‘I can see what you mean,’ Vincent mumbled, his eyes troubled as he looked across the desk at his employer. He was thinking not only of himself but of the other men who would be thrown out of work tomorrow. They were all married men, too, except for Billie Johnson, the plumber’s mate.
Varley said, ‘Naturally, I’ll tell the lads meself. Tomorrow. I wouldn’t be leaving owt like that to you, shirking me duty, so to speak. I shall be able to meet this week’s pay roll, but that’s about it. No severance pay, no bonuses, nowt like that, I’m sorry to say.’ Fred Varley leaned over his desk, and added, concerned, ‘When you get your cards tomorrow, Vincent, I should go up and sign on at once at the Public Assistance Board, if I was you. Better start drawing the dole as soon as you can.’
Vincent nodded grimly.
‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to sort out this mess,’ Mr Varley remarked, rising, obviously wanting to terminate this difficult conversation. ‘And things are bound to turn around in the country right soon. The Depression can’t last forever. I intend to start afresh you knows, and in the not too distant future, and what I want to say is this—when I do open up again, there’ll be a job for you, Vincent. I do hope you’d come back to me.’
Vincent also stood up. ‘Thanks, Mr Varley, and yes, I would. You’ve always been very decent with me, very fair indeed. And I’m sorry your business has gone down the drain, really sorry.’
‘Aye, lad, so am I. And I’m doubly sorry for you and the rest of the men. I know how rough it’s going to be on all of you.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Mr Varley. Ta’rar.’
‘Ta’rar, lad.’
CHAPTER 23
Vincent Crowther sat in the recreation grounds, behind the park in Moorfield Road, smoking a Woodbine.
He was no longer aware of the beautiful Indian Summer afternoon, and all of his earlier jauntiness had dissipated. He was engulfed in his worries about earning a living in order to support himself and Audra.
Only the other day he had read in the Yorkshire Post that there were one million nine hundred thousand men out of work in England. ‘Plus one,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘now that I’m about to join them.’ The idea of going on the dole appalled him. But he would have to do so, since there was nothing else he could do until he found another job.
When he had left Varley’s office he had felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach and the feeling persisted. He had wandered into the little park twenty minutes ago, hoping to clear his befuddled head, marshal his swimming senses before he went home. But he was still stunned, and just a bit bewildered. He had believed Fred Varley to be shrewd and successful, had never once imagined that the firm could go out of business, that Fred Varley, of all people, would go down. Just goes to show, he thought, you never really know about anybody.
Vincent had no idea where to begin to find work, for the simple reason that there weren’t any jobs to be had. Nor did he have any idea how he was going to break this terrible news to Audra.
What a blow it’ll be for her, he thought, and just when she was on her feet again after little Alfie’s death. He groaned out loud, then took a long, satisfying drag on his cigarette. He suddenly held it away, looked at it with a frown, asking himself how long he would be able to afford his Woodbines. And his pint of bitter. And a bet on the ponies on Saturday afternoons. A grimness settled over him. The prospects looked bleak. Bloody bleak indeed.
Rubbing his hand over his forehead, he closed his eyes, thinking about the money he had in the Yorkshire Penny Bank. Not much really. His savings would only tide them over for a month, at the most. And all he could expect to get on the dole was something like a pound a week for the two of them, perhaps a shilling or two more. Obviously he was going to have to do his damnedest to get a job, no matter what it was, or where it was, for that matter. He might well have to try other areas of Leeds, such as Bramley, Stanningley or Wortley, or go even farther afield to Pudsey and Farsley.
‘Well, well, well, if it’s not the gentleman of leisure! I wish I had time to sit on a park bench in the rec and idly fritter away the afternoon—and in the middle of the week no less!’
Vincent recognized the deep, masculine voice of his friend and brother-in-law. He opened his eyes, stared into Mike Lesley’s warm and friendly face peering down into his. ‘Yes, that’s what I am, Mike,’ he said with a weak laugh, ‘a gentleman of leisure… as of about half an hour ago. Yes, I’ve joined the ranks of the unemployed, like the rest of me mates, and half the bleeding country.’
