Putting on the Style

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘You mustn’t worry, I’ll make it OK,’ and, quite unable to resist, he lowered his mouth to hers and began to kiss her again, deeper and more demanding than ever.

  Something seemed to unfold within her and opening up to him Dena gave of herself with sweet abandon. But as his tongue sought hers a sharp pain of desire kicked in and she had the good sense to stop the kissing before things got quite out of hand.

  ‘It’s late, I’d best get off home.’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll make it okay with Kenny. He won’t be a problem.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  When Dena told Miss Rogers that she was moving in with Winnie Watkins, the older woman was so delighted that her thin lips broke into a wide smile and she actually hugged her.

  ‘Why, that’s marvellous. Winnie is a wonderful woman, and has proved to be a stout friend for you. I believe you will suit each other well. You’ll no longer be alone yet she’ll respect your independence.’

  Dena agreed. ‘And she loves Trudy already.’

  There was the suspicion of a tear in the social worker’s eyes as she looked down at the child, fast asleep in her cot with her thumb in her mouth. ‘Who could resist her?’

  Dena gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Alice. You were right about Mam. She hasn’t changed.’

  Miss Rogers shook her head in sad despair. ‘I doubt she’ll approve of your decision, but don’t allow her to influence you. Alice Dobson is a woman eaten up with bitterness, and there’s nothing you can do to alter that. I’m so proud of your success, Dena, I feel as if I have been a part of it. A very small part, but I played a role nonetheless.’

  ‘Oh, you did indeed,’ Dena said with some fervour. ‘Where would I be without you? Trudy would have been taken away and adopted, or I would be out on the streets maybe. Your were my guardian angel, Miss Rogers. Always.’

  The pair looked at each other for a moment, both slightly overcome by emotion, and then Miss Rogers was brisk once more, saying how Dena would no longer be requiring her regular visits, so this would be a parting of the ways.

  ‘You have friends now, to watch out for you, should you need a helping hand. Although I consider you quite mature enough to look after yourself these days, Dena Dobson. But perhaps you might send me the odd note or Christmas card, to let me know how you’re getting along. I’d like that.’

  ‘I certainly will,’ Dena said, feeling a strange choking sensation in her throat. ‘I shall never forget you, Miss Rogers. Never!’ And reaching up, she kissed the whiskery cheek which instantly flared to a blush pink.

  And as she in turn leaned over the cot to kiss Trudy goodbye, there was the slightest quiver on the social worker’s lower lip. After she’d gone, Dena put her hands to her face and wept a few silent tears.

  A day or two later Dena was busily packing in preparation to moving out when Alice again appeared on her doorstep. Just the sight of the reproving look on her mother’s face caused Dena’s heart to drop several notches. What now?

  ‘I thought you might have asked me to baby-sit over Christmas, or at least fetched the brat over to see me,’ Alice said with a sniff of disapproval. ‘But obviously you’re so independent you don’t need a mother any more.’

  ‘I could accuse you of not even bothering to bring Trudy a present.’ Pointedly looking at Alice’s empty hands even now. ‘And don’t call her a brat.’

  ‘Why not? That’s what she is. And why should I give her presents? You chose to have her so you should provide for her. It’s not for me to encourage the getting of bastards.’

  Dena flushed with anger. ‘Don’t you dare use that word in front of my child.’ Trudy was sitting in her play-pen, happily banging pan lids together, oblivious of the cutting words and friction between the two women.

  ‘You’ll be getting yourself another one if you don’t watch out. I hear you’d been out gallivanting every night over Christmas.’

  ‘Whoever told you that?’

  ‘A little bird.’

  ‘Well it’s a lie. I’ve been working hard on my sewing as well as serving on Winnie’s stall. I went out only once, to the New Year’s Eve dance at the Ritz.’ Dena’s heart turned over just thinking about that night and she bit down hard on her lip as she went to put on the kettle, hoping Alice wouldn’t notice the tell-tale blush.

