‘You may, Robin, you may,’ Charles said boyishly. ‘We’re going to see Amy’s family now and I shan’t be back tonight. Hold the fort, would you? And tell Chef I’ll discuss those new menus he has in mind tomorrow morning, and make some excuse to Mr Preston’s party for me. They’re bridge club friends and will expect me to put in an appearance at some point.’
‘Don’t worry about a thing, sir. You just go.’ Mr Mallard ushered them out of the office as though he was a father sending two children to a party.
As they walked downstairs Amy’s head was spinning. She had to resist the impulse to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming. She glanced down at the attractive but practical frock that was part of her uniform. When she had changed into this just a few hours ago she’d been Amy Shawe, waitress, with nothing more exciting in front of her than wondering if the chef was going to throw another of his paddies before the evening was finished. Now . . . She breathed in deeply, finding it difficult to stand still when what she really wanted to do was to dance and twirl and use up some of the adrenalin pumping round her body. Now her whole life had changed in one fell swoop. She was going to be Charles’s wife, his wife. He was everything and more any girl could possibly want.
It felt terribly strange to be helped into the opulent Rover a few minutes later after she had quickly changed into her own clothes. She had never ridden in an automobile before and as she glanced round the shining interior that smelled of leather and cigars, her heart, which had only just started to beat in a regular fashion, speeded up again.
‘I’ve dreamed of you sitting beside me like this.’
The quality of his voice caused hot colour to flood her face and she found she didn’t know what to say. ‘It’s . . . it’s a beautiful car.’
‘I want to surround you with beautiful things.You know the house I’ve just bought near Ryhope, well, I bought it with you in mind. That’s why I haven’t moved in yet or furnished it. The first time I sleep there will be when I carry you over the threshold as Mrs Callendar.’
Mrs Callendar. Her heart pounded more violently and she felt a moment’s brief panic at the speed with which things were moving.
Whether he sensed this or not she didn’t know, but instead of starting the engine he leaned across to her, taking her hand. ‘I love you, Amy.’ His voice was tender and he cupped her chin with his other hand, drawing her gaze to his. ‘You believe that, don’t you? And I feel we’ve gone through the first stage of our relationship in the last two years. I’ve never talked to anyone like I’ve talked to you, you know me better than I know myself, and I like that. It’s a good start to a marriage to be best friends. But I am a man and wanting you for so long, needing you—’ He stopped abruptly, shaking his head. ‘It’s nearly crucified me at times. I don’t want a long engagement, Amy. In fact I’d like us to be married as soon as it can be arranged.’
He kissed her again and although she knew no one could see them, parked as the car was at the back of the restaurant, she felt as embarrassed as if half the diners were watching. But the smell and feel of him combined with his experience in a realm she had no knowledge of proved intoxicating. She had only really been kissed by her granny before, and then usually on the cheek. Now she was finding this closeness to another human being brought forth all sorts of emotions she was barely aware of. But she liked it. She liked it very much.
‘And I want to take you out of that house, show you what it is like to be really loved.’
‘My granny loves me.’
‘Sensible lady.’ His brown eyes were looking into hers and they were dark pools, warm and deep. She felt she could drown in his eyes. ‘You don’t want a long engagement when there is nothing stopping us being together, do you?’ he murmured. ‘I know I haven’t been to church since I came up here but I’ll go and do my penance this very Sunday and arrange a meeting with the priest. He’ll be full of admiration for you, bringing a lapsed Catholic back into the fold. I need you, Amy.’ His voice was now so low and husky she could barely hear him. ‘I’m lonely, every moment I’m not with you I’m heart lonely. I’ve lived for the times you’ve walked into the office; the rest of the time I’ve just been existing. I want to know you’re mine, be able to reach out and touch you, wake up with you, go to sleep with you . . .’
