‘Natalie went to Germany immediately and set the wheels in motion to bring Nanny to England. It was almost impossible to get a travel permit for an elderly Jewish woman, but after bribing several local authority officials where Nanny lived, Natalie obtained a temporary permit for Nanny to visit Switzerland. It’s too complicated to go into now, but that’s why Nanny’s wary of strangers. She’s terrified the Nazis will find her and send her back to Germany.’
What had happened to Nanny Friel’s sister and her friends was unthinkable. If she hadn’t have heard it from someone who’d had first-hand experience of such horrors she wouldn’t have believed it. Bess felt the bitter taste of bile rise in the back of her throat and swallowed hard.
When they arrived at The Strand Anton said, ‘If you look to the right, Bess, you’ll see the Prince Albert Theatre. That’s where I work.’
Bess looked as directed and on the front of the theatre, high above the main entrance doors in letters standing six feet tall and illuminated by dozens of lights, it said “Goldman Productions”.
‘Would you like to come in and have a look round? I have to go to a meeting, but I can get someone to give you a guided tour.’
‘I’d love to,’ Bess said, ‘but I ought to get to my lodgings. My landlady was expecting me hours ago. I know it isn’t late, but I don’t have a key and she’ll be fussing. I’ll take you up on your offer another time, if I may?’
‘Of course,’ Anton said and drove on down The Strand to Trafalgar Square.
‘Anton, would you think me ungrateful if I said I’d like to travel the rest of the way by bus?’
‘But I promised Natalie I’d make sure you got home safely. Besides, it’s pouring with rain, you’ll get soaked waiting for a bus.’
‘I don’t mind the rain. We don’t have a car at home, so whatever the weather, if I want to go anywhere I have to walk or cycle.’ Bess paused, searching for the right words. ‘I can’t explain it, but today has been an extraordinary day. It’s been both awful and wonderful - and I’d like to spend a little time on my own. Does that sound strange?’
‘Not at all, if you’re sure?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Anton turned into The Haymarket, continued to Regent Street, and at the junction with Oxford Circus pulled up at a bus stop.
Before he had time to put on the handbrake, Bess had jumped out of the car, opened the back door and lifted out her luggage. ‘Thank you, Anton,’ she said, returning to the front of the car.
‘It’s been a pleasure, Bess. I’ll send you an invite to the opening night of our new show. You can sit in the Goldman family box with my favourite critic.’
‘I should love that. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Bess.’
‘Oh, Anton,’ she said, before closing the door. ‘Would you lend me six pence please, for the bus fare?’
Anton handed Bess half a crown and said, ‘Don’t leave town.’
‘Thank you,’ she called after him, ‘I won’t. Well, not before I’ve had a guided tour of the Prince Albert Theatre.’
Bess waved until the rear lights of Anton Goldman’s car had turned into tiny red specks, put out her hand and waved down a bus. ‘Arcadia Avenue, please!’
CHAPTER THREE
Bess gave the bus conductor the half-crown that Anton had lent her and he gave her two shillings change.
‘Brand new, they are,’ he said. ‘Don’t know where they came from but you want to keep them, darlin’. Bring you good luck, they will.’
‘Thank you, I could do with some,’ Bess said, dropping the two shiny shillings into her pocket. After putting her suitcase in the luggage compartment, she took the stairs to the upper deck and found a seat at the front of the bus.
What an extraordinary day it had been. It had begun ordinarily enough with breakfast, waving Tom off, and exercising Sable. The extraordinary part began when she couldn’t find her book and had to go back to the library at Foxden Hall to look for it. And thank goodness she did, or she wouldn’t have seen James and he wouldn’t have invited her out, or given her his card.
She could have done without having her handbag stolen, her suitcase bursting open in the middle of Euston Station and the public telephone being out of order. But if none of that had happened she wouldn’t have met Natalie and Anton Goldman – and she wouldn’t have known how Jewish people in Germany were being treated by the Nazis.
In need of a distraction, Bess looked out of the window at the New Year displays that had replaced the Christmas friezes in the windows of the department stores. At Hyde Park Corner she watched as young and old alike, drenched to the skin, scurried along slippery pavements struggling to hold umbrellas above their heads in the downpour.
