by Pam Rhodes
A cheer and a chorus of “Thank you, Reg!” went up around the coach.
Fifteen minutes later, the Hope Hall visitors were all sitting in the hotel’s lovely enclosed garden happily munching their way through their packed lunches.
“It’s like taking out a class full of infants!” muttered Shirley, sinking her teeth into one of Maggie’s home-made pasties.
Liz, Maggie’s assistant, grinned. “Ah, I don’t mind. It’s a nice day out for me, and I like this lot. Most of them have a great sense of humour—”
“Some of them can be a bit too cheeky, like Percy,” interrupted Shirley.
“And then there’s Ida, who doesn’t seem to have a funny bone in her whole body.”
“Oh, Ida’s scary – and that’s really saying something coming from me!”
“But they’ve been through a lot, haven’t they, this generation?” mused Liz. “Any of them over the age of seventy-five would have been born during the war years. Their childhoods must have been pretty tough as life got started again. Just think how many families must have been without a husband or father. And imagine what it was like for couples who’d been apart for years, leading very different lives. Would they still feel the same way about each other once they had to settle back into married life again? There wasn’t much money, jobs were hard to get, and they were still rationed for food and groceries for years, weren’t they? It’s all so different nowadays, especially for young people with all the technology they constantly have at their fingertips. Everything’s available at the press of a button on their mobiles. Just think of all those things they already know that we never will.”
Shirley grunted. “Oh yes, the generation that thinks they know everything. Look at Tyler! He won’t listen to a word I say. We’ve lived and learned a lot along the way. Experience is a great teacher. So why don’t kids ever listen and learn from an older, wiser generation?”
Liz laughed. “I bet every parent from every age has said that at some time or other.”
Shirley glanced at her wristwatch. “Time to get going!” she announced, standing up and putting two fingers in her mouth to give a piercing whistle. After an initial squeal of shock, everyone in the party looked at her in surprise.
“Now I’ve got your attention, let me just talk you through the options for this afternoon. There are several groups going in different directions. If you’d like to go to The D-Day Story, Liz is in charge of that. Anyone wanting to walk along the prom and through the gardens, Donna – who’s waving her arm over there in the corner – is leading that group. There’s another group making for South Parade Pier, where you can sit in the sunshine, watch the waves and try to stop the seagulls munching your cup of fresh cockles! Now, I gather some of you ladies would like to look around the shops, in which case follow Brenda. I’m going to be in charge of the bunch of rascals who’ve opted to go to the funfair, because knowing who’s shown an interest in that – and Percy, I’m looking directly at you here – I think that group is most likely to get into trouble! Any questions?”
“Which one of those has the most loos?” asked Vera.
“This one, I reckon. Why don’t you just make yourself comfortable on the front veranda of the hotel, order a pot of tea and watch the world go by? Then you’ll be first in the queue not just for the ladies’, but for our high tea as well.”
Vera beamed with pleasure at the suggestion.
“Right, find your groups, and don’t forget to be back here by four o’clock at the latest. We won’t be saving you any pastries or cream cakes if you’re late!”
Organized chaos ensued as everyone found the group they wanted to join, but ten minutes later, with the exception of Vera who was sitting on the veranda humming to herself as she basked in the July sunshine, everyone else had headed off in whichever direction they had chosen.
One other person failed to join a group. Ida had deliberately taken herself off to the ladies’ as the various parties gathered, and only reappeared once she was sure everyone else had gone their separate ways. Tidying her jacket and placing her handbag neatly over her arm, she stepped out of the hotel and turned slightly to the left as she walked across the common, which stretched out in front of the hotel towards the sea.
A few minutes later she had reached her goal: an area of green several hundred yards further on from the war memorial, which stood proudly on the edge of the grass as it lined the shore, looking out across the Channel. Finding a rather battered old park bench that stood off to one side, she took a seat, laid her bag flat on her lap and gazed out to sea. Lost in her thoughts, she had no idea how long she’d been sitting there before she became aware of someone taking a seat at the other end of her bench. She looked up in alarm, annoyed that her peace and quiet had been shattered. Her alarm turned to frustrated fury when she identified the intruder.
“Percy Wilson!” she spluttered angrily. “Will you please leave me alone?”
“You’re on my bench,” he replied. “I’d like to be alone.”
“It’s not your bench. I was here first.”
“No, you weren’t, my dear lady. I’ve been coming to sit on this bench for years.”
Ida stared at him. “So have I.”
They looked at each other, the anger draining away from them both.
“You lost someone, did you?” Percy asked softly.
“My mother did. Her brother Jack. I never knew him. I was only a baby when D-Day happened, but when the news came through that Uncle Jack never even made it off the beaches it hit the family hard. For as long as I can remember, my mother was deeply affected by the loss of her brother. More than that, Grandma was never the same after she lost Jack. He was her only son, and she had no one else to share her grief with but the child she had left, my mother.”
