Can Dreams Come True?

by Oliver, Marina

  Alf paused on the top of the steps, and then chuckled.

  'That yer posh motor?' he asked, and without waiting for a reply crossed the pavement and dumped Robert unceremoniously into the passenger seat. 'By the time yer gets yer hands loose, yer'll be feeling fit ter drive,' he said. 'When yer does, get out of here, and don't come back sniffing round my gal, or next time yer'll not get away with bruises.'

  ***

  Chapter 3

  Kate peered from the front room window. It was the bedroom, and she had been banished there after protesting to Alf and Hattie about their treatment of Robert.

  'He'll have you charged!' she cried, worry for both Alf and Robert causing tears to stream down her cheeks.

  'Let him!' Alf said, hands still clenched. 'I'm not having men like him messing wi' my gals! They'm after one thing, and they'll not get it from you!'

  'If they ain't already had it,' Hattie sneered. 'Did yer posh school ever warn yer about men?'

  'You've hurt him! You might have killed him!'

  'Well, I ain't, he was still breathing, more's the pity. But next time he comes round here I will kill him, and so yer can tell him!'

  'How can I tell him if I don't see him?' Kate demanded.

  'Get in bedroom before I give yer another leathering! I'll not be spoke to like that by a flipping kid!'

  Wondering what had made her normally placid father become so violent, first to her, now to Robert, Kate escaped. At least from here she could watch to see how Robert was.

  He was already trying to loosen his bonds, she was thankful to see. He got his hands free and she winced when she saw him rub the side of his head where Alf's blow had landed. Then he bent to untie the rope round his ankles, and stepped from the car. As he looked towards the house Kate's stomach clenched with fear. Surely he didn't mean to come in again and challenge her father? Then she relaxed, as with a contemptuous glance towards the door Robert dropped the rope on the pavement and flung the rag which had secured his hands on top. He didn't look up, just turned away and went to get behind the wheel. A minute later and he had gone.

  She would never see him again. He wouldn't want to know her. And with her father in this unpredictable mood how safe was she from his fists? She had to find a job, with a wage to satisfy them. Soon, she knew, she would try to leave home, but for the moment all she could do was try to earn money and try to placate them. It would perhaps be easier if Mrs Carstairs gave her a reference as Daphne had promised. When things had quietened down she could make plans for her future, but for the moment she was too exhausted and distressed to think properly.

  Having come to this decision, Kate fell into an uneasy state of half-sleep. She woke with a start, thinking she had heard music, and after a while realised she had been dreaming, reliving the party.

  She would never see Robert Manning again. She thought of how they had danced together, their steps fitting as though they had practised for hours. She'd never see him again, would probably never again ride in any motor car, let alone his. He'd been pleasant, so kind. She had been aware that some of the other girls at the party had envied her, wanted his attention for themselves. Now, she supposed wearily, they would have it.

  *

  'So what are you going to do about it?'

  Robert sipped at the brandy Mr Carstairs had given him. 'I don't want to report the attack to the police. That would be worse for Kate than doing nothing, probably.'

  'But with such a violent man, is she safe?'

  'I don't know.' He rubbed the back of his head, where there was still a dull ache twenty-four hours afterwards. 'From the few things she said I had the impression her mother was a difficult woman, but she spoke affectionately of her father. Maybe it was just a loving father's fear that I was trying to take advantage.'

  'She's a year younger than Daphne,' Mr Carstairs said, and Robert nodded.

  'I know that, and all I wanted to do was take her out into the country. Do you realise she had never before been near a field, seen cows and sheep in them, or wild flowers growing?'

  Mr Carstairs sighed. 'I'm afraid many of our slum-dwellers have never moved more than a few hundred yards from their homes. The City Council are doing what they can by building new homes out in the suburbs. But it all takes time.'

  'You know many of the Corporation. I'm sure you know the people who run the markets. Mr Martins has a stall there. Is there any way he could be watched? I'm afraid for Kate.'

  'You won't try to see her again? It wouldn't be wise.'