Mike sat down heavily and frowned at his friend. ‘I know you’re not joking, Vince, I know you wouldn’t joke about anything as serious as this, but what happened? I thought Varley’s was the one building firm in these parts that was doing well.’
‘So did I, so did everybody. But old man Varley just broke the news to me himself, about half an hour ago. He’s going into bankruptcy.’
Mike shook his sandy head slowly, his expression immediately turning dismal. ‘The situation’s dreadful. I heard of three other companies that have gone down in the last month and God knows where it’s all going to end. But look here, Vincent, you’re a skilled man, surely you’ll be able to find something fairly soon—’
‘Not bloody likely!’ Vincent interrupted. ‘Even Mr Varley has seen the writing on the wall, as far as I’m concerned, that is. He suggested that I sign on at the Labour Exchange at once.’
Mike was silent. He shrugged further into his tweed overcoat and his compassionate hazel eyes filled with concern for his best friend. He wondered if there was anything he could do to help Vincent find a job. He doubted it.
There was a momentary silence between these two young men who had gravitated to each other from the first moment they had met. They had grown even closer in the last couple of years and were like brothers now that Mike was married to Laurette. He was younger than Vincent, but he was blessed with great insight. If anyone understood the unusually complex man who was Vincent Crowther, then it was Mike Lesley.
Suddenly Vincent said, ‘However will I tell Audra that I’ve lost my job?’
Mike’s sandy brows drew together in a puzzled frown. ‘You’ll tell her in the same way that you’ve told me, very directly,’ Mike said.
‘She’s going to be upset, to put it mildly… I couldn’t stand it if she fell back into that awful depression. When I think of this spring, when she was so ill after Alfie died, I tremble in me boots, I do that, Mike. Audra was so odd, she was like a stranger to me.’
‘Yes, she was in a bad way,’ Mike conceded, ‘but a lot of women react as she did when they lose a child, especially when it’s the first baby. They’re demented for a while. And her loss was a terrible one, in that she’s had so many other losses in her life already.’
‘Yes, she has. Poor Audra.’
‘Look here, Vince, my money is on your wife. She’s an indomitable young woman. Why, she’s got more character in her little finger that most people have in their entire bodies. She’s plucky, a fighter, and she’s full of Yorkshire grit and determination. I have a strong feeling that that wife of yours will take this news without flinching.’
‘I hope to God you’re right, Mike, I do that.’ Vincent pushed himself up off the park bench. ‘Well, there’s no point putting it off, I’d better get on home and tell her.’
‘I think you should.’ Mike rose and the two of them walked across the recreation grounds together.
‘Do you still want to go to the City Varieties on Saturday night?’
‘Of course I do!’ Vincent exclaimed. ‘I can see no reason to change our plans. Anyway, Audra and Laurette have been looking forward to going, I wouldn’t want them to be disappointed.’
‘Neither would I,’ Mike agreed.
***
The moment he strode into the cottage in Pot Lane, Vincent knew that something had happened—something special.
There was a record playing on the gramophone in the sitting room, filling the house with the s
trains of a Gilbert and Sullivan song from The Mikado. A vase of bronze and yellow autumnal chrysanthemums stood in the centre of the table, which had been covered with a lace cloth and laid for supper with their best china. He surveyed the table, wondering if someone had been invited, but saw at once that it was set only for two. Glancing around the parlour-kitchen with quickening interest, Vincent next noticed the bottle of red wine on the set-pot; then he sniffed. His mouth began to water as he recognized the faint aroma of his favourite lamb stew coming through the oven door, which was slightly ajar. Pursing his lips, he wondered what was afoot, his curiosity truly fired now.
He had just taken off his coat and cap and hung them in the closet when the staircase door opened and Audra stepped into the kitchen. She wore a pretty, delphinium-blue blouse that matched her eyes and a dark skirt—plus the biggest smile he had seen on her face in ages.
‘You look nice, love,’ he said, observing her appreciatively through his narrowed green gaze, half smiling as he spoke. He waved his hand around the room. ‘What are we celebrating then? Have you come into some sort of windfall?’
