagating British ideas amongst foreign visitors to Britain.
The City Council, faced with all the difficulties inherent in ruling a port full of foreigners of every nationality, had supported the idea, and the result was a suite of pleasantly furnished rooms in the middle of the city, where foreign visitors and students could entertain their friends and also make friends with English people. Dances were held; English was taught; a canteen dispensed English food – and confirmed the opinion of its customers, that the British were the world’s worst cooks; a library held an assortment of donated books ranging from classics to the latest Ernest Hemingway and the newest magazines; and the lounge into which I walked that autumn evening seemed to contain a representative from every country in the world – and they were nearly all men.
Shyness swept over me and I hesitated, while the doors behind me made a steady plopping sound as they swung back and forth. Four men in American-cut suits stood near me. They were coffee-skinned, and I could feel their eyes looking me over. Their gaze was not insolent and they seemed to approve of me, for they sighed softly as I passed. Two Negroes sitting near bowed their heads self-consciously over a magazine as my skirt brushed the small table in front of them. They made me feel thoroughly womanly, and I enjoyed the change from being Miss Margaret Delaney, the lady from the Welfare.
A white-haired lady was sitting by one of the two fires that blazed in the room, and she was playing chess with a young Chinese. As I looked round, she cried, ‘Checkmate,’ triumphantly, and her opponent’s eyes vanished into slits as he laughed.
‘Excellent play, most excellent,’ he said.
The lady looked up and saw me and I went to her, and asked where Mrs Forbes could be found.
‘She is probably in her office on the floor above.’ The voice was quiet and cultured.
The Chinese bowed slightly: ‘Permit me to take the lady up,’ he said.
His opponent smiled graciously and said that Dr Wu would be pleased to direct me.
Dr Wu rose and bowed to me: ‘Come this way,’ he said.
He led me out of the lounge and up a flight of stairs to a series of offices.
‘This is your first visit here?’ he inquired, his eyes twinkling behind rimless spectacles and his hands making neat, small gestures to guide me along the passage.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I trust that we may have the pleasure of seeing you here again,’ he said, as he knocked at the door. He bowed again and left me, as Bessie called, ‘Come in.’
‘My deah,’ said Bessie, ‘I’m delighted to see you. Sit down and have a cigarette.’
Bessie, out of uniform, had more charm than most women. That evening she was wearing a pink cardigan that gave colour to her naturally pale complexion. Her dark hair was brushed up in a Pompadour style. As she lit my cigarette I tried to imagine her drilling on a parade ground, but failed hopelessly. The determination and discipline which had lain under her uniform was still with her, however, as I was soon to find out.
‘Bessie, what are you doing here?’
‘I’m the Entertainment Secretary – it’s my job to see that visitors here enjoy themselves.’
I nodded. That explained the Nigerian chieftains at the theatre.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Rather. I meet anybody who is anybody – and no two days are alike.’
‘What have you in mind for me to do?’
‘I’m starting a dancing class – very good teacher, but not enough partners. If you are free, I wondered if you would volunteer to come along on Thursday evenings and act as a partner. I can assure you that there are less amusing ways of spending an evening.’
‘But women are two a penny in this town, Bessie. Why pick on a rather dull person like me?’
‘Two-a-penny women are not required in this establishment,’ said Bessie. ‘Every woman crossing the threshold of this club has to be vouched for personally by a member of the staff or by some other responsible person. Each member has a pass which she must show to the commissionaire at the door.’
‘No commissionaire was there when I came in.’
‘Oh,’ said Bessie, and seized the telephone. Her conversation was brief and frigid. The commissionaire never again left his post without being relieved by his colleague. After Bessie had dealt with him, I think he would have stuck there like the guard at the gate of Pompeii, even to being engulfed by boiling lava.
Bessie turned back to me.
‘You always struck me as someone whose head was well screwed on, and I badly need helpers like that. I noticed at the theatre that you are still single. Any ideas of matrimony?’
‘No,’ I said, my throat tight.
Bessie looked at my plainly combed, long hair, my tailored suit and my far too sensible, flat-heeled shoes: ‘No, I suppose not,’ she said in a specially kind tone of voice.