  Hadn’t she learned it was fruitless to argue with her? Her mother was as slippery as an eel and would always manage to find some way to twist any argument around to suit herself.

  Alice parked herself on the only chair, her spine as rigid as her morals, handbag on knee. But once she’d been served with a cup of best Yorkshire and a McVitie’s biscuit, about which she made no comment at all, she approached her quarry from another angle. ‘I heard you were doing a bit of sewing, making yourself useful at last, though what you know about dressmaking I shudder to think.’

  Dena sipped her tea and chose not to explain how she’d acquired the skill for fear of opening up all that painful business of her being taken into care.

  ‘You haven’t even offered to make anything for me, your own mother.’ Still failing to get a rise out of her daughter, she turned her attention to the pile of cardboard boxes and newspapers strewn around. ‘What’s going on here? Moving out, are we? Where to this time, if not with Kenny?’

  Dena gritted her teeth, desperately holding on to her rapidly diminishing patience. ‘As a matter of fact I’m moving in with Winnie Talbot. She’s very kindly offered us a home.’ Which is more than you did, was the unspoken thought that hung between them.

  Alice sniffed. ‘Much good that’ll do you. She’s got a screw loose has Winnie. Seems to think her husband is still alive when he came down with his plane in the war. She’s a nutter.’

  Dena walked to the door and yanked it open. ‘If you’ve only come round to insult my child and my friends and accuse me of being a bad mother, you can leave right now before we quite come to blows.’

  ‘If the cap fits.’

  ‘What have you come for, anyway?’

  ‘Do I need a reason to pop in for a chat with me own daughter?’

  ‘Generally there is a reason behind your visits, yes. Go on, what is it this time? I’m listening.’

  ‘Nothing fresh. I just wondered if you’d had a change of heart, that’s all. If you felt ready yet to turn respectable and make poor Kenny a happy man.’

  ‘Poor Kenny is it now? I’ve told you already, it’s all over between us.’

  ‘He’ll not wait for ever. You could lose him if you dally too long.’

  ‘Good. I’ll marry when I’m good and ready and not before, and when I find the right man.’ Again that lurch of the heart. Could she have found him already? It had certainly felt like it when Carl kissed her after the dance, and she’d hardly slept a wink since for thinking about him. He’d promised to pop in later today, to help carry her stuff over to Winnie’s. Dena’s heartbeat quickened just at the thought of seeing him again.

  ‘So you’ve no intention of retrieving your decency then? You intend to continue living as some sort of harlot with an illegitimate brat?’

  Dena gave a wry smile. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms but yes, I intend to stay single, for the moment.’

  Alice slammed down her cup and saucer and straightened her hat, although it hadn’t moved an inch on the frizz of grey hair, before marching stiff-backed to the door. ‘You’re trouble is that you are too stubborn for your own good, girl. There might come a time when you regret being so independent. Then you’ll be sorry.’

  So long as I don’t end up a bitter old crone like you, I’ll cope, Dena thought, rather uncharitably, as she silently and politely opened the door to let her mother out. ‘Thank you for calling but if it was only to preach to me about my morals, or rather lack of them, then that’s a shame. It really is time you tried to find something you liked about me. Perhaps you could give the matter some thought before you call again.’

  ‘I’m not sure I
’ll bother.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t, Mam, that would be a pity too. I shall always be glad to see you, whenever you’re passing. We really should make an effort to get to know each other a little better, as adults, don’t you think?’ Dena jiggled Trudy in her arms. ‘Say bye-bye. Grandma’s going now.’

  Alice looked at the child and sniffed disdainfully. ‘I’ll not be grandmother to no bastard.’ Then wagging a gloved finger in Dena’s face, ‘Mark my words, girl, you’ll live to regret this stupid obstinacy of yours.’

  Dena watched her clump down the stairs with sadness in her heart, then softly closing the door went on with packing her few possessions in preparation for her move. Miss Rogers was right again.

  At least Winnie liked her and enjoyed having her around. That was something, wasn’t it?

