by Pam Weaver
‘I missed you too.’
‘It must be nice having your mum back home again.’
Izzie stopped walking and looked at her friend. ‘She’s not.’
Patsy seemed embarrassed. ‘Oh! Sorry. I thought she was.’ She paused then added, ‘When we heard she’d been discharged from hospital, I just assumed …’ Her voice trailed. ‘Sorry.’
‘Who told you my mother had been discharged?’
‘My mum.’
‘Does she know where my mother is?’
Patsy frowned. ‘Don’t you?’
Izzie shook her head.
‘That’s all I know,’ Patsy said with a shrug. ‘But I’ll ask her if you like.’
‘Yes please,’ said Izzie as they started walking again.
When they reached the arcade, Patsy said, ‘Fancy having a go on the slot machines? I’ve got about ten pence to spare.’
Izzie grinned. ‘And I’ve got a bob. Okay, you’re on.’
*
As expected, Linda did well at school. She made new friends and was soon top of her form. Their father had bought her a bike and Linda spent most Saturdays out and about with her friends. As soon as she’d reached thirteen, she got a paper round at Millward’s Tobacconist and Newsagent’s. She was allowed to keep all of her earnings, which meant she was able to go to the pictures or on the bus to Brighton with her friends. All was well until the morning her employer called her into the back room. Linda was hugging her coat closely to her body.
‘Stomach ache?’ Mrs Millward asked.
‘Monthlies,’ said Linda. She grimaced with the pain.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Millward said coldly. ‘You told my husband you had your monthlies less than ten days ago. What have you got inside your coat?’
Linda’s face flushed. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said indignantly.
‘You can either give it back to me now,’ Mrs Millward went on, ‘or I tell your father and we telephone the police.’
Reluctantly, Linda opened her school coat and a Picturegoer magazine fell to the floor.
Mrs Millward glared. ‘I shan’t be requiring your services anymore.’
‘Oh please,’ Linda said, bursting into tears. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before.’
‘Don’t come the water-works with me, Linda Baxter. You’ve been pinching stuff ever since you came here.’
‘I promise I won’t do it again,’ Linda begged.
‘Too late, my girl. You’ve been caught out and I don’t employ thieves.’
Linda stopped crying and gave Mrs Millward a filthy look. ‘Who wants your poxy job anyway?’ she snapped as she flounced out of the shop.
Mrs Millward was right. She had been pinching the magazines for a few months. She’d hidden them under the mattress in her bedroom, only reading them when she was sure to be alone. Undaunted by the sack, Linda found another newsagent not far away and started a paper round with them. But she’d learned her lesson. She’d be a lot more careful next time.
Four
Izzie became very popular at the green grocer’s, so much so that at Christmas she’d been delightedly surprised when several of the customers popped into the shop with a ‘Christmas box’ for her. She’d ended up with a couple of small tins of sweets from Woolworth’s and Hubbard’s department store and the odd home-made mince pie. She also had a few Christmas cards containing a bob or two here and half a crown there. Mr Allen was a fair employer and Izzie enjoyed the work.
Market day in the town was on Wednesday and one day she heard a voice behind her. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
Izzie had been weighing out potatoes and putting them into folded pieces of newspaper she had fashioned into carriers ready for the rush. She looked up. The woman standing in front of her was tall and wearing a brown coat. The bit of her hair which was visible under her brown felt hat was grey and curly. Probably permed, Izzie thought. She looked about fifty, but she could have been younger. Her face was lined and she had sad grey eyes. Izzie shook her head. ‘I’m sorry Madam,’ she said politely, ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘I knew your mother,’ the woman said coldly.
Izzie’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘My mother?’
Mr Allen began hovering nearby as if he was expecting trouble.
Izzie stood. ‘Can I get you something?’
‘A pound of carrots and a cabbage.’
Izzie weighed the carrots and tipped them into the woman’s bag. Her customer gave her a long hard stare. ‘You’re Bill Baxter’s girl aren’t you?’
