by Maggie Ford
One sold rather expensive gowns – nothing under five pounds a go. The other was a book shop. She hoped some of their air of graciousness would rub off on hers, bring in people with money to spend.
‘Lucky we came across it when we did,’ she said to Billy as they came away, reluctant to leave. ‘October’s just perfect to open up. I mean, Christmas round the corner. People with money will be looking for good quality gifts at not too exorbitant prices. But not so inexpensive that they’ll walk on with their noses in the air.’
She went on talking too fast, far too much, as they made their way to the bus stop. Excited, yes, but she always spoke too much these days when Chris was present, trying to fill in every second of those long silences he seemed to specialise in.
‘Yes, October’s definitely the right time to start,’ she said, her voice firm and decisive, as they walked slowly for Billy’s benefit.
It took another week to open. In a new green wool tunic dress, straight and simple with a low belt and a hem of fashionable length, just below the knees, Letty stood ready to open at nine o’clock on Monday, having spent nearly her whole weekend there, leaving Billy at home as his chest was beginning to play him up again.
The October mist took longer to lift each morning as the last week of the month passed, heavy and smelly with coal smoke, tending to yellowness. Billy’s chest was already suffering and his breathing wasn’t at all good, his cough beginning to carry the wet rumble she dreaded to hear.
At the back of Letty’s mind was the problem of nursing him as well as going all the way to Oxford Street each day. It had been all right when she’d merely gone downstairs to the old shop. She hadn’t expected to be able to do that with the new shop – not in an area like Oxford Street where rents could be as high as rent on several houses put together in the East End. It was going to be hard work looking after this place and Billy. Her only consolation was that as much as Chris appeared to shun her, he was totally under Billy’s spell. But Chris didn’t have anything against him, did he? And Billy was the kind of person everyone could get on with, ill as he was.
At thirty-six Billy was looking far older than he should, lines radiating around his mouth, across his brow; his cheeks hollow, no longer full and firm, though his good humour was undiminished.
Last year he had shaved off his moustache. ‘Gives a more up-to-the-minute image,’ he’d said, grinning, but Letty suspected his aim had been to try and make himself look younger. If that was so, it hadn’t worked, only revealed the lines of suffering his moustache had hither-to concealed. ‘I don’t like you without your moustache,’ she had told him, but though he said he’d grow it again, he hadn’t.
Turning her mind back to the job in hand, wishing Billy had been well enough to be with her to enjoy this first day, she took a last look round before she went to turn the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
All around her were the results of all that scrimping and scraping. The fact that her shop wasn’t cluttered with stock was because she couldn’t have quality and quantity, and so plumped for quality.
Four glass shelves, one above the other, along one pale blue wall held half a dozen – no more – fine opaline glass vases, subtle shades varying from pink through to blue, green to grey. On other shelves were cheaper versions (she couldn’t yet afford the real thing) of Gallé glassware, heavy Marinot, Tiffany type, the iridescent hues not as deep or as rich in variation as the original, but good nevertheless.
There was glass and crystal from Austria, Sweden, Germany, Italy. Other shorter shelves held sculptures of animals in softly glowing alabaster, smooth ivory, carved ebony, tinted marbles; willowy figurines in porcelain and silvery metal.
A girl in bronze, arms outstretched, balanced delicately on one leg on a white marble pedestal, the other leg high up behind her, her dress billowed in an unseen breeze. On a suspended shelf were displayed a small jade Buddha and a lacquered chest, beneath it some ivory cats. One long low shelf held fine china.
Letty regarded it all thoughtfully. Was there time to rearrange it to look even better? It certainly looked very tasteful, the electric chandelier she’d invested in making everything glitter. She hadn’t lost the gift of displaying things to their best advantage and today she had the satisfaction of knowing her stock did her credit, not the other way around.
No more thick crockery tea sets or dinner services, scratched tables and chipped vases. Now she offered Worcester and Derby and Chelsea, a little delicate Dresden and some Copenhagen. She had decided against going in for furniture of any sort. With so little room, it was better to have none at all than spoil the effect with one isolated piece that would detract from what she was trying to achieve.
