Her aunt was at the table in the kitchen. ‘Here’s the post, Aunt Carrie,’ Rose said as she dropped the papers, letters and a magazine in front of her. ‘I’ll be off then.’ She put on her black jacket and looked quickly at her aunt. ‘I’ll be home this afternoon,’ she added with a smile.
The smile went unanswered. Aunt Carrie turned her attention to the papers.
Rose left the hotel, turned the corner and ran up the ancient Hundred and Eight steps. The steps were shallow and worn and their twenty feet of width were flanked by stone walls against which were fixed iron handrails that shone from the constant polishing of passing hands. It would only take two minutes to reach the Regional Bank so she halted under the church, in the shadow of the towering limestone wall, and read Alan’s letter.
How would she get through the morning’s work with her insides turning somersaults?
‘Rose Kennedy, please.’
The Chief Cashier rapped on the glass panel in a screen of polished mahogany that hid the Bank’s depths from the eyes of the customers.
‘Coming, Mr Wilson.’ Rose blotted a current account ledger, closed it and slithered from a high stool; her black Cuban heels clattering on the oak-block floor caused the elderly Miss Thompson, who was entering figures in another leather-bound ledger, to lift her eyebrows in annoyance.
‘Count Mr Cooper’s cash, please,’ Mr Wilson lifted the battered money-bag and carried it to a cubicle for her before returning to his position at the counter.
‘Pretty as a picture, isn’t she?’ she heard him say to Nat Cooper.
‘Aye. She’s all right,’ Nat replied bluntly. Rose blushed for Nat, knowing how embarrassed he’d be by Mr Wilson’s manner.
‘I said to the manager,’ the Chief Cashier went on blithely, ‘that the only good thing about the men being called up is that the bank will have to employ young women.’
‘Oh. I see,’ Nat’s tone was non-committal but a lack of encouragement would not stop Mr Wilson. He was talking like this for her benefit, not Nat Cooper’s. Through the plain glass window of the cubicle she saw Nat’s weather-beaten, freckled face.
‘And we’ve got the prettiest girl in Macclesfield, don’t you think?’ Mr Wilson didn’t wait for a reply but added, ‘It’s given the old secretaries high blood-pressure, you know.’
Rose knew what Miss Thompson would think of that remark. She was sure it would not go unheard but she concentrated on counting. Eight half-crowns to the pound: she stacked and counted five silver columns into each bag of buff-coloured paper. The pennies and halfpennies took longest and Nat had collected hundreds on his milk round. Rose shovelled the copper into strong linen bags and finished off with the envelopes of sixpences.
The bank’s door was set diagonally across the corner of the building and, from where she sat, Rose could just see the stalls in the crowded square. She glanced at the clock. They’d be closed soon. Saturday was a half day. The big doors would be shut in ten minutes and she’d be out there in the sunshine. She might even catch sight of Alan in the square, unless he was helping his father at the Swan. Rose thought again of the letter.
‘Dearest Rose. Please keep Saturday night free. I’ll pick you up at five o’clock. I have four days, Martin has lent me his Riley and I want to spend my leave with you. Love, Alan’. That was all it said but she knew – she’d read the thoughts behind the words in his last letters. He didn’t see her as a schoolgirl now.
‘Oh, Alan. You could have had any girl in Macclesfield and you’ve chosen me,’ she whispered to herself before carrying Nat Cooper’s takings to the first till positon. ‘There you are, Mr Wilson.’ She put the bags on the shelf and gave him the credit slip, self-conscious as she turned the brass handle and made her exit from under his openly admiring gaze.
Miss Thompson no longer sat at the bank of ledgers. Rose put her pen and pencils in the drawer, screwed up the scrap paper she’d used, dropped it into the tall wicker basket and made her way to the ladies cloakroom. She walked through the empty back room where Sylvia and Pamela normally worked, listing cheques and totalling day books and cash sheets on two mechanical adding machines that whirred and clashed as the girls keyed in figures and pulled the operating handles as fast as the mechanism would accept them.
The tall, cast-iron and steel monsters, which were bolted to the floor, were silent now, covered over with canvas hoods, and the girls gone upstairs to a hastily converted corner of the stationery store that served as a cloakroom.