‘Yes, yes I am,’ Izzie said as she handed her a cabbage. ‘That will be eleven pence please.’
The woman gave her a shilling and Izzie handed her a penny change. ‘May I ask, do you know where my mother is?’
The woman shook her head.
‘I don’t know if you are aware of it but she went missing,’ Izzie went on, all the old feelings of loss and longing resurfacing again. ‘It’s coming up for three years now. They found her but she had to go to hospital and that was the last we heard of her. Someone told me she had been discharged but I still don’t know where she is.’
The woman had remained still, as though she was mulling something over in her own mind. ‘I’m sorry young lady,’ she said eventually. ‘I can’t help you.’
‘Could you get some more apples from the store room, Izzie?’ Mr Allen said, interrupting them.
Izzie hurried outside and when she came back, the woman had left the shop.
‘What was that customer’s name, Mr Allen?’ she asked her employer.
‘Mrs Sayers.’
Izzie nodded her thanks. As far as she knew, she had never seen the woman before so why was that name vaguely familiar?
*
Izzie woke up. She could hear her sister crying. Pulling on a cardigan, she padded to Linda’s bedroom.
‘Linda,’ she whispered. ‘I’m coming in.’
It was early morning. The street lights were off and the pale grey light of a new day filtered through the curtains. Walking into Linda’s bedroom, Izzie sat on the edge of her bed. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Linda sat up. ‘Oh Izzie,’ Linda said brokenly. ‘Why didn’t Mum come back?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Izzie, ‘but I’m sure she must have had her reasons.’ She changed her position so that she could put her arm over Linda’s shoulder. ‘When I asked Granny, she just said Mum was too ill.’
Linda blew her nose. ‘I remember making her pictures and stuff, but she never wrote back or anything.’
Izzie pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to voice her own suspicion that their father had never even sent the things they’d made.
‘Do you miss her?’ Linda asked.
‘Yes I do.’
They sat for a while, each lost in her own thoughts.
‘Maybe I should talk to Dad?’ said Linda.
‘I tried that,’ said Izzie. ‘He got angry with me. I don’t think he wants to talk about it.’
Linda began to cry again. ‘There must be somebody who knows where she is.’
Izzie sighed. Now she too was beginning to feel teary.
‘I got top marks in science last week,’ said Linda. ‘Miss Leigh gave me a commendation.’
‘Oh Linda, that’s wonderful.’
‘But I wanted to tell Mum.’
Izzie squeezed her sister closer. ‘You could have shown me. Can I see it?
Linda blew her nose again. ‘You can … but it’s not the same.’
‘I know, I know.’
*
There had been a few times when Izzie had helped out at the emporium, usually when she had the odd day off or half a day.
The building was more like a warehouse than anything else. It was stuffed full of everything from wardrobes to books, from lamp shades to second-hand clothing and almost at once, Izzie could see the whole place was a shambles. Her father and his driver-cum-helper Mick Osborne, a rather gr
easy looking individual who always looked as if he was badly in need of a proper wash and shave, brought stuff in by the lorry load but there was no organisation when it came to storing it. As a result, everything was thrown inside higgledy-piggledy, which meant that half the time Izzie couldn’t even reach something the customer wanted to look at. Her father didn’t like it much when she mentioned it to him and they ended up having an argument.
‘Stop telling me what to do, Izzie!’ he’d shouted.
‘But can’t you see, you’re losing customers?’
‘Don’t talk such Tommy rot.’
‘But Dad,’ she said, pointing to a large stack of chairs precariously balanced, ‘that lady really wanted to buy that small table up there, but I couldn’t get at it.’
Bill walked away with an irritated scoff and shut himself in his office. Izzie could have screamed.
It wasn’t until someone tried to pull a suitcase from under a pile of carpet pieces and almost caused the catastrophic collapse of another precarious stack, that he finally agreed to let her try and sort it out.
