‘Oh, Mister Walker, you should let me do that for you. Sophie’s young man is waiting outside for her already and I’m sure she wants to get away on time.’
‘Oh… I didn’t realise,’ he said.
‘I was just telling Sophie that she mustn’t encourage young men like that to loiter outside or they’ll put off your clients.’
Mister Walker automatically looked out of the window as if he expected to see a ruffian frightening passers-by. Sophie wished that Arthur hadn’t come, or at least that he was better dressed.
‘It’s alright, I don’t mind staying behind,’ she said. ‘He’s not my young man, and I’ve already asked him not to wait for me.’
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, Sophie.’
She smiled prettily. ‘Of course I don’t.’
‘Very well.’ He gave her the letter. ‘You get off home, Mrs Fisher, and we’ll see you in the morning.’
Mrs Fisher scowled at Sophie and got up to fetch her coat. She didn’t even say goodbye when she left, but shut the door behind her with a bang.
It only took Sophie ten minutes to finish the letter. She knocked on Mister Walker’s door, and when he called for her to go in she found him sitting at his desk. He put his pen down and gestured to a chair.
‘Sit down, Sophie.’
He read over what she’d typed, and then put his signature on the bottom. It hadn’t been urgent at all, Sophie knew.
‘I’ve been meaning to speak to you,’ he said. ‘You seem to have settled in very well. Are you enjoying your work?’
‘Yes, Mister Walker. Though I worry sometimes that my work isn’t good enough.’
‘Really? I don’t know why you should think that. This letter, for example, is very good. There isn’t a single mistake anywhere and you were very quick.’
‘Then you don’t have any complaints about me?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘Complaints? Not a single one.’ He laughed in an avuncular fashion. ‘Why would you imagine that I have?’
She looked down at her lap. ‘I thought perhaps Mrs Fisher might have said something,’ she said quietly.
For a few moments he didn’t say anything, and Sophie wondered if she’d overplayed her hand. But then she looked up and he gave her a sympathetic smile.
‘You mustn’t worry about Mrs Fisher, Sophie. You see, she’s rather stuck in her ways. She’s been with me a very long time and sometimes, well, it’s difficult for people to get used to changes, new people and so on. I expect she’s still getting used to the idea, that’s all.’
‘I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong idea,’ Sophie said. ‘Most of the time Mrs Fisher is very good to me.’
He nodded, pleased. ‘There you are then.’
He stood up and went with her to the door. As he opened it he placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘You know, I’d like to take you for supper one evening, to make up for Mrs Fisher. Would you like that?’
‘I’d love to, Mister Walker. It would be lovely to meet your wife,’ Sophie said, deliberately misunderstanding him.
His smile wavered. ‘Yes, well, perhaps when things are not quite so busy then. Goodnight, Sophie.’
‘Goodnight, Mister Walker.’
When she went outside, Sophie found that Arthur was still waiting for her. She ignored him, but after a moment he fell into step beside her.
‘Hello, Sophie. I thought I’d missed you.’
‘I had to work later today,’ she said and threw him an irritated look. ‘Why are you here Arthur? I asked you not to come to my work, didn’t I? Now Mrs Fisher has seen you and she’s complaining to Mister Walker.’
‘What is she complainin’ about? All I was doin’ was waiting for you.’
‘She doesn’t like me. The point is I’ve asked you not to come,’ she snapped.
They walked in silence, but after a little while Sophie felt guilty for being so short with him, especially as he wore such a hangdog expression. The trouble was she was angry with Mister Walker, though she supposed she shouldn’t be really. If it had been left to Mrs Fisher, Sophie knew she never would have got a job there, but when she went for her interview she had been introduced to Mister Walker, and she’d used her looks to charm him. Men were simple creatures, really. All it took was a pretty face and a sweet smile and to listen to them talk as if every word they uttered was fascinating. Men believed women are susceptible to flattery, but they didn’t realise that they were no better. And flattery had worked with Mister Walker because he had given her the position. The trouble was he wanted more from her now. Men always wanted more.
‘Arthur,’ Sophie said in a softer voice. ‘What is it you want?’
‘I just want to see you, Sophie, that’s all.’
‘No it isn’t. You want to walk out with me, don’t you?’
‘Well, what if I do? What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Except…’
‘Cept what?’
She didn’t know how to explain it to him without hurting his feelings. He was a kind man, and though she rarely went back to the street where she’d grown up or wanted to see anybody there she’d known, she sometimes missed people. Her mum. Her sisters. Arthur reminded her of them.
‘Have you had your supper?’ she asked him.
‘Not yet.’
Sophie normally made something for herself in her rooms. But it was lonely by herself and she didn’t like living there. She could hear the other tenants in the rooms either side of her, the sound of voices arguing or other equally unwelcome sounds. It was all she could afford on her wages.
‘The King’s Arms does a good roast supper,’ she said. ‘We could go there if you like.’
Arthur agreed happily, and even insisted that he would pay for her, though she told him that she didn’t want him to.
‘I’ve got my own money.’