  Winnie and Dena were like a pair of schoolgirls, all silly and giggly as they settled her into her new accommodation, moving furniture about, fussing over sharing out cushions and bric-a-brac. Winnie had put up pretty new blue curtains in the rooms Dena was to have. She’d also made a hot pot for their tea, to celebrate a new beginning for them both.

  ‘I know that we agreed you’d be independent, but I thought we could happen take it in turns to do the cooking, share the shopping and such like. It would be daft to double up.’

  ‘I’m all in favour of that,’ Dena said, tucking into the delicious food and chuckling as Trudy valiantly did the same with her spoon and pusher.

  ‘Blow on it if it’s too hot, love,’ Winnie told the child.

  ‘S’good,’ Trudy said.

  ‘Course it is, pet. Who’s a clever girl then? And Aunty Win has made a nice chocolate cake for afters.’

  Watching the pair of them, so content together, Dena felt a warm glow deep inside. ‘We are going to be so happy here. But I don’t want you mollycoddling me, or spoiling Trudy too much. I must do my share.’

  Winnie grinned. ‘I hope you’ll let me spoil you both just a little bit. It’ll be a right treat for me to have someone to fuss over after all these years on me own. By the way, did I tell you that Barry came round on New Year’s Eve? To wish me the felicitations of the season, he said, but I think he was feeling a bit left out and lonely, so I asked him in and we saw the New Year in together over a glass of port.’

  ‘You sly old bird.’

  Winnie flushed bright pink. ‘There’s nothing in it. Barry’s just a friend. I really don’t know what Donald would say.’

  Dena put her arms around her friend. ‘He would say, good for you. Barry can be very entertaining company.’

  Winnie gave a girlish giggle. ‘He tells such tales about his exploits in Blackpool. A star turn he is. Yet there’s a sadness to him, a loneliness.’

  Dena didn’t say that Barry had said much the same about Winnie.

  In no time at all a satisfactory routine was established. Dena and Trudy happily settled in the big back bedroom where there was plenty of room for a cot beside the single bed, and a good view over the rooftops of Castlefield.

  Having set up her sewing machine, tailor’s dummy, books and sewing patterns, together with a few other bits and pieces in the front parlour, Dena felt she must have landed in paradise.

  Winnie’s house with its highly polished furniture may be a bit old fashioned but it was big and spacious, such a contrast to the tiny bedsit, and to those painfully constricted years in the dormitory at Ivy Bank. And a vast improvement on the tiny cottage she’d once occupied with her mother and Pete in Barber’s Court down by the canal.

  Dena still thought about her brother, often longed to talk to him about her troubles, since young as he was he would always listen sympathetically. They’d been so close. She longed to tell him about her sewing and how well she was doing selling her dresses and skirts and things. How she dreamed of taking her little enterprise even further.

  Each evening after Trudy had been put to bed, Dena would work at her sewing, running up a seemingly endless supply of skirts, tops and dresses. Or she would sit by the fire in the living room indulging in cosy little chats with Winnie while she stitched buttonholes or embroidered appliqué shapes. It felt good for both of them to have some company at last.

  One of their little pleasures was to listen to the wireless, to Mrs Dale’s Diary and The Archers. The Goon Show was a great favourite of Dena’s and Winnie liked Hancock’s Half Hour. So when the battered old bakelite Bush radio stopped working, Dena set off to get a replacement. She couldn’t afford to buy one but she could surely afford to rent a wireless set. It would be her contribution to the household entertainment.

  A bored young man was sitting behind the counter picking his teeth when she entered the shop. Dena politely made her request. He leapt from his stool eager to help, talking knowledgeably about valves and how much better sound quality modern radios were now that everyone had electricity and didn’t need an accumulator battery.

  He brought out a form. ‘You’ll just have to fill this in and get your husband to sign it.’

  ‘I don’t have a husband.’

  ‘The young man stared at the baby in the pram. ‘Well – your father then.’