She had, however, stretched to pictures. Not many, but all modern originals – expressionistic, abstract, geometrical; some art photography, stark and striking, not everyone’s cup of tea, but Letty’s business sense told her they would sell, were what the fashionable and well off wanted. None of them were by well-known artists, of course. But one day … one day when she had a proper art gallery …
One dream had been fulfilled; another was blossoming within her. Letty’s eyes were already on the future, and she hadn’t even opened the door to her first customer yet!
Tired but hopeful, she went and opened up for her first day in Oxford Street, wishing she had some champagne to drink in celebration and someone to drink it with; she thought then of Billy at home, a pang of fear for him submerging some of her joy.
‘You wouldn’t believe how wonderful it is to have you here, my dear.’ Vinny’s eyes feasted themselves on Christopher. She’d been overcome seeing him standing on her doorstep this Tuesday afternoon, had drawn him into the house, folded her arms around him in the ecstasy of reunion. In concern too – a nine year old coming all this way alone.
She had told him so several times already, still caught up in the marvellous shock of seeing him. ‘They’ll be wondering where you are.’
‘No, they won’t.’ Chris sat drinking lemonade while his aunt sipped tea, gazing about the sunny room he had once known – every corner, every stick of furniture once taken for granted. It looked so strange now, unfamiliar, yet little had been altered, except perhaps for different wallpaper and curtains. ‘I said I was going to the park and I would be ’ome five o’clock.’
Vinny winced at the tinge of cockney. ‘So long since you were here. It’s been two years, Christopher. I still miss you so very much.’
He brought his eyes back to the person he’d once called ‘Mum’, wanting suddenly to burst into tears, but boys of nine didn’t do that. All his mates at home would laugh at him.
Calling it home, was he? The streets he’d played in these last two years. Soon they wouldn’t be home either. After the summer holidays they were moving out of Club Row. It seemed the shop in Oxford Street had done so well, they were to move into the flat above it. ‘All or nothing’ his mother had said. Three rooms and a kitchen, with high ceilings and wide Victorian doors but nowhere to play. He’d be going to a new school nearby, saying goodbye to Danny, the boy next-door, to the schoolmates he’d become used to. Change, nothing but change.
He wished he was back here where life had been orderly, where there was space to play – a long garden, the woods. He’d played in those woods with his brothers … he must call them cousins now … Albert and George and Arthur. Though probably they wouldn’t play with him any more if he was here now. They were pretty well grown up. Albert at fifteen was going on to college soon. The other two were at high school. To them he was still a kid, although he was tall for his age, tall and skinny. Christopher swallowed hard.
‘I mustn’t stay long,’ he mumbled into his glass, his voice echoing into it. ‘Them not knowing I’m here.’
He’d said he and a mate were going to Victoria Park for the day. It was a gorgeous August day and he’d been given cheese sandwiches in a paper bag, an apple and a bottle of fizz, and warned to behave himself.
He had felt very deceitful going off like that using tw
o shillings from his savings box to pay for the bus fare to Walthamstow where Aunt Vinny lived. He had planned for months, to sneak over here and have it out with her – the one he used to call Mum and must now call Aunt Vinny – why she had allowed him to be taken away and made to feel so confused.
Grown ups were so two-faced and underhanded. He hated their lies and double dealings. If he did something underhand or lied, he’d be in hot water before you could say Jack Robinson. Grown ups weren’t nice, except perhaps for Billy. Chris called him that. He’d said to do so, being a mere step-father. Chris liked and respected him for that.
‘But you must stay for something to eat,’ Vinny pressed him.
She gnawed anxiously at her lower lip, her mind on how she could entice him to stay longer, stay the night. Perhaps two nights. She had a Women’s Institute meeting tonight, but she could soon cancel it.
