The Runaway Children

by Sandy Taylor

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said, stepping over the books and making my way to a little velvet stool, where I sat down in front of her.

  She pushed her glasses down her nose and looked at me. ‘Mrs Wright tells me you are going to need a job.’

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘And do you know what you want to do?’

  ‘I’ve never had a job before but back home I always thought I’d like to work in the sugar factory or the custard factory with my friend Angela.’

  ‘I think you can do better than that, my dear.’

  ‘But I’m not trained to do anything, Miss Timony. I couldn’t work in a shop or an office or anything like that. I think I’d be happy in a factory.’

  ‘How about a hotel, Nell?’

  ‘A hotel?’ I said.

  ‘A very dear friend of mine is the proprietor of the Strand Hotel on the seafront. I’ve spoken to him and he’d like to meet you.’

  I could feel myself getting hot and pulled at the collar of my blouse. ‘But what would I have to do?’

  ‘Do you think that you could serve people tea and cakes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I do, and it will be a lot nicer than working in some godforsaken factory, where you never see the light of day. Sunshine is good for our wellbeing, Nell.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It is, my dear. Our bodies produce vitamin D when our skin is exposed to the sun, which is essential for our bones. Children who spent their days down the mines often came up short. There are a lot of short-statured people in Wales, so I’m told.’

  I wasn’t convinced – I hadn’t noticed any particularly short people in Glengaryth.

  ‘Isn’t it posh girls that work in hotels and serve people tea and cakes?’ I said.

  ‘You are a bright girl, Nell, and may I say a very pretty one.’

  I couldn’t help thinking that Miss Timony needed new glasses.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘And that is where your beauty lies. There is a sweetness about you, Nell, that is very becoming.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I said.

  ‘So will you give my dear friend Mr Costos and his hotel a chance?’

  I nodded my head and grinned. ‘Well, I suppose I’ve got nothing to lose,’ I said.

  ‘Except your chains,’ said Miss Timony.

  ‘Pardon?’ I said.

  ‘It is a very famous quote, Nell, by an inspirational man called Karl Marx. “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about but I thought it sounded nice.

  ‘Don’t mind me, Nell, I read too many books. So, shall we pay dear Mr Costos a visit in the morning?’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Oh, and by the way, Olive wants to know why the sea stops at the edge of the shore.’

  ‘Send her up, dear, send her up.’

  I was grinning as I ran back downstairs. Imagine the likes of me working in a hotel! I wish Angela was here – she’d be dead impressed. I straightened my shoulders. I could do this. I mean, how difficult can serving tea and a lump of cake be? And Miss Timony had said I was pretty. I wondered if Jimmy had thought I was pretty; I hoped so.

  Chapter Thirty

  My newfound confidence disappeared in a puff of smoke as I stood next to Miss Timony, looking up at the Strand Hotel. I’d been kidding myself to think that Mr Costos would actually give me a job in this beautiful place.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ I said, hanging back.

  ‘Not sure about what?’

  I made a face.

  ‘Remember the words of Mr Karl Marx.’

  I had to think for a minute. ‘About the chains, you mean?’

  Miss Timony nodded. ‘The only chains holding you back, Nell, are those of your own making.’

  I didn’t have a bloody clue what she was on about – I wished she’d talk normally. I didn’t even know this Karl Marx bloke; in fact, I thought he sounded like a bit of a smartarse.

  ‘Come on, Nell, shoulders back. Mr Costos is expecting us.’

  I reluctantly followed her up the steps.

  If I was worried outside the hotel, I was terrified inside. I had never been in such a beautiful place in my life. Even if I didn’t get a job here I could tell Angela what a proper posh hotel looked like.

  Even though it was still morning, all the lights were on. A beautiful chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling, throwing light and shadow across the room and bouncing off the huge mirrors and glass tables. Deep blue velvet sofas were placed around the walls and beside the white marble fireplace. Paintings in ornate gold frames hung on the honey-coloured walls.

  I was just about to tell Miss Timony that I had decided to hang onto my chains and work in a factory when the low moan of a siren interrupted my thoughts.

  ‘Follow me,’ said Miss Timony, taking my arm.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  ‘To the cellar: chop, chop!’

  I quickly chop-chopped after Miss Timony, followed by a trail of people hurrying through the hotel doors from the street outside. We quickened our step as the first bomb fell; it sounded horribly close. I put my hands over my head and hurried towards the cellar door. There was a man guiding everyone down the narrow stairs.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Timony,’ the man said, smiling.

  ‘Good morning to you, Mr Costos,’ she replied.

  ‘Be careful on the stairs.’

  ‘I most certainly will,’ said Miss Timony, smiling at him.

  I imagined the cellar would be a dark, gloomy place, but it wasn’t. The walls were painted in the same honey colour as the walls upstairs and, to my amazement, a smaller chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling. A chandelier in a cellar! I couldn’t wait to tell Angela.

  ‘Where have all these people come from?’ I asked, looking around. ‘Are they all guests in the hotel?’