“What about your grandfather? Losing his son must have hit him hard too.”
“Oh, I only ever remember Gramps as very remote and uncaring. I suppose you could say he was there in body, but in a world of his own.”
“In the trenches, was he, during the Great War?”
“He was.”
“My gramps was just the same. Those men went through hell. It changed them. They weren’t the same husbands when they got back home.”
Ida nodded with understanding. “You’re right. In some ways, I don’t think Grandpa ever really left the trenches. He saw enemies everywhere and that included us. From the time I was small, I can remember him flying into a terrible temper for no reason I could tell.”
“Was he violent?”
“He didn’t use his fists, but he glared as if he hated us, and his words were like daggers. There were so many times over the years when I’d find Mother working away in the kitchen with tears rolling down her cheeks at something Gramps had said or done.”
“Did they live with you?”
“In the house next door. It felt as if they lived with us. My own dad hated that, although he was too nice to say anything. He was a lovely man, soft as sugar, but clever too. He was an accountant, you know. So when they started building that new estate on the other side of the park after the war, he finally put his foot down and made the decision to buy a house there. We were all much happier then, and it gave Grandma somewhere to come and spend several hours each day, away from Gramps’ constant outbursts and bad temper.”
“And this bench? Why are you here?”
“Jack left on those D-Day landing crafts from this bit of coastline, so it was Grandma who first started coming here as near to June 6th as she could manage every year. And my mother would come with her, so that meant bringing my little brother Jimmy and me along as well. We loved it. For us it was a great day out, all this grass and the sea to paddle in too. This huge memorial was already here then. They built it after the First World War as a tribute to all that was lost. ‘A Memorial to the Missing’, they called it. Well, my gramps lost his mind, and Uncle Jack lost his life – and our family never stopped missing them both.”
“And you still
come?”
“Not so much now. I don’t travel well on my own these days, so this outing was a godsend. I was determined to slip away and spend some time here if I could.”
“It’s a good place to sit and remember.”
Ida nodded and the two of them sat together in silence for several minutes before Ida spoke again. “And you?”
“I come and talk to my Margaret here.”
“I remember Margaret. We were in the same class at school. I was jealous of her ginger curls.”
He sighed. “She was always a real beauty. Far too good for the likes of me.”
Ida smiled. “That’s my line, isn’t it? Margaret was definitely far too good for you! She had a queue of young men hoping she’d look their way, but she chose you, Percy Wilson, the biggest flirt of all!”
He chuckled. “Well, I wasn’t so bad, was I, Miss Hoity Toity? I seem to recall that you and I even had a dalliance at one time.”
“We did. A very short dalliance. I really wasn’t interested.”
His smile softened as he looked at her. “Neither was I, so that worked out just right then.”
Her eyes held his gaze for a few moments before she took up the conversation again. “Did you and Margaret come here a lot?”
“She loved the seaside. This was her special place. She always said she wished we’d had children to come here with us.”
“No youngsters for you two, then?”
“It just didn’t happen. There were no miscarriages, no near misses at all. It just never happened.”
“And the doctors couldn’t help?”
“It was one of those things, they said, and that’s how we looked at it. Margaret was a wonderful wife and we had a good life together. I still miss her every minute of every day. Coming here without her, well, it’s…”
To Ida’s alarm, his eyes filled with rheumy tears. She fumbled in her handbag to draw out a neatly ironed linen handkerchief, but by the time she produced it, he’d wiped his eyes with the back of his shirt cuff in hasty embarrassment.
“If you tell anyone you’ve seen me crying, I’ll tell them how enthusiastic you were about kissing me all those years ago!”
A smile twitched at the corners of Ida’s lips. “It’s a deal.”
The two of them sat together, each alone with their thoughts as the seagulls circled the skies above them.
“Sheelagh, it’s Jackie. I’ve had some news from my contact at the Family Tracing Service.”
“I’m all ears!”
“Well, as I said, the supermarkets have to toe the data protection line, but it was quite clear that the area manager from one of the biggest chains was very sympathetic to my reason for calling. She thinks it’s very likely that Michael was based at their superstore on the outskirts of Basingstoke.”
“How do we know that?”
“Well, she rang me back yesterday afternoon to say she couldn’t tell me anything herself, but that she’d passed my phone number on to a colleague of hers in the town. If that colleague chose to ring me privately of her own accord, that was nothing at all to do with the company.”
“And did that colleague ring?”
“I got a call last night from a lady who preferred not to give her name. Unofficially, though, she told me in confidence that, since the store opened, she has held the position of Personal Assistant to the manager of the huge twenty-four-hour retail unit they’ve recently opened on the outskirts of Basingstoke.”
“There’s only one place I can think of like that,” commented Sheelagh. “Bob and I called in there when we were coming back from visiting my sister-in-law who lives not far from that store. It’s absolutely enormous.”