The catch in his voice brought such a swell of tenderness into her breast it wasn’t hard to say, ‘I want it too, I do.’ She wanted to make him happy again. He’d been through such a lot, she couldn’t imagine what he must have felt when Priscilla and the baby died. For the first time in their acquaintance it was she who touched him, putting her hand to the side of his face where he caught it and kissed her fingers.
When Charles Callendar knocked on the front door of Ronald’s house, the Rover parked in the narrow road outside and his arm very firmly round Amy’s waist, it could be said the shock waves reverberated clear to Newcastle. In spite of the superior air of the district which proclaimed many of the householders had an indoor privy, the good wives weren’t above twitching their starched lace curtains and observing the goings-on of their neighbours, the same as common folk.
It was Eva who opened the door, and so surprised was she that she promptly shut it in their faces before she ran to get her mother. By the time May opened the door again, Amy was wondering what on earth Charles thought of them all. She knew her grandmother would have a bird’s-eye view of Charles from her bed next to the window but thankfully the curtains in their front room, if not in the houses either side, did not flutter.
May ushered them into the sitting room where Ronald was hastily doing up the top button of his shirt and Eva and Harriet were standing goggle-eyed to one side of the hearth. There was no fire burning in the grate, nor had there been for some time. These days any fuel was needed for the range in the kitchen and to keep the small fire going in Muriel’s room.
Introductions were made, and then Charles turned to Ronald and without any prevarication said, ‘You must be wondering why I am here, Mr Shawe, and why I have brought Amy home this evening. I wonder if I might have a word with you in private?’
Ronald looked at the handsome, well-dressed man in front of him and then at Amy’s shining face. Without further ado he peered over Charles’s shoulder at his wife. ‘Perhaps you’d take Eva and Harriet and see if Mam’s all right,’ he said calmly.
For a moment Amy thought her aunt was going to protest but then she swept from the room with Eva and Harriet in her wake, Amy bringing up the rear. In Muriel’s room May hardly waited until Amy had shut the door before she said, ‘Well, girl?’
She would be so glad not to hear that every day of her life. Amy didn’t reply to her aunt immediately. Instead she walked across to the bed holding the frail old woman who was looking at her so intently, and there she said softly, ‘Mr Callendar has asked me to marry him, Gran.’
Muriel stared at her granddaughter a moment more and then all the air seemed to leave her body in a long deep sigh. She sank back on the pillows, her rheumy eyes smiling. ‘I’m glad, lass.’
‘You? He’s asked you?’ Eva looked from Amy to her mother. ‘Has he, Mam?’
May opened her mouth but no words came out. She made an almost imperceptible motion with her head which could have meant anything before turning and leaving the room, still without saying a word. A moment later they heard her footsteps mounting the stairs.
Mouth agape, Eva looked at Harriet but her sister was staring at Amy with unconcealed fascination and envy. ‘Can I be a bridesmaid?’ she asked hopefully.
By the time Charles left the house some time later it had been agreed the wedding would take place as soon as all the necessary arrangements were in place. He was grinning as he drove away, he couldn’t seem to stop and even when he drew up outside the building in which his top-floor flat was housed his spirits weren’t dampened.
Another couple of months and he would be out of this dismal place, he thought as he opened the front door of the flat. He would be living in the bright
, new, clean house he had bought near Ryhope, with Amy as his wife. His wife. His heart leaped and thudded as it had been doing all evening.
Although he hadn’t had a bite since lunchtime he didn’t bother to make himself a sandwich but walked straight into the sitting room, the window of which overlooked Lampton Drops. It had been the view of the river and its central location that had persuaded him to take the flat when he had first moved up to Sunderland. It had nothing else going for it, in his opinion.
He walked straight over to the cocktail cabinet which had been one of the few items of furniture he’d brought with him from the sale of his house in the south. Nestling inside were a host of unopened bottles of whisky and brandy. He poured himself a measure of brandy and drank it down in one. He refilled the glass to the top and then carried it and the bottle over to the big comfortable chair in front of the small grate. He didn’t bother to try to light a fire; he’d always had a housemaid to do this when he had lived with his parents and again once he was married, and when he had moved to Sunderland he’d never got the hang of it.
