Down an English Lane

by Margaret Thornton

  ‘I heard that a lot of parents objected to the streaming; to their children being classed as “dunces”, as they put it.’

  ‘Yes, there were a few heated arguments, and he was forced to climb down, to a certain extent, although Roger would never admit that that was what he had done. So now we have four Junior classes, one for each year group – unstreamed, theoretically; although the teachers, of course, do know the sheep from the goats – and two Infant classes… And yours truly has been granted the post of deputy head, in charge of the Infants, coming into effect in January,’ said Anne with a smile of quiet pride.

  ‘Gosh! That’s great; congratulations!’ said Maisie.

  ‘So you might say that everything is hunky-dory, especially as they are getting on well with the new building plans. You won’t know the place when you come back to visit us, Maisie.’

  ‘Oh, I mustn’t count my chickens. Mum might still say no…’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Anne told her. ‘I have a feeling that everything is going to turn out just fine.’

  And so it did. As Maisie walked over Lendal Bridge on the seventh of January, 1947, on her way to her new post at Galaxy Travel she felt that never in her life had she been so happy…

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bruce was puzzled as to why Christine was not yet pregnant. They had been married for a year and a half and there was still no sign of what his mother liked to call ‘a happy event’. In one sense there was all the time in the world because he was only twenty-two and a half years of age, and his wife was twenty-four; the fact of her seniority still niggled at him sometimes when he thought about her deception. At first, after her miscarriage – and that was another thing which he continued to find puzzling – they had been careful to avoid conception. But for the last year or so he had stopped making his weekly visits to the chemist’s or the barber’s shop, and Christine had appeared as willing as he was to start a family.

  He knew that she had not settled down to life as an RAF wife as well as he might have wished. She had been more contented, though, since they had moved from their married quarters at the camp and bought a house in the nearby village, which was fast developing into a small town. She had shown the housewifely skills, then, to which he had been looking forward, making the pretty honey-coloured stone house into a comfortable home, to which he enjoyed returning at the end of each day. But the monotony of the chores had proved to be not enough to keep Christine happy, and before long she had taken a part-time job.

  The main street of the village, at one time, had contained – in addition to the long row of houses – only the church, the pub, and a few shops; a post office, a general store and a bakery. It was now expanding and some of the houses which opened directly on to the pavement had been converted into shops. One of the first of these to open was a high-class ladies’ gown shop, soon to he followed by a gents’ outfitters, a chemist’s, and a ‘boutique’ selling baby linen and fancy goods. Christine had been employed at the shop which sold ladies’ clothing for several months and, gradually, her working hours had increased from part-time to what amounted now to almost full-time employment. With the appropriate payment, of course, but to Bruce that was of minor importance. He would have liked to have his wife with him when he had his time off, rather than see her working on a Saturday which, she insisted, was the shop’s busiest day. Tourists and day trippers were now finding their way to the quaint little Lincolnshire town and she could not be spared, or so she told him. But he guessed that she was enjoying being indispensable, especially when it meant, as it had done last weekend, that she was unable to accompany him to see his parents in Middlebeck.

  It had been good to see Bruce at the weekend, thought Rebecca… She paused from her task of dead-heading for a moment to sniff at a particularly fragrant rose, the pale pink of its petals merging almost to a salmon colour at the centre. The rose beds at the front of Tremaine House had been particularly lovely this summer, and what a joy it was to grow flowers again after so many years of ‘Digging for Victory’; although she had insisted on keeping one or two flower beds to cheer and console them through the depressing war days.

  And, though she knew it was wrong of her to admit to the thought, it had been good to see Bruce on his own. He was much more like her own dear son again when he was away from Christine, but Rebecca had not shared her feelings with Archie. He got on quite well with his daughter-in-law and never talked disparagingly about her. Well, men looked at these things differently, she supposed, especially where a pretty girl was concerned.