I felt angry. I am not beautiful and my work demanded that I should dress very plainly, but Barney, James and Jackie had loved me, so I could not be entirely lacking in charm. Still, the dancing class promised to be a new experience, so I asked her to explain exactly what was entailed by acting as a partner.
Bessie explained about times and lessons, and I agreed to come the following evening. Then a little silence came between us.
Hesitatingly, I asked if she had ever heard what happened to Lieutenant Forbes.
She gave a fluttering sigh: ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was presumed killed.’
‘I’m sorry, Bessie.’
She sighed again and fiddled with the fountain pen on her desk: ‘It’s quite all right, deah,’ she said, ‘I was lucky to have him for as long as I did.’
I saw that it was time to go and I rose. She got up and walked with me downstairs and as far as the swing doors, which the commissionaire opened. She told him that I would be coming on the following day and that I was to be brought straight up to her. Then she shook my hand.
‘You will enjoy it here – meet some new people – have some fun,’ she said.
I murmured that the nicest thing was seeing her again – and I meant it.
When I got home, Father was sitting by the fire reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. He rose and kissed me. Our house always smells of polish and flowers, and the outside door is invariably open and welcoming; his warm greeting and the habit he has of pushing forward the most comfortable chair for you, make the shyest visitor feel that his arrival is a pleasure. He has long since lived down the fact that he is ‘in the Income Tax’, and everybody knows him as Mr Delaney who has such a lovely show of daffodils.
‘Where’s Mother?’ I asked, taking off my dark jacket and eyeing it disgustedly.
‘She’s in the kitchen, making chili con carne for your supper.’
‘How good she is,’ I said. I love hot dishes, but as no one else in the family liked them, I did not eat them often, so I kissed Father on his bald patch and wandered hopefully kitchenwards.
The house may be Victorian, but the kitchen is not. Father had the old kitchen ripped out, just before the war began, and Mother worked in an atmosphere reminiscent of the advertisements in American magazines.
Mother was really cooking chili con carne.
‘The butcher gave me some extra meat,’ she explained, ‘and I’ve had the beans for years.’
I sniffed appreciatively and sat on the primrose-coloured table, while I told her about the McShane Club. I also told her ruefully about Bessie’s tone of voice when marriage was mentioned.
Mother looked at me shrewdly from the corners of her eyes. She said: ‘The war lasted too long. Now it is finished, it is time to wear pretty clothes again. You should buy a “new look” dress.’
‘Good heavens, Mother, they are too ultra-fashionable. I’ve never seen anyone in Wetherport wearing one yet.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mother, ‘they are in the shops – I’ve seen them – and you have just the figure for one. You’ve plenty of money – you saved all through the war for –’ she stopped.
‘For my marriage,’ I finished off.
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mother sadly.
It was true. I had three hundred pounds in the bank. I sighed; but when on the following day I had finished a round of visits to foster-parents, I slipped into a dress shop and spent an hour buying a dress and coat, followed by another hour in hat and shoe shops. I wondered if I would ever have the courage to wear my purchases, but it did not take much bullying from Mother to make me put them all on, and, when I arrived at the club, Bessie was full of admiration for my appearance. She ushered me into the room in which the dancing class was being held, with the advice that many of the pupils were Muslims, who had not mixed much with women before, and that I should be careful.
Fifteen male pairs of eyes took in every detail of me. Seven female pairs of eyes smiled with relief.
‘Welcome to the battleground,’ said one young lady.
‘How do you do,’ said the teacher. ‘Will you kindly partner Mr Popolopogas. We shall just go over the basic steps of the waltz again.’
We went over them – Mr Popolopogas went over my feet as well. He was a willow of a man, topped with outsize horn-rimmed spectacles, and upon inquiry he informed me in slow, correct English that he was a Greek and was studying medicine.
I graduated from Mr Popolopogas to Mr Ramid Ali, Egyptian cotton merchant’s son, sent to Lancashire to see our methods of spinning. Then I did a quickstep with an officer in the French Air Force, who was about a foot shorter than me. Finally, the dancing teacher picked out one or two advanced pupils to teach them another step of the tango. I was asked to partner a Negro. Although many Negroes lived in the district in which I worked and I knew some of them quite well, I had never been touched by a Negro, and I was nervous – not nervous because he was as black as I was white, but because I knew the shy reserve of black people and I wanted him to feel that I liked dancing with him.
