Better Days Will Come

by Pam Weaver

  Miss Bridewell spotted another customer and as she scurried off, Dinah pulled a face behind her back. Rita giggled.

  The double gates of Holly Acres were a welcome sight as Bonnie struggled along the driveway with her suitcase balanced on the baby’s carrycot pram. It seemed a dreary place and she might have been filled with a real sense of foreboding, but she wasn’t alone.

  As she’d stepped off the train Bonnie had asked a young girl about her own age if she knew how far it was to Holly Acres.

  ‘I’m going there too!’ cried the girl. ‘Apparently there’s a bus stop just around the corner.’

  ‘I shall have to walk,’ said Bonnie pointing to the pram.

  ‘Then let me keep you company,’ said the girl cheerfully.

  ‘It might be a long way,’ Bonnie cautioned, but her new companion wouldn’t be deterred.

  They finally introduced themselves by the front door as Bonnie offloaded her case. Her new companion, Pat Smith, had three cases in all, all of which were breathtakingly heavy. Bonniecouldn’t imagine what she had inside but she had agreed to balance one across the carrycot.

  Holly Acres had the faint illusion of grandeur long since gone. The garden was neglected and a dead Christmas tree stood onthe wide portico entrance.

  ‘I bet this place was quite something when it was someone’s private home,’ Pat remarked as she rang the doorbell.

  ‘Looks a bit bleak now,’ Bonnie remarked.

  A pleasant-faced girl of about their own age opened the door. ‘Are you the new girls?’

  Bonnie nodded.

  ‘Wait here.’

  As they stood in the hallway waiting for someone else to come, Bonnie looked around. So this was to be her home for a while. Hers and Shirley’s. After the gruelling day she’d had, she felt in desperate need of a wash but thankfully the baby slept on. Now that they were in the light, Bonnie could see that Pat was an attractive girl. Her long blonde hair was swept up onto the top of her head and she wore it with a kiss curl on the left temple. She still looked fresh and tidy although Bonnie wondered if she should mention that the cupid’s bow on her lips was slightly smudged. Her companion noticed her looking at her and smiled.

  Presently, the girl who had opened the door to them came back with another girl. ‘Julie will show you to your room,’ she told Pat, and turning to Bonnie she said,

  ‘Bring baby upstairs to the nursery.’

  Julie said nothing but turning on her heel, she headed back the way she had come. Pat picked up her cases again and trudged wearily behind her. ‘See you later,’ she smiled.

  Bonnie picked Shirley up and followed the other girl up a stone staircase.

  The baby room, as it was called, was light and airy. There were six little cots, all painted white, and each cot had a baby in it except the last one by the window.

  Bonnie was introduced to a rather strict-looking woman called Nancy. She announced that she was in charge of the baby room and when Bonnie was on duty, she would be taking care of Shirley.

  ‘Has she been fed?’

  ‘She had her last feed at two,’ said Bonnie, fingering her ‘wedding’ ring. It was actually from Woolworth’s and it felt strange on her finger.

  Nancy looked at the clock. ‘We feed everybody at six,’ she said tartly. ‘You can come back when you’ve unpacked your things.’

  Reluctantly Bonnie handed her little girl to her new carer and went to find her room.

  ‘My name is Doreen,’ said her guide. ‘We’re in together. Our room is in the cottage. You can leave your pram outside in the pram shed. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Rita called into the Railway Café on the way home. Salvatore and Liliana were delighted to see her and almost as soon as shewas in the door, Rita was sitting at a table with a cup of steaming tea and an Italian pastry in front of her.

  ‘You OK?’ Salvatore asked.

  Rita nodded.

  ‘The job, it is still good?’

  Again Rita nodded.

  ‘He worries,’ said Liliana. ‘You come many times. He worry you troubled about something.’

  ‘Actually, I came to ask you something,’ said Rita.

  ‘Fire away,’ said Salvatore mimicking her mother’s expression.

  ‘I’ve been offered two tickets for the WMCS show tonight,’ she said all in a rush, ‘but I have no one to go with.’

  She was distracted because she’d become aware that he had come out of the kitchen and was standing behind her, listening. Her heart was beginning to thump in her chest.

