Best not to get involved.
‘No, thanks,’ she said airily, lifting her chin so he couldn’t guess how shy and insecure she felt. ‘I have to unpack and I’d like a quiet evening if you don’t mind. It’s been a long day.’
‘Give her time to settle in, for heaven’s sake,’ Jan protested.
The expression on his face could have been taken for disappointment had Lissa not known better. ‘What about the dance tomorrow then?’ he asked. ‘Will you come to that?’
She lifted her eyebrows and managed to shrug her shoulders with perfect disdain at the same time. ‘I really don’t think so.’
But the next day as she watched Jan try on various garments and agonise over what to wear Lissa felt sorely tempted to change her mind. She’d felt very strange inside when Derry smiled at her. A warm, tingly sort of feeling that had been most pleasant.
She pictured his face. It was really not at all bad looking with its long straight nose and curving lopsided smile. Brown eyes, thickly fringed with surprisingly long dark lashes, held an expression of permanent mischief, as if he knew some secret about life that had passed others by. Lissa guessed that he kept his brown hair slicked back with brilliantine in order to achieve that fashionable ‘Tony Curtis’ hair style he wore. It probably wasn’t nearly so dark when just washed, she found herself thinking, and decided on the whole that whatever its colour, the style suited him. Deny Colwith seemed pleasant enough, if a bit full of himself, despite the rather odd clothes he wore.
So why hadn’t she said yes?
Because she couldn’t be sure he really wanted her to accept? Because he would have a circle of friends already and she wouldn’t fit in.
‘You don’t want me hanging on your coat tails,’ she said now.
‘I hadn’t thought of wearing any but it’s not a bad idea. Bit different, eh?’ Jan joked.
‘You know what I mean.’
Jan twirled her circular cotton skirt, checking she showed just the right amount of petticoat and no stocking tops. ‘Don’t talk daft. You should come. The white blouse or the blue, do you think?’
Lissa considered. ‘The blue. I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’ She’d decided long since to have nothing at all to do with sex, or love either for that matter. She had no wish to make the same mistake as her mother and bring another unwanted child into the world. She would stay an unmarried virgin, like Queen Elizabeth I. So going to dances with young men was not a good idea. She did wonder though, if that were the case, why the idea of accepting was so very enticing.
Perhaps she really was wicked, just like Kath.
‘You should hear our Derry play,’ Jan was saying. ‘He’s not half bad. Even I, his ever non-loving sister, can tell that much.’ She took out some green eye shadow and began applying it thickly to her lids.
Lissa watched with interest, deciding that although Jan wasn’t pretty in the accepted sense of the word, there was an attractive, homely quality about her. A friendly girl, she was the sort of person you could rely on, or so Lissa hoped. However, the eye shadow would do little for her eyes while she screwed them up in that squinting way she had. Though not for world would Lissa say as much.
‘I’m sure he is,’ she agreed, watching intrigued as Jan outlined her lips with coral pink lipstick. ‘Does he have a girl friend?’ Now why had she asked that?
‘Oh lord, yes, millions. They hang about him like wasps round a jam pot. Sickening it is.’
She should have known.
‘But there’ll be loads of talent there. Male talent that is. It’ll be fun.’
If Lissa had been about to change her mind the mention of all these unknown friends at once put paid to the idea. She was an outsider. Jan was only feeling sorry for her and she had no intention of joining the crowd round Derry Colwith.
‘I’ve nothing to wear, and no money to buy anything,’ Lissa said, settling the issue.
‘You could borrow something of mine,’ Jan offered, not disagreeing with this statement.
Nevertheless Lissa kept to her decision not to go to the dance and sat at home and felt sorry for herself instead.
Chapter Four
The following weekend Lissa spent searching the village for a flat or even a room of her own which she could afford, but to no avail. The week after, she met with no greater success. After a month or more of fruitless searching Lissa had almost given up hope of ever finding a place of her own. Everywhere was either too big or too expensive. A winter let would have been easy to find, but with summer coming, the landladies could make more money out of the growing numbers of holiday makers.
