Dreams to Sell

by Anne Douglas

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas

  CATHERINE’S LAND

  AS THE YEARS GO BY

  BRIDGE OF HOPE

  THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS

  GINGER STREET

  A HIGHLAND ENGAGEMENT

  THE ROAD TO THE SANDS

  THE EDINBURGH BRIDE

  THE GIRL FROM WISH LANE*

  A SONG IN THE AIR*

  THE KILT MAKER*

  STARLIGHT*

  THE MELODY GIRLS*

  THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTERS*

  PRIMROSE SQUARE*

  THE HANDKERCHIEF TREE*

  TENEMENT GIRL*

  DREAMS TO SELL*

  * available from Severn House

  DREAMS TO SELL

  Anne Douglas

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Anne Douglas.

  The right of Anne Douglas to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Douglas, Anne, 1930

  Dreams to sell.

  1. Edinburgh (Scotland)–Fiction. 2. Great Britain–

  History–George VI, 1936-1952–Fiction. 3. Love stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8330-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-473-7 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  One

  Cold as Christmas, or so it seemed in the Rainey girls’ room, yet here it was, March. March, when it shouldn’t be still winter, when there was supposed to be a hint of spring. Not so’s you’d notice when you’d to face getting out of bed.

  Still, Roz didn’t mind the cold too much. Always first up, she moved fast, jumping from her bed, pulling on the dressing gown she’d made herself and sprinting down to the bathroom the Raineys shared with two other families. In fact, it was to reach the bathroom, on the half-landing below, before Todd Atkinson came up complaining from the ground floor, which made Roz hurry now, while her sister, Chrissie, in her narrow bed, peacefully slept on. The last thing Roz wanted when she was washing was Todd shouting through the door, as he liked to do, ‘If that’s one o’ you Rainey lassies in there, come on oot, time’s up, I’ve to get to work!’ As though they didn’t all have to get to work!

  Luckily, the tiny bathroom was still vacant when Roz reached it and she was able to wash and do her teeth in peace, only having to face the glowering Todd when she came out, tall and slim in her dressing gown, her dark red hair damp, her cheeks rosy with cold water and her grey eyes bright.

  ‘All ready for you, Mr Atkinson!’

  ‘And aboot time too!’ he bellowed, pushing past her, a big man in his vest and corduroy trousers. ‘I was just going to rattle the door, I’m telling you.’

  Oh, the joy of sharing with neighbours! Roz, running back to her mother’s flat, vowed again – yes, again, that one day she’d have a beautiful detached house of her own, with a splendid heated bathroom where she could take a bath every day, not just a freezing cold wash, and lie in the bath as long as she liked with no one shouting through the door!

  Maybe she shouldn’t complain. If she lived in a tenement there’d very likely be no bathroom at all, so life in an Edinburgh terraced house, now converted into three small flats, could be a lot worse. It was only that working in a lawyer’s property office brought her into contact with houses that were so much better. Couldn’t blame her for dreaming!

  Back in the little room she shared with her sister, she dressed quickly in the clothes she’d laid out the night before – white blouse, dark wool jacket and calf-length black skirt, which still followed in 1949 the New Look fashion Dior had introduced in 1947. Then it was time to run a comb through her hair before starting the breakfast she’d have to make once she’d turfed her brother, Dougal, out of his cupboard bed and knocked on Ma’s door. Oh, yes, and pulled the covers off Chrissie.

  ‘No!’ squealed Chrissie.

  ‘Yes,’ cried Roz, laughing. ‘Come on, now, you know you’ve to get to the café on time.’

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Chrissie murmured, sitting on the edge of her
bed. At twenty, she was three years younger than her sister, shorter and not so slim – something she minded – but more conventionally pretty, some thought, with a cloud of soft fair hair and clear blue eyes. There were photographs of Flo, their mother, showing her to have looked very much the same as Chrissie in her youth, but life had changed for Flo and so had she.

  ‘All right for me, you say?’ Roz asked. ‘I’d to get up too.’

  ‘Aye, but you like going to work,’ sighed Chrissie. ‘I’d just as soon not.’

  ‘Like a lot of folk.’ Roz shrugged. ‘Suppose I am lucky, to like my work.’

  ‘Of course you’re lucky! You’re the bright one.’

  The bright one? Roz shrugged again. Well, folk said so. She’d done well at school, it was true, and had been lucky enough to win a small cash prize that had meant she could take a typing course, which had led to a job in a city office before she’d got what she really wanted – the post of assistant in a lawyer’s property department.