  ‘Ah,’ said Salvatore.

  ‘They’re absolutely free so it won’t cost anything,’ Rita blundered on, ‘and they tell me it’s a really good show.’

  ‘Thank you,’ smiled Salvatore coyly. ‘I come. I would be honoured to be with such a pretty young lady.’

  Rita was horrified. That wasn’t what she meant at all. She didn’t want to go with Salvatore! Much to her relief, Liliana kicked her husband under the table.

  ‘Rita no want to go with an old man like you,’ she scowled. ‘She like a young man. A handsome young man.’ She smiled and looked directly at Emilio.

  Salvatore gesticulated with his hands as if he hadn’t a clue what his wife was talking about. Rita chewed her lip anxiously. She hadn’t expected it to be so embarrassingly difficult.

  ‘You are right,’ said Salvatore. ‘I am a very busy man, but,’ he stroked his chin thoughtfully, ‘who can I send in my place?’

  Rita began to feel hot and uncomfortable. She dared not look around. She could feel his eyes boring into her back. She never should have started this. Oh flip, what had she done? Girls didn’t ask boys out. Perhaps they would think she was ‘fast’.

  ‘Stop teasing the girl, Salvatore,’ said Liliana.

  ‘I would be pleased to go,’ said a voice behind her.

  Rita’s heart almost stopped. ‘Would you?’ she said turning around at last and trying to sound casual. ‘It might help you with your English.’

  ‘Curatilei. E sola una bambina,’ said Salvatore. (Treat her well, she is only a child.)

  ‘Sero un gentiluomo perfetto,’ said Emilio. (I am the perfect gentleman.)

  The pram shed turned out to be a large rather dilapidated wooden building to the side of the house. When Doreen opened the doors, Bonnie was confronted with two rows of prams lined up against the walls. They were all different shapes and sizes and all coach built. Doreen moved a couple of prams until they were closer together.

  ‘You can put yours here in the corner,’ she said. ‘When it’s too cold to be outside, we leave the babies and tweenies in here.’

  ‘Tweenies?’ Bonnie enquired.

  Doreen laughed. ‘I always forget that it sounds strange to someone outside of the nursery. We call the children between one and two years old tweenies.’

  As soon as Shirley’s pram was parked, they went back outside and Doreen closed the door. An empty hollow feeling settled in Bonnie’s stomach. Perhaps coming here wasn’t going to be so easy after all. The girls seemed friendly enough but the thought of leaving her baby in that dingy shed was not a happy one. She hoped she’d done the right thing, but what choice did she have?

  ‘This is the cottage,’ said Doreen as they walked back across the cobbled yard. ‘Most of us live here. Matron has a flat over the old stables and the other senior staff live in the main house.’

  The stairs were steep and at the top they were faced with another long corridor. Doreen opened a door marked ‘2’.

  ‘You’ve got twenty minutes to unpack and then you’ll have to go back and feed your baby,’ she said looking at her watch. ‘Supper is at six thirty. Do you think you can find your way back?’

  Bonnie nodded. Her room was predominantly yellow but the walls had holes in them where previous occupants had put up pictures. There were no pictures now but the room was a reasonable size, sparsely furnished and with two beds, one obviously occupied. A small teddy bear leaned against the pillows and the dressing tabl
e beside the bed was littered with make-up. She glanced at the people in the photograph on the locker. Standing next to an older man and woman was Doreen, wide eyed and with short bobbed hair, smiling back at her.

  Bonnie put her case on the other bed. She felt awkward, as if she was intruding into someone else’s privacy. There was an empty locker beside her bed and there was only one wardrobe. Bonnie opened the door. One side was bulging with clothes and on the other side, in only one third of the space, three coat hangers jangled noisily.

  She unpacked miserably. She had no photograph of Mum and her sister. She sighed. They would be getting ready to have tea about now. It didn’t take long to put her things away and then, because it would soon be time to go and feed Shirley, she went to look for Pat.