She paid the Colwith family a small sum each week in return for her bed and board and she and Jan got along famously. Lissa had even grown used to the eccentric behaviour of Jimmy and Renee.
But she avoided any contact with Derry.
Fortunately he was out most of the time, either at work, or with his skiffle group. He enjoyed boasting of their success, of the way the girls would scream whenever he made an appearance. The moment he swaggered in through the door each evening he would jauntily challenge them with his disarming grin and claim to be worn out by their ardent attentions. Lissa refused to listen and would find some excuse to go upstairs.
Every morning Jan and Lissa walked together to work, enjoying the softness of the air as spring gradually changed into summer and the streets of the small town grew busier. At lunchtime they often took their sandwiches down to the lake, sitting on the benches by the band stand, feeding crusts to the mallards and moorhens that crowded the shore line and laughing at the upturned wagging tails in the water.
Their friendship was now teetering on the confiding stage and one morning as they were happily unpacking a new delivery of lingerie, giggling together over old ladies’ pink bloomers and corsets, Lissa felt able to risk a personal question.
‘Does it bother you, your father marrying a girl your own age?’
Jan gave her an old fashioned look. ‘What do you think? Anyway, she wasn’t just any girl, she was Derry’s girl friend. Hasn’t he told you? He brought her home for tea and Derry never had a look in from the moment they set eyes on each other.’
‘Goodness!’ Lissa tried not to picture Derry with the voluptuous Renee. It disturbed her somehow. ‘Doesn’t Renee mind? About the age difference, I mean.’
Jan shrugged. ‘She’s sixteen. Dad is forty-five. Makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it?’
Lissa agreed that it did. ‘No wonder Derry won’t speak to her.’ There had been several unpleasant scenes in the last few weeks when Derry had simply refused to acknowledge Renee’s presence, even so far as not setting a place for her at the dinner table. Jimmy often flared up in fury at his son, accusing him of insolence. But Lissa’s sympathies were now with Derry. She could recognise pain behind the jaunty insolence in his brown eyes. It was how she had felt every birthday when her mother had promised to come and never had.
‘What about your family?’ Jan casually asked. ‘You must miss them. Will you be going to visit them soon?’
‘I expect so. Meg will want to know how I’m getting on.’
‘Why do you call your mother Meg?’
‘She isn’t really my mother.’ Ever sensitive that people might be disapproving of her true status, Lissa had decided to be perfectly blunt about her illegitimacy. She had no intention of pretending to be what she was not. ‘I was dumped on her as a baby.’
‘Dumped?’
Jan forgot all about unwrapping corsets as she became absorbed in Lissa’s swiftly told tale. ‘Oh, how dreadful, to be abandoned.’ Her brown eyes, so like Derry’s, grew round and moist. ‘And this Meg, she’s loved you as her own daughter ever since? How wonderful.’
‘Yes, I suppose it was. Not that she was given much choice in the matter.’
‘Is that your real name then, Turner, or your adopted one?’
‘I’m illegitimate. A bastard. I don’t have a name?’ Lissa shrugged her shoulders with a laugh to sho
w that she didn’t care one way or the other and met Jan’s sympathetic gaze with belligerence in her own. ‘I wasn’t even adopted.’
Jan blinked, alarmed by the sharpness of the tone, then after a moment said, ‘Not your fault though, was it? You didn’t ask to be born. Why be so angry about it?’
‘I’m not angry.’
‘You sound it.’
‘I don’t need pity or advice, thanks very much.’
Jan flushed and paid excessive attention to opening a new package but couldn’t resist asking, ‘Have you ever met her then? Your real ma, I mean?’
Lissa shook her head and started to rip up the empty carton, stamping the cardboard flat. It made her feel a lot better. ‘Once, I think, when I was a child. I don’t remember her. She lives in Canada. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘That’s OK.’ Jan smiled. ‘I wouldn’t want sympathy either. Anyway, no one need know if you don’t tell them.’
The violet eyes sparkled with the light of battle. ‘I’m not pretending. I am what I am. This is me. Take me or leave me.’
