The Glowing Hours

by Marina Oliver

  'I must scrub this floor. It's so dirty after all the rain.'

  'You've plenty of time. Of course, if you don't want to tell me I won't pry, but perhaps I can help.'

  Nell was feeling utterly drained. Doing two jobs was more exhausting than she'd imagined, and by the time she got home at night it was long after ten. It was all she could do to drag her feet up the stairs and collapse into bed. These days she slept so heavily not even the tossing of Eth or the snoring of the boys kept her awake. She hadn't even had the energy to think about the fight on Saturday, though she had felt a mild surprise that Pa hadn't commented on her disappearance. Perhaps Ma had distracted him. Eth was being difficult and wouldn't tell her anything, but Amy knew only that Pa had gone to bed after throwing out the boys and barring the door.

  After she'd escaped through the window Nell had spent the night huddled in a leaking storage shed behind a shop in Monument Road. She'd been too tired to try and find one of the refuges she'd seen on her first foray into the wealthier district, but it had been a bitterly cold night, with a touch of frost, and by the morning she had been stiff and aching, her chest constricted as if with tightly tied ropes. Two days later it was difficult to draw breath and her legs didn't seem able to obey her instructions to move.

  'My boss gives my wages at the factory to Pa,' she explained. 'I don't have any for myself except what I earn here. He doesn't know about this job.'

  Gwyneth stared at her in amazement, both her anger and compassion stirred. 'That's monstrous!'

  'I need to save enough so that I can pay for a room while I look for another job,' Nell went on. 'I can't stay there, you see. But it'll take months, and if I lose this job I may not be able to find another in the evenings.'

  'And if you come straight here you haven't had time to eat since dinnertime. No wonder you're so thin!'

  Nell shrugged. She didn't see any point in telling her new friend that she rarely had more for dinner than a crust of dry bread and a half-rotten apple thrown out by the shops.

  'I must get on.'

  Half an hour later she looked up, startled. Gwyneth had on her coat. 'Is it time to finish? I must have been asleep. I've only scrubbed half the floor!'

  'I want to slip out for a few minutes. It's early yet. Lock the door after me and let me in when I come back.'

  'Won't Miss Fremling mind? You could get into trouble.'

  'Miss Fremling has other things to think about. I saw her with a man on Saturday, and I believe she's with him on the nights she asks me to stay here. She's much more human these days, too.' Gwyneth giggled. 'Will you be all right on your own?'

  Nell nodded. It crossed her mind that she could easily steal and sell some of these expensive gowns to raise the money she needed, and she wondered whether Gwyneth had considered the possibility. She went on scrubbing mechanically, too weary to know how long the other girl was gone. When the tap came on the door she jumped nervously, then saw Gwyneth carrying a small parcel and went to let her in.

  'Here, hot pies for both of us,' Gwyneth said, 'and I'll make some more tea. Stop that scrubbing now, you've almost done and it won't take long to finish.'

  The aroma made Nell feel faint, and she had to make a tremendous effort to move towards the table where Gwyneth was setting out plates and knives and forks. As the hot flaky pastry crumbled and the thick brown gravy oozed out, she sighed and lifted a forkful of vegetables towards her mouth. Ten minutes later every crumb had gone.

  'I haven't had food like that since I lived with my Gran,' Nell said, and suddenly burst into floods of tears. 'I didn't know people could be so kind!' she sobbed as Gwyneth, alarmed, sprang up to put her arms round the younger girl's shoulders.

  'Nell, don't cry! You're all right now! Here, use my handkerchief. Let's have a cup of tea.'

  'I'm sorry,' Nell whispered. 'I'm so sorry. Thank you. Just look at the time! I won't be finished till midnight, I'm so slow today!'

  'You'll sit there while I finish for you,' Gwyneth ordered. 'You aren't fit to do such hard work, and afterwards I want to tell you my plan.'

  *

  'I'm so glad I came to the classes with you, Kitty. I wish you would too, Fleur,' Maisie said as they walked down the Hagley Road towards Broad Street.

  'I prefer to go shopping,' Fleur said, tossing her head.

