by Jenny Holmes
‘You said it yourself – you’re no expert. That much was obvious when you stepped into my shoes on the night Myra died.’
Hazel flinched but decided to bite her tongue. After all, she was here for Sylvia, not to stand up for herself and enter into a bitter argument.
‘And you haven’t been through anything like what that young cousin of yours is going through either.’
‘Fair enough. But I do know that Sylvia is far from being “sensible”, as you put it. I’d say she’s the exact opposite.’
‘So you’d like me to say no to her request?’
‘Yes, I would. That’s why I came here – to ask you to try to talk her round. She wouldn’t take any notice of me but she might listen to someone from outside the family.’
‘And if I refused to help her, what then?’ Mabel drew a chair from under the table and sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace. She looked Hazel in the eye. ‘Do you suppose that Sylvia would lie down like a little lamb and do as we say?’
‘Yes, if the advice was put in the right way.’ Hazel sounded uncertain as a fierce new fear began to knock at her heart.
‘She wouldn’t move on from me to the next one and the next until she found the help she’s after?’
‘Oh, God.’ Hazel gasped as the door to her imagination flew open and in rushed images of hot baths and gin, deliberate falls, cannulas, glass rods or curling irons.
‘Quite.’ Mabel read Hazel’s expression. ‘A girl in Sylvia’s predicament doesn’t deserve that.’
Hazel shook her head violently but the images stayed with her.
‘That’s what we have to take into account,’ Mabel explained patiently.
‘So you agreed to help her?’ This was the only conclusion Hazel could draw and now she saw not in black and white but in shades of grey. What if, after all, Mabel was right?
‘I didn’t turn her away.’ Mabel’s reply was guarded. ‘On the other hand, I didn’t offer to help – not right away.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I saw how she was – like a little girl on her knees begging me for help, beside herself. I lifted her up and told her to pull herself together – that was no way to carry on. I said I would only consider our next move if she calmed down, which she did in the end. My advice was for her to think things through for a few days then get back to me. I think I managed to persuade her.’
Slowly Hazel nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. Mabel’s kinder-than-expected view of Sylvia’s predicament had surprised her and she reached out to shake her broad, work-worn hand. Now they had those few days for Sylvia to come to terms with her situation instead of rushing ahead with a back-street abortion in a frenzy of fear and desperation. ‘That’s good.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ was Mabel’s stolid response. She freed her hand to grudgingly pat Hazel on the shoulder then stood up to show her out. ‘You can do that when it’s all come out in the wash.’
Before Hazel knew it, the weekend arrived and with it an arrangement with Gladys to meet up and begin their search for a flat.
‘Nothing’s definite,’ she assured Jinny as she set out late on Friday afternoon. Days were shortening and fog still wound its way through narrow streets, dimming street lamps and seeming to cushion footfall on greasy pavements.
‘Don’t worry – I haven’t mentioned it to your dad,’ Jinny said, silently envying Hazel’s freedom to choose how and where she lived. If I was her age I’d jump at the chance of branching out, she thought as she methodically laid out Robert’s tea of pork pie, pickle and two slices of bread and butter.
The front door clicked shut and the noise of traffic soon drowned out the sound of Hazel’s quick footsteps.
Yes, there’s a lot I’d do differently if I got the chance. Jinny stared wistfully at the window, catching her own shadowy reflection, then hurried to close the curtains.
Meanwhile, Hazel made her way to the far end of Ghyll Road – the starting point for her and Gladys’s search.
‘It would be handy for my work at the clinic,’ Hazel had decided. ‘And it’s on the bus route to the hospital for you. Plus there’s Clifton Market only a stone’s throw away and the Assembly Rooms if we’re ever short of entertainment.’
Gladys had turned up her nose. ‘The Assembly Rooms are old hat,’ she’d complained. ‘Give me the jazz club any day.’
But they’d agreed that Ghyll Road offered plenty of possibilities and Gladys showed her eagerness to go ahead with their plan by showing up early for once. She stood outside the Chinese laundry on the corner of Ebeneezer Street, stamping her feet against the cold and tapping her watch as Hazel approached.
