The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Filthy old goat,’ she’d muttered in an aside after one such caress. ‘’Im with a wife and kids at ’ome too. And he’s old enough to be your father. Disgustin’.’

  Jemima had smiled, recognising a note in Muriel’s tone that suggested that had Mr Gilfroy come to her first, it might very well be Muriel herself spending her evenings in this cramped office, Muriel wearing a small silver ring around her neck on a piece of string, Muriel estimating how much Gilfroy took home in his monthly wage packet and how much of it he gave to his wife.

  Godfrey Gilfroy. It was rumoured he would be moved Upstairs in a year or two. Senior management, perhaps a directorship in time. And if you wanted to get on, you didn’t need a dull little wife called Irene in Rickmansworth. You needed a lively and stylish young thing, someone who knew how to dress, who said the right things. Someone like Jemima.

  ‘Silly!’ she admonished him now, playfully. ‘S’only been a day. Honestly, you’ll be wanting to stay here all weekend next and never going off home at all.’ And though this was intended as a hint, a vision of things to come, his reaction was not what she expected.

  ‘Stop! Please do not go on!’ He let her go abruptly, as though she were on fire, his face taut and pale, and for a moment Jemima felt a flicker of concern. ‘Miss Flaxheed, I’d rather... You must listen. This is precisely the reason that I have asked you here, and during work hours, which would never—I—’

  Gilfroy paused and Jemima stared at him, fascinated. She had never seen him so ill at ease.

  He took a deep breath and continued. ‘You see something terrible, something quite, quite dreadful has occurred.’

  This was it. His wife had found out. She had left him. He had left her. At last!

  ‘My wife—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My wife has found out about—about this.’ He paused, looked down at his hands that now lay flat on the desk and swallowed loudly in the sudden, crushing silence.

  Jemima felt her fingers curl themselves into tight fists. She straightened them out at once so that he wouldn’t see.

  ‘So stupid,’ he continued with a tight smile. ‘She—my wife. Well, I shan’t go into the sordid details. Suffice to say there was an indiscretion on my part, some laundry, some discolouration...’ He coloured and Jemima stood quite still, breathless. ‘At any rate, there was a confrontation, an accusation you might say, that I was honour-bound—’

  ‘To leave her!’ blurted out Jemima.

  ‘To atone!’ Mr Gilfroy countered in shocked tones. ‘To atone, Miss Flaxheed. I am not one to shirk my responsibilities. So. There it is and I am afraid...’ He took another deep breath. ‘Yes, so very, so dreadfully afraid that we must desist at once. There must be no more. It is quite, quite out of the question. You understand, of course?’

  Jemima did understand, perfectly. He was ending it in favour of his wife, who was small and dull and whose name was Irene. He was choosing her and his two daughters and his semi-detached brick house in Rickmansworth over Jemima.

  It was inconceivable. Had the wife threatened blackmail?

  And was she to go meekly back to being Miss Flaxheed, waitress, whose nails must be checked, whose cash-till calculations must be supervised, whose clocking on must be overseen? Whose future, suddenly, looked uncertain?

  Well, she still had her dignity.

  ‘Will that be all, then, Mr Gilfroy?’ She stared at the calendar on the back wall of the office. It had been sent by a tea supplier and showed a view of an Indian tea plantation.

  There was a pause. Gilfroy seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes, yes. That’s all,’ he said and turned away awkwardly, seating himself at his desk, fumbling in a drawer, dismissing her.

  Jemima turned and left the tiny office. She stood very still on the other side of the door, breathing quickly, willing herself not to think, but a quick, hot, solitary tear welled up in one eye. She blinked it away furiously as Muriel advanced.

  ‘Tight bleeder,’ announced Muriel with a scowl, nodding towards the now-vacant table seven. ‘Shot off when me back was turned and only left a shilling.’

  So while Jemima had been trapped in that odious little office being pawed and then unceremoniously dumped back in with the dregs, Mr Oklahoma had escaped, and the fact that neither she nor Muriel had really stood any chance whatsoever of catching someone like that only made her all the more humiliated.

  ‘Will you get this one, Jem? Me stockin’s laddered,’ said Muriel, nodding towards a customer standing expectantly by the cash register.

