Bless ’Em All

by Saddler, Allen

  Experience had given Jimmy an instinct with the traffic. He knew when it was safe to cross the road. He could calculate whether a car or a lorry or even a bus had time to stop before mowing him down. He got hooted for his daring, but it was a game he enjoyed. This time he got half-way across New Bridge Street when the air-raid siren went off. Bloody hell, he thought. In the bloody daylight. In the bloody rush hour.

  The siren had a peculiar effect on people who were out when it started wailing. The first reaction was to stop dead in their tracks and stand frozen for a few seconds, and then to set off as if they had been wound up like clockwork. So it was in the sudden freeze, when everybody was standing still, that Jimmy took advantage of the general paralysis and pushed to the other side of the road, trying to hold the tower of parcels in place, only to see it collapse and spread books all over the pavement and the gutter. Jimmy bent down to pick up the parcels but got bowled over by the rush of people who now seemed to be on a panic mission to get off the street and into a building, any building, in case something falling from the sky would prove to be fatal to their continued well-being. Furthermore, if any of Jimmy’s parcels got in the way they got kicked aside. Then a policeman came along.

  ‘What’s this? We can’t have you cluttering up the public footpath.’ By this time Jimmy had got the trolley on its back and had stacked most of the parcels on it.

  ‘I’ve got to get them to the post office.’

  ‘They’ll be closed, son. The air-raid warning has gone off.’

  Tell me something I don’t know, thought Jimmy. The problem was that it was nearly six o’clock and that the post office might not reopen. That meant that he was stuck with all the parcels.

  Eventually, he got them to his destination, which was closed, and stacked the parcels against the outside wall. He looked around. There was nobody in the street. All the traffic had stopped. It was like a ghost town. Why should he be taking the risk? If a bloody great landmine landed on his head no one would say a prayer for Jimmy Fosset. Old Maurice and Miss Tcherny and everyone would be down the cellar that old Maurice called the ‘air-raid shelter’. Sitting there, all snug, getting cups of tea from a flask, while he was out on his own, confronting the enemy. It was at this point that Jimmy gave up. He left the pile of parcels and the trolley and strolled towards the river.

  It began to rain, hard. The parcels would get wet, the rain would seep through the outer brown paper, turn the corrugated paper into mush, and the books would be ruined. Probably a couple of hundreds’-worth of books turned into papier mâché.

  Somehow, in his illogical and juvenile mind, Jimmy was glad. It served them right.

  4

  ‘BUT what sort of a job?’ Stephen May looked earnestly at his wife’s perfectly oval face, the face he first saw in a draper’s shop in Bootle as she carefully measured and cut a yard of blue ribbon. He hadn’t wanted the ribbon; he just wanted to get close to this girl who reminded him of Cathy, the part played by Merle Oberon in the film Wuthering Heights. He wanted to capture this delicate creature and to have her for his own. He was enthralled by her beauty and by her dark eyes, which seemed honest and trusting. Long before Maurice, Stephen had been bewitched by the idea of a virgin, untrammelled mind. Betty was dark-skinned; perhaps there was a touch of the tar-brush in her ancestry – in Liverpool, who knew? The dark skin was now enhanced by the new blonde hair, which made her seem more exotic than ever.

  Stephen, a proud but shallow young man, was shocked by the idea that his wife was not entirely contented just in being his wife. ‘What can you do? You can’t do shorthand, typing.’

  ‘You have girls working in the shop, don’t you?’

  ‘They’re shop girls.’

  ‘I used to work in a shop.’

  ‘That was before we were married.’

  Betty frowned. This wasn’t going to be easy. Should she tell him the truth? That she had got the offer of a job? A job were she had to go on a bus or on the Underground to get there? ‘It’s a bit of money. Not much, I expect, but we might be able to get out of here and get a place of our own.’

  ‘It’s the best we can manage at the moment,’ said Stephen, frowning. ‘It won’t always be like this. I’ll get promotion. I’ll be a manager, a buyer or something.’

