The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Bertha.’

  Her eyes snapped across to her father, who was standing at the empty fireplace, one foot on the fender, hands locked awkwardly behind his back, a stern expression on his face, in a pose he had probably once seen the King adopt in a photograph in Picture Post.

  ‘Do you think you are off to meet this young man, then?’

  Bertha flushed and then, because she had just given herself away, her flush deepened.

  How could Dad possibly have found out?

  The answer came at once courtesy of a slight movement of skirts and rearrangement of hands near the window, and Bertha’s gaze fixed on her sister sitting in the other corner of the room.

  Jemima. Sitting meekly, straight-backed in the hardest wooden chair the house had to offer—which was saying something, in a house crowded with uncomfortable chairs—her hands folded in her lap, looking every bit the demure and dutiful youngest daughter. Looking, in fact, like everything that she was not.

  Jemima. Bertha felt her face burn. How could Jemima have found out? She’d been so careful! Only Elsie Stephens knew, and Mr Booth himself of course, but Mr Booth had never met Jemima. No, Elsie it must be—Elsie, with whom she and Jemima had gone to see Charlie Chaplin at the Globe on Friday night; Elsie, who had waited with Jemima when Bertha went to purchase the tickets; Elsie, who, regardless of being Bertha’s work colleague, seemed to share more secrets with her sister than with her. Elsie, who only knew the secret in the first place because she had agreed to provide the excuse for this Sunday afternoon excursion.

  ‘Well? Do you not have anything to say for yourself?’

  Bertha’s gaze swung back to her father, who at this moment resembled less a father and every inch the butler he had once been. Actually, Dad resembled a butler more than a father most of the time and Bertha felt like an errant scullery maid more often than someone who wasn’t a scullery maid ought to feel.

  How much did he know? How much did Jem know? A quick glance at her angelic sister showed a head modestly bowed and yet the faintest hint—not that faint, in fact—of a smile. A triumphant smile. Damn you, Elsie Stephens!

  Well, she would not be beaten so easily!

  ‘Oh, but Dad, I thought you’d be pleased! Elsie and I are going to Hyde Park to listen to the speakers. You know how inspiring you said they are, all standing on their wooden boxes...preaching the word of the Lord.’

  That was pushing it, that last bit, but it was worth a try, and Jemima’s head came up, no pretence now of not listening.

  ‘Preachers! If you want preachers we’ve got preachers enough at our own church,’ retorted Dad, meaning St Mary’s, at which they had all taken communion that morning. ‘And it’s not men of God you’ll be hearing if you go to that place now, it’s unionists and socialists. And communists too, if I’m not much mistaken.’

  ‘Oh Dad!’ said Bertha with growing frustration as the clock sped beyond two o’clock. Of course there would be unionists and socialists! That was why she was going—Mr Booth was one of them. As for communists, well, she’d never even seen one, and as far as she knew Dad hadn’t either, though the way he went on about them you’d think folk were tripping over them at Crown Street market.

  ‘I understand they are all sorts, not just socialists and unionists. Men speaking about all manner of things, and I’m twenty-two. I shall be able to vote in eight years... If I become a householder...’

  ‘Ha!’ said Dad. ‘How do you think you’ll become a householder? You’ll never vote and so you never ought to—a woman has no place in the parliamentary process, nor in the industrial or commercial processes neither. A woman’s place is—’

  ‘Yes, but in whose home?’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘How shall I meet a husband if I never go out?’

  ‘So. There is a young man.’

  Damn. She saw Jemima’s smile reappear but Bertha stuck her chin out defiantly.

  ‘I expect there will be a great many men, Dad, seeing as how only men are allowed to speak, but Elsie will accompany me—’

  ‘I understood Elsie was unable to come.’

  So that was it! Jemima had undone her alibi. Judas!

  Bertha faced defeat, her shoulders drooping. What would she say to Mr Booth? How long would he wait? Would he notice she wasn’t there? Would she ever see him again?

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll go with her,’ said Jemima and Bertha heard these words but she didn’t look around because that would be to admit defeat. Jemima coming with her? But this was exactly what she did not want and she felt giddy, faced with the sudden choice of taking Jemima or not going at all.

