‘It is a happy ending for us too, we are about to celebrate our engagement with our parents! Thank you all for coming. Goodnight.’
‘Just a minute, May,’ Henry said, when she and Pomona were about to enter their house. She gave Pomona a nudge. ‘You go ahead.…’ When the door closed, she turned to Henry. ‘It all went so well, you were right about that, Henry. Didn’t Bea play her part well? She really ought to go on the stage, I think.’
‘I know you must be upset,’ he said softly. ‘You and Denzil, I thought you felt the same way about each other. I should know, because I wish you could feel that way about me.’
‘Oh, Henry!’ She gave him an unexpected hug. ‘I suppose you could say, well, we all expected it, didn’t we?’
‘He’s marrying her for her money, so he can restore the manor—’
‘To be fair, Henry, I think she loves him, that’s why she’s so jealous. She’s good at making things work – look at the panto.’
‘I’m saying goodbye to you tonight, May.’
‘I – I don’t understand…?’
‘I have been offered a job, oh, not what I really want to do, but it’s a start. I owe it to my parents to help out where I can, not expect them to keep me at home. I am off to London next week. You need space and time to grow up, May, but I promise you I won’t give up! May I keep in touch with you by letter?’
‘Of course you can.’ She reached up and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Henry, I won’t be sobbing in my pillow all night, you know.’ It’s not the first time my heart has been broken, she thought. Paddy soon put me out of his mind. I have grown up a lot since last summer, but Henry’s right, I’m not quite there yet.
In the kitchen Min passed her a cup of cocoa. She didn’t ask why May hadn’t come indoors immediately.
‘Pomona told me about the special announcement,’ she said casually. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got one of my own. I’ve had an offer to buy this place, and if I agree, there’ll be enough in the kitty to rent one of them new little houses in Kettle Row – much more convenient for you girls to go to school and college. We’d have to retire Smokey and find him a home, but Toby can come with us – and Grandpa, of course. I don’t want him thinking he’s off to the workhouse!’
‘We’d be in civilization,’ Pomona made it sound like paradise.
‘I’ll finish my course at Easter,’ May said. She thought, I won’t be going to West Wick, that’s made my mind up for me. ‘I’ll get a job. You can enjoy your retirement too, Aunt Min. So long as we’re together, that’s enough for me.’
‘And me!’ added Pomona.
PART TWO
Along Worple Road
to
Wimbledon and beyond
Twenty-One
1935
Autumn, nine years later.
MAY WAS SORTING out the contents of the house near the pond in Kettle Row. She’d waited until after Pomona was settled in at Cambridge University. She was very proud of her sister, and was glad that Min had known of Pomona’s success before she passed away in the spring.
This is what Min said I should do, she thought, as she looked around her at the stacked boxes – this lot for the church jumble, these to be stored at the Rectory until she had a home of her own – but when would that be? Min wanted me to be free to pursue a career, but I’m not sure, at this moment, that I know what I want in my new life.
She looked around the kitchen, saw Grandpa’s old cap hanging on the hook on the back door; he’d been gone eight years now, had died soon after they moved here. Dangling below this was a dog’s lead, Toby had not been replaced by a new puppy, despite Pomona’s pleading. ‘You’ll be grown up and gone before we know it,’ Min told her, ‘and who will have to look after a lively young dog, then?’
May folded the cap and rolled the lead into a ball. She placed these in what she called her memory box. Also in there was Pomona’s first bathing-costume, which seemed impossibly small, for her sister was now quite an Amazon, with a muscular frame due to all that swimming; Min’s faded apron, the one the girls had proudly presented to her nine years ago on Christmas Day, nestled next to a parcel containing the flamenco dress her mother gave her at West Wick, before Carmen returned to Spain and her daughters to Kettle Row. May hadn’t worn that, or danced, since the Singing Kettles days. At the bottom of the box was the bundle of cards she’d received for her sixteenth birthday at West Wick, including the home-made one by Paddy and Danny. The short poem written by Paddy, The Punch and Judy Lady, was tucked in the now shabby green handbag. Correspondence with the O’Flaherty family had lapsed over time. She still wore the pendant Paddy had given her; this day it was unseen beneath her blouse. The amber was warm against her skin. It was a link with the past, even though she believed she wouldn’t see him again. As for Denzil, that had just been a flirtation on his part.