  Stephen was shocked at the idea of his wife going out to work. His mother had never gone to work. She had been content to run the home and look after Stephen and his sister Lucy while their father went down the docks. He didn’t always get work, sometimes he was down there all day without getting any work at all, but he went there to get it. Of course, they always had two lodgers in the house, and Stephen’s mother supplied their breakfast and an evening meal, and she always had some knitting on the go – asbestos gloves that were needed for an iron foundry – but she never went out to work. That was unthinkable. That was the deal, the wife’s role. Young girls went to work when they left school, but that was only until they got married and began to have children. Stephen had always been careful to use a French letter, but now he wondered whether he ought to have got Betty pregnant. That would have given her something to think about. But having a baby in the tiny flat would have been ridiculous. That was for later, when they had got on a bit and were better settled.

  ‘I thought I might do something with books,’ Betty said, in a surly, semi-defiant way.

  ‘Books? You don’t know anything about books.’

  ‘I can read.’

  ‘You were taught to read at school, but that’s just stuff for children. Books – I mean real books, that have long words – you wouldn’t understand them. You never read anything but the Family Circle. You’re not even a member of the public library.’

  ‘I could learn,’ she said, sulkily.

  Betty looked at her husband’s hurt and puzzled face. Should she tell him of her adventure? She shouldn’t have secrets from her husband, but he was taking the idea of her having a job so badly. He hadn’t got the room to pace up and down, but he kept turning around, like he was locked in somewhere and couldn’t find the door.

  ‘I thought you were all right. It’s early days,’ he said, casting around for an argument. For God’s sake, if a man couldn’t afford to keep his wife he shouldn’t have got married. Only maiden aunts, spinsters and rough women who did cleaning had jobs.

  ‘Look. Just see how it goes. I might get a raise.’

  Betty decided to brave it out.

  ‘I met this man, Maurice, and he offered me a job. Something to do with books.’

  ‘What? He must be mad. You’re a lovely girl, but … you’re not educated, are you?’

  ‘I can learn.’

  ‘People don’t pay you to learn. They expect you to be able to do something. Who is this man? Where did you meet him?’

  Now for it, Betty thought. But then I haven’t done anything wrong. Why should I be afraid? ‘I went with Bunty. She introduced me.’

  Stephen’s head begun to spin. ‘You did what? With Bunty? Do you know what that woman is?’ ‘She’s been very nice.’

  ‘I bet she has.’ Stephen – who had been told that he resembled Robert Taylor and had tried to let the ends of his hair curl up in the same way as the handsome film star while trying to affect the cultured elegance of Ronald Colman – ruffled his hair with exasperation. ‘I can’t be here all day looking after you. I trusted you.’

  ‘But what is wrong? He’s a perfectly respectable gentleman who happens to deal in books.’

  ‘Bunty doesn’t know any respectable gentlemen.’ ‘Well this – Maurice – is very nice.’

  Stephen felt as though his head would explode. ‘For God’s sake, Bet. You don’t know what some men are like.’ Betty fished into her handbag and found Maurice’s business card. ‘Green’s Wholesale Booksellers. That could mean anything. I mean, what would you be doing there?’

  ‘I don’t know until I start, do I?’

  Stephen sulked all over the weekend. They went for a walk on Clapham Common, and Stephen st
rode along as though he was deep in thought while Betty pattered along by his side trying to keep up. They went around the bandstand three times, and then Stephen suddenly stopped at the pond and glared at the ducks as though they had personally offended him. ‘If I let you go – just for an interview mind – will you tell me everything that goes on? I mean everything.’

  ‘Yes. I will,’ said Betty, submissively.

  ‘Then we’ll make up our minds what to do.’

  After this was settled Stephen cheered up. He felt that he had held on to a thread of authority. Betty would only go to work if he allowed her to. It wasn’t a rebellion. She had accepted that there would be conditions, and she wasn’t going out of necessity. And he had made her promise that she wouldn’t go out with Bunty any more.

  So they rambled over the common, watched a scrappy game of football and stared at the motionless chess players outside the Windmill pub, who seemed as though they were sculptures carved out of stone. Stephen had a glass of beer and Betty had a lemonade.

