A True Love of Mine

by Margaret Thornton

  A True Love of Mine

  MARGARET THORNTON

  For my husband, John, once again; with my love and remembering the happy holidays we have enjoyed in Scarborough.

  And for my friend, Gladys Royston, who also loves Scarborough. Thanks to Gladys for her information about the work of an undertaker!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  By Margaret Thornton

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde,

  And the band played on…’

  Maddy Moon joined in enthusiastically with the song along with the rest of the audience, although she had no idea who Casey was, or what was meant by a strawberry blonde.

  She knew that she, too, had blonde hair; a sort of golden colour which waved a bit and which shone with a reddish tinge when it was newly washed or when it caught the rays of the sun. So maybe that was what the words meant; hair that was golden-red, but not so red as to be called ginger.

  Now the girl sitting near her, at the other end of one of the long forms that were provided for the children to sit on, she was a ginger-nut all right. Her hair, done up in two little bunches and tied at the ends with blue ribbon, was bright orange. Maddy wondered if it earned her the name of Carrots, like the boy in her class at school. She had noticed the girl before; she looked nice and friendly, and Maddy guessed she might be about the same age as herself; ten years old. She had the pale skin and hundreds of freckles that went with ginger hair. Suddenly she glanced in Maddy’s direction, as though aware of the other girl’s scrutiny, and Maddy saw that she had bright blue eyes. The girl raised her eyebrows, smiling at her a little curiously. Maddy smiled back, rather uncertainly, and then looked away quickly because she knew she had been staring. Her mother had told her it was rude to stare.

  ‘…He’d ne’er leave the girl with the strawberry curls,

  And the band played on.’

  The song came to an end and everyone clapped, and several of the children cheered as the troupe of Pierrots – the six men and three ladies, all dressed alike in white costumes with black pom-poms on their fronts and on their pointed hats – bowed and bowed, waved to the audience, then disappeared through the curtain at the back of the wooden planks that formed their stage, and into the bathing huts which they used as dressing rooms.

  Immediately one of the men started to make his way around the spectators, shaking his wooden box, smiling and winking and chatting cheerfully to the children and to the grown-ups – especially the young ladies – in the crowd, encouraging them to part with another copper or two from their purses.

  ‘Enjoyed the show have you, luv? That’s good; we aim to please…

  ‘Aye, I’ll be singing for you again after the interval; doing a bit of dancing an’ all and cracking a few jokes…

  ‘And may I say that is an extremely fetching hat you are wearing this morning, miss…’

  Maddy turned her head and saw the young lady who was wearing a straw hat – trimmed with pink ribbons and a big pink rose at the side – blush a little as she smiled back at the Pierrot.

  Maddy knew that he was called Pete and that he was known as the ‘bottler’. That was according to her grandfather, Isaac Moon, who knew a good deal about the Pierrot shows, especially those that performed along the east coast, and most particularly the ones in their own town of Scarborough.

  ‘But he doesn’t carry a bottle, Grandad,’ Maddy had insisted. ‘It’s a wooden box that people put the money in. Why d’you call him the bottler?’

  ‘Ah, well now, it’s only what I’ve been told,’ Isaac had replied. ‘From what I’ve heard tell, they put all t’ money they collect into a big bottle, like, so that it can’t easily be got at. And then at the end o’ t’ week they smash it and share the money out amongst all t’ members of the troupe. At least that’s what they used to do. Happen they’re a bit more businesslike now. I believe they charge a copper or two more for the folk who sit on t’ deckchairs. Aye, they say a good bottler’s worth his weight in gold – well, copper, I suppose, to be quite honest – to a Pierrot show…’

  This particular troupe which performed each day – three times each day, not just once – on Scarborough’s North Bay, was known as ‘Uncle Percy’s Pierrots’, and was a source of great delight to Maddy. She came to watch them at least once each day during the long August holiday from school. Her parents knew that she was safe enough there. It was not far for her to walk down to the beach – or to the promenade if the tide was in – from her home on North Marine Road. Her mother and father were both very busy in the family business and were glad she had something to occupy her mind. They insisted, though, that she went straight home after each performance. On no account was she to speak to anyone that she did not know, or go wandering off into the town, or get involved with the other beach entertainers; the fortune tellers and pedlars of dubious products and remedies, who aimed to make a living on the sands. Most of those, however, plied their trade on the South Bay beach, on the other side of the headland. The North Bay was a good deal quieter.

  Maddy dropped her penny into the slot and heard the satisfying clonk and the jingle of coins as Pete shook his box and said, ‘Thank you kindly, miss. We’ve seen you here before, haven’t we?’ She nodded, feeling pleased that he had noticed her.

  ‘Well, that’s just what we want – satisfied customers.’

  She smiled happily to herself. The show was just as good as ever. They had already heard a lot of singing. The Pierrots had sung songs with which all the audience joined in; a lady with a high voice had sung about a garden of roses; and a man with a deep voice had sung a song about the sea. And there had been the man who made you laugh – a comedian, and another man who was called his ‘stooge’, so Grandad said; and a lady with two little white performing dogs. And there was still a lot more to come.