We did the exercise while he held me very stiffly and at a distance, but to dance a good tango the partners must be close and the woman must be held snugly against the man. I, therefore, stopped dancing and explained the proper stance. He immediately held me correctly and it was obvious that he knew the proper hold, but had been too afraid of me to use it. I could feel him trembling slightly against me as we moved off again to the throbbing notes of ‘Jealousy’. We were to dance the whole record through, and after a minute I realised that the man guiding me was far more expert than I was.
I concentrated on the steps and followed carefully. He did not dance with the polite diffidence of an Englishman, but with the full ardour that the South American rhythm demanded. My heart beat faster and I began to enjoy myself. Soon there was nothing in the world except the piercing wail of violins backed by the steady beat of drums, and a compelling body which gently but insistently persuaded me into figures I had never danced before. I did not even notice the slight gap between two records. A wild, sensuous happiness enveloped me. The dark cheek above me rested very close to mine. A separate me appreciated the beauty of the line from chin to ear, finely chiselled out of ebony. Sweat was pouring from him but he smelled clean and sweet, and he danced as nature intended us to dance, to the complete relaxation of mind and body.
Suddenly a burst of applause hit me. My partner let go of me and pulled out a pocket handkerchief to mop the perspiration off his face. He was laughing joyously. I was embarrassed to find that we were the only couple on the floor and had indeed danced alone through the last record, while the rest of the pupils formed an interested audience. I blushed hotly as everyone began to laugh, but it was all so good-natured that I had to laugh too.
The dancing teacher came to us and explained to my partner that he should now lead me back to my seat and say ‘thank you very much’, which he did, still laughing exuberantly.
The class then broke up, and I went with the other girls, who were all younger than me, to powder my nose. They were ordinary, middle-class girls, some of them students, with pleasant, accentless speech. They were full of little jokes about the dancing class and teased me about the tango I had danced. They told me I had danced beautifully and said they hoped to see me the following week. I felt very cheerful and I was glad that Bessie had found such nice young women for our foreign visitors to meet. From my work, I knew very well how difficult it was for strangers to know English families, more especially so if the stranger’s skin was not white.
On the bus going home, I realised guiltily that for a whole day I had not thought of Barney, and I wondered if he would mind. Then I thought of how he would have laughed at my discomfiture after the tango and I giggled behind my gloved hand. Looking out through the rain-lashed window I seemed to see him laughing with me, and I thought that perhaps he would be happy that I was feeling happier.
CHAPTER FOUR
I soon became acquainted with all the staff and most of the members of the McShane. Bessie introduced me to the Director, Dr Gantry, a short, wiry man of uncertain temper and many accomplishments. He spoke seven languages well and managed to make himself understood in several more. He was almost womanly in his insistence that the club must have a homely atmosphere; it must look like a well-cared-for house, not too fashionable or too shabby; there must be flowers and it must be warm and airy. He went through the premises daily, inspecting every corner like the Chief Steward of a liner; he met diplomats when their ships docked at Wetherport, and found digs for vegetarian students; he kept up a lively correspondence with ex-members of the club, who had returned to their own countries; he encouraged every kind of Anglo-Other Country society to meet at the club, provided they steered clear of political pitfalls; he led panting young men up and down mountains in the Lake District and in and out of the best country pubs – he would say: ‘You haven’t seen England if you haven’t been in a pub’; he took great care of the women who helped him with their voluntary work in the club, and any man about whom they complained was summoned to his office and if he did not mend his ways his pass was taken from him. This last was a delicate problem, but Dr Gantry had a fair idea of when a man had made a genuine mistake or when a woman’s behaviour might be at fault. He used to say, however, that he sometimes thought he was running a marriage bureau, not a club. So many visitors were men, still young and single. They outnumbered their sisters by four to one, and as a result of the Committee’s care in the choice of ladies allowed inside the club, these men met very marriageable young women. Almost every week Dr Gantry gave his blessing to a new couple about to marry, and he always said that Britain’s best export was wives.