As the bus approached Knightsbridge the sky above Harrods glowed from thousands of coloured lights. Banners sporting the Harrods emblem flew from every corner of the building. Above the main entrance the flags of a dozen different countries boasted an international clientele and every window displayed a red and gold sale sign in a different language. Bess had no money for purchasing anything other than life’s necessities – she certainly couldn’t afford to shop at Harrods – but that wasn’t going to stop her from window-shopping in London’s most famous store before term started.
Excited about her last term at teacher training college and her prospects after she had passed her final exams, as well as needing to think about happier things, Bess allowed her imagination to run wild. When I get my teaching certificate I could teach in London, she thought. Her mind, like a butterfly’s, flitted between her childhood ambition of teaching in a country grammar school to be near her family, Foxden and Sable, to working in London to be near James. Why not do both - first London and then the country? She laughed until she remembered James’s card had been stolen with her handbag.
Handing Bess her suitcase once she had stepped down from the bus, the conductor shouted, ‘Be lucky!’
‘I will,’ she said, by which time the bus conductor had dinged the bell and the bus was on the move.
Walking along Arcadia Avenue in the rain, a refreshing contrast to sitting in the smoky bus, Bess made a decision. As much as she wished it wasn’t so, she couldn’t telephone James because she no longer had his number. And he couldn’t telephone her because, apart from telling him not to, she hadn’t given him her number. There was nothing she could do until the next time she saw him at Foxden, which she hoped would be on her twenty-first birthday. So she needed to put James to the back of her mind and concentrate on getting her teaching certificate. She had worked too hard and for too long to be distracted now, however pleasant the distraction was. Besides, what she had learned earlier from Anton Goldman put the theft of her handbag and James’s card into perspective.
Bess was the first of the paying guests to return to the semi-detached Victorian villa in Arcadia Avenue. Like Bess the other guests, with the exception of Molly, went home to their families for the Christmas holiday. Molly had no home and no family. Her only living relative was a distant uncle who spent his Christmases at a retreat in Ireland and didn’t return to England until the New Year. But Molly hadn’t been alone this Christmas; she’d spent it with Mrs McAllister, the landlady at number seventy-nine.
‘Molly is visiting that uncle of hers. It appears he has returned from foreign parts,’ Mrs McAllister sniffed. Bess wasn’t sure why Mrs McAllister disliked Molly’s uncle. It couldn’t have been personal because she’d never met him. It was more likely to be that she thought he had abandoned Molly, who she was very fond of, to go off to “foreign parts,” although Ireland was hardly what Bess would have called foreign. ‘I’m expecting her home any time,’ Mrs McAllister continued, as she led Bess upstairs to show her what she called ‘improvements’ to her room.
Improvements! Bess’s heart sank. Knowing Mrs McAllister, who charged tuppence if you had a bath in the middle of the week, any improvements were bound to cost money - and money was something she didn’t have a lot of.
On the landing at the t
op of the stairs Mrs McAllister flung open Bess’s bedroom door and, with a gesture more akin to a diva taking a curtain call at the Royal Opera House, ushered her in.
‘Well, dear, what do you think?’ she asked, following Bess into the small room. Before Bess had time to reply Mrs McAllister swept past her, extolling the virtues of hot water on tap, and proudly opened what she called the airing cupboard to show off a new electric boiler. Bess’s only thought was how much this new convenience was going to cost her.
Interpreting the worried look on Bess’s face as disapproval, Mrs McAllister continued. ‘Of course, the room is a little smaller.’ As if Bess hadn’t noticed. ‘So I shall reduce your rent proportionately. Will two shillings a week be satisfactory, dear? And no charge for your mid-week bath.’
‘Yes. Thank you. That will be fine, Mrs McAllister,’ Bess said, shocked by such a generous reduction in rent and tickled by the carrot her landlady was dangling of a free bath mid-week.
‘Good!’ Mrs McAllister concluded. And, after giving the built-in cupboard a reassuring pat, she swanned out of the room.
