CHAPTER SEVEN
Miss Davis looked tired. Returning to work after three weeks away due to illness, she still felt in need of a month in the sun.
“You don’t realise how fortunate you are, Kitty,” she said.
“You’re young. You have your health and strength, and the looks to carry you far.” She remained at her desk. Kitty standing before her.
“You could be a model,” she said with a warm smile.
In these past months Kitty had grown into one of the loveliest creatures she had ever seen. With her long dark hair and magnificent dark eyes, she was captivating. More than that, unlike so many other young madams who had crossed the threshold in and out of this establishment, Kitty possessed no big ideas about herself, no airs or graces; indeed she seemed at times to be totally oblivious of her own beauty. That was one of the reasons Miss Davis had come to love her.
The other was Kitty’s warm and generous nature.
“I’m too short.”
Taken by surprise. Miss Davis shook herself alert.
“Sorry, dear. What did you say?”
Kitty smiled. She was used to Miss Davis’s mind wandering off. She supposed it was the illness or creeping old age.
“You said I could be a model,” she reminded her.
“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I couldn’t because I’m too short.”
Miss Davis shook her head.
“Not ‘short’, my dear. The word is petite. You are petite.” In fact Kitty was like a little doll, small and shapely. She was also big-hearted and had the kind of personality that brightened a room whenever she walked in. Suddenly Miss Davis found herself regretting the great hulk she was. Unmarried and glad to be so, she’d never envied those who had tied the knot especially when she had to deal with the likes of the Connors, who had lied through their teeth about the incident concerning Kitty and their obnoxious son.
Kitty had never revealed the truth but it was painfully obvious what had happened there. It was also obvious that theirs was a very unhappy marriage. As for Kitty’s Aunt Mildred, who only lately had begun to write to her niece, she too was having marital problems.
“I’m glad your aunt has written to you. Kitty. I’m really sorry she’s been so ill.”
Kitty found it easy to talk to Miss Davis. She was a kind understanding soul who genuinely loved the children in her care.
“There was something else in the letter,” she confessed.
“Aunt Mildred wants me to visit her. I thought I might go on Saturday, if that’s all right?” She didn’t reveal there was a certain undercurrent in Mildred’s letter that had made her uneasy.
Miss Davis couldn’t hide her delight.
“Why, that’s wonderful, Kitty!”
Struggling out of her chair she came round to put her hands on Kitty’s shoulders.
“It’s not August yet so you still have five weeks of the summer holidays left. Maybe she has something planned…a family outing or a treat? You can’t know how pleased I am that she wants to see you. It’s long been a thorn in my side that your father’s sister turned her back on you.” Her old eyes were moist. “Do you think she wants you to live with them?” If she did it wouldn’t be before time.
Kitty had a long memory. She recalled the argument between her father and Mildred soon after her mother’s funeral. She remembered the things her aunt had said…how she would not look after Kitty, and how the girl was not her responsibility. In her mind Kitty relived the talk Mildred had given her while she sat desolate on the stairs.
“I can’t have you,” she’d said.
“I have enough problems of my own.” Loath to hold grudges she had always given Mildred the benefit of the doubt, but after all this time her heart still ached when she remembered how her aunt had abandoned her to a children’s home. She could never do what Mildred had done. However difficult the circumstances, she could never have rejected her own brother’s child.
“You have no idea what your aunt wants?”
“She didn’t say…only that it was important.”
“Hmh!” Miss Davis knew the house and business had been sold a long time back.
“Perhaps it’s to do with your father’s properties?”
“I don’t know.” Money was never uppermost in Kitty’s mind. She left Mildred to take care of all that.
“Sit down, child.” Miss Davis waited for Kitty to be seated. Easing her own large frame down again, she bit her lip and wondered how she might put Kitty on her guard without alarming her.
“Would you like someone to come with you on Saturday?”
“That’s very kind, but no.” Kitty hated to be treated like a child.
“I’d rather go on my own.” She saw a flicker of anxiety in the woman’s face.
“Why? Is there something wrong?”
Miss Davis rolled her eyes and laughed a little.
“Of course not! It’s just that you haven’t seen your aunt in a long while. I thought you might like some company, that’s all.” She couldn’t voice her suspicions, but felt it only right to warn Kitty.
“I’m here to help and advise if you need me…I mean, if your aunt asks you to agree to anything.”
In fact she was echoing Kitty’s own thoughts.
“I won’t do anything at all without talking to you first.” Georgie had already said she thought Mildred was robbing Kitty blind.
Miss Davis gave a sigh of relief.
“That’s good.” Afraid she might have planted a germ of suspicion in Kitty’s mind, she exclaimed, “But, I’m not saying she would ask you to do anything untoward.”
Kitty reassured her, “I know that.”
Suddenly the smile slid from Miss Davis’s face.
“I have something to tell you. Kitty. It is hard but must be said. Two things in fact.”
Kitty had that same awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had had when Harry walked away.
“Concerning me?” she asked apprehensively.
“Concerning us both.”
