Rose cast a glance over the words and shrugged. ‘No idea, I’m afraid. I don’t know any Kitty in Tom’s life. Perhaps she’s someone he met abroad?’ Her brow creased as she stared at it again. ‘I can’t help you, Harry. That note is meaningless to me and I can’t contact someone I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t want Annie hearing anything about this Kitty. Tom’s death hit her hard. She doesn’t need to be upset. You keep this note.’
‘Pardon?’
She shrugged. ‘If you’re going up to the factory, perhaps you can ask around as most of the working girls in this city earn their wages up there. But I’m not interested to learn about any other sweetheart.’
‘I understand.’ He frowned.
‘Destroy it, whether you find her or not. I’ll choose to remember my Tom loving Annie.’
__________
Harry had come to the factory as if being guided there by an unseen hand. He’d arrived in a torn frame of mind as to whether or not to bother any further with Kitty. There was a train for London leaving this afternoon; if he strode off now, he could make it easily, with time even for a light luncheon near the station and no rushing involved. Or, given he was here now, he could spend a couple of hours walking around the factory, which he’d find interesting anyway, and maybe find out if anyone knew of a girl called Kitty from 1915.
He was standing near the bridge not far from where he’d alighted the carriage to make a decision. He found himself watching a group of people, presumably factory shift workers, streaming off the train at Selby Halt. It was decision time. He blinked. Should he head home now and feel happy he’d delivered Tom’s things to Rose, or catch the last train this evening and perhaps solve the mystery of the note in the tin, if just for himself?
Harry looked south towards the city and the main railway terminus and then glanced east to the Rowntree’s visitor centre.
He headed east towards the visitor centre. He had to satisfy his curiosity and it gave him a few more hours of distraction before facing his responsibilities.
11
Seated alone in the waiting room for guests, Harry had read all the printed material displayed around the room several times, feeling hungry despite his big breakfast, and no doubt because of all the images of chocolate. The colourful printed advertising material for chocolate beans and Rowntree’s pastilles and clear gums – the latter a favourite of his in his teens – held his attention. There was also a poster of the King’s Tin, depicting the delivery of the Christmas treat to the trenches, and it felt as though Tom’s spirit had not yet finished with him.
Harry glanced at his watch, irked that he was still waiting. Granted, he’d been eight minutes early so Rowntree’s was only two minutes over time but a man could die in two minutes, he amused himself grimly, as he stood and moved over to a grainy photograph. It showed dozens of women dressed in white and seated on the lawns of this factory site. A small sign explained that this was a summer picnic lunch outdoors in 1900 for the hardworking factory girls.
‘You must be Mr Blake?’ a smoky voice said behind him. He turned, expecting a bespectacled, round spinster with a clipboard, and instead was met by a tallish woman with a welcoming smile who likely wasn’t yet thirty. ‘Forgive me for being a fraction late; there were supposed to be four of you on this tour but the other three haven’t shown up at Selby Halt.’ She was shrugging off a navy coat with a purple silk lining that gave the impression of royalty; she certainly appeared regal with her straight bearing and polished manner of speaking. Harry felt his breath catch slightly as she turned fully to face him and let the warmth of that smile envelop him. The woman’s features were a match for her slender elegance; an oval symmetry of pleasing angles, from the arch of her brows to the delicate sweep of her nose. He could see the cold of being outside still pinching her cheeks and she dabbed her nose with an embroidered hanky she pulled from her sleeve. ‘And yet more apology.’ She sniffed, speaking in a tone that was all the more seductive for its soft rasp. ‘I suddenly have a ticklish throat.’ She put her coat over the back of a chair.
He grinned at the dark lock of hair that had escaped and fell past her shoulder to give her a wanton appearance. She noticed it too and he enjoyed watching her politely wrestle the hair back beneath its inadequate pins.