  'Leave Fleur alone if she chooses to be standoffish.' Kitty said cheerfully. 'I think Mr Bliss is a very good teacher and we will be having the benefit, Maisie, it's Fleur's loss. Let's all go to the Tower on Saturday. I want to practise in a big ballroom.'

  Maisie giggled, then shook her head. 'We couldn't, Kitty! Not a public ballroom! Mother wouldn't permit it!'

  'Don't tell her you're going.'

  'But – we always have to say where we're going and with whom!'

  A few minutes later Maisie stopped to speak to an old school friend and Fleur drew Kitty aside.

  'I'll come to the Tower,' she whispered. 'But don't tell Maisie, or she'd give me away!'

  Kitty grinned at her. 'No fear! Good for you, Fleur! You've got heaps more spunk.'

  Fleur preened. 'Did you know Maisie wants to go to the stage classes too?'

  'Maisie? Stage classes? What a hoot!' Kitty laughed. 'Don't say I told you, but she can't even do the waltz properly. Does she fancy herself in a chorus line?'

  'I don't know. She'd never be permitted to do it, so I don't see why she wants the bother of extra classes.'

  'Perhaps she's fallen for Mr Bliss! He thinks he's the very devil of a fellow!' Kitty almost doubled up with laughter. 'Saturday, then, where shall we meet? Quickly, Maisie's coming.'

  *

  'What is the difference between the brush and the hesitation? Miss Baxter?' Nell bit her lip. She'd been concentrating so hard on memorising which order to put her feet for the feather step, and when to use contrary body movement, she'd forgotten Mr Bliss's habit of barking questions at his students.

  'Oh. In the hesitation there's more of a pause when you bring one foot up to the other, before moving it on again.'

  'And the weight?'

  'You don't change from the first foot in either.'

  'Good! And the chassé?'

  'You can change weight from one foot to the other after they're brought together.'

  'We will demonstrate. Come.'

  Nell looked apprehensive. It was the first time during the six weeks she'd been attending Mr Bliss's dancing classes that he had singled her out for demonstrating to the others. She was the newest pupil, and only Gwyneth's determined coaching had made it possible for her to join the class at all.

  Afterwards, as she waited for Gwyneth's more advanced class to finish so that they could walk home together, she reflected on how much she owed her friend. They had by now become very close, drawn together by the fact they both had fathers impossible to live with, but also by their obsession with dancing. She had been on the verge of despair, thinking she could never scrape together enough money to leave home, when Gwyneth had made her incredible suggestion.

  'There's a room free where I live,' she'd said when Nell's sobs had finished. 'It's only a small one next to mine, not much more than a cupboard, but there's a bed and a table. I'm sure my landlady would let you have it for three or four shillings, even half a crown.'

  Nell was making swift calculations. 'I've saved just over a pound. That would be enough for rent and food and coal for two or three weeks, until I could get another daytime job.'

  'You already have this one. Your family know nothing about it?'

  'No, or he'd soon take the money from me.'

  'Where is your money? Do you have to go home for it? And what about clothes?'

  Nell shook her head and smiled faintly. 'I don't have any other clothes. As for my money, I have to keep it with me or someone else would find it and steal it.'

  'Then let's finish here and go and see my landlady. It will be good to have a friend.'

  Nell felt qualms about leaving Amy, but hung on to the idea that only if
she got away could she ever help her little sister. By the time they reached Gwyneth's lodging house and arranged for Nell to take the room she was shivering uncontrollably, incapable of thinking properly. Gwyneth made up a fire in the tiny grate, and aired one of her own warm flannelette nightgowns before it.

  'Take your clothes off, they feel damp, and get into this, then straight into bed.'

  The following day Nell was scarcely able to move, and for several days Gwyneth was on the verge of calling a doctor. What had she done, she wondered, persuading a girl she hardly knew to abandon her home and job? But she liked Nell, was horrified by her story, and her plight made her determined to help. After all, she thought wryly, her father was always preaching about giving succour.

  Nell soon began to recover, though, with the good food and the warmth Gwyneth provided. By the end of the week she was fretting to begin looking for a new job.

  'Miss Fremling will have sacked me by now,' she worried, as she and Gwyneth sat in front of the fire on Sunday afternoon.