  Pat’s room was blue. The curtains were floral, the pattern made up of big bold flowers, unlike any Bonnie had ever seen, and although they were the same colour, somehow they clashed with the blue splodge pattern wallpaper. To make matters even worse, Pat’s candlewick bedspread was purple. There were two beds in the room but it looked as if the other one was unoccupied.

  ‘I wish they had put us in together,’ Bonnie observed as Pat unpacked her second case. ‘Do you need a hand?’

  Pat handed her a floral button-through dress with a small white collar and thin belt. ‘Can you hang that for me please?’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bonnie. ‘This is fantastic.’

  ‘It’s brand new,’ said Pat obviously pleased. ‘Cost me two weeks’ wages.’

  Bonnie couldn’t resist holding the dress next to her as she stood in front of the mirror on the wardrobe door. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Julie’s supposed to be coming back to give me a tour of the nursery,’ said Pat. She pushed the last of her cases on top of thewardrobe and they both sat on the edge of the bed until Julie came back.

  Their whistle-stop tour of the nursery was totally confusing. ‘This is the milk kitchen, here’s the Blue Room, that’s the sluice room …’ – all the details merged into each other. It was obvious that Julie had little interest in the place and Bonnie couldn’t help wondering why.

  As they swept through the children’s bedrooms, Bonnie was aware of several pairs of curious eyes looking at her from under the blankets. She smiled at their little upturned faces. In the baby room she looked at the clock. It was six and Nancy was changing a baby’s nappy in the little bathroom.

  ‘This is the last one,’ she said. ‘You can do your baby now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bonnie. ‘I’ve left her nappies downstairs in the pram.’

  ‘You’re to use ours, Matron said,’ said Nancy. ‘And if you’re breastfeeding, I’m afraid you’ll have to put her on the bottle.’

  ‘Why?’ Bonnie’s voice was small.

  ‘We all think it would interfere too much with your duties,’ said Nancy in a no-argument sort of a voice. ‘If you’re looking after the children downstairs, you can’t just leave them to come up here and feed your baby.’

  Put like that, it sounded reasonable, but Bonnie loved the intimate moments she and Shirley shared together. Still, she was in no position to argue so she breastfed Shirley for the last time. When she had finished, Nancy brought out some bandages.

  ‘What are they for?’

  ‘You need to bind your breasts,’ she said matter of factly. ‘To stop the milk coming back in.’

  When all the babies had been fed, Nancy put out the big light, leaving a low light in the room. The babies who were awake played by themselves in their cots. Shirley and one other little baby were fast asleep.

  ‘I’m sorry you lost your husband,’ said Nancy. ‘This must beawful for you.’

  ‘I’m luckier than most,’ said Bonnie keeping her back to Nancy for fear she would see her scarlet face. ‘I have my baby.’

  Trussed up like a chicken, and with two tablets to help dry up the milk, Bonnie headed back downstairs again. As she walked back through the hallway, a gong sounded.

  ‘Supper,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m off duty now.’

  She took Bonnie to the staff room and left. After a few minutes, other girls began congregating.

  ‘This is my new roommate,’ said Doreen.

  Bonnie smiled. ‘My name is Bonnie Rogers.’

  ‘Bonnie!’ someone snorted.

  ‘Short for Veronica, isn’t it?’ said Julie.

  It wasn’t, but somehow Bonnie didn’t like to say anything.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ said one of the others. ‘Let’s get stuck in. I’m starving.’

  Supper turned out to be lukewarm tinned tomatoes on toast.

  The Pavilion Theatre was at the entrance to the pier. In 1939, the government had decreed that the pier be blown up in the middle in case of invasion. Because of the acute shortage of raw materials, a large section in the middle was still awaiting reconstruction, but the roadside theatre was back in use.

  Rita and Emilio walked in together. Rita felt ten foot tall and a bag of deliriously happy nerves. As instructed, she asked the cashier for tickets in the name of Chamberlain and was handed a brown envelope. It was a good seat, in the centre and fairly near the front. From the moment they sat down, Rita was totally carried away. The show was perfect, as was her company. She had hoped Emilio might hold her hand but he didn’t touch her. Still, she told herself, that’s fine. He knows I’m a good girl. I’m the sort who wants to wait until I get married to let a boy kiss me. She glanced his way a couple of times during the evening and each time he flashed her one of his wonderful smiles, which made her legs go weak and her heart thump wildly. She was in love. What else could she be? And it was wonderful.