When they arrived at the pub they ordered their meals, and Sophie allowed Arthur to buy her a drink. She asked him how things were going at his work.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘The garage is busy. ‘Specially now Will’s helpin’ Mister Horsham mend his aeroplane.’ He told her about the crash and how they’d gone to help.
She looked at his hands on the table. His nails were black with oil around their edges, even though she could see he had scrubbed his hands. The cuff of his jacket was frayed.
‘Are you doin’ anything on Sunday, Sophie?’ Arthur asked. ‘I thought if you’re not we could go somewhere.’
‘Do you know how I left the terrace, Arthur?’ she said
He looked confused at her abrupt change of subject. ‘Someone told me you went into service.’
‘That’s right. I got a position as a maid at a house in Victoria Gardens.’
She was thirteen then. Since she’d finished school she had been working in the boot factory and living with her mum and three older sisters. They shared a single room in a house with families on either side. It was her eldest sister who got her the maid’s position. Sophie hated working in the factory, but she didn’t want to be a maid either. She took the job because she knew her mum wanted her to. At least she’d have somewhere proper to sleep and get her food.
‘It was the best thing that ever happened to me,’ Sophie said. ‘The work was hard because I did everything except the cooking, and I didn’t get paid much. But the family were kind to me. I’ve seen some girls treated like slaves, but I was lucky.’
The family she worked for were respectable. The husband was a surveyor called Edwin Wallace, and his wife had been a teacher before she married. They had three children of their own but they were all boys.
‘I think she was nice to me because I was a girl. She gave me books to read and helped me to practice my writing, and she taught me how to speak properly and how to behave like a respectable lady. She said I was clever and that I shouldn’t settle for being in service all my life, and when I was sixteen she helped me get a job as a shop-girl in a drapers.’
To be
gin with Sophie hadn’t liked her new position very much. She was on her feet all day and the food they were given wasn’t very good, and she had to share a room with three other girls. At least at the Wallace’s she had a room of her own in the attic. But she met people, and that was why she took the position.
‘I decided I wanted to make something of myself, you see,’ she explained. ‘I met somebody there who sent me to lessons so I could learn how to type, and then he got me a position in the office.’
His name was Percy, and he was the son of the man who owned the shop. He was married with two children. In return for the things he did for her she became his mistress. He told her that she was beautiful, and she had the sort of looks that men liked. He took her to the theatre and taught her about music and art, and encouraged her to read books. He said that she was everything a certain type of man wanted, which was not submissiveness, but was what society said they couldn’t have. They wanted a woman who turned other men’s heads, but was respectable and behaved like a lady except in the bedroom. In the bedroom they wanted a woman who knew how to fuck. Those were the words he used. And that is what he taught her.
But in the end Sophie left Percy and left her position as well, because she didn’t want to be anybody’s mistress. She was grateful for what he’d taught her and she intended to use it to make her own way.
Sophie didn’t tell Arthur about Percy. Instead she said, ‘I don’t intend to work in an office all my life, Arthur. And I’m not going to marry a man who doesn’t want the things I do. I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want my children to be servants.’
And neither was she going to become a whore for Mister Walker or for anybody else, Sophie thought to herself. Percy was the only man she’d ever slept with. She’d liked him, but she hadn’t loved him. She’d slept with him because he’d helped her, but she would never do it again. When she slept with another man it would be because she wanted to, for love. She still believed in love. She believed in love more than ever.
‘You mean you won’t ‘ave me because I’m just a mechanic?’ Arthur said.
‘It isn’t that, exactly.’
‘Yes, it is.’
Their meals arrived, but Arthur didn’t notice. She felt sorry for him. He was nice looking really. He had a strong face, and though he hardly knew her, he cared for her more deeply and genuinely than Percy ever had.
‘Eat your supper before it gets cold,’ she said.
As they ate she noticed he didn’t know how to hold his knife and fork properly, and once he wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
CHAPTER 12
When he looked back on that early summer of 1913, William would think of it as the happiest period of his life. The days were unseasonably warm, the hedgerows thick with Feverfew and Oxeye where insects hummed in the drowsy heat. He divided his time between the garage and working in the barn alongside Christopher as they painstakingly rebuilt his aeroplane. In the evenings they would leave the doors wide open and sit outside smoking cigarettes and talking as the light softened. They discussed ideas to improve the plane’s performance, often initiated by things that William read in the magazines he subscribed to. He was fascinated by the rapid development that was taking place in aviation, just as it was in the motor industry. The system of wing warping that Christopher’s plane used had already given way to ailerons to better control the plane’s movement in tandem with the effect of the rudder and elevators. Improved engines were being developed, particularly in France, to produce more power relative to their weight. Different wing configurations were tried, and as all these things were put in place records were broken and set, only to be broken again.
But they also talked about other things. They discussed books and music and art and even cricket, though William didn’t pretend to know much about the latter.
‘But you must have played at school,’ Christopher said when William admitted he’d never played.