  She turned her head at the sound of a voice in her ear. ‘Hello… You don’t mind if I come and sit with you, do you? I’m on my own, and it looks as though you are as well.’

  It was the girl with the ginger hair whom Maddy had noticed a few minutes ago, and the day before. ‘No, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘Here – I’ll budge up, then you can sit next to me.’ There was plenty of room on the form, especially as the two smaller children who had been sitting next to her had disappeared. Her mother had told her not to talk to strangers, but she was sure that did not mean she hadn’t to speak to a girl of her own age.

  ‘I’ve seen you here before,’ said the girl. ‘Are you on holiday here, same as me?’

  ‘No, I live here,’ replied Maddy. ‘Not far away, just over there.’ She gestured towards the ruined castle on the headland. ‘This side of the castle, but lower down; North Marine Road, that’s where I live.’

  ‘Gosh, aren’t you lucky?’ said the
girl. ‘Living at the seaside all the time. I wish I did.’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘I s’pose it’s all right living here. I’ve never really thought about it. I only come down to the beach during the school holidays, to watch the Pierrots. I love the Pierrots, don’t you? The rest of the time I ’spect it’s the same as living anywhere else. Where do you live then?’

  ‘York,’ said the girl. ‘It’s the capital city of Yorkshire.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ said Maddy. ‘We learnt that at school, but I’ve never been there. How did you get here then? On the train?’

  ‘Yes, we came last Saturday; my mother and me and my brother, and the twins. They’re four years old, our Tommy and Matilda – Tilly, we call her. But my father is staying in York. He works at a bank in the city, so he’ll just be coming to see us at weekends. At least he might… He said he would see.’

  ‘You mean…you’re staying here for a long time?’ Maddy knew that most of the visitors to the town stayed for only a week or so, at one of the various boarding houses. Unless they were very rich, of course, and stayed at the Grand or the Crown, or one of the other posh hotels on the South Bay.

  ‘Well, we’re staying for a few weeks – all of August. We’ll go back in time for Samuel and me to start school again. We rent a house for the season; we come every year. We’re staying on Blenheim Terrace this time, leading up to the castle. You can just about see it from here.’

  ‘You’re only just round the corner from where I live then,’ said Maddy excitedly. ‘Oh, isn’t that great? We’ll be able to come down together to see the shows. Oh…’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘D’you know, you haven’t even told me your name, and I haven’t told you mine. Aren’t we silly?’

  ‘I’m Jessie,’ said the ginger-haired girl. She grinned and held out her hand. ‘How do you do?’ she said, in a pseudo-refined voice. ‘That’s what my mother has told me to say when I meet somebody I don’t know. I’m called Jessica, really,’ she said in a more normal voice, ‘Jessica Barraclough, but everybody calls me Jessie.’

  Maddy laughed. She knew she would like this girl; she was good fun. She, too held out her hand, and they shook hands, just like two grown-up ladies. ‘And I’m Maddy,’ she said. ‘Madeleine Moon, really, but they just call me Maddy.’

  They discovered that they had been born within a few days of one another, in the month of June, 1890, and now, in the first week of August, 1900, they were both ten years old.

  There was no time to talk any more because the second half of the show was about to start. The Pierrots were coming out from their bathing huts, one on each side of the stage.

  ‘Here we are again, happy as can be…’ they sang as they ran on to the stage. Maddy and Jessie grinned at one another, then settled down to watch the second half of the performance.

  The man called Pete, the ‘bottler’, sang and danced a bit, as he had said he would do; then he told a few jokes assisted by his ‘stooge’, another of the Pierrots who was pretending to be stupid, although Maddy didn’t think he was anything of the sort really.

  ‘Who was that lady I saw you with last night?’ asked the stooge, in a daft sort of voice.

  ‘That was no lady – that was my wife!’ retorted Pete, followed by a quick rat-tat on the tambourine from a man at the side of the stage. That was to make the audience realise it was a joke and that they were supposed to laugh, thought Maddy. They all laughed obediently, although they had heard the same joke many times before, and Maddy joined in with them. She didn’t really understand it; why was his wife not a lady? she wondered. But she was enjoying the show more than ever today because she had somebody with her to join in the fun.

  The lady with the high voice who had sung about the garden of roses came on again, this time carrying a huge teddy bear, and she sang a song about how much she loved him. Two men performed a tap dance, all the while grinning broadly at the audience, their feet darting back and forth and in and out, making a loud clattering sound on the wooden boards.

  There was a funny sketch with two men who both wanted to win the affection of a young lady. They changed out of their Pierrot costumes for this, the men appearing as quite the dandies in their striped blazers and straw boaters, and the lady, in a bright pink dress with a large hat made of feathers, obviously enjoying the flirtation and having both the men ‘dangling on a piece of string’, as Maddy had heard her mother say.

  All too soon the show came to an end and all the Pierrots, including the lady who had played the piano for them, came to the front of the stage and bowed to the audience.

