by Marie Joseph
‘Thank you.’ Lisa replaced the receiver, then ran upstairs to dress. She heard Millie letting herself in at the back door and, closing the bedroom door on a still-sleeping Richard, she tiptoed along the wide landing.
Millie was wearing her morning face, grimly set into the habitual lines of suffering. Lisa found it impossible to meet the untrue eyes. Quickly she explained where she was going.
‘I’m going now without telling Mr Carr what’s happened. If he hears he’ll insist on coming down. Tell him I didn’t want to wake him.’ She turned at the door. ‘The baby should sleep on. He had an extra bottle in the night.’
Millie’s silence meant she had heard. As Lisa left the house Millie was already setting the table for Irene’s breakfast, taking the cream off the milk for the huge bowl of cornflakes, cutting the bread into ‘soldiers’ for the boiled egg she had saved from her own ration. Now with that silly young girl out of the way she could slip into the fantasy which sustained her day by day. This was her house, that was her husband asleep in bed upstairs, and soon her precious little girl would come down and eat up all her breakfast. The baby … well, Millie hadn’t quite placed him yet. He was just a little animal to be fed and winded. A pity he wasn’t fair like his father. Millie frowned. From where had he got that bright red hair and those pale blue eyes? Like a blazing beacon his hair, glinting in the sunshine when she put him out in his pram. Maybe the colour would fade as he grew. At least he wasn’t dark. Like her … like his so-called mother.
The damage wasn’t as bad as Lisa had expected. By some strange quirk only one of the plate-glass windows had shattered. She was sweeping up the glass, picking up the bigger pieces with her fingers, when she looked up and saw Jonathan Grey watching her.
He wore his army captain’s uniform with a debonair style, the neb of the cap pushed rakishly to one side, and his greatcoat more Russian in length than British. He stepped in through the broken window to stand beside her, looking down at her with a remembered air of whimsicality.
‘You’ve cut your finger,’ he said.
Lisa flushed bright red. ‘You made me jump appearing suddenly like that.’ She nodded towards his suitcase. ‘Are you coming or going?’
‘Going.’ Jonathan took her finger, held it for a moment, then, putting it in his mouth, began to suck the blood away.
The totally unexpected, intimate gesture shook Lisa to the depths of her being. The long, almost sleepless night had left her worried and anxious. What to do about Millie? The matter of how she was going to live up to her impulsive intention of staying at home with the house and the children posed questions she was too tired to answer. Now, as Jonathan sucked seriously at her finger, she was aware of his dark, uptilted eyes regarding her with amusement, the clear brownness of his skin. She was twenty-one, that was all; this man knew her and why she was as she was. He was young, incredibly good-looking in his captain’s uniform, and there was at that moment a crazy excitement in being close to him.
‘Now we must wrap it up.’ Jonathan examined the finger critically. ‘Isn’t this where you lift your skirt and rip a piece from your petticoat?’
‘There’s a First Aid box through in the back.’ Lisa led the way, asking herself why she was trembling. It was the association he had with her past, she told herself, as Jonathan wound a narrow bandage round her finger. It was him appearing suddenly like that, and any minute he would say something insulting the way he always had, and they would be back on familiar ground.
‘How is your wife?’ she asked as lightly as she could. ‘I saw the picture of your wedding in the paper.’
Jonathan smiled down at her. She had forgotten how tall he was, but maybe that was because Richard was of only average height.
‘She’s OK. It’s my old man who’s the problem. We live with him, you know.’
‘In the same house?’
Jonathan nodded. ‘He drinks,’ he told her baldly. ‘He’s got to the stage now where he’s seldom sober, but he still goes down to the yard and fuddles his way through the days.’
‘That must be hard on your wife.’
‘She says it’s her duty. Everyone has a cross to bear and my old man is hers. Apparently,’ Jonathan added, smiling at Lisa with his mobile mouth.
All at once Lisa knew the smile was for smiling’s sake. She changed the subject quickly. ‘Richard’s in bed. With flu. Otherwise he would have been down here.’