Jan looked startled for a minute and then grinned. ‘I’ll take two, ta very much.’ Then they both burst into fits of girlish giggles, the prickly moment past.
‘I wish this shop sold something more interesting than old fashioned corsets,’ Lissa complained, happily changing the subject and holding up a satinette underskirt with straps two inches wide. These slips still have a 1930s look.’
‘Some of our stock genuinely is that old, very nearly antique,’ Jan giggled. ‘Miss Stevens wouldn’t hear of “going modern”, as she calls it. She might get teenagers in her shop and that would never do. Anyone would think young people were a new invention, a disease, the way she carries on.’
They fell about giggling as they priced up the unpretentious underwear and stowed it away in the ranks of glass-fronted drawers that lined the walls of the draper’s shop.
It was then that the idea popped into Lissa’s head, quite out of the blue, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. ‘Hey, I know. We could find a place together.’
Jan’s eyes opened wider than her myopic vision usually permitted as she gazed in astonished wonder at Lissa. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Never more so. Why not’
‘It’s quite the thing for young career girls to do nowadays, or so I read in Jimmy’s newspaper.’
‘Is that what we are, career girls?’
‘Well, why not? I intend to make something of myself, don’t you? Though I haven’t quite decided how yet. Having a flat together would be a start in the right direction, wouldn’t it? Good fun too, don’t you think?’
‘Oh,’ breathed Jan, not able to believe her luck in finding such a friend.
‘We could afford more rent between the two of us. Make it much more economic.’ Lissa grew enthusiastic as she thought of a place she’d looked at just the other day. She tossed aside a pink corset she had been rolling up to grab her friend excitedly. ‘I’ve seen a converted boathouse. Wooden, close to the lake so admittedly horribly damp, small of course, and with a minuscule kitchen, a spiral staircase and two tiny loft bedrooms above. But with the most fabulous views. Two pounds ten shillings a week. We could go and take a look this lunchtime if you like?’
‘Ooh, yes. That would be lovely.’ Jan’s smile formed a perfect triangle of delight in her small face, and then almost as suddenly faded away. ‘We’d have to get permission off our parents. They’d have to sign the lease or something.’
Lissa shrugged. ‘So what? Meg trusts me, though no doubt she’d come over and check it all out.’ She rolled her eyes in exaggerated style as if saying, Parents, how fussy they are.
Jan still looked anxious. ‘Dad might not care for me going. He likes me at home, expects me to help with the cooking and cleaning since Renee works long hours at the hotel.’
Lissa laughed. ‘Hang that for a life. Let the wonderful Renee look after him for a change. She took him on, didn’t she? For better, for worse, for washing and for cooking.’ Lissa held up the long pink corset, suspenders dangling. ‘She’ll be needing one of these if she doesn’t get out of that chair soon and start to do a bit more work. That would really please your dad.’
Then they were both giggling so much they didn’t hear Miss Stevens come in, eyes slightly glazed from the small comforter she had been enjoying in the stock room. Her stentorian voice, however, had benefited from the stiff gin and soon put a stop to their hilarity.
Suitably chastened, but desperately trying to avoid each other’s eyes in case they set off a second attack of giggles, they got back to unpacking corsets.
Philip Brandon stared through the glass panel of his office door, peering beneath the gold letters that read BRANDON AND BRANDON, SOLICITORS AND COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS, and frowned. He could plainly see his young clerk, playing the fool, no doubt in pursuit of Christine, the new typist, when he had been specifically instructed to sort the morning post and stamp it with the date received. Worse, Miss Henshaw, Philip’s personal secretary, sat smiling upon both of them, as if there were nothing untoward in such horse play during office hours.
He got up from behind his wide mahogany desk, tugged at his waistcoat, then took off his spectacles and polished them furiously. The glass in them was quite plain but they were useful as they gave dignity and an air of authority to his somewhat boyish face. He replaced them carefully, hooking the wire frames around each ear as he again peered through the gold lettering.