  'No, I've realised that, and for her sake I must keep my distance. But I don't want to feel she is unprotected. I hoped you and Mrs Carstairs might know of a way she could be helped.'

  'She left school without any explanation. It would be difficult for my wife to interfere.'

  'There must be some explanation. Could Mrs Carstairs perhaps find out?'

  'Are you suggesting she faces the fists of Mr Martins?'

  'No, of course not! But has the school written to discover why she left?'

  'I understand they have, and there was no reply.'

  Robert pushed his hand through his hair. 'What can I do?' he appealed to the older man.

  'To be frank, my boy, there is nothing you can do unless,' he paused and gave a brief laugh, 'unless you are prepared to abduct her and hide her from the authorities.'

  Robert shook his head. 'Much as I feel tempted to do just that I know I have no right. I have no cause unless I involve the police, but I feel so helpless, and if she should come to more harm I'd never forgive myself.'

  'She won't. Look, Robert, I've got young daughters too, and I think that in Mr Martin's place, if I had any suspicion that you were trying to seduce his daughter – ' he held up his hand as Robert protested. 'Let me finish. I believe that was never your intention, but he doesn't know that, and in his place I might have been tempted to hit you too. I'll try to discover what I can, but I can't interfere unless your Kate really seems to be in danger.'

  It wasn't what Robert wanted, but he knew there was nothing practical either he or Mr Carstairs could do. He had to leave it, and with a brief smile he thanked his host, declined further brandy, and took himself back to his flat to spend the rest of the night brooding. A few years ago he might have been tempted to abduct Kate, but now, he hoped, he had more sense. He would have to wait and hope he could see her again away from her home.

  *

  On Monday a letter arrived for Kate.

  This was an unheard-of event. Old Mrs Bunson on the ground floor brought it up when Kate, who had been working for Bella that day, arrived home.

  'From an admirer, is it, gel?' Mrs Bunson asked, and chuckled and winked at Kate.

  'What's that?'

  Hattie appeared at the door behind Kate, saw the letter, and snatched it from her hand.

  'Mum, it's for me!' Kate protested, but Hattie sniffed, nodded to Mrs Bunson and shut the door in her face.

  'Yer don't get no letters from no young men,' she said curtly, and made to throw it in the fire.

  'It's about a job!' Kate said desperately, hoping that it was a reply to one of her applications.

  Hattie paused, and then ripped open the envelope. 'We'll soon see.'

  She laid the inner sheet down on the table, and Kate shut her eyes as she saw a grease stain which no one had wiped away that morning seep onto the paper. Hattie screwed up her eyes and peered at the sheet of paper inside, then handed it across to Alf who had just finished washing his face and hands. Without bothering to dry them he took the letter, and Kate almost danced with impatience and fear that before they had finished the letter would be unreadable.

  'Boots the Chemist?' Alf said disbelievingly, and at last Kate was able to take the paper and read it for herself. 'You'm ter go for an interview on Wednesday?'

  Kate nodded, her eyes shining. 'With the Territorial Manager,' she said, reading from the letter. 'I applied some time ago, and went to see them. They gave me a test, an easy one, working out percentages. For th
e discount they give to doctors and nurses,' she explained, seeing their incomprehension. 'Now I have a second interview, so I must have passed that. Oh, but it says one of you has to come with me.'

  'I can't afford no time off,' Alf said hastily. 'Business is bad enough without tekin' time off. Yer Mom can go.'

  'Me? They ain't interviewing me!' Hattie declared, hands on hips.

  'Oh Mum, please! It's a very good job, if I can get it. It'll pay more than I can earn doing jobs round the market, and they have lots of shops, I could do really well with people like them.'

  'They won't ask you no questions, Hattie,' Alf said, and Kate threw him a look of gratitude. She'd have preferred him to come with her, but her mother couldn't manage the stall by herself, and the interview was early, at nine. There wouldn't be enough time for Alf to set up the stall and leave Hattie in charge, not if he were to have time to wash off the fishy smells and change into his best suit.

  Hattie glared at Kate, but shrugged. 'Might be interesting ter see what them big shops look like behind the posh fronts,' she admitted.