‘Then you wouldn’t have cut your finger.’
‘No.’ Lisa stared at the bandage tied with a comical bow like rabbit’s ears on the top of her finger. But if she had, Richard would never have sucked the blood away. The very idea would have nauseated him. Richard had a hygienic temperament, she suddenly saw.
‘I never would have thought it,’ Jonathan was saying, his head on one side and the wicked glint back in his eyes.
‘Thought what?’
‘That such an ugly duckling could turn into such a beautiful swan. Motherhood suits you.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Amy told me. Read it in the paper. “A son for Lisa and Richard Carr. A brother for Irene.” Irene?’
‘My stepdaughter.’ Lisa wrinkled her nose. ‘Richard put that in thinking it would please her.’
‘And it didn’t?’
‘She hates the baby. I caught her pinching his cheek the day I brought him home. She hates me, too.’
‘Your cross?’
Lisa nodded. She found she was holding her breath as Jonathan glanced at his watch and gave a low whistle.
‘I must run.’
She followed him back through the shop and out on to the pavement. ‘I suppose I can’t ask where you’re going?’
The Jonathan smile was back again. ‘Well, I might be going where I’ll get sand in me butties. OK?’
People were beginning to hurry past on their way to work, stopping to stare at the broken windows. Suddenly Lisa wanted to snatch up her jacket from where she had thrown it over the counter, take his arm, and go with him to the station. Wait until the train drew away, savouring the last glimpse of the dark head, sending her prayers with him for his safe return.
She laid a hand on his khaki sleeve. ‘Don’t come to any harm, Jonathan,’ she whispered foolishly. ‘Come back safely.’
‘Lisa?’ His eyes were questioning. When his lips touched hers, soft and fleeting, she had an urge to wind her arms round his neck. Then he was gone, striding away from her with his loping walk, turning the corner, leaving her standing there, bewildered by the emotion flooding her body.
She turned back into the shop, and when Miss Howarth came in Lisa was staring in disbelief at a bolt of cloth with a hole going all the way through it.
‘Shrapnel,’ Miss Howarth said at once. ‘That Hitler’s got something to answer for. Fifty yards of best brocade ruined. The mean-minded faggot.’ Her arms came round Lisa, holding her close against a flat sloping bosom. ‘Nay, don’t take on so, love. It’s nobbut a bit of stuff. Better through that than through thee or me.’
‘Oh, Miss Howarth,’ Lisa sobbed. ‘Isn’t the war awful? It’s come home to me this morning just how awful it is.’
That night Lisa told Richard that of course Millie must stay; that with the onset of clothes rationing she realized that her dreams of expanding her own side of the business must wait until the war was over; that she would work from the shop.
‘Part-time would be best,’ Richard said. ‘You could work in the mornings, then take the baby out in the afternoons. To the park, or the clinic,’ he added vaguely. ‘You’d meet other mothers that way. Company your own age. Compare weights and things. Stop all this worriting about a so-called career. That way you’ll have the best of both worlds.’
Lisa looked hard at her husband, seeing the concern in his face, pale from the aftermath of his illness. He was old, she thought suddenly – exactly twice her own age.
‘Oh, Richard,’ she sighed, as his arms came round her, holding her close.
Eight
In spite of her growing success she was a very lonely woman.
With the end of clothes rationing her career had expanded in every fresh line she took up, in spite of the post-war depression. The simple patterns and designs, so much the Lisa Logan hallmark, appealed to women starved of colour and imaginative lines. She used mainly her favourite Monet colours of lilac and soft pinks, giving her work an easily recognizable stamp of individuality.
Millie Schofield came in daily, even at weekends, giving Richard what Lisa supposed most men secretly wanted: two women catering for his every whim. It was, Lisa supposed, a ménage à trois, in the non-sexual sense, a situation she was forced to tolerate if she wanted to make money and yet more money. So the three of them lived in an uneasy truce.