  Jemima didn’t want to get this one, or indeed any one. She didn’t want to be here in this cramped, pot-planted, cane-chaired dungeon surrounded by acid-tongued, dried-up old ladies and wealthy, cigar-smoking foreigners who looked right through her. She didn’t want to be here in this tearoom with a manager who couldn’t take his hands off her one minute then couldn’t look her in the eye the next. A manager who would probably make her pay for his lapse for as long as she continued to work for him.

  ‘Er, miss. ’Scuse me—can I pay?’

  No you can’t. Push off! she thought irritably, but at that moment the office door opened and Mr Gilfroy emerged, chin up, nose very high, hands locked behind his back, a fierce look in his eyes, a look that for the last three months she had been protected from, but that now, suddenly, she knew would seek her out. She scuttled over to the cash register.

  ‘Pot of tea and a slice of walnut cake, it was,’ said the young man helpfully and Jemima saw that it was him, the man from the park—Mr Booth.

  Mr Booth. Mr Ronnie Booth. Music teacher and political agitator. Mr Booth who had been so pleasant, so attentive to her that afternoon. Mr Booth who had seemed to be Bertha’s young man but who, once one had actually met him and talked with him and observed him, had turned out not to be anything of the sort. Mr Booth who, now that you looked at him closely, was a pleasant enough young man, with nice hair and lovely green eyes. Yes, really quite nice eyes and well-dressed—in a schoolteacher sort of way. And now here he was at her cash register, wanting to pay for a pot of tea and a slice of walnut cake. Well.

  Jemima smiled. ‘Why, Mr Booth, what a lovely surprise. It’s Miss Flaxheed. Miss Jemima Flaxheed.’

  ‘Friends, most of you know me. I am Cyrus Flaxheed, proud father of the bride, and I consider myself well versed in speech-making, having for some fifteen years held the position of butler at Leadheath Hall in Sussex, home of Lord and Lady Parker-Soames. So you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I stand up here and say my piece.’

  A chorus of murmurs rippled down the trestle table that ran the length of the church hall. Whether the murmur was of agreement or encouragement or an acknowledgment of Mr Flaxheed’s illustrious career depended on who you were.

  The bride and groom were at the centre of the table. Dad stood beside Jemima, Mum on his other side, and as Dad launched into his speech the only murmur Jemima heard was a groan. The last time Dad made a speech had been at Aunt Mary’s funeral in the parlour of Uncle Alan’s farmhouse in Shropshire three years earlier. Some terrible and unmentionable illness had struck Aunt Mary down and whittled her away to nothing and, following her eventual demise, Uncle Alan had been unable or unwilling to say anything at all about his recently deceased wife. So Dad had stepped in and, even though he had seen Aunt Mary perhaps twice in the last quarter-century, he had still managed to talk about her for a full thirty minutes.

  And this was a wedding—he had a captive audience and a role to play. Lord knew how long he might go on for.

  ‘This is an auspicious occasion in the life of any father. Marriage, the holy union of two of God’s children...’

  Jemima closed her eyes. The honeymoon was to be in Torquay. She and Ronnie were catching the six o’clock train from Paddington and she began to wonder if they would make it.

  ‘...happens only once in a person’s lifetime, a state not rashly or injudiciously entered into, but one that, nevertheless, forms the basis for...’

  Jemima opened her eyes
. She had lost the thread of what Dad was saying. Judging by the glazed expressions around the table they all had.

  She caught Muriel’s eye across the room, where her friend sat at the second table, between two of Mum’s distant cousins. Muriel gave her the cross-eyed look she usually reserved for when Gilfroy was being particularly officious.

  Mr Gilfroy had been officious a lot lately, not to say downright mean in his insistence on timeliness, cleanliness and courtesy far beyond what duty demanded. His pursuit of these aims had been directed mainly at Jemima, so much so that in the end it had been a relief yesterday evening to triumphantly announce her engagement and to hand in her notice, to tell him exactly what she thought of his ideas of hygiene and to sweep out of there with her head held high before going for a celebratory port and lemon at the Cat and Fiddle over the road.

  ‘...a foundation, indeed, on which the very pillars of our civilised world stand firm!’