  Fortunately, the choice did not appear to be hers to make.

  ‘Well. Alright. So be it,’ said Dad as though he were passing judgement on some great act of God rather than simply allowing his two daughters to take a tram into town. Then he reached for the Gazette and shook it out purposefully. ‘And mind you be back before tea,’ he added.

  ‘I think they should go,’ said Mum, looking up from her knitting now that the disagreement had been sorted. ‘I’m sure they’ll come to no harm.’ But Dad was deep into the latest carryings-on of Mr MacDonald’s government and Bertha and Jemima had left the room.

  ‘Oh! We shan’t make it!’ wailed Bertha as they sailed around the corner of King Street and into High Street.

  The coat had been a mistake. The afternoon sun was beating down and her full-length skirt with her best coat over the top of it was making her perspire in a fashion that was hardly becoming. As for running to catch a tram, that was out of the question in the long coat. She could do little more than shuffle rapidly. The alternative, picking up both skirt and coat, was not worth the frowns of the Sunday afternoon folk who seemed to be out and about in Acton with the sole purpose of getting in her way and staring at her.

  But Bertha’s shuffle was an Olympic sprint compared to Jemima’s saunter, and with one eye on the brick walls of the tram depot ahead, one eye on her dawdling sister Bertha felt she would burst with the frustration of it all.

  ‘Oh, do stop being so hysterical, Bert,’ called Jemima from twenty, now twenty-five yards behind. ‘The 36 is always late anyway. And there’s another afterwards.’

  The 36 was not late when it was leaving the depot, only when it was returning to it during the evening rush. And as for there being another, the next one was not due to depart for a whole hour, which would mean they would not arrive at Hyde Park till nearly four o’clock, by which time Mr Booth would have long given her up.

  ‘Oh do come on, Jem!’

  It occurred to her that Jemima was deliberately going slowly so that they would miss the tram. But that would mean they would have to go home and give up the whole idea and why would Jemima have volunteered to accompany her if she did not wish, for her own devious reasons, to come? No, it must just be her usual perverse need to make her older sister squirm. Bertha took a deep breath and resolved not to squirm, no matter what.

  ‘And they’re bound to be on strike,’ continued Jemima as though the thought had just that moment occurred to her. ‘The trams are always on strike.’

  On strike! Bertha felt that she might collapse. As they neared the brown brick archways of the tram depot, a double-decker London United tram lumbered out of the entrance and onto Uxbridge Road with a terrific clanking and screech of metal, a large 36 stuck above the driver’s cab, and Bertha gasped in dismay.

  ‘Wait! Wait a minute!’ she cried, raising her hand and running alongside the tram.

  It had barely got up speed and the conductor, perhaps taking pity on the flushed young lady with the inappropriate winter coat, or perhaps seeing her prettier younger sister tripping merrily behind in a charming light summer dress and a sudden smile in her eyes, pulled his bell and let them on board.

  ‘Two to Hyde Park,’ gasped Bertha, as they settled themselves upstairs on the top deck and the conductor swung his ticket machine at them.

  ‘Off for a Sunday stroll?’ he asked conversationally, aiming this
remark at Jemima.

  ‘No. We are attending a political rally,’ said Bertha haughtily, handing over her money.

  ‘Pretty girls like you shouldn’t be wastin’ a lovely Sunday afternoon on no politics,’ came the reply, still aimed firmly at Jemima.

  Jemima smiled briefly and dismissively. ‘We’re not the ones wasting our Sunday afternoon. You’re the one who’s stuck on a tram all day.’

  The tram conductor, who until that moment had appeared to be enjoying his job, shuffled off, scowling, and Bertha, a deep beetroot colour, stared fixedly out of the grimy window.

  ‘Why do you have to be so rude to people?’ she hissed, not turning around in case the conductor had returned.

  Jemima pouted. ‘Rude? He was the rude one! Didn’t you see how he was ogling us? Disgusting. He was older than Dad.’

  Bertha had not noticed that he had been ogling them, she’d thought he was just being friendly. Well, it was over now and she would not think of it again.