‘I’ll get in touch with your … your mother. Explain to her …’
‘No, don’t do that!’ Chris hurriedly put down his glass and got to his feet. ‘She mustn’t know I’m here. She thinks I went over to the park for the day. I’ve got to be back by five. I don’t want her ever to know I’ve been here.’
Vinny put her cup and saucer back on the small white-clothed table.
‘Then why did you come?’
‘Because I wanted to know if you really did love me?’
Tears began to gather in Vinny’s eyes. She saw the boy mistily – the narrow face, the dark hair. The sensitive mouth swam before her.
‘Of course I loved you, Christopher.’
‘Even though you weren’t really my mum?’
‘I loved you as though you were my very own.’
Chris stood very still. ‘Then why did you let me go?’
‘I had no option, dear.’ Quickly Vinny explained her oversight about the adoption formalities, how they hadn’t seemed all that urgent, how after her husband was killed in the war, she forgot in her grief to do the things she ought to have done. Then it was too late. His real mother had married – to that awful cockney Billy Beans, and the man so sickly! No doubt she’d only married him to get her son back, though how she could stoop so low to gain what she wanted …
Vinny’s face began to twist as she spoke, eyes narrowing with venom, lips beginning to work.
‘I mean, who’d want to marry a type like that out of choice? With his “finks” and his “foughts” and his “ahts” and “abarts”? The lowest of the low!’
‘He ain’t low, Aunty Vinny!’ Chris burst out in defence of the man who had stolen his affection. ‘He’s the nicest …’
‘There, you see?’ Vinny gazed up at him. ‘“He ain’t”. Is that the way for a young boy to speak who once went to a good school?’
Chris ignored that. ‘You mustn’t talk about him like that, I …’
He was about to say ‘I love him’, stopped himself in time. It would have sounded disloyal, though to whom he wasn’t sure. But Aunt Vinny wasn’t listening.
‘And your mother’s no better than she ought to be! Carrying on like she did, then getting all upset because she got herself into trouble.’
Vinny retrieved her cup, took a swift sip of the cold dregs, hardly pausing before she ploughed on: ‘Anyone would have thought it was our fault … my fault. The way she went off at me. And me offering to take you off her hands so she wouldn’t have to face the shame of it! She had none of the trouble, the problems I had bringing you up. Kept awake half the night with your crying, trying to feed you with a bottle, and me half dead from lack of sleep. And then when you’re growing up, along she comes. Wants you back, after the hardest part of it has been done.’
The cup clattered abruptly back on to its saucer, the sharp sound assaulting Christopher’s eardrums like a rifle shot.
‘She didn’t deserve my help, your mother,’ Vinny said harshly. ‘A trollop, that’s what she is. That man – your nature father – heaven knows how many times they did … well, the things they did. You wouldn’t understand. But you were the result. And all I can say is, she never was any good. Oh, she was upset when he left her, but only because she didn’t have him to marry her and make a decent woman of her. She was no better than a common tart!’
‘That’s not true!’ Chris found his tongue at last. ‘Don’t say that about my mother!’
‘Your mother?’ Vinny looked at him in amazement. ‘Did she have any part in bringing you up? No. I had all the hard work on my shoulders bringing you up. I’m more mother to you than she ever was, than she’ll ever be …’
‘Don’t say that!’ He was hopping from one foot to the other. ‘You’re not to say that about her! She cries. I’ve seen ’er. She talks to my dad when she’s on her own and thinks no one else is listening, and talks to ’im as if he’s there. And then she cries.’
Suddenly the need to protect Letty flooded over him. The quiet kind way she had treated him while he’d been with her. Her and Billy, being so nice to him. And here was Aunt Vinny who had behaved as a mother to him, with a mother’s hard hand on his legs when he’d misbehaved, now telling him what a trial he had been to her. She wasn’t his mother. Had never been his mother. And now she was making out his own mother was a horrid person. Well, he wasn’t having that.
‘She’s my mother!’ he yelled, making Vinny wince. ‘She’s my mother!’ he shouted again, hardly realising he was making a declaration that would now bind him to Letty forever. ‘And I won’t let you talk about her like that. I’ve got to go home.’