He explained that he’d suffered an injury when he was young that prevented him from playing sports. That evening Christopher insisted they play a game outside the barn using a tennis ball, and a piece of ash destined to become a wing strut as a makeshift bat. He showed William how to make a stroke, though it was soon evident to them both that William’s talents lay elsewhere. Afterwards they fetched bottles of beer from the pub and then worked again until it was dark.
Most days Christopher would arrive in the morning and work all day rebuilding the framework for the fuselage, and in the afternoon William would help him or else continue with his efforts to modify the engine using parts he had engineered by firms in Northampton. He worried that he was neglecting the garage and leaving Arthur to cope on his own too much, but he reasoned that once the airshow was over things would return to normal. Using the same rationale he put his plans to expand the business to one side.
Sometimes in the evening they would hear Elizabeth’s Riley approaching along the lane. She would arrive with a basket packed with a cold supper and bottles of wine, and they would have an impromptu late picnic. Afterwards, Christopher would bring out a gramophone he’d brought to the barn so that he could listen to music while he worked, and he would play Schubert or Vivaldi and they would take it in turns to dance with Elizabeth.
The first time Elizabeth tried to coax William to dance with her he claimed that he was born with two left feet.
‘Oh, come on,’ she insisted and took his hand.
‘I don’t want to trip you over or something, that’s all.’
‘I won’t mind if you do.’
‘Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ He put his hand on her waist and they began to dance while Christopher sat with his back against the barn wall, a whisky by his side and a cigarette in his hand, his eyes half closed as he watched them with a sort of indolent, hooded smile.
‘At least you dance better than you play cricket,’ he observed
‘You dance very well,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Did you go to lots of balls when you were young? I bet you did. I expect you broke all the young girl’s hearts.’
William didn’t say anything, only smiled, though he was thinking of the social evenings at Ballantynes where he’d danced with a girl for the first time in his life.
‘You don’t like to talk about yourself do you?’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’ve noticed that you do that all the time.’
‘Do what?’
‘Smile in that enigmatic way of yours. Or else you change the subject.’
‘I don’t mean to.’
‘I think you do. That’s alright. It gives you an air of mystery. Though I expect you know that.’
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing mysterious about me.’ He gestured to take in their surroundings. ‘What you see is everything there is. I haven’t anything except this garage.’
‘Yes, but how did you get here, that’s the question.’
It became something of a running joke between the three of them, and later, when William was introduced to their friends, either Christopher or Elizabeth would caution that they mustn’t ask anything about William’s past because he wouldn’t tell them anything.
When it was Christopher’s turn to dance with Elizabeth, William exchanged places with him. Across the fields the orb of the sun sank below the trees, setting Elizabeth’s hair alight with fiery hues. They danced easily together. They made a startling couple, William thought, and yet they weren’t a couple, of that he was sure. From the beginning he’d sensed there was a close bond between them, a familiarity akin to intimacy. But they were more like brother and sister. As William watched them, Elizabeth glanced in his direction and smiled at him as if she meant to include him and he smiled back at her, happy to be with them both.
One afternoon William had to drive into town to pick up some parts he’d ordered, and Christopher went with him because he felt like having a break. On the way through town he asked William to stop so that he could buy some cigarettes, but as he went to get out of the car he abruptly sat down again and put his
head down.
‘Damn! That girl,’ he said. ‘The one wearing a blue hat, is she coming this way?’
William saw a young woman wearing a blue hat looking in a shop window. After a moment she turned and began to walk in the opposite direction.
‘She’s gone the other way,’ he said.
Risking a look, Christopher breathed a sigh of relief. ‘She didn’t see me did she?’
‘I don’t think so. Who is she?’
‘Oh, a girl I went about with a bit last year, actually. Malcolm Donaghue’s sister, Anne. Do you know her?’
‘No.’
It was a harmless enough question, but William was struck by it because it revealed that Christopher thought about him in a certain way. His lack of money was never mentioned, but William realised that Christopher and Elizabeth probably had some notion of his parents having been reasonably well off, middle class types, his father perhaps a solicitor or a doctor or something professional, and that he’d lost his inheritance through bad luck or bad judgement; either theirs or his own.
‘The thing is... I entered a race in the south of France last year,’ Christopher went on. ‘Unfortunately, I happened to be photographed with a French girl I met. The picture was in the newspaper here and when Anne saw it she was furious. Cut me dead, actually. Refused to see me and returned my letters. Her brother put it about that I was an absolute cad and ought to be taught a lesson. I gather he was keen to oblige. Anyway, it was all a ghastly mess. I haven’t seen her since, until just now.’
‘Did you think she would cause a scene?’
‘Oh no, she would never do that. But it would be embarrassing for her, I suppose. Anyway, I’m glad she’s gone. Do you mind if we get my cigarettes somewhere else in case she comes back?’
A few days later, Christopher mentioned his near encounter with Anne Donaghue to Elizabeth.
‘I don’t know why you’re worried about seeing her,’ Elizabeth responded with surprising acidity. ‘It’s her own silly fault that she made an ass of herself.’
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