  Bruce appeared to be happy, however, in his marriage. He assured her that he was, and on the one occasion when she and Archie had visited them in their new home she had been able to find no cause for alarm, or even for a slight criticism. Christine had shown herself to be a dutiful and contented wife, unless she had been on her best behaviour in front of his parents.

  Rebecca wondered now, though, why the young woman needed to go out to work. She certainly did not need to do so for the money; Bruce was able to provide for her quite adequately, which Rebecca had always believed it was a husband’s place to do. She had always found interest and fulfilment enough in her own home without seeking diversions elsewhere. She could not understand why Christine did not feel the same.

  But it was unkind of her to criticise the girl, she rebuked herself. Maybe she was really wanting to start a family and only working until such time as that might happen. Rebecca was surprised that it had not happened already. When the two of them had got married in such a hurry she had waited then for what she had thought would be the inevitable news. But she had been wrong… She had felt remorseful then about the suspicions she had harboured concerning Christine – it was sure to have been her fault, she had decided, for leading him on – and then, in her more realistic moments, about her son as well, because it did take two after all…

  The truth, of course, was that she did not like her daughter-in-law very much. It was something she tried to hide because she could not give a logical reason for her dislike. It was a question of

  ‘I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,

  The reason why I cannot tell…’

  to quote the old rhyme.

  She was distracted from her thoughts by the click of the garden gate, and she turned round to see a woman coming up the path. She gave a start… It must be that she had just been thinking about the girl, because for a moment she thought that the person coming towards her was Christine. She was older, though, she could tell as the figure came nearer, but she was most definitely the image of her daughter-in-law. She blinked rapidly and took a deep breath. Pull yourself together, Rebecca, she told herself. You’re imagining things.

  The woman was dressed in a black suit, despite the heat of the July sun, with a tiny black hat with an eye veil perched on her platinum blonde hair. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to trouble you. I don’t know whether I’ve come to the right place, but I’m trying to find a young woman called Christine. Christine Myerscough, she used to be called, but I’m afraid I don’t know her married name.’ Her voice sounded quite refined, but with underlying broad Yorkshire vowels.

  ‘Christine Myerscough, yes… She is married to my son,’ said Rebecca. ‘She’s called Christine Tremaine now.’ She looked at the woman, who met her gaze unflinchingly; her clear silver-grey eyes were so like those of Christine. ‘May I ask, though, why you want to find her? She isn’t here. They live in Lincolnshire, but I would like to know why…’

  ‘Why do I want to find her?’ said the woman. ‘Because she’s my daughter, that’s why, and because I have some news for her.’

  ‘Your…daughter?’ gasped Rebecca. ‘But I understood… That is to say, we thought…’ How could she tell this woman that they had believed her to be dead? Clearly Christine had deceived them – and Bruce as well? – because this person, most obviously, was who she said she was, Christine’s mother.

  ‘I’m Myrtle Myerscough,’ said the stranger, holding out
her hand.

  ‘How do you do?’ replied Rebecca, rather belatedly. ‘I’m Rebecca Tremaine.’

  ‘What has that daughter of mine been telling you?’ asked Myrtle. ‘A pack of lies no doubt.’ She gave a sorrowful smile. ‘Happen she told you we were both dead and gone, is that it? I wouldn’t put it past her. Well, as a matter of fact that’s what I’ve come to tell her. Fred, my husband – that’s her father whether she likes it or not – he was killed in a road accident last weekend, and I thought she should know.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I am so sorry,’ said Rebecca, instinctively putting an arm around the woman, to whom she found herself warming. ‘Do come in and sit down for a while. I’ll make us a pot of tea, and then you can tell me…whatever you think I should know.’

  Myrtle Myerscough did not need much persuading, and she followed Rebecca through the spacious hallway and into the elegant drawing room. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ she said, looking around with an appreciative glance. ‘Oh aye, that daughter of mine knew what she was doing all right, didn’t she? Had her eye on the main chance, I don’t doubt… I suppose you might say she’s her mother’s daughter,’ she added, almost to herself, ‘but she went about things differently from what I did. I suppose they’ve got a bairn by now an’ all, haven’t they, our Christine and…what did you say your son is called?’