May sighed. There was no recent news from Carmen, which was worrying because of newspaper and wireless reporting on the likelihood of a civil war in Spain. There were two opposing factions, she’d learned: Republican and Nationalists, the former were in government. She hoped that Carmen was in a place of safety. The unpleasant Carlos had left her years ago, and Carmen had become a solo artiste. The promised reunion with her children hadn’t materialized.
May turned from the memory box, to the old trunk, still festooned with cobwebs, which she had brought down from the loft. She brushed them gently away, but she didn’t lift the lid, because she knew exactly what was inside: her father’s battered straw hat and the Punch and Judy puppets on top of the striped canvas of the booth. Pomona had her own mementos in Cambridge, including Grandpa’s old fiddle.
I’m sorry, Dad, that I couldn’t carry on, she thought, but she was aware that it wasn’t the same at West Wick nowadays. Jenny and Percy weren’t around any more; the Swan was a private house, and the depression had affected even the end-of-the-pier shows. The town too, had changed, had become what Min called ‘gentrified’. Rich people had holiday homes there now; they arrived by train and car at weekends throughout the year and Norland Nannies wheeled prams along the promenade. The charabancs and paddle steamers no longer spilled out day-trippers. The open-air pool had been abandoned, and as well as new swimming-baths, there were tennis courts and a golf course. The fishermen were having a hard time, some of their sea front cottages had signs advertizing bed and breakfast.
She felt in need of a cup of tea, but where had she put the kettle? Even as she glanced around there was a knock on the door. Henry was here to fetch the remaining boxes. When they’d loaded his car, she must sweep up, lock up, and wait for him to collect her. She was spending the night at the Rectory. The next day Henry was driving her to Raynes Park, near Wimbledon, where she’d been invited to stay in his house until she found a job and somewhere she could afford to rent. Bea, she hoped, would be there to greet her, for she lodged there when she was not on tour with the repertory company. Her success in the pantomime had been the start of a stage career.
When Bea left Kettle Row May took the first job offered. She was the only female employee at the local estate agents. The men were all kindly, but over fifty years old. She missed the fun, the girlish giggles, the companionship of a true friend; her social life was almost nonexistent.
‘I must drop the keys off at the office,’ she said now to Henry, as he stowed the boxes on the dicky seat of his small car.
‘They will be sorry to lose you. How long have you been working there?’
‘Ever since I finished my commercial course; you know how long that is,’ she retorted. ‘You keep reminding me, after all, that I should have made my mind up by now about marrying you.’
‘I realized it wasn’t possible until Pomona was independent and your aunt, of course, needed your support in her later years.’
He looked at her thoughtfully before starting up the engine. She was conservatively attired in a V-neck bottle-green cardigan over a beige blouse, a calf-length skirt, salmon-pink rayon stockings and rathe
r clumpy court shoes. She still wore her glossy black hair in a knot in the nape of her neck, which gave her an old-fashioned air. She was twenty-six. Bea was the same age, and she wasn’t married either, or ready to settle down yet, but she certainly led a less conventional life than May. ‘Do you really intend to take the Civil Service exam?’ he enquired.
‘Why not?’ she returned. He smiled at that. Some things hadn’t changed. May was a determined young woman. He was thirty years old with a responsible job in a London bank, he had a mortgage, a second-hand motor car and he played the organ in the local church; but, he thought ruefully, there’s no romance….
‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ he said.
‘I’ll be ready.’
Emma Wright hugged May close, the following morning. ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving Kettle Row, too. I haven’t got used to Terence not being around – the place is far too quiet and tidy! But it’s nice that he and Pomona are both in Cambridge, isn’t it?’
