by Maggie Ford
Yet one moment of aberration was always possible. On one hot August afternoon, she herself experienced a twinge of fancy. She glanced up at the young man waiting among others to check in, her mind, as she handed a man before him his room key, casually noting someone in his late twenties, quite good-looking, with an efficient manner.
‘How long will you be staying, sir?’ she enquired politely when she was finally able to attend to him.
‘Just the one night. I’m meeting an old friend for the evening and going back tomorrow. We were at Oxford together – he’s a marine consultant – has his own business.’
Long experience judged him immediately. Beneath that veneer of self-assuredness lingered a diffident personality, else he wouldn’t have begun bothering to tell her why he was here, as though explaining away his single night’s booking. Almost as though he thought she might suspect him of some clandestine agreement with a lady perhaps?
Annie hid a smile, hooked a key from one of the pegs behind her and handed it to him. ‘Number two-five-seven Mr Willoughby,’ she chanted, then smiled openly. ‘It has a sea view.’
There had been no need to give him one with a sea view but something about him prompted her to be especially nice to him. Perhaps it was that very diffidence she had detected that drew her to him. He’d signed his first name as Alexander, though why it should matter to her she wasn’t certain.
She found her gaze following him across the foyer with its ceiling fans to combat the heat of the August day and its constant movement of holiday and business guests, aware of her preoccupation only when someone on the other side of the counter coughed politely.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she hastened, returning her gaze immediately to a couple with a child. ‘How may I help you?’
‘We booked a week here, a couple of weeks ago. Name’s Morris.’
‘Ah yes.’ She quickly consulted the booking form he laid before her, her eyes flicking briefly once to the progress of Mr Willoughby up the wide, carpeted staircase before he disappeared for good on to the next floor up.
For the rest of the day she watched for Mr Willoughby, half-annoyed, half-derisive at herself for this ridiculous interest inside her. She saw him go out later that afternoon; he handed his key to the young part-timer who came in afternoons. But she didn’t see him come back, her attention most likely having been taken up with something in the office when he did, or perhaps he’d returned after she had finished duty and gone home, he and his old Oxford chum enjoying a late night.
The next day, Sunday, was her day off. He would be leaving that morning for wherever he lived without her seeing him again. It had been just a passing thing, a silly moment of fleeting infatuation, and that his face persisted in hovering in her head made her angry with herself for such foolishness. Her mother accused her of being moody, wanted to know if she was feeling well. To escape, she took a walk, then after Sunday dinner buried her face in a book before retiring upstairs on the pretext of sorting out dresses for the week.
On Monday when she came back on duty he was, of course, gone. Again she chided herself, wondering why her heart should sink as it did. She would soon forget him.
‘Oh, Miss Bowmaker.’ Colin, coming from the manager’s office behind reception, held an envelope with the hotel’s brown and gold crest on it. ‘One of the guests handed this in yesterday morning when he paid his bill. It’s addressed to you.’ Colin’s eyes held a look that said he trusted she wasn’t forming one of those unsavoury alliances with a guest which some lesser hotel receptionists were wont to do.
She almost snatched the envelope from him, not so much because she was eager to open it as in annoyance at the message Colin’s uncharitable look conveyed. To further dampen his assumption, she put it into her handbag which she placed in the locker of the office, just to show it held no meaning for her.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ enquired an inquisitive Colin.
‘It’s probably only a thank-you note. Whoever it was has gone now, so there’s no urgency, is there?’
‘His name was Mr Alexander Willoughby.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ Her heart raced, but she controlled herself until lunchtime. In the tiny staff restaurant at the featureless rear part of the hotel that looked out on boxes and wrappings from the kitchen waiting to be taken away by the dustmen, she slit open the flap of the prestigious cream envelope and drew out the equally fine single sheet of paper with its brown and gold embossed letter-heading, folded once. On it was written in a bold sloping hand: Alex Willoughby, No.3 Turner’s Hill, North Hampstead, London.
In Chalkwell Park on a now dark bench on a snaking little path hidden by shrubbery, George and Pam had just finished making love, and now sat side by side, his arm about her, each deep in thought as they puffed at rather damp cigarettes. They’d made love several times since Dad had told her with no beating about the bush that nothing would ever induce him to embrace George Bryant, son of his bitterest enemy, as a prospective son-in-law.
‘You can knock that whole bloody idea of yours on the head,’ he had spat at her, his finger pointed threateningly towards her when in July she had tentatively tested the ground.
‘We’re only friendly, Dad,’ she had lied.
‘Then you can get un-friendly as soon as you like. I don’t want to talk on it any more.’
‘But Dad …’
‘I don’t want to hear another word on it. Understood?’
She had nodded dismally, had heard him going around the house grumbling under his breath about past injuries, glaring balefully at her if their eyes met. She hadn’t dared bring up the subject again, shuddered to think what he would say if he knew the real truth.
‘He’s never going to forgive,’ she had told George, and they had sat that day close together, silent, both heavily laden with the hopelessness of it. She had asked what his father would say if he were told.