Sylvia and Pamela’s expensive education had not prepared them for real work but they were, in their own ringing words, ‘making the jolly best of it’. Rose liked them; they included her in their conversation but quickly lost interest in her as they horsed around, sharing jokes, their talk punctuated with references to Cook, Nanny and ‘going to the country’.
‘What are you doing this weekend, Syl?’ Pamela, tall, fair and ungainly, whom finishing school had not cured of clumsiness, slooshed water all over the floor as she scrubbed her long hands vigorously.
‘Exercising Shamrock, I suppose. Poor old thing’s not had a decent ride for ages.’ Sylvia, dark and fiery in appearance, was gentle by nature. She rubbed lotion into her hands and looked at Pamela. ‘War’s a bugger, isn’t it? What are you doing?’
‘Going to the cottage. Mummy’s says there’ll be no ruddy petrol soon, so we’re making the most of it.’
Both girls had an air that Rose wished came naturally to her. It was something to do with the way they expected to be heard. They’d tilt their heads backwards and looked confidently at whoever was speaking to them. She heard the sniffs of disapproval from Miss Barclay and Miss Thompson at the girls’ bad language. In case the older women were looking at her she smothered a smile as she checked her face in the mirror.
‘What will you do, Rose?’ Pamela asked. ‘Take your sisters to the Picturedrome?’
‘No,’ Rose said. ‘My friend. He’s a pilot. He’s home on leave.’ She filled the washbasin with water and began to soap her hands.
‘A pilot?’ Pamela’s voice lifted at least an octave. ‘You lucky dog. Fancy not telling us you have a boyfriend.’
Sylvia stopped brushing her hair. ‘Is he good looking? You’re a dark horse!’
They were curious and interested but Rose didn’t want them to think that it was a serious love affair. Alan had never spoken about love.
‘He’s a friend I kind of grew up with. He lived in the house at the back of ours. The house in Wells Road. The one we lived in before,’ she told them.
‘Go on,’ Pamela urged. ‘Is he good looking?’
Rose found herself blushing, wishing she could be like them, sure and unembarrassed. ‘He’s tall, thin, dark haired and sort of serious looking. Not what you’d really call handsome,’ she said.
‘How old is he?’ Sylvia demanded.
‘Twenty. He’s . . . He was a medical student at Edinburgh and he’d joined the University Air Squadron. So he joined up,’ Rose told them. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing more to tell.’ She tried to sound casual and sophisticated and was relieved to see that they were satisfied. She reached for the towel and dried her hands before putting her jacket on and going towards the stair door.
Pamela called after her. ‘Have a good time!’
‘Tell him to bring two pilots home for us next time,’ Sylvia added, ignoring the outraged looks of Miss Thompson and Miss Barclay.
Rose slipped out at the side door into the narrow street. When she reached the steps she stood and looked down on the iron-railed cattle pens, the roofs and chimneys of the mills and beyond them the foothills of the Pennines where the houses thinned out along the old road that climbed from Macclesfield to Derbyshire through wild purple moorland.
The only nice thing about living here was the view: the hills beyond the town and, away to the left, the flat plain of industrial land that stretched from Macclesfield to Manchester.
Three markets were held each week at the top of the steps and a cattle
auction weekly at the bottom. Cattle and sheep were driven on foot. The shouts of drovers and shepherds filled the houses in Waters Green and the cries of street sellers, rag-and-bone men and the squabbling children in Churchwall Street, behind the hotel, seemed never to be absent. Even the town sirens sounded from the cotton mills opposite.
Rose walked down the Hundred and Eight steps. Mary and Vivienne were halfway down, sitting on top of the mountain of sandbags packed around the entrance to the crypt of St Michael’s.
‘Are you taking us to the pictures tonight, Rose,’ the girls chorused, ‘the Fred Astaire film at the ’Drome?’
Vivienne’s lips were bright red.
‘You’ve been putting lipstick on, Viv!’ Rose stood before them, hands on hips, squinting up at the impudent pair. ‘You’re not old enough.’
‘Mary does. So I can. She’s only eleven months older than me.’ Vivienne tucked an arm into Mary’s. ‘Tell her it’s all right,’ she said as she nudged Mary.
‘It’s all right, Rose. We’ll wipe it off before Aunt Carrie sees it,’ Mary said defensively, swinging her solid legs in time with Vivienne’s slim ones.