Irene had been accepted at a Teachers’ Training College in Yorkshire, and her earnestness moved Lisa almost to tears. She was still plump, but her golden hair and milkmaid complexion gave her, Lisa knew, a ripe attraction appealing to older men, especially those who still hankered after their mothers.
Peter, at eight, grew daily more like his grandfather, Angus Logan. Tall, thin, with hair as bright as a copper warming pan, he gave no trouble, either to his parents or to his teachers at the local school. Millie could stuff him with food to her heart’s content without adding to his lean frame.
‘That lad’s got hollow legs,’ Richard said one evening, puffing contentedly at his pipe. He smiled at Lisa as she sat on the floor beside his chair surrounded by drawings, sheets of figures and samples of materials.
‘It’s time we opened another shop.’ Tucking a strand of hair behind an ear Lisa looked straight at him. ‘Now that we sell as much dress material as curtain yardage, we’re very short of space.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘Richard, I’ve seen an empty shop in Nelson Street, and just round the corner on some waste land there’s a small warehouse. That’s empty too.’
Before he could speak she held up a finger. ‘No, don’t say anything. Hear me out first. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and that little warehouse wouldn’t take much converting to a factory. I’d start with, say, a dozen sewing machines and two lay-out tables, and there’s room at one end for a partitioned-off office for the administrative side.’
The expression on Richard’s face brought a note of pleading into her voice. ‘Richard! Listen! Please! The overheads would be negligible. Now the war is over hem-lines are coming down, skirts getting fuller. Women are going crazy for the New Look. They’re longing to spend money on clothes after years of austerity and square shoulders.’ She held out a sketch. ‘See! That’s the way they want to look. Nipped-in waists and the feel of material floating round their legs. Our material, yards and yards of it. The days have gone when three yards of 36-inch made a dress, and a pair of cami-knickers had to be got from a single yard.’
Richard had lost the thread of what she was saying. How lovely she was, even lovelier at twenty-nine than as a young girl. No longer hankering after a sun-kissed complexion, Lisa now accentuated the magnolia creaminess of her skin by drawing attention to her large grey-blue eyes with smudged grey eye pencil, and mascara brushed on her long eyelashes. The little job he allowed her to do kept her happy, and he had to admit she had a rare and unique talent for design. He even thought he understood the reason for her wanting to branch out into what he liked to think of as a man’s world of business.
After what Lisa’s father had done, getting himself hopelessly into debt, it followed that his daughter needed to prove she could succeed, just to show she was Angus Logan’s daughter in name only. Richard sucked at his pipe, smiling on her with tolerance, rather proud of the way he’d worked that little problem out for himself.
‘So, in view of what I intend to do,’ Lisa was saying now, ‘I’d like to be entirely responsible for this new venture.’ Her voice came out just a fraction too loud. ‘Richard, I’d like my own bank account, and my own cheque book.’ She went on firmly: ‘I’ll need a loan to get started, but I know you’ll help me there. Our credit is high at the bank.’ Rummaging in a folder, she held out a sheet of figures. ‘Look. I’ve worked it all out in rough. It’s scarey at first glance, but I know my timing’s right, and the customers are already there. They know me and ask for me. I’m having to reject orders, Richard. I’ve got a long waiting list, so it would be criminal not to expand!’ Her eyes were suddenly wary. ‘And I want to do this on my own. It’s my idea and I want to feel free to do it my way. Can you see that?’
For a moment Richard said nothing, then he knocked out his pipe with such fury that Lisa looked up from her folder, startled.
‘Good God, what kind of talk is all that? We’re married, for heaven’s sake! You’re not some silly single career woman who thinks she can succeed on her own. You’re my wife and we share. And sharing means having a joint bank account for a start off! I’m the one responsible for you and your debts, and I always will be.’
‘My debts?’ Lisa spluttered into an angry torrent of words. ‘My debts? Oh, come now, Richard. I’ve more than doubled the takings. I’ve worked hard and every single penny I’ve earned has gone into the business. What bloody debts of mine have you ever had to pay?’