At the end of two months of helping with the dancing class and sometimes helping Bessie with a particularly large influx of visitors, Dr Gantry offered me a position on the staff of the club.
‘The Government has made so much use of our services that we have been able to obtain a grant from them to extend our work,’ Dr Gantry said one day, as he chatted to me in the lounge, where I was waiting for the dancing class to begin, ‘and it has long been my opinion that lady visitors to this country have many problems peculiar to women. I put this point to the Committee the other day and it was agreed that we should ask you to join our staff and look after our lady members.’
His offer was very unexpected but I was most interested and murmured that I was flattered by it.
‘Mrs Forbes tells me that much of your present work is in connection with women and children. She said also that you have a degree in Economics – is that so? and that you can speak French and German?’
‘Yes, it is so.’ My face must have shown my interest, because he went on to tell me about the salary and the working hours. The staff worked in shifts, and sometimes I would have to be on duty during week-ends and in the evening; this did not trouble me as I had often worked irregular hours; and as he went on to describe the work to be done, I felt a great desire to leave my present employment, in which I saw only the more sordid and degraded side of women, and do work of a pleasant nature.
‘I can be free in two months’ time,’ I said, my mind made up. ‘Will that be all right?’
‘Just in time for the rush of summer visitors,’ said Dr Gantry, wringing my hand, and then, before I could take breath, he shot across the room to talk to an Indian in a pink turban.
So I became part of the life of the McShane. It was for me a new and exciting life after the many years I had spent amongst the less fortunate inhabitants of the city. I helped Indian ladies with their shopping, shepherded American ladies round castles and museums, introduced wan German girls, imported as nurses, to the delights of having enough to eat, arranged tours for Gold Coast ladies whose knowledge of Shakespeare was frightening and who always wanted to see Anne Hathaway’s cottage. I led hikes into the Welsh mountains, into the Lake District and into the Peak District, arranged tours round biscuit factories, cotton mills, docks, power stations and new housing estates; and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I encouraged my often-shy bunches of ladies to talk to everyone they met, with the result that many a factory hand heard of Somaliland for the first time, and many a farmer saw India as a cluster of multicoloured saris fluttering round his cow-shed.
I rediscovered England myself, and the beauty of it was intensified for me by the many years spent working in an industrial town. When nowadays I sometimes feel a little homesick, I think of Tarn Hows in a rainstorm or the green pools of Snowdonia glittering in the sun, and my mind is diverted and the mood passes.
So the summer and autumn passed in a holocaust of work. Father was amused at what he called my Wogs, but he was pleased to see my enthusiasm, and Mother was delighted about my improved health – plenty of fresh air was putting pink into my cheeks and improving my appetite. I no longer wept. The pain that was Barney was with me still, although I tried not to disturb the wrappings with which time was insulating it.
James sometimes invited Angela and me to the theatre or to a concert, but he was careful not to be alone with me, and marriage was not mentioned by either of us again.
I never forgot the tango which I danced with the Negro, Paul Stacey, and neither did he. Whenever I attended one of the dances given at the McShane, he always danced a tango with me, and I always felt slightly drunk after it. He had a girl friend, a Polish refugee, and they clung to each other through many social difficulties. She could not tango, however, and she used to stand and watch us dance and clap her hands to the rhythm of the music. She had been in a concentration camp and her eyes were full of the horrors she had seen, and yet when she was with Paul she was completely at peace. He knew exactly how to chase the ghosts from her mind and bring quiet to her restless body, and he never deserted her except to dance the tango.
The tango undid the good which many months of quiet discipline had done. When I knew that Barney would never come back to me, physical desire had raged within me. I knew, however, that to live I must find peace of body as well as of mind, and I therefore worked long hours and concentrated painstakingly on the problems of my clients. Gradually some respite came until, consciously or unconsciously, in the space of five minutes Paul made naught of all my efforts. At first I felt humiliated and ashamed that, without encouragement, I could feel such desires – but comon sense told me that I was still young and must expect such feelings, so again I did my best to channel my energies into my work.