The room was definitely smaller because of the flimsy-looking cupboard surrounding the boiler, but what struck Bess most was the temperature. Before Christmas the room had been uncomfortably cold to sit and study in, and there was a distinct smell of damp. Now it was warm. And even if the faint gurgling sound in the pipes persisted, as hot water was drawn off and replaced by cold, it was a small price to pay for a warm room and a two-shilling reduction in rent.
‘Two shillings,’ she said, which reminded her of the two shiny new shillings the bus conductor had given her. She took them out of her coat pocket, wrapped them in a sheet of writing paper, and put them in the middle compartment of her satchel – for luck. After hanging her coat on the back of the door and putting her skirts and dresses on coat hangers in the wardrobe, she put the clothes she’d retrieved from the concourse at Euston Station in a cotton wash-bag and hung it next to her coat. Underwear, cardigans and blouses she folded and placed on shelves designed for men’s shirts in the small wardrobe: a man’s wardrobe that was once part of the bedroom suite in her neighbour Miss Armstrong’s room.
Of her housemates Miss Armstrong was the one Bess knew least well. She was a bookkeeper and worked for a chain of fashion houses called La Mademoiselle Modes in London’s West End. She was tall and slim, attractive rather than pretty, with brown hair that she kept stylishly short. The girls didn’t know her age, though she had once said that she’d lodged with Mrs McAllister for ten years, so she was probably in her early to mid thirties.
Miss Armstrong was a private person. She talked about work occasionally but never about friends, male or female. Molly thought she was walking out with someone because one Sunday evening, returning from a visit with her uncle, she saw Miss Armstrong getting out of a gentleman’s car. When Bess asked Molly what the man was like, Molly said she daren’t look, but by the sparkle in Miss Armstrong’s eyes that night at supper she was definitely in love. That was typical Molly, young and romantic, with a vivid imagination.
Bess picked up a book and fell backwards onto her bed. But before she had read the first page, there was a knock on the door.
‘Bess, are you there?’ called a voice Bess recognised as her friend Nora.
‘Yes. Come in.’
Nora Myers was Bess’s closest friend at number seventy-nine. Not only because they were the same age and both came from the Midlands – although Nora was from inner-city Birmingham, which was about as far away from Foxden in lifestyle as you could get – but because they both attended the De La Salle Teaching College in Kensington.
‘Happy New Year, if it’s not too late,’ Nora said, hugging Bess as she stood up.
‘Of course it’s not. Happy New Year. Did you have a good Christmas?’
‘It was all right, but I missed everybody,’ she said, blushing.
‘You mean you missed Arthur McNaughton,’ Bess said. Both girls laughed.
‘And you?’
‘Yes, it was lovely, thanks. My brother was home. We had lots of fun, and I went riding every day.’ Bess purposely didn’t mention James. She was excited enough just thinking about him. If she said his name she thought she’d burst.
‘I’m starving. Are you coming down for tea?’
‘Yes. Hang on while I put my shoes on,’ Bess said, finding one shoe under the bed, the other on the opposite side of the room.
‘Molly’s back and she’s brought a hamper of goodies from that mysterious uncle of hers,’ Nora whispered.
‘What do you mean, mysterious uncle?’
‘Well, you know. I mean, no one’s ever seen him, have they? He could be her sugar daddy for all we know. He’s always giving her money and--’
‘Don’t say things like that,’ Bess said. ‘Think yourself lucky you have a family. Poor little Molly’s all alone in the world, except for her old uncle.’
‘All I’m saying is, no one’s ever seen him and when he gives Molly money it’s always in cash. I think it’s a bit odd, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps it is, but it’s none of our business,’ Bess said, although Nora was probably saying what the other women had thought at one time or another.
In the small communal sitting room, Molly was rifling through a large hamper with childlike enthusiasm. ‘Look what I’ve got, Bess,’ she said, dishing out bags of buttered almonds, chocolate-covered Brazil nuts, toffees and fudge. ‘Happy New Year!’ she shouted, handing Bess a bottle of cream sherry. ‘I bought that with some of the money my uncle gave me. I know,’ she said, ‘we’ll toast my uncle’s generosity, the New Year, and our continued friendship. Come on, Mrs Mac – oops, sorry – Mrs McAllister. Give us ya best glasses, lassie. Nothing but the best al dee the noo,’ Molly said, in the worst Scottish accent Bess had ever heard.