‘Gosh, I must look a wreck,’ she admitted, laughing at herself. Yes, her mouth was generous when she smiled and fired delight in eyes the colour of the cocoa samples beneath the cabinets in the visitor centre. He suspected in sunlight they’d blaze warm and liquid.
Helplessly captivated, he spoke the first response that came to mind. ‘That’s not the word I’d choose to describe you.’ The woman gave him a glance of amused surprise at his forwardness. Harry cleared his throat softly. ‘You know my name but I don’t know yours.’
She held out a hand. ‘Indeed, how rude of me,’ she said, still letting the warmth of her smile linger on him. ‘I’m Alexandra Britten-Jones. I shall be your guide for this afternoon.’
‘I’m staring, aren’t I?’ Harry felt his insides knot with embarrassment.
‘Well, I wasn’t going to mention it.’ She chuckled. Her manner by comparison was effortlessly easy.
‘Forgive me, you remind me of someone,’ he lied, feeling idiotic at greedily swallowing the sight of her and intensely glad he’d stayed on a few hours longer.
‘Was she windswept too?’ she jested, clicking her tongue at yet another wayward wisp of hair escaping from the other side.
Harry was surprised at the depth of his disappointment to see a wedding band on that hand.
‘Anyway, it’s just us for the VIP tour. I hope you don’t mind?’ she enquired.
‘What’s to mind? Surely the question is whether you can be troubled taking one person rather than four around?’
‘It’s my job, Mr Blake, and I enjoy it very much, whether it’s one or one dozen people. Shall we?’ she gestured, reaching for the coat. ‘You’ve left your personal belongings in one of the lockers, I presume?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Well, let’s begin here,’ she said, ushering him into a corridor to glance at cabinets of products. As she spoke of Quaker ideals and how those ideals influenced the lives of the factory’s workforce, he became increasingly mesmerised by his companion. They walked on down other hallways and through doors and it didn’t matter to Harry whether she read him the back of a cocoa tin or explained the working conditions in the factory, he was soothed by her voice and her laughing manner.
‘. . . light and spacious rooms with countryside views in what we call our multipurpose dining block. This was only built in 1913 and it can seat two thousand girls and five hundred men in their separate dining halls at one time.’
‘I can’t imagine that number of people eating at once,’ he admitted.
She grinned. ‘It’s quiet at the present time but give it an hour and you’ll be amazed at the speed at which meals are served. The Rowntree firm ensures its staff always have access to freshly cooked, quality food, and lots of fresh air at their break times too.’
‘I’m impressed,’ he mused, strolling alongside her, noting she was barely inches shorter than him, gliding on low heels.
‘The firm also provides school rooms so the younger girls can gain an education in everything from arithmetic to cookery. There’s a gymnasium, lecture halls, hothouses, swimming baths, even an orchard . . . all part of this complex.’
He gave a low whistle. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘As a guide?’
He nodded and noted the flicker of sadness in her otherwise steady gaze.
‘This is my fourth year, although you’re accompanying me on my final week, Mr Blake.’
‘You’re leaving?’
She sighed. ‘I’m afraid so. This is the area that was a makeshift billet for soldiers and we had wards over there. I volunteered at the Friends Hospital and that’s how I came to be working here.’
‘You’re leaving?’ he repeated.
She nodded, dark lashes hitting the tops of her cheeks before she raised her gaze to him. ‘Married women are not allowed to work here, unfortunately.’ She shrugged. ‘Company policy. They can come back on a casual basis but only alongside other married women; it’s against the rules to be with the single girls.’
‘What do they think might happen,’ he asked, aghast, ‘should they mix, I mean? Maybe the young spinsters might learn how to get pregnant?’ he added. ‘Or better still, how not to.’
Her smile matched his wry tone. ‘Yes, indeed. I agree it’s all very early Victorian thinking, but those are the rules and the Rowntrees are so generous in every aspect that I can’t bring myself to criticise them as others might.’ She slipped an arm into her coat.