  ‘No, dear, Mr Costos has opened his doors to anyone who needs shelter.’

  ‘That’s good of him,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a good man, Nell.’

  We stayed until the all-clear sounded and then made our way back upstairs.

  Once everyone had gone back out into the street, Mr Costos came across to us.

  ‘Shall we sit?’ he said, motioning towards one of the beautiful sofas.

  I followed Miss Timony and we sat down. Mr Costos sat opposite us, smiling.

  I thought he was very handsome. He was tall and dark, with black shiny hair that was smarmed down with so much Brylcreem it looked like a little cap on top of his head. Above his lip was a thin moustache that turned up a bit at the ends. In Bermondsey he would have been called a dandy. I thought he looked like Clark Gable. It was hard to tell his age.

  ‘So, you are little Nell,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘who my dear friend Miss Timony has said so many nice things about.’

  I shook his hand and nodded.

  ‘And you need a job, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shyly.

  ‘And I need a waitress, so we will be doing each other a favour.’

  I looked at Mr Costos’s smiling face and I felt the chains slowly fall from my shoulders.

  Maybe that Karl Marx bloke knew what he was on about – there was nothing to be scared of here.

  ‘I have someone to cover breakfasts so I will need you to work every day from eleven o’clock in the morning until five in the afternoon, with Wednesdays off. I will also need you to work every other weekend. Will that suit you?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Costos, that will suit me fine.’

  ‘That’s settled then. You will be my little cockney waitress and I’m sure you will be happy here.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Costos,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘You are very welcome, little Nell.’

  Just then a young man literally burst through the hotel doors.

  ‘You can’t imagine what I’ve just been
through!’ he said. ‘That bloody bomb nearly blew me off my feet – my whole life flashed before me. I thought I was going to die.’ He sat down next to Mr Costos and wiped his forehead with a hankie. ‘And there are bits of my life, Gino, that I wasn’t that keen on remembering.’

  ‘Breathe, dear boy, breathe,’ said Mr Costos, patting his knee.

  ‘I’m still shaking,’ said the man, holding out his hands to prove it.

  ‘Were you close to the bomb when it fell, Philip?’ said Mr Costos, gently.

  ‘Not exactly, but I might have been and that’s almost as bad.’

  ‘You’ve had a nasty shock, dear boy, but you’re safe now.’

  The man seemed to recover pretty quickly. ‘And who’s this wondrous girl sitting in front of me?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Nell, who Miss Timony told us about. She has agreed to work for us in the tea rooms. Isn’t that splendid?’

  He was staring at me so intensely that I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He made a square shape with his hands, as if he was taking a photograph of me.

  ‘You look like a young Fanny Cornforth, my dear. Don’t you think so, Gino? Don’t you think she looks like a young Fanny? With all that fabulous Titian hair.’

  Miss Timony looked at me and smiled. ‘It’s a compliment, my dear.’

  Mr Costos raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t let my friend scare you, Nell, he’s given to flights of fancy.’

  ‘You’re a philistine when it comes to art, Gino. You don’t have an artistic bone in your body and you, an Italian – your forefathers would be ashamed.’

  ‘My forefathers, as you well know, were goat herders and I don’t need artistic bones to run a hotel.’

  Mr Philip leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  ‘Have you heard of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, dear girl?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘He was a great artist, Nell, of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. One of his muses was a young girl called Fanny Cornforth – she was also his mistress. Unfortunately she got rather fat and ended up in an insane asylum in Chichester. You have her beautiful hair but let us hope you have a less dramatic life.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and rest after your shock,’ said Mr Costos.

  ‘I think I will, Gino, I’m still a bit shaky.’ As he left the room he turned back and winked at me. ‘Goodbye, Fanny, we shall meet again, I hope.’

  I grinned at him; I’d never met anyone quite like him in my whole life.

  After he’d left the room Mr Costos smiled at me. ‘Philip can be a little dramatic at times but he is right about your hair, Nell, it is indeed beautiful.’

  I could feel my face getting hot – I wasn’t used to compliments. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You are very welcome. Now, why don’t you and Miss Timony sample our tea and cakes? It will give you an idea of the work you will be doing.’

  The tea rooms were situated right at the front of the hotel overlooking the sea.

  It was a pity that the huge window was criss-crossed with white tape.

  ‘It is in case the hotel gets bombed, Nell, and the glass shatters. So many injuries have been caused by shards of glass flying around,’ Miss Timony explained.

  I looked around the room; there must have been at least twenty tables. Sparkling cutlery and glasses were laid out on crisp white cloths. It was lovely. I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to work here. If only I knew that my family were safe somewhere, my happiness would have been complete.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Olive started school at Holy Cross infants, which was attached to the church where Mrs Wright did her praying. There were just two classrooms, with a playground at the front and a lovely green field at the back, where the children were able to run around. So many children had been evacuated to the countryside that there were very few pupils left.