‘They might not see as much of each other as you think,’ Henry reminded his mother. ‘Especially as Pomona is in a women’s college.’ Terence had decided against applying to university himself, but secured a job at W.G. Pye in research. ‘He was always experimenting, seeing how things work,’ Henry had said when he heard this news. ‘Look what he did to my motor cycle.’
‘He put it all back together eventually,’ Emma said in his defence.
‘You’ve got Selina’s baby to look forward to,’ May said. Shy Selina had surprised them all by being the first of the family to marry. A young curate came to assist at the church and was offered lodgings at the rectory. Within a year an engagement was announced, followed by a wedding six months later, and recently the good news of Selina’s pregnancy. The couple had their own quarters at the rectory, where Emma could help out if her daughter had an asthma attack, but fortunately, these were now infrequent. ‘Selina is serene,’ as her mother happily observed. ‘Marriage suits her, unlike Imogen and Denzil.’
‘He knew what he was taking on,’ Henry said wryly.
May said nothing. It was a shame, she thought, that Imogen had not continued organizing the Singing Kettles. Within a year or two of the pantomime they’d disbanded; she might be autocratic, but she’d been the force behind the group.
‘I’ll look after the family in the churchyard,’ Emma whispered in May’s ear. ‘Remember, we are always here for you if you need us, Young May Moon.’
No-one had called her that for ages.
Henry parked the car outside the house. ‘We don’t leave cars in the street; after I’ve seen you indoors and unloaded your boxes I have to drive along to the garage where I keep it. I only use the motor in the summer months, and lay it up for the winter, as there is plenty of public transport – the trolley bus runs along the Worple Road to Wimbledon, and there’s a good train service to London.’
They were in a short residential street, which linked with busier roads with shops. Henry’s house was the end one of a row of substantial late Victorian villas, with walkways between each pair. The houses were built of mellow yellow bricks, with contrasting red bricks round the bay windows of the sitting room, and the largest bedroom above. The small front gardens were enclosed by neat privet hedges, which also marked the divisions between the houses. These had been intended for white-collar workers, but without provision for servants, though most housewives employed a daily help on busy days.
The late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the stained-glass panel above the door. May stepped inside the long hall and smelled lavender polish.
‘Everything shining, in your honour!’ Henry said. ‘I told Mrs Hemsley, the daily, that you were coming!’
The sitting-room door was opened with a flourish and she was ushered inside. Waiting with outstretched arms was Bea.
‘Oh, May, it’s wonderful to see you again! You haven’t changed a bit.’
‘You have,’ May murmured. Bea was still tall and skinny – no longer awkward but elegant in a shirt and slacks, as the wide-legged trousers were called. Her bobbed hair was now blonde and she wore spectacles with tinted lenses.
‘Hello, May, remember me?’ May realized that there was a young man in the room, and she instantly knew who he was: the bright red hair was unmistakable.
‘Danny?’ He towered over her. She had last seen him when he was ten.
He smiled. ‘I can’t believe you’re not surprised! I must have grown a bit.’
‘Quite a lot, actually. It’s ten years since West Wick, Danny.’
‘You two know each other, that’s obvious,’ Henry said. ‘Introduce us, Bea.’
‘Sorry! Danny was at a loose end, too, now that the current tour is over, and I said you wouldn’t mind if he tagged along with me for the weekend here. When I mentioned May he said he’d always wanted to see her again. Danny, meet Henry. Henry, this is Danny.’
They shook hands. Then May said to Danny: ‘Were you really hoping to see my sister? Pom’s at Cambridge, Danny.’
‘I’m not surprised. Though I expected to see headlines in the newspapers one day, with a photo of her, celebrating swimming the Channel.’
‘You catch up on all the news, and I’ll get some tea, while Henry is disposing of your luggage. I hope you don’t mind sharing a double bed with me, May, for a couple of nights? I could always shift into the small bedroom and Danny can sleep on the settee in here –he’s used to that!’
‘No, of course we can share a room, Bea – we’ve lots to catch up on,’ May assured her.
‘I’m not earning much as understudy to the leading man,’ Danny said frankly. ‘I haven’t slept in a proper bed since I left home.’