  In fact it had become a celebratory four or five port and lemons, not only at the Cat and Fiddle, but at the Pig’s Head too, and the Station Arms, and finally some dingy little basement club called Jellicoe’s, where two middle-aged city gents insisted on buying her and Muriel outlandishly coloured cocktails and had then offered to escort them home. Actually, not home exactly, but to the Tunbridge Hotel over the road. She and Muriel had excused themselves to powder their noses and run giggling up the stairs and onto a passing tram.

  Jemima glanced again at Muriel, who made no attempt to stifle a huge yawn, and after all those port and lemons it was a miracle they were here at all. And as for Mr Godfrey Gilfroy and his ‘clean nails are a sign of a clean mind, Miss Flaxheed’, well, he could think himself lucky she hadn’t decided to provide Mrs Gilfroy with some of the details of where exactly those oh-so-clean nails had been and how often.

  But the moment had passed. Now she was a free woman. A wife.

  ‘...that fateful day, more than twenty-five years ago, when my dear wife, Alice, gave me the honour of her hand in matrimony...’

  Oh, please!

  Monday morning. She pictured Muriel hurrying along the lower-ground floor corridor at Gossup’s, late as usual, smoothing down her uniform, patting her hair into place, furiously scrubbing her nails clean at the tiny enamel sink in the staff lavatory, putting the urn on, rushing out to set up the tables before Mr Gilfroy came out of his office—and all with no one to help her. Jemima’s uniform, her apron and headpiece, would remain hanging on the peg in the changing room. That horrible white lace thing they had to wear on their heads that made them look like ladies’ maids in some big old house! And that awful starchy apron that was like having a piece of cardboard tied round their legs! She wouldn’t miss that or the spilled tea on the white linen tablecloths or the cake crumbs floating in tea dregs or the dried-up old spinsters from Maida Vale who left no tips and quibbled over their bills. No, she wouldn’t miss any of it.

  ‘...when I held her in my hand—a tiny, red-faced, screaming little thing she was; loud and angry even then—and I said to Alice, “Alice,” I said...’

  Good Lord.

  Muriel caught her eye again and winked conspiratorially. Her family all lived in Wapping, which was right the other side of London. Jemima returned her smile vaguely and looked away. People’s lives, she realised, went in different directions, and the friends you had today were not the friends you would have tomorrow.

  ‘...and now, here she is, a grown woman, on her wedding day, and I’ll tell you now, my friends, it makes me a proud father, and I hope—yes, friends, it’s my sincere hope—this lad sitting here beside my little girl appreciates what it is he’s won.’

  For heaven’s sake!

  Everyone was watching her now, Mum smiling indulgently as though she were reliving her own wedding. Would you smile if all you had to remember was a plain little wedding ceremony a quarter of a century ago in the bleak anteroom of someone else’s house? But time could make you nostalgic about anything. Twenty-five years ago Mum had been a second scullery maid and Dad had been a butler, a man so much older, so much above her in every way, that it must have been like marrying a prince. Here was a man who had taken her out of that life of servitude and drudgery to this: a different life of servitude and drudgery.

  Sitting opposite Mum was Uncle Alan, his hair shining wetly and parted precisely down the centre so that you could see his scalp. He was silent, his smile creased with a slight frown. Was he, too, remembering his own wedding to Aunt Mary, who had withered away and was now dead, and whose only son, George, had survived more than four years in the trenches only to be taken by the flu epidemic of 1919? Uncle Alan’s frown deepened in concentration and she saw that his gaze was directed down the far end of the room, where Muriel was touching up her face powder in a little mirror.

  Aunt Nora, sitting next to Uncle Alan, had the kind of fixed smile on her face that people had when they weren’t really listening. It was unlikely she was fondly remembering her own wedding, Uncle Harry having run off in 1915 with a VAD from the local hospital. Beside Aunt Nora sat Janie and Edie, both perched on the edge of their chairs. They worked, the two of them now, at the Hoover factory at Perivale. As Jemima watched them Edie slid a furtive hand up to her face to rub a large red pimple in the crease of her nose. Beside her, Janie hissed something and slapped Edie’s hand away.

  At the other end of the room was Ronnie’s sister, Rose, and her husband Clive Trent. Rose and Clive were publicans, Ronnie had explained during the introductions after the service.

