The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  And she had pulled out an old bus ticket and scribbled down the address of an employment agency in Kensington High Street and handed it to Jean.

  ‘I’m Nellie. Nellie Peters,’ she had added, standing up and smoothing down her skirts. She hadn’t held out her hand or even met Jean’s eye as she said this as she was too busy adjusting her petticoat, the cigarette wedged firmly in the side of her mouth.

  ‘Thanks. I’m Jean. Jean Corbett,’ but the nanny had been scowling over at her charge and seemed not to be listening. The child, it appeared, had pushed another child off the swing and an anxious and overdressed young woman had run frantically over. A scene had appeared inevitable.

  ‘Bloody little bitch,’ the nanny had muttered and marched over.

  Jean hadn’t stayed to watch. A few days later she had sat in the offices of Simpson’s in Kensington High Street across from a Miss Anderson and, yes, it had appeared that everyone wanted a nanny and, despite Jean’s shaky references, she had been given the name and address of eleven potential clients. In the end she had agreed to visit only one, the Wallises in Athelstan Gardens.

  ‘Anne!’ Jean called. ‘Come on, your mother will be wondering where we’ve got to and it’s your piano lesson at five.’

  As Nanny Peters had begun to herd her small charge away and appeared in no hurry to prolong the interview, Anne capitulated and came moodily away.

  ‘I wonder why Nanny Peters came back and didn’t tell us,’ she mused as they began the walk home.

  ‘Perhaps she was too busy with her new family.’

  Anne considered this. ‘Nanny, what did she mean about you following her suggestion?’

  ‘I have no idea, Anne. I think she was mistaking me for someone else.’

  Chapter Twenty

  MARCH 1953

  The telephone was ringing as Harriet arrived back home from visiting Cecil at his office.

  She dropped her front-door key so that by the time she had let herself in Mrs Thompson had already got to the telephone and was standing in the hallway in her apron, the usual cigarette clenched in her mouth. Harriet reached for the glass ashtray that lived on the hallway table and whipped it beneath Mrs Thompson’s cigarette moments before a dusting of ash toppled from the end and tumbled towards the carpet.

  ‘Mr Paget,’ announced Mrs Thompson, unimpressed by Harriet’s quick thinking with the ashtray.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Thompson.’ Harriet took the telephone receiver and, even though Freddie had been back seven months, it was a moment before she realised it was him on the other end of the telephone and not Simon.

  ‘Listen, sis, you won’t believe it but Caruthers has offered me the job.’

  Harriet heard herself gasp and she put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘I can’t believe it! I only just spoke to Cecil a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Oh, I already had it in the bag by then. Looks like I didn’t need Old Ceec’s help after all. Apparently just being the brother-in-law did the trick. What do you think? Accounts clerk in some finance department near Liverpool Street, starting tomorrow.’ He paused to laugh. ‘Not quite the glittering career in high finance Father had planned for me.’

  ‘Father didn’t plan for the war.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Freddie, it’s marvellous. Look, why don’t you come over? Come and meet the children, I know they’d be thrilled. Come for afternoon tea. Cecil won’t be back for ages yet.’

  It was going to be all right. And Freddie was coming to tea to meet the children.

  ‘Mrs Thompson! Mr Paget will be coming for afternoon tea at a quarter past five. Please set up the tea in the drawing room rather than in the kitchen.’

  Harriet did not wait to observe Mrs Thompson’s reaction to this request, which was both unprecedented and spontaneous. Instead, she went upstairs and almost ran into the nanny.

  ‘Miss Corbett. Are the children back from school yet?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Wallis,’ the girl replied. ‘We’ve just this moment returned from the park and Anne is getting ready to go to her piano lesson and Julius is in his room doing homework.’

  She delivered these statement, then waited on the stairs.