One day Bessie came and told me that a party of Egyptians was expected that evening. They were a rich and influential group of young men, who were touring Britain. It was Sunday and they were stranded in Wetherport until morning. Their guide, a harassed Government official, had telephoned to ask if we could entertain them for the evening, and, since a dance was held every Sunday evening, Dr Gantry had said that we could.
‘They’re Muslims,’ said Bessie in disgust. She was normally extremely tolerant, but for some reason she had taken a dislike to all followers of the Prophet, and it took her all her self-control to be pleasant to them. Like everything else about the staff, this was well known in the club. Probably she did not like them because, on their arrival in Britain, she was often the first Englishwoman – sometimes the first woman outside their family – to whom they had ever addressed themselves; and she suffered from their lack of knowledge of Western conventions.
Anyway, Bessie galvanised the canteen into baking in their honour, rounded up by telephone some girls with whom they could dance and begged me to help in the ballroom as well, although I protested laughingly that I was tired, after tramping round the cathedral with a party of American ladies.
When the Egyptians arrived, I was having a cheerful argument with Dr Wu, who believed ardently in the Chinese Communists’ cause and wished to convert me to his views, so I did not see them enter the room.
A silence stole over the lounge and I turned to see about a dozen exquisitely tailored young men surveying the room languidly, while a very indifferently tailored Englishman with a decidedly hunted look was dithering in front of them.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to Dr Wu, and went to the rescue.
The Englishman clutched my hand, said he was delighted to meet me and introduced me to his charges as Mrs Forbes. All the Egyptians immediately voiced their delight too, so it seemed pointless to explain that I was not Mrs Forbes.
I took their coats from them, found them easy chairs near the fire and asked the steward to find out what they would like to drink. The party was split evenly between whiskies and sodas and cups of tea. Since Bessie had not appeared, I asked Dr Wu, in a whisper, if he would kindly find her for me. Then I sat down amongst the new arrivals and chatted to them about their tour. Their English was a pleasure to hear, every word being clearly enunciated.
Dr Gantry arrived, followed by Bessie, so I moved away from the circle and went to speak to the group of American ladies, who had congregated in one corner. They were curious to know who the new visitors were, and when I told them that they had come to dance, the ladies promptly announced that they wanted to dance too and charged off to the cloakroom to ‘pretty up’, as they called it.
It looked as if the evening would be lively, so I sat down in a corner to rest for a few minutes. I had hardly seated myself when Dr Wu came up and silently handed me a cup of coffee – he must have seen my fatigue and gone specially to the buffet to get it. I was touched.
‘Please don’t mention it,’ he said when I thanked him, ‘it is a pleasure to me.’
I looked at Wu with new interest. Up to then he had just been another Chinese with Communist ideals, but when he expressed his pleasure he became suddenly a real person to me for the first time.
‘You are very kind, Dr Wu,’ I said, as I sipped the coffee appreciatively.
Wu smiled. ‘You are very kind to us,’ he said. ‘Madame Li has told me of your many kindnesses to her and to the other ladies in your charge.’
‘It is nothing,’ I said, the old shyness creeping over me. ‘I just do my work.’
‘You do much more than your work,’ said Wu. ‘We all know that,’ and he waved one hand as if to associate with his remarks the many faces in the background.
This was the first indication I had had that anyone other than the ladies I escorted appreciated the amount of work which I put into the club, and I was pleased. Through Wu’s polite remarks I glimpsed also how much foreigners like himself depended on the club for its friendly atmosphere.
‘I must desert you and go to the dance,’ I said, hastily finishing my coffee. ‘I have promised to help Mrs Forbes.’
Wu rose, bowed and smiled so that his eyes nearly vanished.
‘Alas,’ he said, ‘dancing is beyond me. My stupid feet fail to understand what the music tells them to do.’ His hands fluttered hopelessly.
I laughed.
‘Soon my friend will arrive and we will both come to the ballroom to watch you dance. Mr Stacey says that you dance most excellently.’
‘Mr Stacey is too kind. Do I know your friend?’
‘I think not. May I have the pleasure of introducing him to you later in the evening?’
‘I should be delighted to meet him,’ I said, and went away to dance with the Egyptians.
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