Christine was squealing, dropping papers all over the place as she put up her hands in weak defence, her breasts bouncing beneath her white blouse in delightful unison. Philip contemplated how they would feel pressed up against him. His hand twitched convulsively as if testing their softness in his hand. Perhaps as a pillow for his head. For a moment he envied Derry then felt guilt wash over him like a hot tide.
Blinking furiously, he straightened, stiffening his spine to a more proper posture. What was he thinking of? He thrust open the door and stepped into the outer office.
‘Have you finished with the morning post, Colwith?’ he asked in his quiet voice, and the occupants of the room froze, as if captured on camera.
Derry was the first to recover. ‘Won’t be a jiff.’
Philip winced. ‘Can we use the English language within the precincts of the office? Bring them through when you are done. Five minutes, if you please.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Derry, adopting a suitably sober expression. Christine had fled to her big black typewriter in the corner and was already pounding heavily upon it, bent on proving how hard she was really working.
Miss Henshaw was looking flustered as if it had been she who had been running about and squealing so outrageously. Philip glowered at her before returning to his desk, to let her know that he did hold her largely responsible. She flushed a dark red and bent her sensible, neatly cropped grey head more arduously to the conveyance she was laboriously typing. When the telephone shrilled at her elbow she almost snatched it up.
‘Brandon Solicitors. Can I help you?’ she trilled in her bright telephone voice, pencil. poised over her pad. ‘Of course. One moment, please.’ Miss Henshaw flicked switches and pulled plugs on the ancient switch board. ‘Mr McArthur.’
‘Thank you,’ said Philip, in a tone meant to show she was not forgiven. Miss Henshaw took the point and got back to her typing. ‘Behave, you two. You’ll get us all the sack.’
Derry only had to look at her with that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth smile and she was putty in his hands. It made her day just to watch him strut up and down the office. He certainly gave her a giggle and something to think about in her cold lonely bed at night. Vera Henshaw rather liked young men. She’d used to dream about Philip at one time, about what might have been between them had things been different and he not a man of affairs and she his simple secretary. Foolish even to have considered the possibility. Didn’t every secretary fall in love with their boss? And Vera knew she
wasn’t really his type. He preferred smart, attractive young women, not tired ones in floppy cardigans with the first signs of varicose veins.
Vera Henshaw sighed. It could have been so perfect, she a mere thirty-nine, or thereabouts, and he a mature thirty. But of course he would never marry, not now Felicity, his fiancée, had died. How that poor girl had suffered! But Philip had remained loyal. He’d not so much as glanced at another woman in all the three years since, the dear man. It was as if he was afraid to. As if by doing so, he would in some way blight her sweet memory. Though in Vera’s considered opinion he sorely needed a good woman to shake him out of his mourning. Unfortunately, she was not that woman.
She mopped up a tear and on finding herself the object of scrutiny from her fellow workers, threw them a sour look. She put back her spectacles which hung from a cord about her neck and took out her frustration on the keys, her fingers hammering the words while her mind continued its deliberations.
There was a moody, brooding quality to his dark good looks, a sadness about him. The ears flat to the finely shaped head, full lips, and dark, unfathomable eyes that gave away none of their secrets. A real charmer he could be when he put his mind to it. No doubt about it, plenty would be glad to be the wife of Mr Philip Brandon.
Miss Henshaw sighed again. Realised she’d got her fingers accidentally on to all the wrong keys and had typed several lines of nonsense. She ripped out the paper with an exasperated click of her tongue. Really, she was becoming as irresponsible as the two youngsters.
‘Have you finished that post, Derry?’ she barked, venting her wrath on his hapless ears. ‘Well, get it along to Mr Brandon or you’ll find yourself at the labour exchange next week. And poke that fire. My feet are frozen.’
Her poor circulation was not helped by the hours she spent at this desk, she told herself morosely. A martyr to her work she was. Life had been so much easier when she was a junior with old Mr Brandon and they’d had all those clerks with scratchy pens for the paperwork. Miss Henshaw tucked her feet into a small knitted blanket she kept for the purpose and frowned at him so that he could see she meant what she said.
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