‘You might say we’ve had two windfalls, in a sense…’ She left her sentence dangling and ran to kiss his cheek. Then she stood away from him, gave him a queer, almost smug, smile and led him by the arm to the fireside. She took an envelope off the mantelpiece, waved it in front of his eyes. ‘First, there’s this! It’s a letter from that firm of solicitors in Ripon, you know, the ones who wrote to me in June to tell me that Great-Aunt Frances Reynolds had died and that she had left me something in her will. You thought it was going to be another piece of silver, or that china teapot I admired, but it isn’t either. It’s fifty pounds, Vincent! Wasn’t that lovely of her?’
‘Aye, lass, it certainly was,’ he said with a grin, thinking that Audra’s little legacy could not have come at a more propitious time. He was about to say so, wanting to tell her that he had lost his job, get the unpleasant task over with, when she prevented this. She flung herself at him and hugged him so tightly he was taken aback.
But he hugged her in return, stared down into her face.
He saw that it was filled with laughter and her bright eyes were more brilliantly blue than ever: there was a radiance about her. ‘What is it, Audra? You look like the cat that’s swallowed the canary. Right chuffed with yourself, my girl, that’s what you are!’
‘Yes, I am, Vincent. I went to see Doctor Stalkley this morning and he’s confirmed it to me. I’m two months pregnant. We’re going to have a baby… next May.’
It seemed to Vincent that his heart did a tiny somersault of joy. He had been praying that she would get pregnant. Another child would fill the terrible void Alfie had left, and for both of them, not just her. His grief had been as acute as hers, and he still thought about his dead son with sorrow.
Vincent drew her closer, pressed her head against his chest, stroked the crown of her burnished head. ‘You couldn’t have told me anything better, love,’ he said. ‘I’ve been hoping to hear this for months, I really have. No wonder you’re chuffed… so am I.’
‘I thought you would be, Vincent.’
His response was to tighten his arms around her. And he decided not to spoil the special evening she had planned for them by giving her his bad news. He would tell her about Varley’s going bankrupt tomorrow. That was soon enough.
Unexpectedly, and much to his astonishment, he suddenly felt optimistic about finding a job. The baby was a lucky omen.
CHAPTER 24
‘Oh, Audra, what a bonny little girl!’ Gwen cried, her face lighting up as she bent over the hospital bed to look at the new-born infant in Audra’s arms. ‘She’s just perfect.’
‘Thank you, Gwen, I think so, too, but then I’m her mother, so I suppose that’s natural.’ Audra smiled up at her friend, who had dropped in unexpectedly to visit her at St Mary’s Hospital, then turned her eyes to the bedside table. She let them rest on the lavish bouquet Gwen had placed there a moment before. ‘And thank you for the flowers, they’re lovely.’
‘Well, you always did like yellow roses, lovey. There’s also this…’ Gwen placed a package on the bed. ‘It’s for—’ She stopped, glanced at the baby and laughed. ‘You haven’t told me her name.’
‘Goodness, how stupid I am. We’re going to call her Christina. Do you like it?’
‘Oh I do, it’s ever such a pretty name.’ Seating herself on the chair next to the bed, Gwen leaned forward and touched the gift. ‘Shall I open this for you… and Christina?’
Audra laughed. ‘Please.’
‘I hope you like it,’ Gwen murmured as she untied the ribbon around the fancy box and took off the lid. She lifted out a shell-pink dress with deeper, rose-pink smocking across the front, and held it up for Audra to see. ‘It’s silk and it’s handmade.’ She looked at Audra expectantly.
‘Oh Gwen, it’s exquisite and I love it! Christina will look so pretty in it, but you are extravagant.’ Audra reached out and squeezed Gwen’s hand.
Gwen beamed with pleasure. She leaned back in her chair and regarded Audra thoughtfully. ‘I must say, you do look well. Certainly a lot better than you did after you’d had Alfie—’ Her voice quavered as she said his name, and she stopped, chagrined. ‘Oh, I’m sorry…’
‘Don’t be so silly, Gwenny, we can’t avoid mentioning Alfie’s name occasionally, and it doesn’t upset me, truly it doesn’t.’ Audra smiled at her reassuringly. ‘I’ve recovered from his death now, in the sense that my grief has lessened. It’s not too painful any more. Of course, I shall never forget Alfie and I shall always love him, hold him dear in my heart. But there’s Christina now.’