“Is it to do with my being fostered out?” The last couple who had spoken with her seemed very keen. Kitty had been fearing they might apply for custody.
“Can’t I stay here until I’m sixteen?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that, Kitty. We are duty bound to find you a suitable set of foster parents, and a secure family home. It’s a good policy, even though things do tend to go wrong occasionally.” She pulled a wry little face.
“You seem to have been particularly unlucky so far.” Her instincts told her the present couple were not suitable for Kitty, but their credentials were perfect and nothing had been uncovered to discredit their application. She told Kitty as much.
“They do seem able to give you a good home,” she said.
“But it may not come to that.” Her eyes crinkled into a smile as she said more cheerily, “Who knows? Your Aunt Mildred may be about to offer you a home with her.”
“I doubt that.” Even if she did, Kitty still had few inclinations to live with her; though if it meant avoiding being fostered out again, she might be tempted.
“When will I know if I’m to be fostered out?”
“The decision will be made very soon.” More than anyone Miss Davis knew how Kitty had been shifted from pillar to post, and her heart went out to her.
“You’ve had some very bad experiences, Kitty,” she acknowledged.
“That’s why this time the couple are being put under the microscope.”
Kitty merely nodded. Since being returned by the Connors, she had been to two other sets of foster parents, and each time the consequences had been disastrous. First there was the middle-aged family who already had three children of their own; they saw Kitty as their own personal contribution to society and treated her as a piece of propaganda rather than a person. After she refused to be paraded before everyone at a fund-raising garden party, Kitty was smartly returned to the home.
“Ungrateful!” they said
.
And Miss Davis equally smartly showed them the door.
The second couple had no children. Rousing Kitty from her bed between the hours of four and six every morning, they knelt in her room, wailing and moaning, renouncing the devil and all his evils. The same ritual was enacted every weekday morning, and most evenings to midnight. Exhausted and disillusioned, Kitty was returned to the home at her own request.
“You said there were two things you had to tell me.” She was holding her breath. Could anything be worse than being fostered out again?
“It’s to do with me, Kitty.” As though recharging herself, Miss Davis drew in a great gulp of air. It came out in a rush with the words, “I’ve decided to retire.”
Kitty could hardly believe her ears. “But you’re not old enough!”
First Georgie gone, now Miss Davis. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Miss Davis laughed out loud.
“Bless you for that, dear,” she said. “And you are right of course. I might not be ready for the knacker’s yard, but I certainly feel it. I’m four years away from retirement age, but I’m worn out and that’s the plain truth.”
Worn out from years of worrying about others, worn out from years of fighting the authorities on her children’s behalf, worn out by the increasing burden of administration, the long trying days and sleepless nights.
“I still don’t know what I’ll do with myself,” she admitted, “but I need to re-evaluate my life. This last long illness told me that.”
It told her she was growing older. It told her she had no real quality of life, and that time was running out.
“It took a lot of heart-searching before I finally decided,” she confessed in a quiet voice. “Now that I have, I won’t change my mind.”
“It won’t be the same without you.” Kitty couldn’t get to grips with it. “I’ll miss you.”
The words were inadequate. She would miss her more than she could ever say. This big kind soul had been father, mother and friend to her. She had been there from the very start, and each time the fostering had gone wrong. She was there when Harry left her life, and there when Georgie went. In Kitty’s ever-changing world, Miss Davis was the one constant figure, and she had come to love her.
“I don’t want you to go,” she murmured, and even as the words left her lips she regretted them. How could she begrudge this woman her rest? How could she make her feel guilty.
“No, I don’t mean that,” she quickly added, and the words caught in her throat.
Miss Davis understood.
“Of course you mean it. Kitty,” she said softly. “I don’t mind. I understand how you feel. That’s why I wanted you to be the first to know. I owe you that much.”
“Will you ever come back here?”
A sad shake of the head.
“No.” One word, but it carried a world of convictions.
“What will you do?”
“For the first few weeks, I mean to put my feet up and take things easy. After that, I mean to go north, to Blackburn where I come from. I have a few relatives I haven’t seen in a long time.” Chuckling, she confessed, “It wouldn’t surprise me if they showed me the door. Oh, I’ve written, we’ve kept in touch, but somehow we’ve never sat face to face in all these years.”
She sighed, momentarily closing her eyes and seeing it all in her mind: the Palais near Accrington where she used to dance as a teenager, and the wonderful old buildings round King George’s Hall where she and a sweetheart met every Friday night. He didn’t last long though, not after he tried to get her knickers off in the back seat of the Odeon…
Opening her eyes, she sighed again, with pleasure.
“Oh, Kitty, it will be good to see the old town again.” A flicker of disappointment crossed her face, “But it’s all changed now, I understand. Once upon a time everybody knew everybody down our street…children played on the cobbles and women chatted while they white-stoned their front steps. The houses are posher now, with bay windows and net curtains, and everyone has inside lavatories.”
She laughed out loud. “By! I remember the times when we had to queue up at the bottom of the yard, waiting for our turn to use the loo.”