  ‘I don’t think I did,’ said Rebecca, ‘but he’s called Bruce. No…there is no baby.’

  ‘Well, blow me down! I was wrong then…’

  ‘Look, why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable, and I’ll go and make the tea, then we can have a chat. I can see there is quite a lot we need to talk about.’ Rebecca quite literally pinched herself as she went into the kitchen. Could she be dreaming this? She had always known, though, that there was something odd about Christine…

  ‘She told us she was brought up by her grandmother,’ said Rebecca, over a cup of tea, ‘and that when her gran died she was quite alone, and that was why she joined the WAAF.’ Better not to dwell on what Christine had said about being an orphan… But why on earth should she say so when it was a downright lie? Because she was ashamed of them for some reason, Rebecca intuited, as she listened to the tale; ashamed of both her mother and her father. Her sympathy, though, was for Myrtle, who, she guessed, was a rough diamond maybe, but not without some finer feelings.

  ‘Aye, I’m reading between the lines here, and I can see that Lady Muck was ashamed of us,’ said Myrtle, reverting to a more pronounced Yorkshire accent. ‘Well, I suppose I always knew she was. I was nobbut a mill girl, you see, Mrs Tremaine, but I discovered there were other ways of earning a few bob, if you know what I mean. I was always quite a good looking lass…’ Rebecca thought she understood, although it was hard to take in. ‘And my hubby, too, he didn’t always keep to the right side of the law. Anyroad, my mother took the child away from us to live with her, said we were a bad influence on her, so I reckon if she’s grown up despising us we’ve only got ourselves to blame. But as for Fred, well, he’s dead now and the funeral’s on Friday, so I thought I’d best come and tell her.’ A tear glistened in the corner of her eye and Rebecca’s heart went out to her.

  ‘How far have you travelled, Mrs Myerscough?’ she asked. ‘And how did you know where to come? You said Christine didn’t tell you her husband’s name?’

  ‘I’ve come from Bradford this morning, and I’ll be going back there tonight. And if you tell me where I can find our Chrissie I’ll try again tomorrow. She came to see me just before she got wed – boasting, of course – but all she let slip was that her fiancé’s folks lived in Middlebeck and that his father was the squire. So when I got here I made some enquiries and Bob’s yer uncle. You’re very well known round here, of course.’

  ‘Yes, we have been here a long time,’ replied Rebecca. ‘But “squire” is only a courtesy title, I can assure you. It doesn’t mean very much now… My husband should be back shortly, and when you have had a meal with us – yes, I insist that you should – then he can run you back to the station. And of course I will tell you where you can find Christine…’ Rebecca had mixed feelings about this astonishing revelation. She was angry, and sad too, about the way her son – and she and Archie as well – had been deceived. Christine was about to get her comeuppance. But she reminded herself that the girl was about to hear of her father’s death. She, Rebecca, must try to be a little more charitable.

  ‘They are living in Lincolnshire,’ she told Myrtle. ‘In a village not far from Lincoln…’ She wrote out the address for her on a piece of paper. ‘I believe they are quite happy. Anyway, you will be able to see for yourself. What a shock it must have been for you, my dear, losing your husband so suddenly.’

  Myrtle told her, bravely fighting back the tears, that he had been in a head-on collision with another lorry on the main road, returning from Middlesbrough to Bradford. Nobody had really been to blame as the wheels had skidded in the heavy rain. ‘Mind you, he was always in a tearing hurry, dashing to get home on a Saturday night… He wasn’t a bad sort of bloke, all told…’

  When Archie returned he insisted that Myrtle should not only stay for a meal but for the night as well, and then make the journey to Lincoln and onwards the following morning. She had no luggage with her, but Rebecca could lend her such personal items as she might require. Whatever the woman’s failings, Rebecca could see that she was as fastidious in her dress and appearance as was her daughter.