May had been hoping to follow Henry upstairs, to have a wash to freshen up, before changing into a cotton frock. She felt hot and sticky in her travelling clothes, but she sat down obediently in a chair opposite Danny, as the others left the room.
‘How old are you now, Danny?’ she asked, for something to say.
‘Almost twenty-one. I’ve already asked Bea about you. I know you’re about the same age as Paddy. I’m sorry he never kept in touch with you, because he was really smitten at the time, you know. Am I right when I say I think it was the same for you?’
‘You’re just as nosy as you were when you were ten!’ She couldn’t help smiling. ‘We’ve all grown up.’
‘Has Pom still got freckles and is she just as fierce?’
‘Yes, to both your questions. She’s very superior now, too, and I suppose you’d call her a bluestocking.’
‘I reckon I could soon get round her,’ Danny said confidently.
‘Danny, did things work out for your family as they hoped?’
‘Did they for you?’
‘Not exactly. I expect you already know from Bea, that I’m a shorthand typist, not a flamenco dancer – nor a Punch and Judy lady.’
‘Well, it was like that for us too. My parents lived in my grandfather’s house, Dad returned to his old school, Mum stayed at home and taught music there in her spare time, but she’s busier than ever now, looking after her granddaughter.…’ he broke off, then continued, ‘Paddy’s child. He married young, he was only my age when he started his own small joinery business. It wasn’t a good time; he went bust, like many others in the early thirties. His wife left him to struggle on, and she left the baby, Cluny, too. Paddy had no alternative but to go home with her.’
‘What does he do now?’
‘He works from our grandfather’s old workshop, repairing and restoring old furniture. He takes any job he’s offered; he’s making farm gates at the moment.’
‘But you became an actor – keeping up the family tradition; that must please your parents,’ May said, still trying to take in the news about Paddy.
‘Tea and cakes!’ Bea pushed a loaded trolley before her. She looked keenly at her friend’s flushed face and wondered what the two had talked about.
So did Henry, who came in the room behind her.
‘W
hat d’you think of him?’ Bea asked, as she climbed into bed.
‘Danny, I presume? He’s grown up very nicely! Bea – you’re not – you know…?’ May floundered.
‘Lovers? Of course not, he’s far too young for me, but he’s good company and I suppose he reminds me of my cheeky young brother. Are you still pining with unrequited love for Denzil?’
‘I got over him years ago.’
‘I gather you and Danny’s brother were close when you were in West Wick?’
‘Perhaps – but that was even more years ago.’ She fingered the amber at her throat.
‘Did he give you that?’
‘Stop asking questions! But yes, he did. We were far too young for a serious commitment then. Goodnight, Bea, sleep well.’
‘I shall be awake now, wondering what you haven’t told me, May,’ Bea said, as she switched off the bedside lamp.
Twenty-Two
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Saturday, May was awake before Bea. She looked around her, smiled at Bea’s white slacks which she’d flung haphazardly on to the chair, and which dangled to the floor; her friend was as untidy as ever. This was the biggest bedroom, with the bay window, and there was a fireplace opposite the bed – it must be cosy in winter to lie and watch the flames flickering in the dark, she thought.
There was sun streaming in through the curtains where she had parted them last night, to look at the stars. She glanced at her watch, it was already 7 a.m. May turned back the covers on her side of the bed, and lowered her legs to the ground. The linoleum was cold to her feet. She found her slippers and dressing-gown, noted that Bea was still fast asleep, and went quietly out to the bathroom opposite.
She put down her rolled towel and toilet bag on the edge of the bath, marvelling at the depth of it, standing on clawed feet: so different from the tin tubs of country life, and the narrow hip bath in the small bathroom in Kettle Row. The WC had been off the kitchen there; here there was a throne in a cubicle next to the bathroom, with gleaming tiled walls and proper lavatory paper. Min had always provided cut-up newspapers hanging on a nail on the wall: old habits died hard. May tried the hot tap over the basin. The water gushed out, but it was cold. Did she need to boil a kettle in the kitchen, and bring a jug upstairs, she wondered?
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