  'No, she won't. I told her you were ill and offered to do some of the work until you were well enough to go back. She let me sweep and dust, and though the linoleum isn't polished like you kept it it's still presentable.'

  'I must find something in the daytime.'

  'What did you do before?'

  'I worked a press, stamping out the metal shapes for buttons.'

  'Do you want to do that again? Isn't it hard work?'

  'It's easier with the power presses, but they're dangerous, you have to watch them every second or they could chop your hand off. I was so tired the last few weeks I was thankful I didn't have one of them.'

  'There are lots of small factories, and I've seen notices outside advertising for girls and women. I suppose they pay them less than a man. The unions aren't interested in fighting for women's wages.'

  'I won't go back to Ladywood, someone would recognise me and tell my Pa. I might try somewhere in Hockley, in the jewellery workshops.'

  'You could work in a shop. You speak well, and Miss Fremling says that's the most important thing. Why don't you have the same sort of accent as most of the people round here?'

  'Oi can talk loike folks born in Brummagem!' Nell said with a slight laugh. 'Or like you, girl, with your lovely lilting Welsh voice that sounds like music, do you see. And actually, darling, I think your accent is simply terribly divine!'

  Gwyneth laughed. 'How on earth do you do it?'

  'In the first place I wasn't born here, we lived in Walsall. That's really the Black Country, the accent's slightly different. When I was three my grandparents took me to live with them. I nearly died. I caught diptheria, and Mom had Sammy and Eth by then, with Benjy on the way, as well as my three older brothers. They might all have caught it. They, my grandparents, lived in the country, in Sutton Coldfield, and after I got better I was still not strong so they kept me.'

  'But surely they were neither Welsh nor spoke like the gentry?'

  'No, but somehow I can imitate anyone. Gramps was coachman to a very rich family, and they often had foreign friends to stay, Americans and French, mainly. I used to listen to them, and Gramps encouraged me to try and copy how they spoke. He liked me to sing and dance for him, and pretend to be different people. It made him laugh, though Gran used to be annoyed, said it would get me into trouble.'

  'Why did you come home?' Gwyneth asked gently.

  'Gramps died three years ago, and though Gran was allowed to stay on in the cottage she seemed to have given up trying. Six months later, just before I was fourteen, she went to put some roses on his grave, came home and went to bed early. The next morning she didn't call me for school and when I went in to her room she was dead. Pa came and fetched me home. They'd moved around a lot, but he'd just got a job in Ladywood. I was old enough to go out to work and he wanted my wages. Not me, I was just another mouth to feed.'

  'Poor Nell! But you could work in a shop. I'm sure Miss Fremling would give you a good reference. She's not such a battle-axe as she makes out. I think she's like that just to make herself appear tough.'

  Two days later Nell obtained a job in a bakery. It wasn't as clean as Gwyneth's gown shop, with the flour and the crumbs and sticky cakes, but it had the enormous advantage that she was allowed to bring home left-over bread and pies, and this was usually enough to provide both girls with at least one meal a day.

  She was earning enough to give up the evening job, pay rent for her tiny room, and buy cheap clothes from the Bull Ring market. When Gwyneth discovered Nell was swift to learn the dance steps she was herself practising, she persuaded her to join Mr Bliss's classes. Within two weeks Nell was allowed to join the stage class too. She was ecstatic, and several times the lodgers on the floor beneath complained at the noise as the two girls practised together.

  'Take no notice,' Gwyneth laughed. 'Soon we'll be able to give up the shops and become real stage dancers. I've got tickets for the Pantomime, only shilling ones in the gallery, but we can look at a real troups of dancers. It's my Christmas present to you. Now let's go through that routine again.'

  'Girls, watch the way I turn out my knees while I point my toes together,' Nell instantly said in a superb imitation of Frank Bliss's rather precise, clipped tones, and waddled across the room with her arms supporting an imaginary partner. 'Now kick, higher, higher, higher! Miss Davis, be careful of the light bulbs! We can't afford to replace any more!'

  'Oh, Frank,' she breathed in Edwina's soft west country burr. 'Give them a rest! They'll be collapsing from exhaustion, littering the floor, and we won't have time to carry them all out of the studio before the next class!'