Even that was a precious memory.
“My old aunt tells me they’ve pulled down acres of the old terraced housing and built a new shopping arcade since I was last there. St. Peter’s church is still the same though, and the cathedral…and Corporation Park with its lake and acres of magnificent gardens.” There was happiness in her face as she went on, “One beautiful summer’s day, Kitty, when my wanderings are over, I shall sit on the bench at the top of the park, and look over the whole of Blackburn, and all around me will be the smell of blossom and the sound of children playing.”
Her eyes lit up at the thought.
“Oh! It’s a lovely place, Kitty.”
“It sounds wonderful.” Kitty had visions of church spires and people who sat outside on sunny afternoons, and a lake filled with white birds and surrounded by swaying willows. “I’d like to see Blackburn one day.”
She was thinking of a house of her own, and a husband, and children. She was thinking of Harry. And her heart was sore.
Miss Davis was thinking too; about wasted time and the few years she might have left.
“Some time ago my mother left me a nice little nest egg,” she explained. “I’ve been too busy to spend it, but I mean to spend it now.”
Her eyes lit up.
“I’ve always wanted to travel…to visit far-off places I’ve only ever seen on the Alan Whicker programmes.”
Suddenly her mind was made up.
“Yes! That’s what I’ll do, Kitty…travel to the corners of the earth where I’ve never been.”
“Will I ever see you again?” Lately she could hardly recall her mother’s face. Kitty didn’t want her parting with Miss Davis to be so final.
“Well, I won’t be leaving for a month. After that, we’ll see.” She wondered if it would be harder to keep in touch with her past than to turn her back on it and start a new life without hindrance. But, no.
Kitty would never be a hindrance.
“We’ll talk about it later, dear.”
Rising from the chair was her sign that the little chat was over.
There was one thing though.
“I’m sorry your request to visit Georgie was turned down, but I hope you understand why?”
Kitty had been bitterly disappointed by that decision.
“No, I don’t,” she answered honestly.
“I can’t see how it would be harmful for me to visit her. It wasn’t harmful to me when we were living here, under the same roof.”
Miss Davis tried to see it from Kitty’s point of view, but still had to admit, “Georgie has always been a law unto herself. You’re right of course…she did not influence you in a bad way, but, perhaps that was because you were strong enough to resist.” She smiled at Kitty then.
“In fact, to a certain extent I believe it was you who influenced her, and for the better.”
“Well then?”
She shook her head slowly from side to side, a look of determination on her face.
“No, Kitty. You can’t visit her at the borstal. The decision was made above my head and, to be honest, I’m fully in agreement. First, Aylesbury is too far, and second, and most importantly as far as I’m concerned, you should never set foot inside a borstal…not even to visit.”
Kitty was so looking forward to seeing Georgie again.
“Why can’t she be on her best behaviour?” she groaned.
“You know she’s had her sentence extended again. If she keeps on like that, she’ll never get out!”
“I’m afraid she’s her own worst enemy.” Miss Davis had actually attended court when Georgie was brought to answer charges for fighting in the laundry room at the borstal. It wasn’t the first time and, unless Georgie saw the error of her ways, it wouldn’t be the last.
“This is somethin
g she has to deal with in her own way,” she advised Kitty.
“She’s fortunate to have a loyal friend in you.”
“I can’t seem to help her though, can I?”
“Don’t think like that. Kitty. You are the most stable influence in her life. You’ve helped her more than you realise. If it hadn’t been for you…your letters and loyalty, I honestly believe she would have gone from bad to worse. In a place like that you need a friend to believe in you.”
All that evening Kitty busied herself. She made entries in her diary, all about the conversation between herself and Miss Davis.
She flattened Mildred’s letter inside the pages, and returned the diary to the back of her bedside cupboard. After that she went downstairs and chatted to some of the girls; one in particular by the name of Margaret, a young girl who was here because of a court order and her parents’ constant neglect of her.
“I miss my mum,” she told Kitty.
“So do I,” Kitty told her gently, “but it won’t be long before you’re home again.” In a way she envied the girl because there would come a day when she would be with her mother again. It gave her cause for thought, and what she thought was this. Too much had happened for her to go back. It was the future she must think of now, not the past.
Her own thoughts came as a shock to her. She had travelled a long painful road before realising her parents were gone for good; that Mildred had much to be ashamed of; that Harry would never leave her, not while her heart beat warmly and her dreams were filled with memories of him.
“Come and sit beside me,” she told the girl. And while she told her a story of princes and thieves. Kitty was put in mind of herself as a five year old when her own mother used to tell her the very same stories.
While she told the tales her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t realise the child had fallen asleep beside her until the little body slumped sideways and would have fallen off the chair if Kitty hadn’t caught her. Gently, she took the tired bundle upstairs where she undressed her and tucked her in her bed.
“Goodnight, sleep tight,” she said, planting a soft kiss on the sleeping face.
“It won’t hurt you to go to bed without being washed…just this once.”
Dorothy Picton agreed.
Living a Lie Page 14