The Factory Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Why did they act this way? What was so wrong about having a bit of money? She’d been lucky, that was all, it wasn’t a disease, yet they treated her as if she was a pariah. It was so silly, and it was hurtful, and there was nothing she could do about it. Try as she might, she had never been able to shake them off their lofty perch into which was forever burnt the indelible words ‘Them and us’, still living in the era when the gentleman would not dream of mixing with the common man except to slum for fun. To Mum and Dad she was now ‘Them’.

  Taking in a sharp, deep breath through her nose, Geraldine cast the questions from her and turned her thoughts to the life opening up before her. If that was how they wanted it, then sod them. She’d tried to do her best and her best had been spurned. So all right, then, sod them!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Life couldn’t have been sweeter. With five weeks to go before the baby was due, Geraldine was happy to stay at home rather than socialise and her new house was so lovely she was as content as a pig in swill, as Mum would have put it. Roaming from room to room, gazing over and over again at all the lovely furniture and furnishings Tony had managed to fill the rooms with was pure joy from which she never tired.

  Fenella came often to see her and they’d sit talking about babies and clothes over coffee and cake. And Geraldine nearly passed out when a letter came from Tony’s mother, after months of silence following her letter to them saying she was expecting their grandchild. His mother hoped that her daughter-in-law would go through her delivery safely and without too much trouble, and though there was no invitation to visit, Geraldine wasn’t as concerned as once she might have been, vowing to take it all with a pinch of salt. They were the losers, not her. She was ecstatically happy.

  One fly in the ointment was Mum and Dad. So far they’d deigned to set foot in her new home on one occasion only, the Sunday afternoon after moving in, and then to sit on the edge of the green brocade sofa in the elegant living room with its Georgian windows as though they were visiting a stranger. The conversation had been equally stilted and after a while Tony had excused himself saying he had to go to see someone. Left alone with them, her own parents, the conversation hadn’t relaxed one bit as they sipped their tea as though she’d poisoned it. Invited to stay for tea, they had made an excuse that Mum’s brother Frank and his wife and kids were coming to tea with them and they had to be back in time.

  As yet Mavis hadn’t come at all, but then it meant paying out for the bus fare which they could ill afford and Mavis too was nearing her time. She could discount Evie and Fred – they were young and visiting was a chore for them, but she hoped their hearts were with her.

  Wally and Clara, courting strong and probably needing to find places to go to while the time away quicker to their wedding next spring, came on several occasions, Clara gazing around enviously but not unkindly, her small face full of yearning, saying how she wished this was all hers and Wally earnestly promising that one day they might have a place like it.

  Aunts and uncles had up to now been noticeable by their absence, maybe expecting to feel uncomfortable by what they saw as their jumped-up niece lording it over them in her grand home. But then they were far enough removed not to concern her. The only one who came had been Dad’s eldest sister Aunt Jess. Widowed and at a loose end, she’d turned up unannounced one Monday with her unmarried daughter to sniff a lot as her eyes roamed about the place, while she made a point of saying that of course all this sort of thing wasn’t to her taste.

  ‘I like a place ter be more homely,’ was her chief remark, repeated several times. ‘I couldn’t never feel comfortable in a big place like this.’

  To which Geraldine couldn’t help thinking, that’s because you don’t have it – if you had, the boot would definitely be on the other foot, wouldn’t it?

  Cousin Doreen said little, but kept picking up this ornament, that vase, this and that piece of porcelain, to peek surreptitously at the base as if looking to detect some rare mark that might establish some vast worth, though why she needed to at all was beyond Geraldine’s comprehension. Watching with growing irritation, she was sure that were she to discover anything costing a fortune, she wouldn’t have recognised it anyway.

  Apart from Mum and Dad’s one and only appearance so far niggling at her, Geraldine found herself perfectly happy being at home on her own. It wasn’t exactly wise at this time to go socialising and she was content to let Tony go off on his own knowing he quite often combined it with business, as he’d made a lot of business friends this last year or so. She would go to bed early with a warm drink and a couple of biscuits, perhaps a few chocolates, and read. She was often asleep by the time he came home tired and just a little tipsy, though quietly so, every business deal hardly expected to be conducted without a round or two of brandies to finish off the champagne that usually went with dinners out.

  Obviously he was away during the daytime at his shop, and some evenings would work on in the back room of the shop after closing up, fashioning more jewellery to show in his window, though these days the settings were gold and the gems real. Also he was beginning to deal in already complete jewellery.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ she said after a couple of weeks of his staying behind for hours after the shop closed, ‘that place is rather like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? It’s in the wrong area for the kind of stuff you’re making now. Surely no one around Bow can afford to buy any of it. Might it not be a good idea to get rid of it and find somewhere slightly better? Nothing too grand, but certainly somewhere better than Bow. Hackney would be nice – it’s quite a nice area.’

  He’d grown oddly stubborn, telling her she didn’t know what she was talking about. But three days later, he surprisingly relented.

  ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said,’ he told her, coming home around midnight, apparently from dinner with a colleague. Geraldine was already in bed when he entered the bedroom.

  ‘I’ve been talking to someone I know and he agrees I should get out of the East End and set up somewhere more suitable.’

  Sitting there in bed, she couldn’t help but feel a little irked. He’d had the conceit to dismiss her advice as not worthy of note yet had taken the same advice on board from a man, a casual friend no doubt. That he and this person probably knew more about the jewellery trade than she did cut no ice with her – common sense should have told him that she knew what she was talking about. It was belittling, emphasising a man’s opinion that she was just a woman not worthy of being listened to.

  ‘So I’ve decided,’ he went on, slowly undressing, ‘to look for a place somewhere in the Bond Street area.’

  Geraldine experienced a brief flashback to the day she walked down that street and found the dress she’d copied, thereby getting to know Tony for the first time. But she pushed away the lovely memory, still indignant.

  ‘Don’t you think that’s jumping the gun a bit?’ It was impossible to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘The rent on that old place is a fraction of what you’ll have to pay on what you’re looking for. And the landlord won’t be too happy having to find someone to take it over with the present state of the country.’

  ‘No bother. It’s already been arranged.’

  She stared at him. ‘How can it be? I only spoke of it three days ago.’

  ‘I’ve been toying with the idea ever since we moved here and a few weeks ago I began getting the wheels turning.’

  ‘Then why put me off when I mentioned it? You were positively offhanded with me. You dismissed out of hand what I suggested.’

  ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I had to see if things could go through OK. Now they have and so I’m telling you.’

  ‘After someone else has advised you the same as I did,’ she added sarcastically. She was confused. He’d said he’d already got the ball rolling, yet had kept silent about it when she’d made the suggestion. Then someone had apparently advised him this very evening and he’d said he’d taken up t
he suggestion, yet had apparently already started the ball rolling. Something felt wrong, none of it making sense. But he was a little drunk and probably wasn’t able to string his sentences together accurately. He’d explain it better in the morning, no doubt, when he was sober.

  She forgave him his drink-garbled information and snuggled down under the covers as he crept in beside her, the brandy on his breath wafting spicily across her face as he kissed her goodnight and her silent forgiveness grew in volume.

  Yet the way he had told her nagged on well into the early hours. How had he found someone for the shop so quickly? And even with that out of the way, where was he going to find the rent for premises in a place like Bond Street, even the tiniest corner. The rent being asked for West End premises was sky-high even in these days of unemployment, and though it was true that while the poor grew poorer the wealthy continued to thrive, even so, how was he going to afford such rent, on top of what he was paying for this place?

  Surely he wasn’t thinking of going to his father yet again? Tony was seeing it as all too easy for her peace of mind, taking from his dad just as and when he fancied. Naturally she didn’t wish to see him – and of course herself – lose all the things they were enjoying, but to expect his father to finance him forever … what if one day he ceased to? Where would they be then? Common sense told her it must stop now before it got out of hand and they took an even greater fall.

  Tomorrow she’d write to his father, a decision that made her tremble beneath the bedcovers while Tony began to snore gently, contentedly. It was a daunting thought, contacting his father who still saw his son as having married beneath him and had no regard for her whatsoever. But something had to be done. For Tony’s sake she must try to nip this cadging lark of his in the bud. On the other hand, if Tony’s father took her advice and put a stop to the allowance, which it appeared to have become, she could be the loser, all this grandeur she’d come to enjoy disappearing overnight. Not only that, Tony would be furious with her. He might never forgive her.

  Perhaps she should speak to him first. Then perhaps not. He’d be just as angry and there’d be such a devil of a row.

  Perhaps if she asked his father to cut down on the money, not to such a degree as to see them reduced to going back to the Bow area, but at least enough to stop Tony continuing to assume it still grew on trees and from stretching to even greater hare-brained ideas. And she must make a point of asking his father never to let him know the source of what had prompted him to be more frugal with his allowance.

  But what if Tony’s father, disliking her as he did, told him about her letter? Dare she risk writing at all? Yet if she didn’t do something now, could they very well find themselves heading for a terrible downfall one day in the future? On and on the questions nagged until finally she fell asleep.

  Somewhere in her sleep her mind had made itself up. The following morning after Tony had left for his work, she found herself sitting down at the small bureau in his study, writing furiously, as though someone else was guiding her hand. Encouraged by the way she was able to word the letter she let her hand run on. That Tony was becoming far too reliant on the money his father sent, and the fear it was bringing to her, was enough to keep her hand moving.

  Filling an entire page, she finally signed off, rapidly folded the paper in three, pushed it into the first envelope she found, a long business one, sealed it, the gum sickly sweet against her tongue, and addressed it. There, it was done. Giving no time for second thoughts, she threw on her hat and coat and hurried out into the morning drizzle. In her haste the heel of her shoe slipped off the wet top step of the three down to the street and she landed on her back with such a wallop as to shake her from head to toe.