‘Allow me,’ he said, and lifted the shoulders of her garment so she could shrug into the coat. It was thick cashmere wool, lined with slippery satin that slid expensively beneath his touch. He noted the label from London’s fashionable couturier district around Mayfair and wondered why this woman of means was involved in such a menial pursuit.
They were close enough that he could smell the soap lingering from her bath that morning, and he could see the baby-like wisps of hair at the back of her neck that would flutter if he so much as breathed on them. He blinked with consternation at the impulse to kiss the long neck that straddled square, angular shoulders.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured and as he caught her soft sideways look it brought with it the childhood memory of a similarly capricious glance from a French girl who haunted his mind. Ah yes, that’s who Mrs Britten-Jones reminded him of. It was Antoinette. His breath seemed to get trapped in his lungs at this realisation.
‘Pardon me, I was miles away for a moment.’
‘Am I boring you already?’ she teased.
‘No . . . not at all. I’ve just recalled who it is you remind me of.’
‘I hope she’s devilishly ravishing.’ Was she flirting now because she felt safe that the wedding band had been noted?
‘Almost unbearably so,’ he replied, as he moved to her side.
‘Good. I want to hear all about her sometime,’ she said and he dared not entertain the hope that they would meet again. Either she heard her error or was aware of the sudden awkwardness, as she pressed on. ‘What I was saying is that married women tend to be gone for several years while having children. By the time they might wish to return, they’re badly out of practice from their work on the factory floor and have lost their dexterity. The young girls are much faster, and factories are all about speedy production, of course.’
He nodded, interested. ‘So did they stretch the rules for you?’
‘In a way, yes. Due to the war our engagement was long. I know it frustrated my mother.’ He watched her grin, probably recalling many tense enquiries. ‘But neither of us was in any hurry. When we did marry I was already a tour escort and so the rules were bent a little by no one really mentioning that my status had changed, but I can’t really lean on that excuse for much longer. I’ve been Mrs Britten-Jones for almost two years.’ She gave a soft smile and Harry wondered if he was only imagining it as a sad one.
‘Lovely.’ He didn’t know what else to say and even that single empty word reverberated in his throat like a press of pain. ‘I mean, that’s lovely to hear.’
‘Thank you. I reminded my husband only last week that we never did have a honeymoon, what with the war. He keeps promising to make it up to me. Shall we go through here?’ She gestured and he nodded.
‘Your husband must have been demobbed extremely early . . . I mean, that you spoke to him last week.’
‘He didn’t go to war, Mr Blake,’ she said, in a rehearsed breezy voice as though she’d had to say this phrase repeatedly. ‘He tried but he wasn’t permitted for health reasons . . . his eyesight. He was also part of essential services. Matthew works with the railways.’ Harry gave a moue of understanding but immediately labelled him a coward privately. It was unfair but he was feeling churlish that a bloke with spectacles, who probably collected train numbers and memorabilia, had landed this woman. ‘And he did do lots of work behind the scenes, particularly with the transport of men: those going to the Front, the injured being brought to hospitals, as well as moving around goods and equipment. If not for Matthew’s personal efforts to get more trains on lines, I wonder if more of our brave men wouldn’t have survived.’ Harry said nothing and this seemed to unnerve her. ‘Actually his work was invaluable, I believe, and he was likely more use on the ground here than being shot at in France or Belgium.’
Harry didn’t believe her for a moment. ‘I’m sure.’
They were walking now towards another red-brick building. He felt the chill settle in his chest like frosted crystals and his breath became raspy. He wished now he’d packed appropriately but it was not as though he wasn’t familiar with uncomfortable winters. The trenches of winter in 1916 and ’17 were arguably the most bitterly cold temperatures of most soldiers’ memories, including his.
She gestured at the building. ‘We have a gymnasium at the back of our dining room and here is the factory swimming pool and baths: very important to our staff. Er, do you swim, Mr Blake?’ Her breath clouded in a mist in front of him and he felt a ridiculous temptation to inhale it.