‘But you can’t …’ Vinny’s cry was desperate as she stood up, her hand outstretched trying ineffectually to stop him, Christopher backing away.
‘I’ve got to go. I won’t tell Mum what you said about her.’ It was the first time he had ever referred to her spontaneously as ‘Mum’; he didn’t even realise it then, but the pattern was at last established.
‘Goodbye, Aunty Vinny,’ he yelled, and turned from the cosy house he had once called home, the woman he had once known as his mother, out into the bright August sunshine, running the whole long way to the bus stop.
Chapter Twenty-One
The flat echoing to her footsteps across the boards, Letty paused a moment at the parlour door and looked back into the room. There were dents in the lino where the piano had stood. Mum used to play so nicely on it, the family gathered round to sing at Christmas and New Year and birthdays.
Dents too where the large, round, polished mahogany table had been, and the sofa with its sagging seat. That was where Dad’s old armchair used to be, Dad sitting by the fire, suffering his three young daughters’ bickering, his two boisterous sons pushing each other about. Terrible thing, the boys dying so young. Dad had never been the same after that, not in all these years.
And there was Mum’s wooden-armed chair, the one she always claimed had given her a nice upright posture. There she’d sat, a duchess in her castle … Letty switched her eyes away and looked again into the empty room, the dents in the lino a record of her family, there for all time until someone chose to replace the linoleum with a different one.
She’d got rid of most of the stuff, sentimentality put firmly aside – the piano to Lucy, the sofa and Dad’s old chair to a family along the road in need of a few sticks and too poor to buy any. The old Victorian ornaments had been bought up by a man with a stall.
Dad had the dining table and chairs. She had kept the photographs, her own ornaments and Mum’s old chair. It would look a bit out of place in the new flat with its modern furniture, but that was just too bad. She would never part with Mum’s old chair, not as long as she lived. Everything else had been sold to raise a bit more for the rent on the new flat.
In the kitchen the wall dresser stood empty; the deal table gone, the old gas oven and copper looked forlorn. The bedrooms were deserted, the age-darkened wallpaper showing pale rectangles where pictures had hung.
Nothing left of a home that once vibrated to the comings and goings of a family; its dramas, joy, sadness, its overcro
wding, the slow emptying as her sisters married and left. Love too had gone eventually, and returned in part with her marriage to Billy but was never as it once had been. Where had the years flown?
Now it even smelled empty. Slowly Letty closed the door, her throat tight, and went down the stairs and out through the back into a dull September afternoon. The family had seldom if ever used the back door, usually going through the shop to get out. The shop belonged to someone else now. The flat would too, soon.
‘Everythin’ oright, ol’ gel?’ Billy stood waiting for her. His cheery voice put the smile back on her face, took the tightness from her throat. She looked at him with fond affection, feeling suddenly better.
‘Fine,’ she said brightly, turning her eyes to Chris, who was standing a little way off.
‘You said goodbye to Danny?’ she asked, and saw him nod dejectedly. ‘We’re not going to the other end of the earth,’ she said brightly. ‘You’ll still be able to come back here to see him at weekends.’
Christopher nodded, giving her a little smile. He had changed. It was hard to believe he’d been so sullen until a few weeks ago; then, quite suddenly, he was easier to speak to, more ready to respond, though she didn’t dare question what had occasioned the change.
‘Yes, I will … Mum,’ he said, the last a mumbled afterthought, but it was there, she was sure.
It was some seconds before it actually sank in, that he’d addressed her by name. She gave him another look, smiled again, and received one in return. In that instant, life became bliss for Letty. She needed nothing more to fulfil her beyond the fact that her son had smiled at her quite spontaneously and called her ‘Mum’.
In just one year her shop started paying for itself. Never in her wildest dreams had Letty imagined she’d have paid back the money owed to the bank in that short time, plus interest, and still been able to afford the first floor flat above the shop – two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and a huge living room with a lovely high ceiling, its long narrow windows overlooking busy Oxford Street.