  Harriet smiled and that seemed to unbalance the girl, who didn’t know where to look. Nanny had gone for the austere look today: a dull, white blouse over a navy skirt, offset with flesh-coloured tights and her ugly navy shoes. To supplement this she had dug up a dun-coloured cardigan. Come to think of it, every day was austere day for Nanny. And it was a pity too, for the girl was quite pretty. She had good bone structure and a good figure, if a little … well, austere. All she needed was a hair-do, a decent outfit and some good lipstick. Surely there must be one or two unused tubes upstairs. She would give them to Nanny. And perhaps it was time the girl got a pay-rise; after all, she had been with them now for six or seven months.

  ‘Well, let’s be very naughty and skip piano lesson for today,’ Harriet declared. ‘Would you telephone Miss Dalrymple and let her know? We have a visitor coming for afternoon tea: Mr Paget, the children’s uncle will be joining us.

  ‘Mr Paget? The children’s uncle Simon?’

  ‘No … their Uncle Freddie. They haven’t seen him in a long while.’

  ‘Oh. Has Mr Paget been away, then?’

  ‘Yes, obviously, or they would have seen him, wouldn’t they?’

  The girl made no reply to this.

  ‘Well. Would you let the children know? No, wait—I’ll tell them myself.’

  Really, the girl was beyond sullen! It quite spoilt her features when she pulled such a face. Perhaps the lipstick wouldn’t suit her after all.

  Harriet went quickly up the stairs and found Anne in her room rummaging around in her wardrobe.

  ‘Anne, I—oh!’

  Harriet had trodden on Anne’s school hat which lay in a dishevelled state in the middle of the room. It squelched as her foot made contact with the crown and water seeped out onto the carpet.

  ‘It’s my hat,’ Anne explained, emerging from the cupboard. ‘It ended up in the pond. I really can’t say how.’

  ‘Oh. Well, never mind. Anne, what do you think? Your Uncle Freddie has returned to England and he’s coming to tea this afternoon to see you.’

  Anne digested this information thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t have an Uncle Freddie,’ she declared at last.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Harriet explained patiently. ‘He is my and Uncle Simon’s younger brother. You met him at Harrods once during the war, though you probably won’t remember it as you were only a year old. Julius would remember it.’

  Anne appeared less than impressed.

  ‘What would I remember?’ said Julius behind her.

  ‘Uncle Freddie. He’s coming to tea. You met him at Harrods once. In the tea room. During the war.’

  ‘Oh yes, I do remember that … We had scones. They served them on a sort of multi-layered plate thing. One of them had peel or something in it—so I don’t think that can have been a scone after all. More likely it was a kind of bun—’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you remember Uncle Freddie being there?’

  Julius frowned in concentration, but it was clear the scones had made a bigger impression on his five-year-old brain than his uncle had.

  ‘Well, anyway he’s coming to tea and he’s very much looking forward to seeing you both again. In fact—I have a super idea! Why don’t we go and meet him at the tube station?’

  Anne and Julius regarded their mother in astonished silence.

  ‘You want us to go to the tube station to meet him?’ Julius repeated. ‘All of us?’

  ‘Yes!’ God, children could be so maddeningly slow sometimes!

  And so, after some minutes spent assembling the appropriate outdoor clothing they were ready to set off, and when it became apparent that they were going out sans nanny and with just their mother, Anne grabbed Harriet’s hand and skipped down the front steps, almost falling head-first in her excitement. Julius followe
d at a more sedate pace, preferring to walk a little apart with his hands in his trouser pockets and clearly still dubious as to the nature of the expedition.

  ‘What will Uncle Freddie look like?’ Anne asked, swinging Harriet’s arm madly as she walked. ‘Will he look like Uncle Simon?’

  Harriet laughed. ‘No, he’s much younger than Uncle Simon. And they don’t look a bit alike. Uncle Freddie has darker hair and he’s a bit taller and thinner. And he doesn’t smoke a pipe.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘And Mother, where has Uncle Freddie been?’

  ‘Canada. He’s been in Canada. And America. Working.’