  ‘You see, it has to be a respectable place,’ Stephen said, as if explaining a tricky point to a child. ‘It’s easy to slip down the scale. Let yourself down.’ Betty only had a vague idea of what Stephen was driving at. Were Bunty and Tim down the scale? Probably Mrs Bennet was, and certainly the Penroses let everyone down. It was how you felt about people. But Maurice was quite obviously up the scale and would never let anyone down.

  On the Monday morning, as soon as Stephen went off to work, Betty left the house for the telephone box in the high street.

  ‘Hello. Green’s.’

  Betty pressed the button that allowed her two penny coins to clank into the tin box.

  ‘Hello. I’d like to speak to Mr Maurice Green, please.’

  ‘Hold on.’ It was a young man’s voice, and then:

  ‘Hello. Maurice Green.’ ‘Ah, Maurice. It’s Betty.’

  ‘Sorry. Who?’ Oh dear. He’d forgotten her. He’s probably dealt with hundreds of people since their meeting.

  ‘Betty. We met at –’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maurice said hurriedly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. I’ve asked Stephen.’

  ‘Stephen?’

  ‘My husband. About taking a job. You remember?’ Oh my God, Maurice thought. The silly young thing had taken him seriously. ‘You do remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, then. Should I come up?’

  ‘Eh? Well, I don’t know. We are rather busy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Betty felt tears sparking in her eyes. It was all a swizz. She’d been silly to think that someone like Maurice, with all his education and knowledge of the world, would give her a job. Stephen was right. What could she do to justify her employment? ‘It’s all right,’ she said, with a catch in her voice. ‘If you’re busy …’

  Maurice felt awful. The girl was so vulnerable. It was so easy to hurt her, to make her feel unworthy, to give her fragile confidence a blow from which it might never recover. But Little Women, for God’s sake. Of course, the Christian thing to do would be to try to help her in some way, not to push her down. It had probably taken some courage for her to make this call. Could he just leave her with the option of the sordid Soho knocking shop?

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet and talk about it. Do you know the Milk Bar in Fleet Street?’

  ‘I can find it, I expect.’

  ‘We’ll meet there. At one o’clock.’

  Betty was going to thank him, but the telephone started buzzing and she was cut off before she could press another two pennies into the slot.

  It seemed odd. A meeting in a milk bar. If she were going to work for a book firm she would expect to be shown around the place, shown the ropes, as it were. Besides, she wasn’t sure how to get to Fleet Street. She could get on a Number 88 bus and ask the conductor. The 88 didn’t go to Fleet Street. The nearest it went to the famous street of newspapers was Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Get another bus in the Strand, love. On this side, opposite the Strand Corner House.’

  Betty was familiar with Oxford Street and Regent Street from window-shopping trips, but this area of London was new to her. There were shops but not clothes shops. You wouldn’t come here to buy a new outfit. There was an HMV record shop, a shop that sold bicycles, pianos and prams, stationery shops, shops that sold wireless sets and gramophones and everything to do with them, and lots of poky cafés that smelt of strong coffee. The Milk Bar was quite a new idea. She hadn’t been in one before.

  She thought that she shouldn’t go in on her own. It wasn’t the same as a pub, but all the same … She was about fifteen minutes early, so she spent some time looking at the display windows in the newspaper offices, looking at photographs of the King and Queen at some posh party and footballers who had scored a winning goal. There were pictures of Winston Churchill, looking like a prize bulldog, chatting with Army generals who looked so serious and proud. They were winning the war in France, although they weren’t even there at the moment, so they were bound to look pleased with themselves. She crossed the road back to the Milk Bar and saw Maurice approaching. My, he was a gentleman. He had a long, dark-grey overcoat and a bowler hat, polished shoes and a furled umbrella neatly by his side. He stopped and looked down at her, smiling like a kindly old uncle.

  ‘Hello,’ he said gently. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’

  Of course, Stephen was a gentleman, but Maurice was a kind of super-gentleman. Stephen was young; Maurice was older and more practised in the art of courtesy and consideration.