  ‘That was good, wasn’t it?’ said Maddy, and Jessie agreed that it had been a ‘splendid show’. Maddy had noticed that she used rather grown-up words and that she spoke in quite a posh-sounding sort of voice. She didn’t appear swanky though, or at all stuck-up; but she did not sound like she, Maddy, sounded, or like the rest of the boys and girls in her class at school.

  They made their way across the sand and up the wooden steps to the lower promenade, chatting together all the while, then up the steep path which led up to the cliff top and the hotels on Queen’s Parade. The backs of these hotels opened on to North Marine Road, which was where Maddy lived, but her home was on the other side of the road.

  ‘Will you come again this afternoon?’ asked Jessie.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Maddy. ‘I ’spect I will have a few errands to do for my mother. She’s busy, y’see, working in our shop, or else she’s out helping my dad with his job. So I help her during the school holidays. She doesn’t let me go into town on my own, not yet, just to the shops along our road. Some of my friends have to work really hard when we finish school, ’cause their parents have boarding houses, so I ’spect I’m lucky, really, just running a few errands, and helping to wash up and keep my room tidy. I’ll probably go to the show tomorrow, though. Will you?’

  ‘I would like to,’ replied Jessie. ‘It all depends on what the rest of the family are doing. My brother likes fishing; that’s where he’s gone this morning, down to the harbour. It’s all he ever thinks about when we’re here, when he’s not reading his books, that is. I should think the twins might like watching the Pierrots though – they were too little last year – but if they get restless my mother could take them away to play on the beach.’

  ‘Is your brother older than you then?’ asked Maddy. ‘I s’pose he must be, if he’s allowed to go fishing on his own.’

  ‘Yes; Samuel’s fourteen, four years older than me.’

  ‘But… I thought you said he was still at school?’ said Maddy, a little perplexed. All the boys she knew had left school at thirteen, fourteen at the very oldest, and were working for their living. Many of them went out in the fishing boats, as did their fathers, or were apprenticed to some trade or other. Her own brother, Patrick, who also was fourteen, had left school the previous year and was now an apprentice in the family business.

  ‘Yes, he is still at school,’ replied Jessie, in answer to Maddy’s query. ‘Samuel and I both go to private schools in York. Mine is just for girls, and Sam’s is just for boys. We will both be staying there until we’re sixteen at least. My father would like Samuel to get a position in the bank, like he has.’

  ‘Oh, I see…’ said Maddy. ‘My school’s over there, near the Market Hall. But there’s lads in my class as well as girls.’ She waved her arm vaguely to the left. ‘My brother went there as well, and my mam and dad, ages ago. But Patrick, that’s me brother, left last year – we all leave when we’re thirteen or so – and now he’s working with me dad, learning to…well, to do what our dad does.’

  ‘You said you have a shop, didn’t you?’ said Jessie. ‘What sort is it? Do you sell sweets and tobacco and newspapers?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘When I was a very little girl I used to say that I wanted to be a sweet shop lady.’ She laughed, a merry sort of giggle. ‘But I’ve grown out of that idea now. I think I would like to work in a really elegant dress shop.
’ Maddy would have said ‘posh’, not elegant. ‘But my mother wants me to go to a college where they teach shorthand and typing, then I could be a private secretary to someone… Go on, you said you would tell me what sort of a shop you have.’

  Maddy, in fact, had not said so. She found it difficult to explain to people who did not know just what the family business entailed and what they sold in the shop. ‘Well, I suppose it is a sort of dress shop,’ she said. ‘It’s just round this corner.’

  They had reached the top of the cliff path, near to the terrace where Jessie and her family were staying. ‘I tell you what,’ said Maddy, ‘you come with me now, and then you can see for yourself. It’s not very far for you to walk back, is it? Or will your mam be cross with you if you’re late?’

  ‘No, Mother doesn’t often get cross,’ smiled Jessie. ‘So long as I’m home by half past twelve, in time for lunch.’

  They turned the corner into North Marine Road and walked northwards for fifty yards or so. ‘Here it is, this is where I live. That’s…our shop,’ said Maddy, stopping in front of a double-fronted shop with two large plate-glass windows.

  Jessie gave a gasp of surprise and stared, open-mouthed, for a few seconds. Then, ‘Goodness gracious!’ she said. ‘How very peculiar…’

  Chapter Two

  Maddy felt a little annoyed at her new friend’s remark, which she considered rather rude. But when she looked at the windows herself – the windows which she passed by every day without so much as a second glance – she realised that to someone who was not used to such an establishment as this, it might well appear to be a trifle…peculiar.

  ‘Moon’s Mourning Modes’, proclaimed the sign, in gold writing above the shop, and if anyone was in any doubt as to the meaning of the words, a glance at the windows would tell them. They were filled with black clothing, the right-hand window containing men’s apparel, and the left-hand one clothes for women and children. Suits, waistcoats, overcoats, top hats for the men; silken dresses, cloaks, skirts and jackets, wide-brimmed hats trimmed with feathers for the women, and even a small black dress for a little girl of seven or eight years old and a knickerbocker suit for a boy of a similar age; all in unrelieved black.