  'Stop it!' Gwyneth gasped, doubled up with laughter. 'I can't breathe properly!'

  Nell was such fun, she thought later as she lay in bed. She'd never had a sister to share jokes with, and her father had considered them too good to mix with the villagers, so she rarely played with their children outside school. It had been a good day when she'd suggested Nell came to live in the same house.

  *

  'My dear young lady, I only take experienced modern ballroom dancers into my stage classes,' Frank Bliss said yet again, trying to keep his patience. Some of these upper class girls with their imperious voices and absolute confidence seemed to think they could order everyone about.

  'You don't know how experienced I am,' Kitty replied. 'Won't you let me show you?'

  She darted across to the gramophone and began to wind it up. As the music filled Endersby's ballroom she came back, smiling seductively as she sidled close to him. Frank shrugged. She was slender, yet shapely, and it wasn't often such a haughty young piece was actually begging to be taken into his arms. He didn't need to pull her close. She moulded herself against him, and he had to remind himself he was supposed to be testing her dancing skills. They swayed to the tune of a waltz, and when the music changed into foxtrot rhythm Kitty altered step without faltering.

  'Don't you want to teach me – other things?' she murmured, lifting up her face to his as the music came to a close.

  'Perhaps, soon,' he muttered, breaking away from the tantalising attraction of her perfume. 'You are very good – a very good dancer, Miss Denver, and after you have been in the ballroom class for a few more weeks you will almost certainly be competent enough to join the stage class. The elementary one,' he added cautiously.

  Kitty suppressed an irritated sigh. Instead she looked up through her long silky eyelashes, and placed one of her slender hands, the nails painted a delicate pink, on his arm. 'I don't want to wait,' she said huskily. 'Perhaps if I came to your house for private lessons I would be ready for the stage class sooner?'

  He resisted temptation. There were far too many people in his house. 'It wouldn't be convenient, I'm afraid,' he said curtly. 'I have an increasing number of classes now I am using this ballroom, and I don't give private stage lessons, just a few for special students who want extra ballroom tuition.'

  'I'm sure it would help if I had extra tuition in b
allroom dances,' Kitty suggested. He tried to move away but her clasp on his arm tightened and she swayed towards him. 'You could come to my house. There's never anyone there except our housekeeper. My mother's away, and we have a very good gramophone.'

  He capitulated. There was a look in Kitty's eye he distrusted. He dared not be caught alone with her. There had been enough of that sort of trouble in Bristol. 'We'll see. Suppose you join the stage class here on Wednesday afternoons? On probation, as it were? After a month we'll discuss it again and see whether you are able to keep up with the others. They've all had more lessons than you have.'

  'But probably not as much – experience,' Kitty said sweetly. 'Thank you, Mr Bliss. I won't forget your kindness.'

  *

  'You're going to join the stage class?' Maisie was almost incoherent with fury.

  'Why not, if Mr Bliss thinks I have talent?' Kitty drawled.

  'You're no better than I am, and he wouldn't let me join!'

  'Maisie, you can't be as good! Kitty's brilliant! She had all sorts of people admiring her at the Tower again on Saturday, and always had dozens of partners to choose from,' Fleur put in.

  'The Tower? You didn't go to the Tower, Fleur!' Maisie exclaimed, distracted.

  'Oh, don't be stuffy!' Kitty retorted. 'Why shouldn't she if she wants to?'

  Maisie turned on her. 'Because if she gets entangled with your sort, Kitty Denver, she'll soon be no better than you!'

  'What exactly do you mean by that?' Kitty asked, her eyes glittering.

  'It's not fair you get into the stage class and I don't! I'm as good as you are, better, in fact, so why did he choose you? Did you offer to go to bed with him? Blood will out, I suppose!'

  'Kitty, you didn't, did you?' Fleur was astounded.

  'How else could she get such favouritism?' Maisie demanded, her face mottled red with fury.

  Fleur instinctively drew away from Kitty, and looked at her in horrified fascination. Kitty shrugged her shoulders.

  'I did nothing of the sort. Fleur, we were going shopping for some new shoes. Shall we be off?'