‘I do. I enjoy it very much, although I haven’t in a while, for obvious reasons.’
‘Where’s home for you, Mr Blake?’
He looked down to his shoes briefly, where he could feel winter clawing through the leather. He knew that sensation too from the trenches, wasn’t scared of it; he grinned instead. ‘Call me Harry, would you?’
‘All right, but then you’ll have to call me Alex.’
He then realised just how much he had missed female company these last years. Her smile was melting all the shields he’d built up around his emotions to get through the relentless days of war. Just being close to the blush of smooth, soft skin and the neat clip of her voice with only the vaguest hint of the northern lilt in it threatened his masterful ability to remain distanced from life.
‘Home for now is London.’ There was no point in lying; his appearance, manner, the fact that he had been put on a VIP tour by the booking office were all obvious clues. ‘Er, Greenwich.’
‘I do love Greenwich,’ she admitted, not sounding even vaguely surprised, more delighted, in fact. ‘The Royal Observatory fascinates me . . . well, its measurement of time and all those astronomical instruments: so impressive.’
‘I’m no sailor – sickened like a weakling on the crossings to and from France during the war – but I do find it reassuring to be around all that maritime paraphernalia too,’ he quipped. ‘The royal museums are splendid, I agree.’
They had entered the mugginess of the swimming baths. ‘There are eight shower baths with hot and cold running water, which the men from the starch room use daily. Plus, I mentioned the slipper baths for use by the women.’
There were only two lone swimmers, sliding slowly through the marked lanes, with a single, broad woman seated atop a tall ladder-like seat watching them. Harry’s gaze met Alex’s after they’d both spotted the lifeguard.
‘The women took on all the jobs across the board around here during the war, Harry, including running our railway around the site. The fire officers were reserved, though, as you’d know.’
‘I’ll bet she’ll hate giving it up.’
She nodded. ‘Sheila is a brilliant swimmer too. These baths were built in 1908 because too many people died swimming in the river. The Rowntree family wanted them to still have a place to swim because it’s such a healthy pastime but they wanted their workers and their families to be safe. And yes, she’ll regret deeply having to relinquish her role, but that’s how it is. The men do deserve their jobs back.’
‘Hopefully your enlightened Quaker employers will continue finding worthy roles for the women and not just make them resign and go back to being servants in houses or stay-at-home mothers.’
‘That’
s dangerous talk.’
‘Not really. I think women have proved they are every bit as valuable as men in most workplaces.’
‘Tell that to the politicians.’
He lifted a shoulder. ‘No need. The power of the people is going to win out. I can imagine a lot of women like your Sheila not wishing to go back to their old roles.’
She held the door open. ‘I like that you think that way.’
‘Does your husband view life in that manner?’
His question caught her off guard. He watched the consternation at how best to answer stall behind her slightly pouted lips. He tried to imagine the shape of those lips against his. ‘Er, yes, as a matter of fact, my husband is one of a rare enlightened breed who believe a woman should have all the same freedoms as men. It’s one of the principal reasons I married him.’
‘Excellent. So he gives you plenty of space to live your life your way, you mean?’
She hesitated. ‘I’m not permitted to discuss personal matters, Harry. I could get into trouble.’
He made a show of looking around them. ‘No one’s listening.’
‘You seem rather curious about my life.’
‘I’ve been gone a long time from real life. I’m curious about everyone and everything, especially those who were spared the brutality. People like you and your husband have the luxury of perspective.’
‘Is that a criticism?’
‘Not at all. Forgive me if I sound envious.’
Her gaze narrowed as she sized him up. ‘Nothing to forgive. Those of us left behind owe all of you who fought in Europe the most enormous debt.’ She found a bright smile. ‘Shall we head across to the factory? You must feel like sampling the chocolate now that you can smell it.’
He inhaled. ‘What am I smelling?’
The Chocolate Tin Page 17