  'I need a bath, and to wash my hair,' Kate said excitedly. 'My school uniform's clean, I can wear that. I'll get the bath up from the yard tomorrow.'

  'There's not enough coal ter boil that many kettles, and it's too hot fer a big fire anyway,' Hattie said.

  Kate wanted to protest, but she knew it would be useless. Getting the big zinc bath which all the lodgers used up from the yard behind the house, and boiling enough water to fill it, was a major undertaking, one Hattie allowed only once a month. Even then, they all had to use the same bathwater.

  Nodding to her mother, Kate did what she normally did, took a small bowl full of hot water into the bedroom on Tuesday night and tried to sponge herself down with that. She recalled the time she'd had a bath in Daphne's house, after a sweaty game of tennis, and the marvel of having hot water come out of taps, and being able to sink into water which came up to her shoulders, and soak in it as long as she wanted. That, along with a car, was a dream she was beginning to think she might never achieve.

  *

  Mrs Carstairs shook her head. 'I'm sorry, Daphne, but I can't do that.'

  'Mama, why not? You know Kate, you know why she had to leave school, it isn't her fault.'

  'I know what you've told me, dear, and I would help if I could, but my position as a Governor means that I have to back up Miss MacDonald. If I wrote a reference for Kate it would be undermining her authority.'

  'I don't see why,' Daphne muttered rebelliously.

  Mrs Carstairs sighed. 'She said she was not satisfied with Kate's conduct. Any potential employer in, for instance, any quality shop, would be likely to contact Miss MacDonald, and if she told them different things, who would they believe?'

  'You, I hope!'

  'But don't you see? It would not do Kate any good to have such doubts aroused. But you say she is willing to become a maid?'

  'She doesn't want to, but she's desperate, and at least then she'd be able to live away from home. She doesn't complain, but I know her mother resented her staying on at school.'

  'It seems a shame, after all her advantages of education, but perhaps it's for the best in the circumstances.'

  'What circumstances?'

  'Oh, nothing. Something your father said.'

  Daphne looked curiously at her mother, who seemed unusually flustered. 'What did he say? What do you mean?'

  'Oh, that taking girls out of their own environments does not, in the end, do them a favour. They no longer fit in at home, and can't mix on equal terms with better class people,' Mrs Carstairs said slowly. 'But please don't argue with your father, Daphne, he has a great deal to concern him at the moment, dealing with Stella's wedding and settlements and so on. I will ask around to see whether any of my friends would take her. They wouldn't bother with references from school.'

  Daphne retreated to the small parlour where she and Stella usually sat, and spent an hour deep in thought. Then she heard her mother going out, and made up her mind. Not everyone would contact Miss MacDonald.

  She went slowly upstairs to her mother's room, and saw with relief that there was a fresh supply of the slightly scented, headed notepaper in her mother's bureau. A few sheets would not be missed. Abstracting half a dozen sheets and a couple of envelopes she stuffed them into her knickers and sauntered out to her own room.

  There she was soon deep in composition, and when satisfied she copied out the reference she had composed in the best imitation she could manage of her mother's writing, signed it with a flourish, and blotted the sheet before folding it up and placing it in the envelope. On the outside she wrote, in capitals, 'To whom it might concern', and decided to make another copy just in case this one was lost or damaged.

  She would help Kate, if only to make up for being jealous of her and Robert. Surely most employers would not bother to ask Miss MacDonald when they had such a glowing reference from her benefactress?

  *

  On Wednesday morning Kate fizzed with suppressed impatience as her mother took her time getting ready. Despite her declaration that she had no intention of being interviewed by jumped-up shop walkers, Hattie seemed uncertain what to wear, first of all putting on the clothes she wore at the market, then changing them for her Sunday best, deciding that she looked too posh for a weekday and changing back. At last, compromising with her market skirt and a clean blouse, and her Sunday hat, she was ready. On the way she dawdled, insisting that since she had to take time off work she was going to enjoy herself, and she never normally had the time to look in shop windows. The church clocks were striking the hour when they reached Boots, and Kate was hot and flustered at the thought of being late.