  For his part, Maurice was overwhelmed by the girl’s attractiveness. She looked even better in the daylight than she had in the smoky and flattering dim light of the sordid dive where they had met. There was something rather prim and yet pleasant. The girl didn’t have any idea of how attractive she was. It wasn’t artlessness, for she was entirely without pretension. She had on a two-piece suit in a sky-blue shade, which she probably kept pressed all the time, with a cream blouse that snuggled around her neck and a small hat with a fur trim. The whole outfit was probably a cheap version of one sketched on a fashion page of a Sunday newspaper. You wouldn’t have taken her for a lady – not in the class sense – because the outfit was not first class, rather more of a cheap out-of-town department store, more Arding and Hobbs than Aquascutum. If you saw her on the street you might judge her to be a parlour maid on her day off.

  ‘Come on,’ said Maurice, suddenly feeling the hell of a dog. ‘I’ve always wanted to try this place.’ They went into the shining super-hygienic environment. Betty found it exciting. You would have expected some exotic cocktail rather than a drink that, whatever its fancy description and flavour, was, essentially, a glass of milk. Everything was white and shiny, and the staff wore white suits and caps. It was more like an operating-theatre in a hospital than a café.

  ‘What shall we have?’ Maurice asked, as though the whole operation was a larkish dare. There was a list of various flavours that could be injected into the milk. ‘Banana, strawberry, blackcurrant. What d’you fancy?’

  ‘I’ll have strawberry,’ Betty said, feeling like a young girl out on a treat. It came in a tall glass, very fluffed up, but with a straw. It all seemed very daring and modern. Maurice suddenly felt ten years younger. He knew he looked out of place in this razzmatazz environment, all chrome and bakelite, but had the consolation that he was with the prettiest woman in the place.

  ‘You see it’s like this,’ he said. ‘We employ experienced staff.’ Betty, crestfallen, and feeling more than a bit foolish, blew down the straw into the milkshake and the frothy mixture frothed up over the top of the glass.

  ‘Oh dear. What a mess.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Maurice, producing a crisp snow-white handkerchief and starting to mop up the surplus milk. ‘We have to be careful about mistakes, you see.’ It was all sounding a bit limp. He was trying to let her down gently, but there were tears in her eyes already. It was too humiliatin
g for the girl.

  ‘It doesn’t mean that we can’t use you. It’s just that you need a bit of experience first.’ What was he getting himself into? This was bosh. People could pick it up as they went along. There was no training or certificate that allowed someone to work in the book trade. The wages were not good enough for employers to be particular.

  Betty was puzzled. ‘But how? How can I get this … experience?’

  ‘Well,’ Maurice floundered. ‘You could serve a sort of apprenticeship. I could give you something to read and see how you get on with it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Betty. But she didn’t. Surely an apprenticeship was something that men did, to be a carpenter or a plumber?

  ‘Of course, I should pay you something while you’re training, and then, if all goes well, we could see about taking you into the business.’ Maurice, who had fashioned this bizarre scheme entirely off the top of his head, was, in the end, quite pleased with the idea. If he employed Betty at Green’s there was a danger of her not being able to cope and making mistakes and probably bursting into tears. It was already apparent that, in Betty’s case, brains did not go with beauty. The employment of an additional pair of hands that were not needed would, as likely as not, lead to trouble with the other staff. So, employing this girl, in any capacity, would be an act of charity. This way he could continue to see her and, in some way, fashion her education. The more he thought about it the more he liked the idea. If it was an indulgence it was nothing against the liberties taken by brother Bernard.

  But the girl seemed puzzled. ‘You want me to read books?’

  ‘Yes. But that’s not all. I want you to tell me about them.’

  She shook her head. She was extraordinarily pretty. She could have been his daughter, his granddaughter even. He had never considered the joys of fatherhood because, with Clare, there was no chance of such a thing occurring – but then, if he had had a daughter, he would have been fearful of her falling into the hands of a man like Bernard, as this poor girl nearly did.