It was jolly hard work but before long, Izzie had managed to achieve some semblance of order. Books were in one corner, arranged on bookcases which could be easily off loaded if someone wanted to buy one, china and ornaments were displayed in an attractive way in another corner, army surplus had its own area, garden tools another – the list went on and on. With Izzie’s intervention, a visit to Bill’s emporium had become a pleasure and was no longer a serious risk to public health. Izzie was pleased with what she had done, but she wasn’t tempted to work for her father full time.
Life at home wasn’t so easy. Linda kept herself to herself. When their mother first went, Linda cried a lot and wanted Izzie to cuddle her but she was past all that now. She didn’t even want to talk about Doris anymore, something which Izzie found hard to bear. Izzie was anxious to keep the memory of her mother alive, but as time went on it was becoming more and more difficult. There was nothing of hers in Chandos Road – not so much as a picture or a hair brush. As well as all that, the work load in the house fell mostly on Izzie’s shoulders. They sent the heavy stuff like the sheets, pillow cases and table cloths to the laundry – their father’s shirts went there too – but everything else had to be done by the girls. Linda did as little as possible and their father regarded anything to do with the house as ‘women’s work’. Izzie would complain, she’d asked Linda to help, she’d written rotas and given explicit instructions about how a thing should be done so that there was no confusion but it was all to no avail.
By the time her sixteenth birthday came around in 1950, Izzie was still working in the green grocer’s shop but she knew it wouldn’t last. Right from the start, Mr Allen had made it clear that as soon as his son left school, he wanted to establish him in the family business, so Izzie would have to find something else. Even though she had lived frugally, Izzie didn’t have much in the way of savings but at the back of her mind, she knew she wanted to leave home. She had been putting what she could into a small tin she kept at the back of her drawer but because her father took so much of her money for her keep, it was slow going. What she needed was a better paid job but they were hard to come by. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise when Mr Allen called her into his office at lunch time one Friday.
‘I know you are looking for another job, Izzie,’ he said, regarding her over the rim of his spectacles, and indicating that she should sit, ‘so I wondered if you would consider working for one of my customers.’
Izzie lowered herself into the chair in front of his desk.
‘Mrs Shilling is looking for a young person to help her mother-in-law. The post doesn’t involve any nursing care for the old lady, but they would like someone to amuse her during the day.’
Izzie frowned. Entertaining some old duffer? It sounded rather boring. ‘I’m not sure—’ she began.
‘The pay is good,’ Mr Allen interrupted, ‘better than the usual rate, and old Mrs Shilling is a very nice person, or I should say, was. Unfortunately, she’s recently had a stroke.’
She was probably gaga as well, Izzie thought. Apart from the pay, the more he told her the less appealing the job became.
Not wishing to appear rude, Izzie chewed her bottom lip. ‘Well …’ she began again.
‘I would be happy to give you a recommendation.’
Izzie hesitated.
‘Look,’ Mr Allen said quickly as he picked up the telephone, ‘why not take the afternoon off and go round there to meet them? I’ll give them a ring to say you are on your way.’
Izzie walked to her appointment. She felt sure she would hate the job but she couldn’t break her promise to Mr Allen after he’d gone to all the trouble of ringing young Mrs Shilling, as he’d called her, to say she was on her way. As she waited to cross Richmond Road, a bus heading towards the town went past. A face at the window brought her up with a jolt. The woman seemed surprised to see Izzie too. They stared at each other for several seconds before the bus moved out of sight. It was Mrs Sayers. What was it about that woman that made her feel so uncomfortable?
Five
The White Lodge was a big Victorian house on the corner of Victoria Road and Richmond Road. The maid who opened the door to her seemed pleasant enough, but Izzie’s first impression of young Mrs Shilling, who was standing in the hallway in front of the mirror, wasn’t so good. The maid left. Izzie waited.
The woman might have been known as young Mrs Shilling, but she wasn’t that young and she seemed a bit snobby. She had smiled briefly when Izzie explained who she was, but after that, she’d hardly looked at her. She was obviously getting ready to go out. Izzie couldn’t help admiring her elegant suit with a new look length skirt in a stunning royal blue, but Mrs Shilling made a point of saying that she couldn’t stay long, making Izzie feel that she was a bit of a nuisance even being there.