‘It looks common,’ Rose told them. ‘You don’t want to be like the girls round here. Do you?’
‘We won’t put it on to the pictures, will we Mary?’ Vivienne conceded. ‘Are you taking us?’ she added eagerly.
‘I’m going out.’ Rose gave them a hand each and they jumped down beside her. ‘With Alan.’
‘Ooh. Is he home?’ Mary’s big round eyes widened. The three of them had the same colouring but Mary, as she had grown up, had developed a heavier bone structure, which gave her a practical look, making her seem older than her almost sixteen years.
‘I want to see Fred Astaire. Will you and Alan take us to the pictures?’ Vivienne asked insistently. Rose could not remain cross with Viv, the real beauty of the family, she believed. Vivienne had chiselled features, a graceful body and a wildness, almost a wanton look about her; a girl for whom excitement was a drug and as necessary as air and water.
‘If you take that muck off your face, I’ll pay you both in,’ Rose said. ‘Where’s Aunt Carrie?’
‘In the market,’ Mary replied.
‘Good. I’ll have a wash before she comes back, while I’ve got the scullery to myself,’ Rose said.
She went down the rest of the steps to Waters Green, turned into the entry and let herself into the back door of the Temperance Hotel. The kitchen was empty. Off the kitchen a latched door led into the scullery, two steps down. The tiny room, stone-flagged, cold, smelling of damp and gas, overlooked the yard.
A brass cold-water tap was set high above a shallow, brown slopstone sink, which held a white, enamelled washing bowl with chipped and rusty edges. Beneath the sink a yellow curtain concealed a matching pail and jug. Rose set them on the wooden draining board and lit the gas. A tiny window, pasted with a lattice-work transfer to make it opaque was criss-crossed with sticky tape against bomb-blast, when or if it came. It gave poor light to the little room.
Rose filled the bowl with hot water, put the catch on the door and slipped out of her clothes. She’d wear her best dress, a blue crepe-de-chine, tonight. It had a sweetheart neck and a little fall of pleats over the right hip, covered buttons with loops all down the back and tight bands at the wrists. She’d wear her barathea jacket over it and the black hat that fitted the crown of her head so that her hair curled around it. There was about half an inch of Evening in Paris perfume in its navy blue bottle on her dressing table. She loved its heady scent.
She’d have to tell Aunt Carrie she was going out with Alan. There might be a scene, but she was prepared for it. Mum and Dad wouldn’t have minded and, she reminded herself, ‘I’m almost nineteen. Aunt Carrie can’t run my life.’
Then, as she thought about Mum and Dad again, all the same questions rose to torment her. Was there a man somewhere, at the moment, in Macclesfield who knew her to be his daughter? She tried to press the facts she knew into the history of her birth and found again that too many other questions were raised. There were some pieces of the puzzle that didn’t fit. It was like a detective story without clues. And always there was a suspicion that she had failed to make the logical connections. That the answer was staring her in the face and she couldn’t see it.
What did she know? She knew that Mum and Dad had fled to Ireland to marry, three months before her birth. Mum had been fifteen. That much had been revealed with the discovery of the certificates in Wells Road. Aunt Carrie, at the same time, had lost her home and her money to a man who had smooth-talked her out of them and was in the throes of a legal battle to salvage their inheritance. And she was pregnant. With her, Rose.
Did Aunt Carrie share the same medical history as she and Mum had shared? For Mum had told her that she was not able to have many babies.
Had the man, her true father, deserted Aunt Carrie? Why had she not married him? Was he dead?
And how, most of all, could Aunt Carrie, a woman she had always thought of as most like herself, deny her strongest instinct, her maternal feelings, and give her baby to Mum to bring up? She must have hated me, Rose thought. But she had no doubt that Mum and Dad had done it gladly. She had always known herself to be loved and, in some way, special. Sometimes she thought she was going mad, thinking in this way. She must try not to.
She concentrated on her preparations. In a few hours she would be going out with Alan. Where would he take her? Her stomach gave a funny lurch when she thought about him. She’d only seen him once since the funeral.
Nat Cooper crossed the square from the Regional Bank to the Swan. The Swan was the busiest pub in Macclesfield and the bar smoky and crowded when he arrived. Stallholders leaned against oak pillars, old men exchanged experiences with young soldiers from the training camp a mile or so out of town, and Nat went up to the bar and watched, admiringly, Mona Siddall as he always did.