  ‘S’right—the Boar’s Head in Camberwell,’ Clive had announced proudly, as though she ought to have heard of this place and would be suitably impressed. Jemima hadn’t and wasn’t.

  ‘Oh yes, next time you’re down Camberwell way you shall have to pop in,’ gushed Rose, who was older than Ronnie but dressed like a little girl. She talked like one too.

  Jemima had smiled demurely. ‘I can’t imagine a single reason why I should be down Camberwell way’, she had replied. As for ‘popping’ into the Boar’s Head, she’d as soon present herself at the doors of Holloway Prison.

  There had been a short silence then Ronnie had coughed. ‘Well, my love, now we shall have a reason, shan’t we?’ he said, and Rose had smiled with relief, and Clive had positively beamed and looked as though he might actually slap his thigh. Jemima had waved at someone across the room and walked away. And now here they were, Rose and Clive of the Boar’s Head, Camberwell, grinning down the length of the table at her and actually holding hands as though this was the second-best day of their woeful little lives. As though she were now family. Well, she supposed she was. Dear God.

  Bertha sat on the far side of Mum, but as she was leaning back in her chair all Jemima could see of her was her nose. Bertha was not smiling and no doubt this was because she was too busy daydreaming about herself and her own wedding to think about her only sister’s big day. Who Bertha was daydreaming about marrying, one could hardly imagine. Someone dull, that was certain.

  Then there was Ronnie.

  Ronnie sat beside her, staring straight ahead, the tips of his ears pink, his nose shiny with moisture, chin thrust out. His groom’s attire consisted of a hired slate-grey morning suit that was shiny around the elbows and knees where it had been steam-pressed too often, a cream carnation buttonhole that clashed with the buttercup yellow of the bridesmaids’ dresses, and his everyday, schoolmaster’s shoes that he had polished so highly it merely drew your attention to the fact that they were shop-bought and some years old. His neck squeezed out of the tiny opening afforded him by his too-tight collar so that he resembled a soldier on a parade ground awaiting the sergeant-major’s drill commands. The hand that reached beneath the linen tablecloth and grabbed her fingers was as stiff as a salute.

  But instead of turning his gaze on her, he turned and grinned sheepishly at his best man. The best man was a rather sorry-looking chap named Collie Westing whom Jemima had only met for the first time at the church. He was the man with one leg who
had been standing beside Ronnie on the church steps. She hadn’t asked—well there hadn’t really been a moment—who this Collie Westing was. She had been under the impression that Mr Cannon from the league was going to be the best man but now it appeared that Mr Cannon wasn’t here, nor indeed was the rather pompous Mrs Grantham-Jones, and the task had fallen to the one-legged Mr Westing. You presumed Mr Westing had been in the War with Ronnie, which was even more reason not to ask too many questions.

  ‘...sallying forth into the Kingdom of Heaven!’ announced Mr Flaxheed with some relish.

  Sallying forth?

  Ronnie’s fingers flexed then tightened around hers uncomfortably. Why did he stare straight ahead like that? What was he looking at? Why wasn’t he looking at her?

  She looked across the table. Mr Westing had a wooden crutch that he had laid against the front pew at the church, and he had stood on one leg throughout the entire service so that she had kept glancing at him, fascinated, wondering if he would wobble and perhaps fall over, but he hadn’t.

  Ronnie swallowed noisily. He would be making his speech next. She felt for the strangeness of the ring on her finger, twisting it round.

  ‘...and so I give you Mr and Mrs Ronald Booth—health and long life!’

  ‘Health and long life!’ came back the shout as two dozen glasses were raised with dry-throated relief.

  Jemima forced a smile. Ronnie turned pink and glared at the tablecloth.

  ‘Up you get, lad,’ ordered Dad, nodding at his new son-in-law in the way that he would once have commanded the hall boy at Leadheath to empty the master’s chamber-pot.

  Ronnie took a hasty swig of his beer, wiped his sleeve across his mouth, then scraped his chair back across the polished floor of the church hall leaving two grooves on its parqueted surface. A silence fell. Ronnie swallowed and said, ‘Ah...’ and his eyes flickered around the room as though he expected someone to hand him a speech. Jemima reached for her glass and raised it to her lips, staring into its gently fizzing amber depths and imagining herself elsewhere.