  The tram gathered speed and was soon trundling at a heady twelve miles per hour eastwards along High Street. A breeze gusted in through the open windows and they clutched their hats. Bertha gazed out the window. They were already passing the new aircraft and motor vehicle factories where so many people seemed to work nowadays. She saw them every morning, slow lines of pasty-faced girls with stooped shoulders and filthy overalls, girls who before the War would have been in service. Think they’re too good for it, Dad said, and what was so good about stuffing aircraft parts into other aircraft parts anyway, he wanted to know.

  ‘Shove over,’ complained Jemima, wriggling her hips on the narrow seat they shared.

  Bertha, annoyed, wriggled back at her. ‘Well, I don’t know why you wanted to come in the first place,’ she replied tartly, glaring at the sailors’ cap worn by the little boy on the seat in front and refusing to look at her sister.

  ‘I could hardly let you go on your own, could I?’ said Jemima sweetly.

  ‘I wasn’t going to go on my own, was I? Elsie was going to accompany me.’

  ‘Elsie was going to accompany me,’ mimicked Jemima, putting on the posh voice Dad used when he was reminiscing about his butlering days. ‘Elsie wasn’t going to accompany you anywhere. You were going off on your own to meet some man.’

  Damn and blast Elsie!

  ‘I’m twenty-two, and I shall come and go on my own if I wish to. I go off to work on my own every day and no one gets excited about that.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not meeting some man at work.’

  ‘Ha! How do you know I’m not?’ replied Bertha.

  Jemima sniggered and Bertha, humiliated, resumed her observations through the bus window.

  And Jemima was right, of course; she was not likely to meet a young man at work seeing as how there were forty women operators at the West Western Telephone Exchange, and one woman supervisor, Mrs Crisp. There was a manager, of course, Mr Littlejohn, who was married and whom she had seen only once in the two years she had worked there. She was more likely to meet a young man on the top deck of the number 36 tram than she was at work.

  Bertha glanced swiftly around but the top deck was full of families and elderly ladies. Then she remembered Mr Booth—Ronnie!—and she smiled to herself.

  ‘You should be grateful I offered to chaperone you,’ said Jemima, nudging her for a reaction.

  ‘Offered! You’re a nosy parker, Jemima Flaxheed! You just want to stick your nose in where it’s not wanted.’

  ‘Oh, don’t think I don’t already know all about your Mr Booth,’ said Jemima in a bored voice, and Bertha clenched her jaw and cursed that Judas Iscariot, that viper in her bosom, that Elsie Stephens.

  ‘He is not my Mr Booth, he is an acquaintance,’ she retorted. ‘And he has a Social Conscience,’ she added, as though that clinched it.

  ‘A social conscience? I’ll bet he wants more than a social conscience from you!’

  ‘How dare you! Mr Booth is a gentleman.’

  ‘Sounds very dull.’ Jemima yawned. ‘And I bet you want more than that from him. Poor man, I hope he’s prepared to defend himself.’ She tapped the place on her gloved finger where a ring would go.

  ‘That says a lot about your gutter mind if that’s what you believe.’ Bertha lifted her nose in the air and sniffed. ‘If I’m going to vote one day, I shall want to know something about the world. I’m not content to live in ignorance. It’s 1924! There’s more to a woman’s life than...than...than serving tea and madeira cake to wealthy American businessmen!’

  ‘Ha!’ Jemima responded, and a silence fell as both sisters stared out of opposite sides of the tram.

  Jemima had worked for the last year in the tearoom at Gossup and Batsch, a large American-style department store just off Regent Street. The store—a six-storey early Victorian monstrosity—had suffered somewhat during the War. It was rumoured to be owned by Jews and since ‘Batsch’ was obviously a Hun name the building had come under sustained attack in those first few excitable weeks in August 1914. Indeed, the windows had been broken so many times they had had to be boarded up. But ‘Batsch’ had miraculously become ‘Batch’ and since the War ended the store had flourished. Lots of young people shopped there because it sold fifty-shilling suits and ready-made dresses of the type you saw in American films at the Globe. And now there was a tearoom on the lower ground floor, so after you had strolled around and wanted to rest your feet, you could have a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake.