‘Good heavens, I hardly recognized you,’ Hazel exclaimed, taking in Gladys’s latest hairstyle – more blonde than ever and even more closely cropped. She wore a navy blue clutch coat teamed with a printed yellow silk scarf and matching beret.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Gladys chided. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘Why – I’m not late, am I? Anyway, I went to Morrison’s estate agency for the addresses of flats to rent. They gave me three here on Ghyll Road and one at the top of Ebeneezer Street.’
Armed with the list, Gladys immediately discounted the one on Ebeneezer Street. ‘Too close to the gas works,’ she said.
Then it turned out that the first address on Ghyll Road was next door to Pickard’s butcher’s. Gladys wrinkled her nose. ‘All that smelly offal being cooked on the premises! But the second address might be worth a look,’ she decided.
‘Perhaps beggars can’t be choosers,’ a dispirited Hazel pointed out, trudging along in Gladys’s bright wake. She bore in mind the fact that her savings might soon run out unless there was an upturn for her at the clinic.
‘We’re not beggars.’ Gladys’s retort was true enough. ‘We’re two respectable young women with good jobs and references to whit. Any landlord would jump at the chance of having tenants like us.’
‘So what about this one?’ Referring to the estate agent’s list, Hazel stopped outside an ornate stone terraced house with three storeys plus a cellar that was approached from the pavement by narrow stone steps. A row of nameplates to one side of the front door showed that the house was split into six separate residences. ‘It says here that the landlord lives on the ground floor,’ she pointed out to Gladys.
Gladys stood back to inspect the somewhat shabby building. ‘I bet it’s the cellar that’s empty,’ she predicted, venturing down the worn steps to peer through the window at a dark, bare room. ‘Just as I thought.’
‘That’s the third one crossed off the list, then?’ Hazel asked. At this rate, nothing short of a palace would satisfy Gladys.
‘Yes. Who wants to live in a mouldy old cellar? We’d be like a pair of moles scratting about in the dark.’
They walked on down the street to the final address on the list – a detached house set behind a high laurel hedge in large grounds. Straight away Gladys viewed this with more interest.
‘Finally, your majesty!’ Hazel teased her hard-to-please cousin.
‘Who lives here?’ Gladys wondered as she set off up the drive.
Hazel followed, noticing a yard to the side with a coach house and other outhouses. Approaching the stained-glass front door, she saw a wide porch containing wellington boots of all sizes and a child’s bike carelessly thrown down and partly blocking their way. To either side of the entrance were well-lit rooms with large paintings on the wall, a grand piano in one corner and more children’s toys scattered across oriental carpets.
‘Do you really think this is the right address?’ Gladys sounded less sure of herself now they were on the doorstep and she hesitated before pressing the bell.
Hazel consulted her list. ‘This is number 120, isn’t it?’
Their voices must have attracted the attention of someone crossing the wide hallway because a woman’s figure could be made out through the glass panels and a muffled, short-tempered voice called out, ‘There’s someone at the
door!’
Soon after, the door was opened by a man they both recognized.
‘Bernard!’ Taken aback, Gladys’s pre-rehearsed speech disappeared from her head.
Hazel realized it was the philandering doctor from King Edward’s.
He stepped out into the porch, closing the door behind him. ‘Hello, girls,’ he began with a mixture of suspicion and pleasure. ‘What brings you to my neck of the woods?’
Hazel was the first to get over their shock and explain their mission – a flat for two single people, close to the bus routes and so on.
‘Well, we do have rooms to let,’ Bernard acknowledged. ‘They’re above the old coach house, which is standing there empty, doing nothing. It was Vera’s idea that we should get a lodger.’
‘Is there room for two?’ Gladys found her voice and fixed on her chirpy smile.
‘I should say so.’ Bernard’s tone was enthusiastic as he looked from Hazel to Gladys and back again.
‘What would the rent be?’ Hazel enquired, hearing children’s voices arguing, overridden by the same woman’s voice as before.
Bernard blithely ignored the fracas. ‘Eight shillings per week. How does that sound?’