‘If you’re going to swear… .’
‘You make me swear. You try to pretend that what I’m doing is merely a nice little sideline, a hobby to keep me happy. And as long as my earnings are mingled with the business you can go on pretending. You won’t let me be, Richard. You have to stand back this time and let me be. Can’t you see?’
‘Your earnings?’ Richard snorted. ‘I thought we were the same firm. In every way. I haven’t objected to you working, have I? If I hadn’t been willing to keep Millie on you’d have been forced to stay at home doing the housework like any normal wife. Millie’s been doing your job for years.’
‘You hypocrite!’
‘Keep your voice down. She hasn’t gone yet.’
‘Call her in, then! She’ll side with you, that’s for sure.’ Lisa took a deep breath, almost sick with disgust. ‘You insisted that Millie stayed on. You like it this way… .’ She gestured at the drawings littering the carpet. ‘All right, then. I’ll go to the bank myself, using your credibility to get a loan. If we’re in the same firm that shouldn’t be too difficult.’
A flush of anger heightened the colour in Richard’s cheeks. ‘And you say you love me?’
Lisa sighed. ‘I love you. There’s a part of me that even enjoys your supportiveness. It’s very important for a wife to feel she’s being taken care of.’ She gathered the sketches together. ‘But loving you doesn’t turn me into your shadow.’ Her mouth quirked upwards. ‘Come on, now, love. You’d soon lose your respect for me if I wanted to live my life vicariously through you and Irene and Peter, wouldn’t you? You’d hate there to be no more to me than that.’
That night Richard made love to her, and when it was over went immediately to sleep.
Lisa stared wide-eyed into the darkness.
She was a lucky woman, she told herself. She, who once had nothing, had a home, a husband who loved her, and a job she enjoyed. She would make him go with her to see the empty shop and the warehouse, make him agree to her plans. She could make anyone do anything if she tried hard enough.
All at once the loneliness swamped her again, leaving her bereft and as lost as a tiny child whose hand has slipped from a parent’s grasp.
When Richard saw the shop he agreed it could be a viable proposition and, shaming her by his generous capitulation, set the wheels in motion for the purchase. The warehouse, however, posed a stumbling block neither of them could have anticipated.
‘It was bought for redevelopment before the war,’ the solicitor told them. ‘Since then nothing has been done. I’ve made inquiries, but as far as I can see the owner has shown no further interest in the property.’
>
He coughed politely behind a blue-veined hand. ‘My client is not a man easy to approach. Something of an odd-bod, I would say.’ The second cough was even more discreet than the first. ‘My advice would be to contact him directly. He seems to view the legal profession with suspicion. Put the telephone down on me, to be frank.’
‘And his name?’ Richard asked before Lisa could speak, wanting to give the impression, she knew, that all this business was his own idea – that he had brought his wife along merely to humour her. ‘It might be worth having a word with him, as you say,’ he conceded.
The solicitor consulted a slip of paper in a dark green folder. ‘Patrick Grey, the builder and property developer. The firm of Patrick Grey and Son, General Building Contractors. The office and main yard are in Reading Street, but if you would like his private address …? I would have to ask his permission, of course.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Lisa refused to look at Richard. Oh, dear God – the Greys. Patrick and his son Jonathan. Was she never to be rid of them? Since that last disturbing meeting with Jonathan during the war, when he had kissed her, leaving her struggling with feelings she could not define, she had seen him twice. Once from her seat on the top of a bus, as he was striding along the pavement, hatless, the collar of his raincoat turned up against a biting wind. And once as a head in a crowd round the war memorial in the park on Armistice Day. Both times he had been alone, and both times she had wanted to go after him and tell him of her thankfulness that he had come back safely from the war.
He was a part of her life, probably the only person who knew her from the old days when she had been young Lisa Logan, ashamed of her sprouting chest and her freckles. He was, she supposed, a friend who would always be her friend, in spite of the intervening years when he had most likely forgotten her existence.