  Olive loved her teacher, Miss Jolly. ‘Don’t you think that’s a nice name, Nell?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a good name if you are jolly, but a pretty unfortunate one if you’re not.’

  ‘Oh, she’s jolly all right, Nell, and really pretty, and she says I’m a clever girl and I’ll soon catch up.’

  Miss Timony had gone to see the teachers before Olive started school to make them aware of the schooling she’d missed.

  I didn’t much care about that; I just wanted Olive to be happy. She had been through so much for such a little girl.

  When we’d first arrived in Eastbourne she used to ask about Mum and Dad and Tony and Freddie, but she didn’t mention them anymore. Miss Timony said to leave her and she would open up in her own time. ‘No point in pushing her, Nell,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I walk a lot, Miss Timony. I find it helps.’

  ‘We all deal with grief in our own way, Nell, but I do think it’s best to let it out if you can.’

  ‘Do you think Olive is keeping it all inside?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Young children have a way of dealing with things they might not want to remember.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They seem to be able to live in the moment, they don’t dwell on the past. It’s still there inside her head but she’s tucked it away. In Olive’s case I think that’s a blessing.’

  What Miss Timony said made sense because, while I couldn’t stop thinking about all that had happened to us since leaving Bermondsey, Olive remained her usual cheerful little self. None of what had happened seemed to have affected her and I was thankful for that. I wished I could just turn my brain off in the same way.

  Every morning before going to work I helped out at the guest house. I cleaned rooms and helped Mrs Wright and Mrs Baxter in the kitchen as they cooked breakfast. It was easy to see how close the two sisters were – they chatted and giggled as they threw eggs and bacon in the pan and buttered toast. I hoped that me and Olive would remain that close. There was always plenty of food because Mrs Wright got extra rations on account of running a guest house. I also met guests at the station and walked them down to Sea View. Mrs Wright said it gave her the edge on other guest houses, whose guests were left to make their own way there. Not that there were many guests to meet.

  ‘I used to have to turn people away, we were so busy. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had a “no vacancies” sign in the window. It was hard work, but I loved it. All those kiddies with their buckets and spades and little fishing nets, too excited to eat their breakfast – I just loved it, Nell.’

  ‘But it will be busy again, won’t it? Once the war is over?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I do hope so.’

  I didn’t have to be at the hotel until eleven o’clock in the morning so I was able to walk Olive to school every day. I loved those times when we were on our own. I loved listening to her chatter as she skipped along the seafront, swinging her gas mask like a handbag.

  ‘Have you made a new friend at school?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, his name’s Henry, the same as Mr Yann’s dog.’

  ‘Any girls?’

  ‘Of course there’s girls, Nell, but they’re not my sort of girls. I like Henry best. Can I bring him home to tea?’

  ‘We’ll ask Mrs Wright. I’m sure she won’t mind.’

  ‘Nell?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I write to Aggie at the sweetshop?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Olive.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We can’t let anyone in Wales know where we are.’

  ‘Cos you bashed Albert over the head with a shovel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I miss her, see.’

  ‘You can write to her when the war’s over and she’s back home in Coventry. You’ve got her address, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and she’s got mine, but Rannly Court’s not there anymore is it, so how is the postie man meant to deliver the letter?’

  ‘Does that make you feel sad, Ol
ive? That Rannly Court’s not there anymore?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘It’s normal to feel sad and you can always talk to me, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to talk about it just now, Nell, if that’s okay with you.’

  ‘Of course it is. Now, how about introducing me to this new boyfriend of yours?’

  Olive started giggling. ‘Henry’s not my boyfriend, Aggie is.’

  ‘But Aggie can’t be your boyfriend, she’s a girl,’ I said.

  Olive looked at me all wide-eyed and said: ‘But she’s still a person, Nell.’

  Well, there was no answer to that one, was there?

  * * *

  I loved working at the Strand Hotel. I don’t know what I was so worried about; it must have been those chains that Miss Timony was on about. I wore a black dress, a white apron with a frill round the bib, and a little white cap secured with a wide elastic band that went round the back of my head. When I caught sight of myself in a mirror, I didn’t look like me at all – I looked like the kind of girl who worked in a posh hotel. Most days I worked with a girl called Jean; we got on like a house on fire. She was the only girl in a family of five boys. Her younger brother was the only one at home; the others, including her dad were all away fighting the war.

  ‘Bertie has asthma so he didn’t pass the medical. Mum knew he wouldn’t but she had to let him find out for himself,’ said Jean.

  ‘Does he mind?’

  ‘He minded a lot at first and some people were unkind to him.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  She nodded. ‘There are some horrible people around.’

  ‘Is he okay now?’

  ‘Yes, he joined the Red Cross and drives an ambulance. He never leaves the house without wearing his uniform.’

  On my first day, I started clearing one of my tables and found some money on the tablecloth. I went across to Jean. ‘Someone’s left their money behind,’ I said.

  ‘That’s yours, daft.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a tip.’

  ‘What’s a tip?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Nell! Where have you been?’