  All her life, she’d been interested in houses. Even as a child she’d daydreamed about owning a beautiful house of her own, and if the dreams were a long way from reality, when she’d left school she’d been sure that working with houses would be the next best thing. And so it proved. She was doing well in her job, not just typing particulars but accompanying her boss, seeing houses and gaining experience all the time. Now all she had to do was climb the ladder for promotion and maybe one day she’d be in charge of a property department herself. What an achievement that would be! Except that it was going to be a lot harder than she’d ever imagined, if not impossible.

  Leaving Chrissie to roll slowly out of bed, Roz moved away to do her morning chores.

  Two

  First, with her usual apprehension, she knocked on the door of the room that had once been shared by her parents but now was her mother’s alone. How would Ma be? You never knew, you see, from one day to the next.

  ‘All right?’ Roz called at last. ‘All right, Ma?’

  ‘All right, pet,’ came Flo Rainey’s faint reply and, with a sigh of relief, Roz hurried on to check on poor old Dougal, her brother, who had to sleep in a cupboard.

  Well, not exactly a cupboard, but not much more, it being a tiny room off what had been the principal bedroom of the house in Edwardian days and was now the Raineys’ living-room-cum-kitchen. Dougal, now twenty-two and a tall, blond, strapping fellow, had to manage as best he could with a small bed and little space, the only place to put his things being a share of his mother’s chest of drawers, making him sometimes complain that if he’d been a lassie, he’d have had a proper bedroom, eh?

  ‘And then there’d have been three of us in a room instead of two,’ Roz would remind him. ‘And you know how much space we’ve got.’

  That morning, she was relieved to see that he was already up and dressed in a shirt and trousers, a towel round his neck, shaving gear in his hand and his bed clothes in a pile, which was his idea of making his bed. Draped over a chair were the overalls he’d be wearing for his work in a machine tools firm, a job he’d taken on following his national service after the war, and which he never said much about. Roz always supposed he enjoyed it. Or, rather, hoped he did.

  ‘Better get in the queue for the bathroom,’ she told him, tying on a large blue pinafore. ‘Time’s getting on and you don’t want those MacGarry boys from up the stair cutting in.’

  Evan and Bob MacGarry were brothers in their twenties who shared the top flat and were both in good jobs – draughtsmen, no less – but how did they manage in the flat? Roz often wondered, for they’d lost both their parents and looked after themselves. Still, they were good young neighbours – a great improvement on Todd Atkinson, that was for sure!

  ‘I’m going to make the porridge now,’ Roz told Dougal, ‘and, no, there’s no bacon – we’ve had our ration, and we don’t get eggs till the weekend.’

  ‘Damned rationing,’ Dougal muttered. ‘Four years after the war and we’re no better off. Worse, in fact. Stuff’s rationed now that wasn’t even rationed in the war, how about that?’

  ‘They say food’s so short, we have to help other countries who are worse off than we are,’ Roz told him, taking out the porridge pan. ‘At least clothes are off the ration; suppose we should be grateful for that.’

  ‘Who cares about clothes? Food’s all that matters.’

  ‘Bathroom’s free!’ cried Chrissie from the doorway. ‘Better be quick, though, Dougal. The MacGarry lads will be down any minute.’

  ‘As long as I don’t have to see old Atkinson,’ said Dougal, disappearing, as Chrissie ran to get dressed and Roz rushed about, preparing porridge and boiling the kettle for tea.

  It was pleasant enough in the kitchen end of the main room, she reflected, with the warmth of the little range beginning to give out heat, the kettle singing, the porridge bubbling. If only the living area weren’t so cluttered, stuffed as it was with pieces of second-hand furniture, including a heavy sideboard where Flo had placed a photograph of her husband and her children’s father, Arthur Rainey, in his soldier’s uniform.

  Roz never liked to look at that. Too sad. Too much of a reminder that life had never been the same since he’d been killed at El Alamein during the Second World War. Her mother liked to look at it, though, in spite of taking Arthur’s death so hard. Always had, even though being so depressed it was the family who’d had to take over for her until she’d felt up to taking a job again. Now she was working behind the cash desk in the same café where Chrissie was a waitress. She was certainly better than she’d been, even if they did still have to tread carefully around her, taking each day as it came.