  Several men going off to their places of work came rushing to her aid, seeing the pregnant woman in distress. Some bent over her, one asking if she was all right, had she had hurt herself, and started to make an attempt to help her to her feet, but another told him to let her find her breath before getting up.

  It was so embarrassing that she got up, practically leapt up, unaided, hastily reassuring everyone that she was quite all right, that it was just a silly tumble, that she should have looked what she was doing. Before they could do anything she was virtually running down the road to the post box with her letter, anything to get away from them and the gazing intrusion of their eyes. And if she did pause to reflect on her action before popping the letter into the narrow opening of the letter box, she did so with little thought other than how foolish she had felt lying flat on her back on the pavement with men staring down at her as if she were an imbecile, at the same time openly taking note of her condition.

  She hadn’t been hurt, just very shaken, though the thump of landing flat on her back was still with her, as if something heavy had gone right through from her back to her stomach. There was a small pain there but as she made her way back home, the back of her coat still wet from the damp pavement, it slowly diminished. All she wanted to do was to get back indoors out of the way of any prying eyes from other windows in the square, hoping that no one but those off to their various businesses had witnessed her stupid fall.

  Two days later, with always two or three posts per day, came a letter from Tony’s father, addressed to her. Fortunately it arrived after he’d left and thanking God for that, Geraldine tore it open. The letter could not have been more terse, half a page, no more.

  In reply to your request that I send my son no more money, or at least less than you assume I have been sending him, I have to tell you that I have never sent my son any money from the day he gracelessly turned down my offer to have him with me in the law firm of which I am a partner. As far as I am concerned he chose the bed he preferred to lie in, and further confirmed it by his marriage.

  If I hadn’t washed my hands of him the day he walked away from my generous offer to set him up in a thriving law firm, then I certainly did so on the day he married without the courtesy of asking our opinion, and to someone, and I am sorry to have to say this, of whom we would never have approved had he sought it.

  Therefore, he forfeited any prospect of my ever sending him any money. If he gets himself in severe straits then he will have to get himself out of it, as we all have in our time. I do congratulate you both on the coming birth of your child, and may send a little something for it on its birth – but as for forwarding my son any funds whatsoever, I never have, nor ever shall, finance him in any way connected with this foolhardy pursuit of his.

  I see that you have been labouring under a misapprehension all this while, but hasten to put the matter right.

  Please let me know when the child is born.

  The letter hadn’t even addressed her by name, much less any word of endearment, nor did it end with any signature, a direct snub to her standing if ever there was one. But if it rankled, that rankle was smothered by the shock of knowing that Tony’s money was not coming from his father.

  Yet Tony had money – he had to have in order to afford this house, and apparently for the exorbitant rent that would be asked for West End premises, and for seeing that she remained well dressed and to continue to be taken out socially to fabulous places. Where was he getting it, and from whom?

  All day she stewed, waiting for him to return home. He came home late as she had expected, remaining behind after closing the shop. She wondered why he should bother working on his beloved lapidary knowing full well that more and more his trade involved buying in and selling the real thing.

  He came home around eleven. She was still up, despite now aching all over as the muscles stiffened from the fall she had taken. She hadn’t yet told him about that because it might have meant mentioning the letter she had posted to his father. Now it was different.

  Conscious of her aching limbs and of a small pain in her stomach, she sat very still in the armchair as he came into the living room. Waiting until he had come over to kiss her, and then offering only her cheek, she held the letter out to him as he stood back in some
surprise at her cold reception.

  ‘This arrived today from your father,’ she announced, and in case he thought something bad had happened to his parents, added quickly. ‘It was addressed to me in answer to one I wrote to him.’

  ‘You wrote to him?’ he queried as, innocently, he took the open sheet of paper.

  ‘I felt a need to. Read what he says, Tony.’

  She remained very still while he read, mainly because the movement of her muscles was so painful. She watched his face closely, saw it change from smiling bewilderment to concern then alarm. She was still watching his face as he looked up, a silly grin beginning to spread across his features.

  ‘So you’ve caught me out.’ He even managed a chuckle and put his hands above his head, elbows crooked, the letter still clutched in one hand.

  ‘Fair cop! OK, I confess!’

  ‘Please do, darling.’ Despite the endearment, her tone was frigid.

  Sitting down in the other armchair, he studied the letter again, she suspected so as not to meet her steady gaze still trained on him. Seeing she wasn’t to be messed with, his tone when he spoke had become thoughtful.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve got money by borrowing.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, yes and no.’

  ‘What does that mean, yes and no?’

  He was gnawing the inside of his mouth as though trying to make up his mind how to reply.

  ‘Well?’ she prompted and he gave a start, looking up at her for the first time.

  Still she waited while he scrutinised her face, taking his time about it until she felt she wanted to scream at him. Yet she sensed he was trying to define her mood, debating whether it was safe to divulge whatever secret he held for being the possessor of all this money that had not come from his shop or his father. Finally she could stand the scrutiny no longer.