Hazel’s face fell. That seemed an awful lot. After all, you could rent a whole house on Raglan Street for seven.
‘Four shillings each.’ Gladys turned to Hazel, whose face told her how she was feeling. ‘It’s worth a look, isn’t it?’
In the meantime, without them noticing, Bernard’s wife Vera had left off chastising the children and quietly opened the door. She was tall, with chin-length dark hair styled into a central parting and carefully crimped. Her face was inscrutable as she took in the scene.
‘It was once the groom’s quarters, in the days when people had them. Horses and carriage on the ground floor, groomsman above.’ Bernard was in full swing, putting a good gloss on the rooms in questions. ‘There’s a kitchen and two other rooms – a bedroom for each of you. Plenty of space.’
‘Bernard,’ his wife said in an undertone as she drew him back into the hall, frowning now and unyielding. ‘I’d like a word in private.’
‘Oops, that’s torn it!’ Gladys suppressed a giggle as the pair retreated. ‘Did you see the sour look on her face?’
‘Yes. I don’t suppose we’re the sort of lodgers she had in mind,’ Hazel agreed. This was embarrassing, to put it mildly.
They waited less than a minute before Bernard reappeared. ‘Vera’s had a change of heart, I’m afraid,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘It seems the coach house is not to let after all.’
‘Oh dear!’ Gladys’s dismay fooled no one. It was obvious that the situation tickled her.
‘Never mind. Ta, anyway.’ Hazel was anxious to be on her way. ‘We’ve only just started to look, haven’t we, Gladys?’
‘That’s right.’ Gladys’s eyes twinkled with suppressed laughter. ‘Will you keep your eyes and ears open for us, Bernard?’
‘You bet.’ He gave a conspiratorial wink then mumbled under his breath, ‘Sorry about that. I hope to see you girls in town later tonight.’
‘If you’re lucky.’ Gladys winked back at him.
Hazel turned away and started back down the drive. ‘Really!’ she told Gladys crossly when they were safely back on the pavement.
‘I didn’t do anything – what did I do?’
‘You winked at him!’
‘He did it first.’
‘Honestly, Gladys! All right, if you must know – he’s someone I can’t stand.’ There was something wolf-like about Bernard – a glint in his yellowish eyes, a hint of saliva at the corner of his mouth. ‘What now?’ she asked, stuffing her list into her pocket.
‘Now we go home and get changed for the jazz club,’ Gladys decided gaily. ‘I’ll see you at the tram stop, seven o’clock sharp.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Everyone except Sylvia was there that night – Gladys and Hazel, Norman, Eddie and Dan and eventually John, who joined the gang at nine o’clock, accompanied by Reggie Bates, a fellow player from John’s cricketing days.
‘Hello, Hazel. We haven’t met.’ Reggie stood at the bar offering to shake her hand and enjoying the introduction made by Dan on John’s behalf. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, though.’
‘Oh dear.’ Hazel tried to laugh away the embarrassment she often felt at meeting new people. ‘All good, I hope.’
Taking a drink from John, Reggie carried on with more along the same lines. ‘Oh yes, Dan and John both sing your praises, don’t you worry.’ Shorter than John, Reggie was square set, with reddish hair swept back from his high forehead and a pale, freckled face. He looked smart in a wide-shouldered grey suit and dark blue tie with a white rose county logo. ‘Even so, they didn’t do you justice.’
Hazel’s smile was uncertain and she quickly drew Gladys into the conversation. Above the soaring notes from a band she hadn’t heard before – creating a smoother and lighter mood than Earl Ray’s ensemble – she explained to Reggie that this was her cousin’s favourite weekend haunt and that it was due to her that she was here at all.
‘Listen – I think we can do a quickstep to this music!’ Without further ado, Gladys seized her chance to lead an unsuspecting Reggie onto the dance floor, while Dan picked out his own partner. This left Hazel with John at the bar.
‘I did warn him he’d be forced to trip the light fantastic if he came here,’ John said as he watched Reggie stumble then collide with another couple. ‘I take it Gladys doesn’t mind that he’s no Fred Astaire.’