  Archie was just as shocked and dumbfounded as Rebecca was by the revelations. ‘Aye, it’s a rum do and no mistake,’ he commented, when he returned from running Myrtle to the station on the Wednesday morning. ‘And you reckon she might be a prostitute? I can’t really see that.’

  ‘I think that is what she was hinting at,’ said Rebecca. ‘But what I can’t get over is the girl deceiving us like that. When all’s said and done they are her parents, no matter what they might have done. It was a wicked thing to do, to tell us they were dead.’

  ‘Oh well, I dare say Christine had her reasons,’ replied Archie, still unwilling even now to criticise his daughter-in-law. ‘I only hope it doesn’t harm their marriage. They seemed to be getting on very well.’

  ‘Mmm…yes, of course,’ said Rebecca. ‘They’ll just have to sort things out, won’t they? It’ll put the cat among the pigeons, though, that’s for sure.’ But her hopes for the outcome of this crisis were not the same as her husband’s.

  Wednesday afternoon was the only time during the week that ‘Alma’s Fashions’, the shop at which Christine worked, was closed, apart, of course, from all day Sunday. Wednesday was the day when she tidied around and set her little home to rights, and the day on which Bruce tried to get home a little earlier. She would cook a more special meal than usual, then they would go out to the village pub and have a few drinks.

  Their house, just off the main street, was only five minutes’ walk from her place of work. It was situated in a secluded little area named Cherry Tree Close. Cherry trees, which in the springtime were a mass of pinkish-white blossoms, lined the pavements. Even now, in the height of summer, they were a pleasant sight with their slender trunks and browny-gold leaves, through which the sun cast dappled shadows on the grass verges.

  Altogether, this was an agreeable place in which to live, thought Christine, as she stood at her lounge window, adjusting the curtains of floral chintz and replacing the ornaments she had dusted; her gran’s vase, a cut-glass ashtray, and a posy bowl of china flowers. She was in one of her happier moods that day. She was enjoying working with Alma Copeland in the shop; the woman, some ten years older than herself, was fast becoming a friend as well as her employer. Christine felt, if she played her cards right, that she might before long be offered a partnership in the business, or at least a share of the profits, rather than a weekly wage. One of the perks of working there was that she was able to buy garments at a reduced rate. Only that morning, with Alma’s permission, she had put aside for herself one of the prettiest
of their range of summer dresses, which she would pay for at the weekend. Another reason for Christine’s feeling of elation was that she had managed to wriggle out of the visit to Middlebeck the previous weekend, and Bruce would not be pestering her to go there for another month at least. At the moment she was trying to persuade him to take her on a holiday to the south coast. Torquay appeared to be a very nice place from what she had seen in the brochures; an elegant and refined sort of resort; they called it the English Riviera. She felt that Bruce was showing more interest now; she could usually get him round to her way of thinking if she used her most persuasive charms.

  She stood still for a few moments, smiling to herself, lost in her reverie. Then she saw a woman coming up the garden path. She gave a start, and the posy bowl slipped out of her fingers and landed on the carpet. Unconsciously, she noticed that one of the flower heads had broken off – hell and damnation! She had paid quite a lot for that piece of china – but there was no time to worry about it now. The woman coming up the path was…her mother! She dodged back behind the curtain, but it was too late; Myrtle had seen her and was raising her hand in greeting. There was nothing she could do. But would she really have pretended there was nobody at home if her mother had not seen her? she wondered.

  Trying desperately to compose herself, she went to the door where her mother was waiting. She knew there was no point in being rude to her and telling her to go away, that she wasn’t welcome. She just hoped that Myrtle would say what she had to say and then go, before Bruce returned home. Oh hell, no! That was not very likely; he would be coming home early today. She took a deep breath and opened the door.