Audra dropped her eyes to the child in her arms and smiled down at her, then glanced at Gwen. ‘I feel quite wonderful, really. It was an easy birth, just as it was an easy pregnancy. It’s odd, isn’t it, that I had such a bad time with Alfie. But I hardly knew I was carrying Christina and the delivery was over before I could blink—well, almost.’
Gwen nodded her stylishly-bobbed blonde head. ‘Yes, it often happens that way.’ She gazed out of the window almost absently, and a wistful expression flitted across her face. ‘You are lucky… I wish I could get pregnant.’
‘Oh you will, just give it time.’
‘Time!’ Gwen laughed softly. ‘It’s May 1931. I’ve been married exactly two years and one month.’ She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, added, ‘But then again, Geoffrey says I’m too anxious, too tense, and that I must relax about having a baby.’
‘Perhaps he’s correct, after all he is a doctor. And how is Geoffrey?’
‘Oh he’s all right.’ Gwen jumped up abruptly. ‘The nurses on this ward seem to be very careless in the execution of their duties. These roses will be half dead by the time one of them decides to bring a vase.’ She reached for the bunch of flowers. ‘I’ll put them in water… be back in a jiffy.’
Audra’s eyes followed Gwen as she walked up the ward. She had changed a lot in the last two years, as Audra had known she would. He had changed her… changed the way she dressed and spoke and walked and perhaps even the way she thought. And she had changed yet again since the last time they had met. There was definitely something odd about Gwen today, something that Audra could not quite put her finger on. They saw each other infrequently these days, since their friendship had continued to drift after their marriages. And so the slightest difference in Gwen was most apparent to Audra, the shrewd observer, when they did meet. It has to do with her appearance, Audra now thought, frowning. Was it her outfit? Certainly the black linen dress and jacket were rather dowdy, and stark with their lack of adornment. Also, the sombre colour drained the life from her face. But no, it was not her clothes. It was something else, something indefinable.
Puzzled, Audra let her eyes rest on Gwen as she marched back to the bed, carrying the vase of roses. And as she drew nearer, Audra knew, suddenly, what it was that was so different about her friend today. All of the light in her eyes had died.
She’s no longer happy with him, Audra thought, if she ever was. That’s why she doesn’t want to talk about him, the reason she leapt up and rushed to put the roses in water. Oh poor Gwenny, she expected so much from this marriage, envisioned such a wonderful life for herself with Geoffrey, and I bet it’s pure hell.
‘Thank you,’ Audra murmured when Gwen placed the vase on the night stand. She scrutinized her surreptitiously. Yes, there was a sadness behind those pretty pale blue eyes and a funny little droop to Gwen’s mouth which had not been there before.
Gwen interrupted her thoughts, when she announced, ‘I just want you to know that I gave that young nurse a good ticking off.’
‘I bet you did… you see how it is, Gwen, when you’re back on a ward you want to take charge… old habits die hard, don’t they?’
‘Yes, perhaps they do.’ Gwen sat down, went on, ‘Whilst we’re on the subject of nursing, are you going back to work for that woman in The Towers when you get out of hospital?’
‘You mean Mrs Jarvis… oh yes, I promised her, and I can’t let her down. She’s not at all well, and besides, we need the money.’
A sympathetic look flashed across Gwen’s face as she remarked, ‘It must be awful for you, lovey, Vincent still being out of work.’
‘Well, it’s worse for him, really,’ Audra said softly, eyeing Gwen carefully, detecting criticism in her tone. ‘The frustration of not being able to find a job is dreadful for him, as I’m sure you can appreciate. Vincent’s not a lay-about, or a lazy man, you know, and—’
‘I wasn’t suggesting anything like that!’ Gwen cried, flushing slightly.
Ignoring this comment, Audra continued speaking in an even voice, ‘He’s out again this afternoon, doing the rounds. He’s very responsible. He follows up on every lead.’
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