‘I don’t suppose so. I hope he’s better at cricket than he is at dancing the quickstep, though,’ Hazel commented wryly.
‘You can bank on that. Reggie’s wicketkeeping takes a lot of beating.’ Keen to praise his friend, John went into detail about Reggie’s bulldog tenacity behind the wicket. ‘He’s still in the first team, doing his bit for Yorkshire and decent enough not to forget his old pal.’
‘You’re not old,’ Hazel argued. ‘What are you – twenty-seven, twenty-eight?’
‘Twenty-nine. But I’ve been out of the first-class game for four years now. Reggie could easily have dropped me if he’d wanted.’
‘Dan says you had to give up because of an accident?’
‘I jiggered my knee – fractured the kneecap and tore a ligament and that was that.’ He spoke plainly and without bitterness.
‘Playing cricket?’
‘No. I crashed my car – my own daft fault. One day I was the season’s top scorer, the next I was laid up in a hospital bed with a bandage around my bonce and my leg in plaster.’ Tilting his head to one side, John paid attention to the music for a while and Hazel was diverted by a tap on her shoulder.
She turned to find David Bell greeting her with a smile.
‘Don’t look so surprised.’ Dressed in an open-necked shirt and grey V-necked pullover, he jerked his thumb towards a table close to the stage where Bernard and a couple of other hospital doctors sat. ‘They invited me along.’
‘That was nice of them.’ Regretting as ever her tendency to blush, it took Hazel some time to get used to seeing David in this fresh setting.
‘Yes. They must think there’s life in the old dog yet.’
‘I should say so. Are you enjoying yourself?’
‘It makes a change to get out and about. I take it this is one of your regular haunts?’
‘Yes, I like it here.’ Aware that Reggie had given up on the quickstep with Gladys and returned to the bar, Hazel settled into the conversation with David. The band eased from one number to the next and there was a flurry of people exchanging partners or ordering drinks, which edged her and David closer to the dance floor.
‘Shall we?’ he said impulsively.
‘Why not?’ Before she knew it, her hand was in his and his arm was around her waist. She felt him guide her expertly between couples, feet gliding across the floor and shoulders swaying to the rhythm of the music. ‘You’ve done this before,’ she sai
d with a smile.
‘Back in the dim and distant past,’ he agreed. ‘When I was a lad back in Durham we had a wind-up gramophone and a stack of records – mostly old-fashioned dance tunes. My sister Ursula is two years older than me. She used to roll back the living-room carpet and bully me into helping her practise her dance steps. I must have been the only boy in the county who knew my Military Two-step from my Gay Gordons.’
‘It paid off,’ Hazel said with a laugh, growing used to the lean, taut feel of David’s shoulder under his woollen sweater and enjoying the sensation of him being in control. As usual, the music brought down her guard and allowed her to relax in his arms.
‘Bernard tells me you paid him a surprise visit earlier today,’ he mentioned with an edge of curiosity in his voice.
‘I was flat-hunting with Gladys. We didn’t know it was his house.’ Glancing towards the bar, she noticed that her vivacious cousin had drifted back there and was in conversation with Dan, Norman, Reggie and John. ‘Anyway it turned out it was no good.’
‘Bad luck,’ he commiserated. ‘If you’re serious about finding somewhere to live, I could keep my ears open for you.’
‘We’re serious all right.’ November was slipping away and Christmas was on the horizon. ‘We’d like to find somewhere before the New Year. Anyway, is it true that you’ve asked Irene Bradley to be your housekeeper?’
‘Guilty as charged. The poor woman’s husband turned out to be unreliable – he took one look at the bouncing baby and vanished into the ether. As if things weren’t bad enough for Irene already, they were set to get ten times worse.’
‘So you rushed to her rescue.’ It came as no surprise really – she already knew that David’s sympathy for the underdog was well developed.
‘No, it was the other way round,’ he argued. ‘You’ve seen the state of my living quarters – Irene came to mine.’
They agreed to differ and danced in ever decreasing circles as the floor grew even more crowded. At the end of the number he held her for a few moments after the music had faded then released her with an oddly formal little bow. Then he led her back to the spot where he’d asked her to dance.