  The show was amazing. Dinah was only in the chorus but Rita watched her every move. Everyone at Hubbard’s knew she wanted to be an actress and that she’d been waiting to get a place in drama school. She was so tall and elegant that Rita couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been given the lead role.

  In the interval, Emilio insisted on buying her a cup of tea, but it turned out to be free.

  ‘Are you enjoying the show?’

  She hoped her voice sounded sultry and mature but it came out a bit squeaky with excitement. Emilio smiled, making Rita melt all over again. ‘It is very kind of you to ask me.’

  The silence that grew between them made Rita feel a bit awkward.

  ‘Are you going to work in your uncle’s shop?’

  Emilio shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye and Rita remembered that the show was called No, No, Nanette. ‘I am fisherman.’

  Rita pulled a face. ‘The Worthing fishermen guard their patch very closely,’ she said. ‘Their rights go back years and years. I doubt you’ll get a pitch here.’

  He shrugged. ‘Then I am lucky guy. I have a boat at East Worthing.’

  Rita was surprised.

  ‘I share with a friend,’ he explained. ‘The waters here are good for mackerel and sea bass. I think I make a good living.’

  ‘So you’re staying in Worthing?’ Rita said breathlessly and to her utter joy, Emilio nodded.

  As the curtain went up for the second half, Rita was trembling with excitement. Salvatore treated her like a silly schoolgirl, but Emilio was treating her like a young woman … and he was going to live here.

  The show was just as good in the second half as it had been in the first. The story was a little confusing but the three couples who found themselves together in a cottage finally got the right man and everybody lived happily ever after. Rita loved the music, especially ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘I Want to be Happy’. Dinah had told Rita to wait for her after the curtain came down. They didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘We’re all having a party,’ she told them. ‘You must come.’ Rita felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven.

  The party was in somebody’s house along the sea front. It was rowdy and the gramophone was playing Red Hot Jazz, the sort of music the council had banned from all its public venues. Rita couldn’t think why. It was fun. She felt a little out
of place because most of the girls were wearing party frocks and she wasn’t, but nobody remarked it. In fact, they were all very friendly. Dinah looked so elegant as she smoked her Craven A cigarette in a short holder. ‘Enjoying yourself, Rita?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ sighed Rita. ‘The show was wonderful.’

  As everybody squeezed in, the people who wanted to dance stayed in the spacious hallway while the rest of the cast sat around the sitting room drinking and talking. There were no sandwiches or cakes. They ate fiddly bits called hors d’oeuvres. Rita tasted her first vol-au-vent and her first olive.

  She’d been there for about an hour when a man grabbed her hand. ‘Dance, pretty lady,’ he cried and, laughing, Rita looked around for Emilio.

  ‘Actually, I came with someone.’

  ‘The tall good-looking chap?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘He’s gone outside with Jeremy to look at the stars,’ said the man. ‘He won’t mind. Come on.’ And he swept her into his arms as somebody changed the record to a waltz.

  Seventeen

  After supper on that first day in the nursery, Bonnie had gone upstairs to check on Shirley and found her sleeping peacefully.

  ‘I’ll come up to give her the ten o’clock feed,’ she told the girl in the nursery, and then she went to her room. She supposed she should have stayed in the staff room and made friends, but Bonnie was tired and homesick. She collected her uniform and went back to her room to get ready for duty in the morning.

  She had been told her uniform was ‘an attractive pink gingham dress’. It turned out to be a shapeless, round-necked garment with a Peter Pan collar, three rubber buttons down the front so that they could be boiled, and from what she could make out, size 20 fitted everybody. She had also been given a list of things she’d need to take with her. At the bottom of the page, alongside a toothbrush and comb it said two pairs of garden knickers. Bonnie had scratched her head. What on earth were garden knickers? Much to her embarrassment, when she had asked around the London stores, she was met by blank stares. The only real suggestion came from an old fossil who had probably been working in the shop since the age of the dinosaurs.