Everyone laughed, including Mrs McAllister who, after allowing Molly to pull her into the middle of the room, took a bow. Still smiling, she took a red, green and blue checked tablecloth from the dresser drawer, opened it and laid it across the table, smoothing the creases with the palms of her hands. ‘The colours of the McAllister tartan,’ she said proudly, as she did every time she used the tablecloth. ‘Although somewhere along the line – probably when the name became anglicised – we lost an A and gained an L,’ she concluded, before placing the contents of the hamper onto china plates.
Bess poured generous measures of sherry into Mrs McAllister’s best glasses and Molly shouted, ‘Get the good stuff down you, girls, ‘cause next week we’ll be back on the cooking sherry.’
Bess wasn’t hungry but she couldn’t resist a little duck pâté on a Jacob’s cream cracker followed by a truffle, which she had never tasted before. She told her housemates about her Christmas, her sisters and her brother Tom, and the presents she had given and received. She still daren’t mention James. She couldn’t trust herself to say his name without blushing. Nor did she tell them about the theft of her handbag, or meeting Natalie and Anton Goldman. It wasn’t the right time; it would have put a damper on Molly’s tea party.
Miss Armstrong said her Christmas with her brother, a country vicar, had been pleasant but a little too quiet and she was pleased to be back in London. Nora agreed, saying how much she had missed her sweetheart Arthur, and after a couple of glasses of sherry she declared her undying love for him.
When the party ended the girls banned Mrs McAllister from the kitchen. Everyone agreed that she had done enough for one day so, after a few ‘Och buts’ and ‘Ah wells,’ she retired to her private sitting room.
By the time the table had been cleared, the dishes washed up and the uneaten food covered and put in the larder, it was midnight and the house, usually quiet by ten, was still a hive of activity. While Bess, Molly and Nora jostled to be first in line to use the bathroom, Miss Armstrong came out of her bedroom, turned into the bathroom and closed the door. The three girls stood open-mouthed before bursting into laughter and applauding Miss Armstrong for her tenacit
y. Eventually giggles and whispers replaced the laughter and chatter and the last two girls, Nora and Bess, said goodnight and went to their own rooms.
‘Good old Molly,’ Bess said, as she climbed into bed. The vision of Molly pursing her lips and mimicking Mrs Mac’s voice, and standing with her arms folded beneath her firm little breasts like Mrs Mac, whose habit was to fold her heavily freckled arms beneath her ample bosom, made Bess laugh aloud.
Molly reminded Bess of her young sister Claire. Like Claire, Molly was pretty with big blue eyes. She looked older than her years, and attracted the attention of young men. Claire was lucky, she had older sisters to look out for her, but Molly was an orphan and didn’t have anyone until she moved to live with Mrs McAllister and the girls at Arcadia Avenue.
Molly was the youngest of the women and called herself an actress, although she had never trodden the boards. She hadn’t worked at all during the two years she had lived with Bess and the other women but she was confident that one day she would be discovered. Until then she was dependent on her uncle for her lodgings and clothes, and a small allowance for books and elocution lessons.
Molly, like most eighteen year olds, preferred to spend her money going to dances or watching the latest film at the Alhambra Picture House. She said it didn’t matter how she spent the old boy’s money because she was only borrowing it and one day, when she was rich and famous, she would pay every penny back.
Bess thought about introducing Molly to Anton Goldman but decided against it. She didn’t know Anton well enough. Besides, after helping her young friend to learn audition speeches, Bess feared it would be some time before Miss Molly McKenna was ready for the London stage – and probably even longer before the London stage was ready for her.
*
‘There’s a telephone call for you, Bess,’ Mrs McAllister called from the bottom of the stairs.
Bess woke with a jolt and stumbled out of bed. Telephone call? Only her father had Mrs Mac’s number. Unless somehow, James… Her heart soared. ‘I’m coming, Mrs McAllister!’
Foxden Acres (The Dudley Sisters Quartet Book 1) Page 5