‘I’m meeting friends for afternoon tea,’ she explained as Izzie watched her tightening the little black belt over the top of her jacket to emphasize her dainty waist. ‘Mr Allen tells me you’re a hard worker,’ Mrs Shilling went on, ‘but I must say you’re very young. What experience do you have?’
Izzie’s account of her working life was very brief.
Mrs Shilling leaned forward in front of the mirror on the hallstand and patted her hair before putting her hat on. ‘How long have you worked in the green grocer’s?’
‘Since I left school, Madam.’
Mrs Shilling raised an eyebrow. ‘And why are you leaving now?’
‘Mr Allen wants his son to learn the family business,’ Izzie said.
Having taken her gloves from the drawer on the front of the hallstand, Mrs Shilling opened her handbag and found her lipstick, which she applied to her already brightly covered mouth. ‘Mr Allen can give me your references?’ she added before rubbing her lips together.
‘Yes, Madam.’
They were interrupted by the sound of a car horn on the road outside. ‘Good,’ said Mrs Shilling as she gathered her things. ‘Then you’d better go and see mother-in-law.’ She breezed past Izzie with hardly a backward glance and opened the front door to wave at someone outside. Before closing the door again, she leaned back into the hallway and, waving her hand irritably said, ‘Off you go then. Along the corridor, third door on the right.’ The front door banged and, with that, Izzie was left alone in the hallway.
Annoyed by Mrs Shilling’s attitude, it was only the thought of having to tell Mr Allen that she hadn’t actually met old Mrs Shilling that prevented Izzie from walking out herself. She made up her mind that if the old lady was gaga, or as rude as her daughter-in-law, she definitely wouldn’t be staying.
Izzie set off down the hall and knocked on the third door. A surprisingly strong voice called, ‘Come in.’
The old lady was sitting in a big leather chair which was pulled up to a table in front of the window. The table itself was covered with boxes and what looked like some very unusual pieces of pottery.
‘Who are you, dear?’
‘My name is Isobelle Baxter but everybody calls me Izzie. I’ve come about the post.’ And at the old lady’s behest, she went through her résumé once again.
Mrs Shilling listened attentively and then smiled. ‘Well, you seem like a very capable girl,’ she began, ‘so let me tell you a bit about myself.’ She indicated that she should sit down so Izzie perched on the nearest chair.
‘My husband and I were archaeologists,’ the old lady went on. ‘We worked mainly in South America. He died just before the war and I came back to this country. I spent the war years working as an archivist. With the threat of invasion hanging over our heads, we had to do all we could to protect the nation’s heritage.’ Mrs Shilling went on to explain that after her retirement, she had spent her latter years writing reports and papers on the work she and her husband had done. She was so fascinating that Izzie found herself relaxing; making herself more comfortable as she listened to the story.
They were both in a lovely room overlooking the garden. The walls were lined with books and there were some interesting and intriguing things on display.
‘I planned to write a book about our experiences but my health has let me down,’ Mrs Shilling continued. ‘Still, I am luckier than most. My stroke has left me with a weak arm and my leg isn’t too clever but fortunately I haven’t lost my marbles … yet.’
Izzie chuckled. As she sat listening to her, it didn’t take long to realise that working for someone like Mrs Shilling would be very interesting indeed.
‘Tea?’ the old lady asked.
Izzie nodded. ‘Yes please.’
Mrs Shilling rang the bell on the table next to her and a little while later the girl who had opened the front door to Izzie came into the room. ‘Could you bring us some tea please, Esther?’
‘What I want is someone to help me put everything down in black and white,’ Mrs Shilling said as Esther closed the door again. ‘Can you type?’
With a sinking feeling, Izzie shook her head.
‘Not to worry,’ old Mrs Shilling said brightly. ‘I shall dictate everything slowly so that you can write it in long hand and even if you can only type it up with one finger, it will be good practice for you. So what do you say? Can I tempt you to come and work for me?’