  ‘Doing what?’ asked Julius.

  ‘Oh, lots of things. Important work for a railway company and a shipping firm and—oh, lots of things.’

  ‘A shipping firm? You mean like Daddy?’ said Anne, looking up at her mother with a frown as though she could not quite understand anyone, aside from her own father, choosing to work in such a place.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Or rather, not quite the same, because this was a company that has commercial ships rather than passenger liners and it was around Hudson Bay and not across the ocean. And Uncle Freddie worked in their accounts department, I believe.’

  ‘And why has he come back?’ Julius asked.

  ‘Because he misses us all and he was homesick.’

  ‘So why didn’t he come back before? If he missed us, I mean?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask him.’

  Freddie would not exactly relish such a question, but he was just going to have to deal with the children himself.

  ‘I don’t think Uncle Freddie missed us at all,’ Anne mused. ‘In fact, I don’t think he remembered us at all, because he never sent birthday presents or Christmas presents, did he? Or birthday cards or Christmas cards. Not once.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ Julius grudgingly agreed. ‘One has to concede the old girl has a point,’ and he looked to his mother for an explanation.

  They had reached the busy junction outside the station so that Harriet stopped at the pedestrian crossing and it proved quite impossible to continue the conversation.

  It was approaching five o’clock as they arrived at South Kensington tube station and already early rush-hour workers were streaming out of the entrance. Harriet, Julius and Anne took up a position just outside the ticket barrier from where they could observe people who had arrived on either the Circle or the Piccadilly Line.

  ‘If Uncle Freddie left sometime after the war ended, that’s at least eight years.’ Julius was standing slightly off to the right of his mother and sister as though to minimise the possibility that people should assume he was with them. He surveyed the passing crowd thoughtfully. ‘So that’s sixteen Christmases and birthdays combined. Or thirty-two, if you count all my Christmases and birthdays and all Anne’s. That’s a frightful lot of presents we didn’t get,’ he concluded.

  Anne stared at him, clearly shocked by these figures.

  ‘I’m certain that, now that he is back, he will put things right,’ Harriet replied.

  She felt fairly sure Freddie was in no position to provide the thirty-two missing presents—and had not, in all probability, given them any thought at all—but she had no doubt that, with a little persuasion and the loan of a cheque-book, he could be coerced into a trip to Hamleys.

  ‘And when did Uncle Freddie get back?’ asked Julius.

  Harriet opened her mouth to reply, then found that there was simply no correct answer to this question, or rather, none that would satisfy the children’s curiosity while at the same time alluding, at least partially, to the truth.

  ‘Anne, please stop twisting about and stand still—oh, I can see him!’

  Freddie had somehow come through the ticket barrier without them spotting him and was standing on the other side of the concourse. Harriet started up and was about to wave before she realised that he was pressed against the tiled wall of the station, beside a chocolate vending machine and a litter bin. As she watched, her hand poised mid-wave, he raised both hands to his face and began to rub his temples violently, then he ran both hands through his hair. He looked wildly from side to side and at last seemed to see them. His face registered dismay.

  Harriet let go of Anne’s hand.

  ‘Children, I want you both to wait here for me. Don’t leave this spot; I shall be back in a just a moment,’ she said, not looking at them, and she pushed her way through the crowd until she had reached him.

  ‘Freddie, what is it? What’s happened?’

  He looked at her with a face so pale she felt her stomach lurch.

  ‘Would you believe, I just ran smack into my old C.O.?’ he said and he laughed humourlessly. ‘Straight into him. Doors opened, me on the Circle Line train, him on the platform just about to board the train. Face to face. Not sure which one of us was the most surprised.’ He paused, then shook his head and Harriet saw that his hands were shaking. ‘And do you know what I did? I ran. Pushed past him and got out of there just as fast as I could. Suppose that’s what I do best, isn’t it—running.’