  She needn't have fretted. There were six other girls waiting with their mothers or, in one case, a father, in the room they were shown to. The girls eyed each other surreptitiously, no doubt calculating their chances against the opposition. Two of the mothers, who clearly knew each other, were chatting loudly about their other children and the excellent jobs they had, and how Boots insisted on having young ladies serving in their shops, while everyone else waited in nervous silence.

  A prim-looking woman appeared after fifteen minutes, holding a sheet of paper in her hand. She glanced at it and looked round the room. 'Miss Barclay? You're next. Through that door at the end of the passageway. Go straight in.'

  She saw Kate and her mother and came across to them. 'Miss Martins? Good, you're here. And Mrs Martins, I presume. We are interviewing you in alphabetical order, so you'll be, let me see,' she consulted the list, 'number six. Miss Barclay is number two, and we take about fifteen minutes for each applicant.'

  'Yer mean yer've got us here an hour before yer needed us?' Hattie said angrily. 'Yer've gotta bleeding cheek! If I'd known I wouldn't have bothered ter come! Come on, Kate, we'm not staying.'

  'Mum, please!' Kate whispered, hot with embarrassment. 'Please let's stay now we're here. It's a chance of a good job for me, you can't let me down now!'

  'You may do as you wish, of course,' the prim woman said, her lips curling in disdain.

  'I could be earning regular money,' Kate said, blinking away the threatening tears.

  'I s'pose we might as well, then,' Hattie said grudgingly. 'But I'm not sitting here, being gawped at,' she added, glaring round the room at the interested spectators. I'm going out 'til their lordships 'ave time fer us. Yer can come or stay.'

  Kate sat back. 'I'll stay,' she said, her voice rough with unshed tears. How could her mother shame her so much?

  'Please yersen.'

  Hattie stalked off, and one of the other girls gave Kate a sympathetic look. But she could see the scornful glances of two mothers, and inside she cringed. Was it worth staying? Could she depend on her mother to return? If she didn't, might they refuse to interview her on her own?

  The next hour was agony, as one girl after another was shown into the interview room. At last only Kate and one other were left, and it was almost time for
her to be interviewed. Then the outer door opened, and to her immense relief Kate saw Hattie, her face set in a grim look, come in.

  Before Kate could speak, thank her for coming back in time, the prim woman appeared and asked her to go along to be interviewed. Kate smiled timidly at Hattie, and took her arm to squeeze it in gratitude as they went to the end of the passageway as directed.

  The room inside was vast, Kate saw, and a huge desk dominated it. Behind it a bald man wearing a very smart suit and horn-rimmed spectacles sat tapping a pile of papers with a gold fountain pen.

  'Come in, Miss Martins, Mrs Martins. Sit down. Now, Miss Martins, tell me why you wish to work for Boots?'

  Somehow Kate replied, and he then asked her more questions before turning to Hattie.

  'How do you feel about your daughter coming to work for us, Mrs Martins?'

  Hattie shrugged. 'What do I know about it? She's gotta work somewhere, ain't she? Might as well be here, where she'll be kept outta trouble.'

  'Trouble?' he asked, his pen poised.

  Hattie sneered at him. 'Not the sort yer think I means,' she said, 'though if she don't look out fer 'erself that might come. I meant she'll have ter work hard, an' at least she'll be able ter get hold of some proper medicines fer me husband when 'is bronchitis comes back.'

  'Thank you, Mrs Martins, Miss Martins, we'll let you know soon.'

  Kate didn't know how she got out of the building. Thanks to her mother, she stood no chance of working here. She glanced at Hattie, but she seemed oblivious of the harm she'd done, and wouldn't understand. Kate bit back her reproaches. They would do no good. She'd have to depend on the reference Daphne was obtaining from her mother.

  *

  As they walked back home Hattie looked at Kate. 'Yer won't get that job, snooty lot! So yer'd better spend the rest of the day looking fer summat else. It's too late to get odd jobs in the market, but I'd better help yer dad.'