  ‘I don’t have one of those either.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the young men, suddenly turning pompous. ‘You can’t rent a radio.’

  Dena was incensed. ‘Are you trying to tell me that because I’m not married and my father is dead, killed in the war, I’m somehow not considered to be a worthwhile, reliable person?’

  The question was too long for him to follow, and he didn’t attempt to answer it.

  ‘I’ll have you know I’m earning me own living, keeping my child without help from anyone, largely anyway, and I don’t owe a penny to a soul. Just because I’m a girl, and I got pregnant too young doesn’t turn me into a criminal?’

  The young man flushed bright red, not really wanting to hear all these personal details. ‘I’m sorry but it’s the law. You need a man’s signature for one of these new hire purchase agreements. I don’t make the rules.’

  ‘No, but I bet you could break them, since you’re a man, or at least could bend them a little.’ She tired to flutter her eyelashes at him, since she sensed there was no other way to get round him. Unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

  ‘No can do. Sorry. More than my job is worth.’

  Dena was compelled to take the form round to Barry who gladly signed it for her. But it was a bitter pill to swallow.

  Dena didn’t allow these little set-backs to spoil things for her. Life was exciting. She also had the added thrill of Carl. Could he really care for her as much as he appeared to? Or was he just stringing her along, thinking she was easy? No, no, she didn’t believe that was the case at all. Dena was determined not to see problems where there were none. Carl respected her. She could sense it.

  But if they started to get serious, how would he feel about taking on his brother’s child? Trudy’s welfare must be her major concern. Of course they might never get serious, so where was the point in worrying about that till it happened? If it happened.

  And then there was still the problem of Kenny.

  Carl had confessed to her the other day, when he carried her things round to Winnie’s, that he still hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell his brother about his feelings for her.

  ‘I do want us to be upfront and out in the open,’ he told her, ‘but I must tread carefully. Kenny always was touchy and likely to fly off the handle at the slightest thing. I’d like to try and persuade him to take an interest in someone else before I spring it on him.’

  Dena understood perfectly and was content to go along with whatever Carl thought best. Right now, she had more than enough change in her life to cope with: a new home, a new friend, a growing business, and a deliciously confusing new love in her life. She could ask for nothing more.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The stock room that Winnie rented at the market hall was duly cleaned out and tidied, and space made for Dena to work there for
a few hours each day when she wasn’t helping Winnie on the fabric stall.

  Trudy was trotting around and into everything now, so it wouldn’t be easy coping with a toddler, but Dena was determined to try. She thought that maybe it would be best if she left the play pen up in the stock room, so she could pop Trudy in it when she was working.

  Flushed with her Christmas profits, Dena visited the Manchester warehouses again and bought in the fabric she would need for the styles she’d designed for the coming spring and summer, then purchased a couple more sewing machines and began looking around for someone to help her.

  Then one morning Joan Chapman popped her head round the corner of the fabric stall.

  ‘I heard you were looking for someone to help with the dressmaking and I wondered if I’d fit the bill. I’ve done quite a bit in my time, making stuff for my own two girls, and for my nieces, but I’m willing to learn more. And to be honest, I’m sick and tired of baking pies for Belle Garside.’

  Her round cosy figure was a familiar sight on the market, and Dena knew her for being hard working and honest. Exactly what she needed. ‘Joan, I’d love to have you on board but how would Belle cope without you? I don’t want to be accused of poaching her staff.’

  ‘She’ll have to find someone else instead, won’t she? Or get her own painted fingernails covered in dough for a change.’

  Dena said, ‘I’d have Trudy with me all day. And I’m still not married, so if that’s a problem to a decent married woman such as yourself then . . .’

  Joan interrupted her. ‘I could start first thing Monday.’

  ‘Right, you’re on. I’ll match what you were earning from Belle, and hope to improve on that as we go on.’

  Joan beamed with pleasure. ‘That’ll do me nicely. And if you do start to expand, my sister might be interested in joining you as well. She’s a dab hand with her Singer sewing machine.’