  Doesn’t seem too bad today, Roz thought, feeling relieved again as her mother appeared, looking bright enough, a cigarette at her lips and a shawl over her nightdress.

  ‘Is the tea ready?’ she asked hoarsely. ‘I’ll get dressed later.’

  ‘Everything’s ready, Ma. And here come the others.’

  ‘Morning, Ma!’ called Dougal.

  ‘Morning, Ma,’ murmured Chrissie, giving her mother a hug.

  And as they all sat down to their breakfast, the family exchanging glances that said all was well, Flo stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray Roz had placed ready.

  ‘Awful cold this morning, eh?’ she asked, sipping her tea. ‘When’ll spring be coming, then?’

  ‘Och, I reckon it’s on its way,’ Dougal told her. ‘But then, I’m an optimist.’

  Three

  By the time the kitchen clock showed half past eight, they were all scattered: Flo and Chrissie to the Café Sunshine off St Andrew Square, Dougal to his firm in Fountainbridge, Roz to the offices of Tarrel and Thom’s in the New Town. Unfortunately, she couldn’t go all the way by tram, which meant she had to finish the journey that morning running through a biting wind, worrying that she would be late. In fact, when she reached Tarrel’s offices in elegant Queen Street, she was exactly on time, but it had been a near thing.

  Mr MacKenna, in charge of the property department, was nice and easy-going. He was a big, broad man in his forties who couldn’t be a better boss, but Mr Banks, the head of the firm, was a stickler for punctuality, correct dress and professional manners. It wouldn’t do to be caught by him coming in late, especially with wind-blown hair and a look of anxiety.

  Luckily, he wasn’t about when Roz arrived, and nor, of course, was anyone called either Tarrel or Thom, both founders of the law firm being long dead, although Mr Banks was a great nephew of the Henry Tarrel who’d first opened his doors as a lawyer back in the 1850s. No property department then, of course, but Mr Banks, being a shrewd businessman, was as keen to move with the times as any other competitor and always backed new ideas, if sound, and if the firm’s high standards were observed.

  Which, of course, they were, not only by Mr MacKenna in his department and in his general legal duties, but also by his colleagues, Mr Newman and Mr Wray, who were both partners in the firm.

  There were n
o women lawyers, Roz had noticed when she was first appointed. Apart from herself, the only women employed were Miss Calder, secretary to Mr Banks and unofficial clerk to the practice as she knew everything anyone wanted to know, and Norma Ward, office typist – the only person Roz called by her first name. Strictly formal, you could say, was Tarrel and Thom’s. But in that respect it wasn’t much different from most professional work places in 1949.

  Roz loved it, anyway, in spite of not finding herself on the ladder to promotion. She loved the wide entrance hall, where there were always flowers arranged by Miss Calder, and the large rooms lined with books. The solid mahogany desks, the leather chairs, the parquet floors, the smell of polish. All the building spelled quality and quality was what Roz appreciated.

  Maybe because her own home, the flat at 35 Deller Street in the St Leonard’s area of the city, though immensely better than some of the tenements she knew, was so lacking in the kind of quality she admired at Tarrel’s, she felt in spite of herself rather dissatisfied.

  She’d no right to complain. In fact, she was grateful that her parents had done so well to get to Deller Street, her dad not earning much, working at the electricity station and always finding the rent a struggle. No, no, she wouldn’t complain. Just couldn’t help dreaming of one day having some place of quality herself. Why not? Everyone was entitled to dream. Hoping she looked tidier than she felt, she picked up the post that had already been left for her by Miss Calder and hurried into the property department.

  Once a fine reception room in the original house, this was still spacious and elegant, though now divided to make a good-sized office for Mr MacKenna and a smaller one for his assistant, Roz. Hers had room only for a typing table and filing cabinets, whilst the lawyer’s held his great mahogany desk, his fine bookcases containing law manuals and reference books, and two leather chairs for clients. Prominent on one wall was a large street map, while another showed a collection of black and white photographs of properties for sale, the exterior views having been taken by a professional photographer, the interiors by Mr MacKenna or Roz herself.

  She had been pleased to learn how to use a camera and had become quite proficient at snapping sitting rooms and hallways, afterwards updating the collection regularly at the office as sales could move fast in Edinburgh. Like the rest of Scotland, there was no chain to hold up sales, offers being legally binding, having usually been made as sealed bids to lawyers’ private auctions – changes of mind, therefore, being costly and rare.