  A year ago, Bertha had seen a small advertisement in the Herald seeking ‘Superior Serving Staff’ and, though she had not considered herself a serving person as such (it was a little too close to domestic service), the idea of working in a smart new tearoom in a glamorous American-style department store just off Regent Street, even if it was owned by Jews, was exciting. More exciting than plugging telephone lines into an exchange and wearing an uncomfortable telephone receiver fastened to your head all day long, ruining your expensive Marcel-wave and giving you a sore ear to boot. She had shown the advertisement to Jemima.

  ‘What do you think? Does it sound like a good position? Do you think I should apply for it?’

  ‘Only if serving fat old cats “keps of tay and a slace of Madeira cake” all day long is your grand ambition,’ Jemima had replied scathingly, and while Bertha had spent some days reconsidering and thinking about it a great deal, Jemima had applied, attended an interview and been awarded the position.

  Bertha reached out and with her glove wiped a circle in the window so that she could see through the accumulated smoke and grime. The tram passed the cricket ground then creaked to a stop by the isolation hospital, and a stooped elderly man with a stick tried to get on. He could hardly manage the step and the conductor had to reach down and pull him up. As she looked down from the top deck Bertha saw that it wasn’t an old man at all: it was a young man of perhaps twenty-five, his war medals pinned lopsidedly to his chest. She thought again of Mr Booth whom, she presumed, must have been in the last years of the War, though he had said nothing of this and she certainly had not inquired.

  Really, she did not know very much at all about Mr Ronnie Booth, she realised, feeling a knot of nerves begin to form in her stomach. It had been all very fine, this planning and waiting and imagining what might be and counting down the days and getting ready and running for the tram. But now that she was here (with her sister!) hurtling along the London streets towards a young man she had met only once and about whom she knew almost nothing and whose intentions towards herself were utterly unknown, it suddenly seemed somewhat reckless.

  Somehow the tram was already clanking past Shepherds Bush and fast approaching Kensington. Soon they would be on Bayswater Road and then—

  She gulped. Thank God Jemima was here.

  What if Mr Booth failed to turn up? She experienced a moment of panic. Well then, she would simply hop back on the first tram home and no one would be any the wiser—if she were here alone. But she wasn’t alone, she was her
e with her sister.

  Damn you, Elsie Stephens!

  She watched the crowds of couples strolling along the pavement enjoying the unexpected September sunshine. So many bodies, so many faces. Suppose she failed to recognise Mr Booth? Their meeting—miraculous though it had seemed at the time—had been fleeting to say the least. And if she hadn’t been late posting that letter, it would never have occurred at all...

  There had been a commotion in the post office. Bertha, joining the queue late on Saturday morning with errands to run for her mother and a letter for her great-aunt’s birthday which ought to have been posted three days before, had been in no mood for a commotion.

  ‘Express letters and other postal packets are sixpence a mile over and above normal charges,’ boomed a resolute male voice, carrying above the restless queue that stretched as far as the doorway.

  ‘This is a public service and yet you make it accessible only to those that have wealth!’ came the unlikely reply, also a man’s voice, younger and higher pitched, more emotional.

  Bertha, and indeed everyone in the queue, craned their necks, but she could see little more than the back and shoulders of a shop-bought grey suit and a shiny auburn head.

  ‘Not me that makes it accessible or otherwise,’ replied the postmaster in a bored fashion and Bertha recognised him as Mr Lake, who was actually the sub-postmaster and who had often served her in the past. ‘Now, do you want to send this letter or don’t you? I’ve got a lot of customers besides you.’

  ‘Aye, there’s other folks want to post their letters too!’ grumbled an elderly woman just in front of Bertha amid a growing murmur of discontent.

  The shiny auburn head swivelled around and seemed to sense the mounting air of menace behind him. Bertha saw a man in his mid-twenties with pale skin and a large bushy moustache, a narrow face with a strong nose and chin, and rather nice vivid green eyes. She liked that face. It immediately turned away from her and back to the counter.

  ‘Brother, you are a cog in a capitalist conspiracy that is so vast you cannot even see it!’ he declared angrily, then turned and marched out of the post office, braving the line of damning looks and disappearing around the corner.