George had shrugged. ‘It’s different for me. I’m a man. I could leave home whenever I want. You can’t – you’re a girl. I don’t want to of course. But if we married, we’d leave home wouldn’t we? Set up our own home. It’s an old, old, silly row – gone on years. You’d’ve thought they’d have forgotten it by now.’
‘Well, they haven’t,’ she had burst out, tears beginning to pour down her cheeks. And we’re the ones paying. They’re hurting us, not them. I love you, George. I don’t think I could exist without you now. It’s not fair …’ She could hardly talk, the words coming brokenly. ‘Two silly old men …’
She had broken off, her throat closing up, had wept on his shoulder as he cuddled her close. By the sound of his own effort to soothe her, he too had been near to tears.
It was then they’d decided to kick over the traces of that old quarrel. If she became pregnant they’d have to marry, it would be expected of them, no other means to avoid the scandal. Her parents loved her. They’d forgive the young people in love if not the family who had, unknowingly in that dim distant past, caused this desperate measure years later.
Tonight they had made love again, not fearing discovery by anyone passing. August Bank Holiday had been two weeks ago. The weather had grown dull and wet, discouraging Southend visitors. Its coloured lights glistened in the damp evenings to fewer people than it had hoped; Fairyland and Children’s Playground were deserted, the Kursal half empty, dodgem cars stacked against crash barriers, just two or three accommodating a sprinkling of customers, the flying chairs and scenic railway carriages more or less vacant as they continued optimistically to spin and dive for the odd few. The haunted house and ghost train were now truly left to the painted celluloid spirits.
Chalkwell Park, always only the haunt of locals and now deserted, was a haven to them on their chosen bench. But this evening Pam was downcast.
‘I was sure I’d have fallen by now.’
‘It’s bound to take a while, darling. I’m doing my best.’
Pam pouted. Their lovemaking was doing nothing for her tonight – it seemed to her to ha
ve become more of a routine than the overwhelming joy it had been. ‘If I didn’t want to get pregnant, you can bet your bottom dollar it’d happen. It always happens to girls who don’t want it to. Do you think I’m too old?’
‘Twenty?’ In the darkness his voice sounded incredulous. ‘What d’you mean, too old?’
‘Well, you hear of girls of seventeen and eighteen, too young to get married without their parents’ consent, falling pregnant after risking it just once. Maybe if I’d been promiscuous when I was younger I might’ve fallen pregnant more easily now.’
George shot upright. His tone was obviously angry. ‘Don’t talk like that, Pam. You’ve not had anyone else, have you, before me?’
She had become angry too, suddenly flaring. ‘I’ve just said I haven’t, haven’t I?’
‘I mean,’ he moderated, ‘you’ve not ever thought about it with anyone else before you met me?’
‘Of course not. I’ve not really been out with anyone before you.’
‘You must have.’
‘Not in that way. I’m hurt you could even think that, George.’
He was immediately contrite. ‘Oh, God, Pam, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. I was being thoroughly stupid, but I do love you so much, Pam.’
She melted, sinking quickly back into his arms. ‘I love you too, darling. So very much.’ And she thought, as he held her to him, that she must get herself pregnant soon so as to be with him forever with nothing anyone could say or do.
* * *
‘I had another letter from Arthur Monk,’ Josie told Winnie Blackman as they made their way on a wet Saturday evening to the pictures in Leigh, the September weather drawing in a little miserably.
‘How many does that make since he started writing to you?’ asked Winnie. There was a smirk in her tone, a smirk shared by them both.
‘Eight.’
‘And how many have you sent him?’
‘Four.’ The question had been whimsically put but Josie now replied with a straighter face, thinking of her involvement with Arthur Monk and did she really want to get involved even only by letter. ‘There’s nothing much to write about. And his are always full of the same thing. Politics. He seems utterly obsessed with politics.’
‘Boring, I should imagine. He talks about other things though?’
‘A few things. About himself really.’
The subject falling a little flat, Winnie losing interest, they walked on in silence for a while as Josie thought about Arthur and his letters.
She hadn’t seen him once since meeting him in June at the Kursal. This was her fault, for she had evaded every invitation so far to meet him again. So he’d stuck to letters as she’d said, mostly full of politics. He had told her he was one hundred percent Labour, as she imagined everyone from East London to be; that he’d helped canvass on behalf of his prospective candidate during the General Election in June. He was jubilant Labour had got in, overjoyed to see Baldwin’s Conservatives lose, saying what a mess (according to him) the man had made of his drawn-out term of office, and that MacDonald, whose Labour Party had earlier seen just ten months in power before being ousted by the Conservatives, should never have lost the election in nineteen twenty-four. Arthur could only have been thirteen then and shouldn’t have cared about such things. Instead he wrote as if he’d been an elder statesmen for years, but for his almost childish exuberance at last June’s outcome.
Bored stiff by accounts of how from nineteen twenty-two govermnents seemed to have changed yearly for three years running, when at last he had got off the subject enough to ask to see her again, setting a date for the next Sunday, Josie imagined a day of constant political chat.