  They stood in silence as all around them the station filled up and on the far side of the concourse the children waved at them excitedly.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  APRIL 1953

  There was going to come a point, Cecil realised uneasily, when his behaviour could no longer be construed as courteous and would, instead, be regarded as improper. Had he reached that point? Perhaps it could already be regarded as improper and he was simply deluding himself about his real motives?

  He paused for a moment, frowning.

  ‘Oy, watch your step, deary. Them stairs is slippery as a bar of soap once they bin washed down. I should know—damn near broke me neck on ’em just last week.’

  Cecil started and almost lost his footing. He grabbed at the banister of the stairwell and steadied himself.

  A charwoman in a grubby headscarf, a cigarette dangling from her lip, leered down at him from the first floor landing, at her feet a mop and bucket and a slosh of water in a puddle that was dripping in steadily growing rivers down the stairs towards him. Cecil sidestepped a trickle that was inches from his shoe.

  ‘Thank you. I shall take care to mind my step,’ he replied with a curt nod of his head as he advanced up the stairs towards her.

  The charwoman grunted but didn’t move, observing him silently and seemingly in no hurry to step out of his way.

  ‘You’ll be after that Miss Squires, top floor,’ she said shifting her position so that she was leaning on the other hip.

  Cecil paused, his face reddening and the thoughts of a moment ago rushing back into his head.

  ‘I beg your pardon! I am not acquainted with a Miss Squires.’

  ‘Anyways you’re outta luck,’ continued the woman, as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘She’s gorn off into the country for the weekend. Over’eard her tellin’ Mr Barnes, the caretaker. Won’t be back till Monday mornin’.’ The woman removed her cigarette and knocked ash onto the nearby window-sill. ‘All right for some,’ she added, as though Miss Squires had done her a personal injury by going away for the weekend.

  Cecil did not dignify her comment, nor her insinuation, with a reply and stepped firmly past her, taking some satisfaction in leaving a large and rather muddy footprint on her newly washed floor. He could still hear her grumbling as he reached the third floor of the block of flats.

  Leinster Mansions was a four-storey block of apartments built for gentlemen bachelors in the late twenties and a little shabby now, the carpets worn and faded, the paint peeling in places, a number of light-fittings minus their bulbs. The building, situated on a main thoroughfare in the heart of Hammersmith, was a little too close to the tube station to be entirely desirable, but nevertheless it retained a certain faded elegance, a pre-war charm that Cecil still felt drawn to in these austere times of concrete and prefabs. The Rocastles lived here; or rather, Jenny Rocastle lived here alone, at
flat number 9 on the third floor.

  Cecil looked up the stairwell towards the top floor and for a fleeting moment wondered which was the flat of the absent Miss Squires. He hadn’t seen a lady of the type Miss Squires appeared to be during his previous three visits. Indeed, he had encountered no one at all during his previous visits, excepting Mrs Rocastle herself. And that, perhaps, was a good thing.

  But good Lord, he was doing nothing improper! He could just as easily have brought Harriet with him.

  And yet he had not. He had in fact (while not uttering an out-and-out lie) certainly given the impression that he was going into the office on this Saturday morning to transact some rather urgent shipping business. But instead he had taken the Piccadilly Line westbound five stops and was even now standing outside the flat of a young lady in Hammersmith.

  It did not look good.

  He hesitated at the door of number 9. Ought one to have telephoned beforehand to announce one’s intentions? Under normal circumstances he would have done just that, but he had information to relay that had come to light very late the previous afternoon, after the time that a gentleman could respectably telephone a young lady at home. Cecil paused and slowly adjusted his tie. He had not, he now realised, wished to convey the information to Mrs Rocastle yesterday afternoon over the telephone; he had wanted to deliver it himself and in person to her flat.

  He raised his hand and pressed his finger on the front doorbell. A tinny buzz sounded distantly on the other side of the door. He waited, but could hear nothing. He ought to have telephoned after all, because it appeared that, like Miss Squires, Mrs Rocastle was not at home.