“It certainly is, and these new superstores are still breaking ground in terms of deciding what retail techniques work best in an outlet of such capacity. So when that one opened with a great fanfare just under a year ago, a bright new manager was brought in to oversee the operation.”
“Michael?”
“Well, that manager was called Michael, and he’s no longer there now. He left under a cloud about six months back.”
“What happened?”
“There were a lot of local problems apparently. The building itself wasn’t finished on time, and they were still trying to rectify some structural, wiring and plumbing problems on the day the store actually opened. Then the agency they’d called in to recruit local staff were very slow at the job, and that meant they were short of personnel at all levels from the very beginning. And I gather the council weren’t as helpful as they might have been, so some of the decisions they needed to make about flow of traffic, parking arrangements, refuse collection and security of the site took much longer to come through than had been expected.”
“And all of that responsibility fell on to the shoulders of the new store manager?”
“Who apparently was extremely experienced and excellent at his job. But then, on the day of the big opening, everything started to fall apart. When the bakery department switched on their ovens in the early hours of the morning, it fused the whole electrical system, and they had no power at all until halfway through the day. There weren’t enough overnight staff to get the shelves properly stocked, so there were glaring gaps along every aisle. The ladies’ toilets were declared out of order; the new cashiers hadn’t got to grips with the intricacies of the tills, so there were long queues at every aisle – and a couple of customers had a proper punch-up outside the front door because of a disabled parking bay that should have been properly labelled, but wasn’t. That gave the local press a great photo for the front page at the top of their lead article, which declared the store was too big, badly planned, inefficiently organized and not needed or wanted by local people because it threatened the future of all their High Street shops.”
“Oh dear. Well, if it was our Michael trying to cope with all that lot, no wonder it was too much for him.”
“Absolutely right. He worked round the clock for months in an effort to get everything running smoothly, and for the most part he was successful. But then head office started having a go at him because the sales revenues were down on their corporate projections. They needed the store to show high sales figures right from the start, and it was Michael’s job to push up the income. And he really tried. He came up with all sorts of special promotions and incentives, but it was a bit like climbing uphill through treacle because, for that local community, a lot of damage had already been done. They hadn’t enjoyed their initial visits. Improvements were too slow, explanations were unsatisfactory, and the huge complexity of the place made them complain that they couldn’t find anything they’d actually come in to buy.”
“An impossible situation for any manager.”
“And in the end it was too much for him. He wasn’t sleeping. He never seemed to find time to eat properly. He became tetchy, and handled some personnel situations in a way that created more problems than it solved. There was a lot of grumbling about him from staff at all levels and that obviously affected his confidence because he sensed people thought he wasn’t up to the job.”
“Do we know anything about his home life?”
“Apparently, he has a wife. I’m not sure if there are any children. The lady who rang me couldn’t really say, because work was so constantly busy that she didn’t meet the family or get to know them at all. But as his personal assistant, she certainly recognized the immense pressure her boss was under. He seemed to be at work morning, noon and night, rarely going home unless she actually pushed him out of the door. That can’t have been easy for his wife.”
“What was the final breaking point?”
“Without warning, one of the big bosses came down from head office, and he didn’t come alone. He brought with him a new troubleshooter manager to take over the running of the store. The boss then told Michael he was immediately relieved of his duties. He was to take garden leave for the next two months, after which time the company would consider whether they had any further need for
his services.”
“Oh, what a stab in the back!”
“Michael was destroyed by that news. He said very little. He didn’t even go back to his office to collect his personal things. He just walked out, left his company car in the car park and disappeared.”
“You mean, he didn’t go home?”
“From that day to this, no one’s seen or heard anything of him. The lady on the phone was terribly upset when she told me that. I could hear she was choking back the tears. She blames herself for not realizing how badly depressed he was. She felt she should have supported him more. That’s why she offered to break company protocol and speak privately to me, in the hope that we might have news of him at last.”
“And have we? Are we absolutely sure he’s our man?”
“She sent me a photo. Take a look. I’ve just forwarded it to you.”
Sheelagh took the phone away from her ear so she could check her messages. The one from Jackie was at the top. She opened it immediately. It showed the image of a smart-suited, middle-aged executive with a confident air and a warm smile. It didn’t look a bit like the shuffling, scruffy, filthy Michael she knew.
But without a doubt it was definitely him.
Four days after his last email, Phil Coleman wrote again.
He’s insistent, thought Maggie, but whatever he says I won’t reply. She didn’t like the idea of a married man getting friendly with another woman without his wife being involved in the conversation too. That was how these things started. All very innocent at the beginning, but she knew from bitter experience where these innocent encounters could lead. She deleted the message and tried not to think about it again.
The following morning, she checked her emails as usual before leaving for work. Half a dozen items had come in overnight, mostly adverts that arrived in her inbox every day, except for the one at the very top. It was from her ex-husband, Dave. With shaking fingers, she clicked to open the message.