Fortunately it had rained that day and she hadn’t gone. She imagined that would be the last she’d hear from him, but on the Monday a letter had arrived apologising for his not being there – his one pair of shoes had been at the mender’s and he had been unable to go out. He expressed his abject apologies and his hopes that she hadn’t been too upset at being stood up. If she wasn’t upset, could they meet the Sunday after that?
She had written back to say that she wasn’t upset, refraining from mentioning that she hadn’t even gone to meet him. But she cried off seeing him on that Sunday too, saying she was already booked for a church outing arranged long beforehand. Church was a good excuse for getting out of a date – an invented wedding, christening, an obligation to participate in some fictitious fete or other. Arthur was apparently not at all churchy, so there was no likelihood of his offering to be there with her; and when all that was exhausted there was always Dad to be helped in the boiling of cockles, all hands to the wheel during the height of the summer season she had told him. But now she was running out of excuses.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to see him,’ she told Winnie. ‘Just that I don’t want to get too involved at the moment. And I’ve only met him once. I don’t really know what he’s like, do I?’
‘You won’t know if you don’t go and meet him,’ Winnie said.
‘Well, say if I like him and I was to fall in love with him. Bang goes any hope of meeting someone well off. I still want to see what London is like – see what the well-to-do get up to – maybe even be one of them if I met the right chap. You do too. I don’t see why not. We’re both attractive enough, you and me. I’m sure we could turn the head of any heir to a fortune.’
‘You won’t,’ Winnie laughed, ‘if you go on saying, “you and me”. It’s you and I. We’d have to remember to put on airs and talk very properly with plums in our mouths.’ Already she was putting on an appropriate accent. Josie followed suit.
‘We did plan it, Winnie, did we not?’
Again Winnie laughed. ‘Did we not,’ she mimicked. ‘It’s all right to say didn’t we. All we’d need to get into those sort of circles would be to learn a few of the sayings they use. If we ever get that far.’
‘But you still want to go, one day?’
‘Do I?’ Winnie said with fervour, her own life with a layabout father and several brothers and sisters as unattractive to her as anything could be, she’d told Josie many a time. She too dreamed of bright lights and the careless enjoyment London offered.
‘Well, I won’t be seeing it if I go off with someone like Arthur Monk,’ Josie said flatly.
‘You can’t keep on dangling him on a string though, can you?’ Her friend paused, looking thoughtful. ‘You know, Jo, I think he could be quite useful.’
‘Useful!’
‘You could get him to take you around London some time. I could tag along so we could get used to the place with someone who knows about it.’
It was an idea. For several weeks Josie mulled it over, then wrote her letter saying she’d like to see him in London, being that Southend in autumn wasn’t all that wonderful. She said she’d have to bring a friend along since she had never travelled up to London before and feared doing it alone.
The plan was set. Arthur Monk fell straight into it, eager to see her at last. But guilt did settle a little uneasily on Josie’s shoulders as she agreed a date. They set it for the second Saturday in November, some way ahead, but that being Lord Mayor’s Day with a colourful procession through London and crowds of people to watch it, with flags and banners and bands and guards in lovely uniforms on horseback and people waving little Union Jacks, he thought it was a good time for their date and worth waiting for.
‘Lord Mayor’s Show!’ her mother said when Josie asked permission to go. ‘I don’t know about letting you go all that way up to London on your own.’
‘I won’t be on my own,’ Josie pleaded. ‘Winnie Blackman’ll be with me. She’s twenty. She’ll look after me.’ Winnie Blackman was only just twenty, her mind no doubt focused on boys by now. Could she look after anyone?
‘Two of you on your own then,’ Peggy said. ‘Two girls. It’s as good as you being on your own. Lord knows what you’ll be getting up to. And Lord knows what you’ll find up there.’
She
had never been to London in her life. It struck her as a terribly dangerous step and she was on the verge of forbidding her youngest daughter outright. After all, the girl had only just turned eighteen, easy prey to anyone who might take advantage of her and her innocence. And in all those crowds. All very well saying Winnie Blackman, her best friend, would be with her. Winnie Blackman at twenty was still under age. A wonder her parents had let her go, but they weren’t very respectable people. Her father was a drunk, a layabout, her mother, with loads of kids, had to take in washing to make ends meet. Not a nice family.
On the other hand, it did seem unkind to deny Josie this wonderful day out. Josie promised to leave for home the moment the show was over and not linger in London, and it was a straight run back on the train, and it had been Josie’s birthday last week, and no one had done much about it, no birthday party or anything, just a card from her and her father and a winter scarf for a present. This would be a little extra treat for her. And girls these days were so much more forward and confident than they had been in her day. And Josie’s large blue eyes were filling with tears at the thought of being denied. Perhaps she would be all right. One couldn’t go on and on coddling young people forever. And when they did get to be twenty-one and be adult, they mightn’t be equipped to look after themselves if they weren’t allowed, just a little beforehand, to sort of have small practice runs.
‘Look,’ she conceded. ‘So long as you start for home as soon as it ends, like you promised, and don’t linger about in London.’