‘Hello Nat,’ Douglas McGregor said. ‘You’ll have to stand for a wee while. Your table’s occupied.’
The shyness that had overcome Nat when he’d seen Rose at the bank fell away as he ordered his first pint.
‘Alan’s home this weekend. Did you know?’ Douglas said.
‘He’s got leave, then?’ Nat drank half of his pint at one draught, smiling hugely when he put the glass down. Then the smile left his face as he asked, ‘Did you ’ear the news last night?’
‘Aye. They’ll not stop until they reach the coast,’ Douglas said grimly. ‘I think it will be a while before Alan gets leave again.’
‘Will ’e come up to Rainow d’yer think?’
‘I’m sure he will. He’ll want to see you and your mother and he likes the farm.’ Douglas pulled the beer pump’s china handgrip and filled tankards for two soldiers who stood to attention, smart as paint in new uniforms.
‘He likes flying, doesn’t he?’ Nat asked. ‘He’d rather be that than a farmer.’ Nat looked down at his right leg, which was a good half-inch shorter than his left and prevented him from playing his part in the war. The accident when he was fourteen, his leg crushed between the shaft and wheel of a hay cart, had left him with a limp that a built-up boot could not disguise. A working farmer need not expect the call-up but he’d happily have turned the place over to an older man for the duration of the fighting if he’d been able to pass a medical test.
Douglas leaned over the bar. ‘He enjoys reaping a field of wheat as well as he likes flying over it. Will ye take a dram?’
Nat said, ‘Ta,’ then casually added, ‘I saw Rose Kennedy in the bank. She must have left college afore she qualified.’
‘Aye. She’s a bonny lass,’ Douglas replied. ‘Have you found a lass?’
‘No. Not yet,’ Nat said. He couldn’t pluck up the courage, that was the trouble. How could he go up to her now? Him a twenty-six-year-old farmer and her a pretty little nineteen-year-old bank clerk? How could he tell her that he wanted a wife and she’d spoiled him for anyone else?
‘You could do with a wife though. There’s a lot of work to be done on yon farm and your mother’s getting on,’ Douglas continued.
Nat looked at the face of the big Scotsman. ‘I canna ask a girl to start courting and tell her about the ’ard life of a farmer, now, can I?’ he said. ‘Any road we’ve got three land-girls now. Gimme another pint, Doug.’
Nat took his pint glass and found a seat at the table just inside the door. Two young women were drinking port, their vermilion-painted lips streaking their glasses, their bright red nails flying up to their hair or tapping on the table. They were well known in Macclesfield for their habit of spending every Saturday moving from pub to pub, assessing the company they were likely to find that night. They were a loud and cheeky pair and Nat would have avoided them if he could but theirs was the only table with a spare seat. They stopped talking when he sat down. Nat tried not to look at them but looked instead at his square hands where they lay across his muscular thighs.
It wasn’t that he lacked the confidence to talk to girls. He could get a girl interested, buy her a few drinks; maybe a plate of fish and chips in the little cafe on Mill Street, take her to the pictures, see her home. Then if he was lucky . . .
He’d been doing it for years: coming down to Macclesfield on a Saturday, his shoes and trilby in the wooden box beside the milk churns, his best clothes under the linen coat he wore on the round. He’d leave Mam and young Jimmie Gleave to do the afternoon milking and return, steadily climbing through the sweet-scented night, the three miles to Rainow by the light of the lanterns that swung from the front of the cart; humming if he’d struck lucky, singing tipsy songs in his tuneful baritone if he’d spent the evening in the Swan.
The blackout restrictions didn’t hinder him. Where the car drivers had to manage on half-blacked headlights, if they were brave enough to chance the roads, a horse would return the way he’d come and Dobbin knew his way back to Rainow, lanterns or no.
No, he didn’t lack confidence. It was just that he’d never found a girl he’d wanted to ask out twice. And he didn’t have the nerve to ask out the one he wanted, even once. The two floozies, as he thought of them, were scraping back their chairs, pushing by him to the signalling soldiers. Nat stood up to let them pass and as he did so, saw Alan, in flannels and an open-necked shirt, making his way towards the table through the crush.
Mill Town Girl Page 25