He had done it. He grinned again, drinking half the glass of brandy before leaning back in the chair and stretching his legs. After all the agonising of whether she would or she wouldn’t, he had finally done it and it had gone better than ever he had hoped. And the uncle hadn’t seemed too bad a sort, not when he had been on his own at least. After the wife had rejoined them, the man had seemed to shut up like a clam, barely speaking except to say he was fully in favour of the marriage and that they had his blessing. The sour-faced witch hadn’t thought much to that if her face had been anything to go by although she had said all the right things in a fashion.
He finished the brandy and poured another glass before shutting his eyes and letting the familiar, warm glow the alcohol always gave him take over his senses. Many a night now he went to sleep like this, waking in the morning with a thumping head which only cleared after he had washed and shaved and had another shot to steady his trembling hands. But all that would change after he married Amy. All the loneliness of his life, a loneliness which had been with him long before Priscilla’s death, in fact since he had been sent away from home at the age of seven to boarding school, would vanish when Amy was his wife. They would be happy, so happy. He smiled a befuddled smile.
The bottle was completely empty by the time Charles fell asleep, one arm draped over the side of the chair and the other still clutching the glass in which a few drops of brandy remained.
It had not occurred to him in all his musings of the last hour or two that he had been wrong when he had stated Amy knew all there was to know about him. But the empty bottle at the side of him, and all the other ones stacked in one corner, were sufficient proof that she did not.
Chapter 10
‘Hey, man, isn’t that your Perce? Honouring us with his presence, is he?’
Bruce glanced across the yard towards the gates of the iron and steel works. Aye, it was Perce all right and got up like a dog’s dinner in that suit he’d seen him in before. Had he come to offer another chance of some quick money, no questions asked?
Perce was smiling when Bruce reached him and he clapped his younger brother on the back. As men streamed past them, one or two called out a greeting to Perce who responded with a wave of his hand, his eyes on Bruce. ‘How goes it?’ he said as though they’d last spoken just that morning instead of weeks ago. ‘You still on short time?’
Bruce stared at him. Perce knew the answer to that or he wouldn’t be here at this time of the day. Only those on short time left at one o’clock. Twenty-five hours a week and there had been talk it might be down to twenty before long.They’d be eating bread and dripping for dinner at this rate once Amy’s money stopped. He nodded. ‘Aye, it don’t get any better.’
Perce shrugged. ‘Talk is it won’t, man. The backbone of the country’s just about broken but you don’t have to work here. I told you I’d see you all right if you came to work for me and it wouldn’t be peanuts either. You’d be earning real money.’
Bruce shook his head. ‘And risk having my collar felt by the long arm of the law? I don’t think so.’
‘If you want to get on in life you have to take the odd risk.’
‘Aye, well, it seems to me you’re taking enough for the both of us so let’s just leave it like that, shall we?’
‘There’s more and more being laid off, you know that. The shipyards are as bad as the mines now and the government doesn’t give a damn. If you go on the dole they don’t recognise the first week and then there’s three days lying on, that’s if you can get a brass farthing out of them at the end of it.’
‘I don’t intend to go on the dole.’
‘There’s plenty who said that who are now standing cap in hand.’
Bruce shrugged. He had come to realise over the last year or two that he and Perce would never see eye to eye on a lot of things. He would have liked it different but he wasn’t a bairn and he had to face facts. From being close as boys they had grown into two very different individuals.
There was silence for a moment and then Perce said,‘Fancy a beer?’
‘Aye, all right.’ His throat was as dry as sandpaper and he’d sweated like a pig all morning, besides which he missed going for a pint with Perce now and again like they’d once done.
The pub Perce chose was one of the less salubrious in the vicinity. Neither of them spoke until they were at the bar. Perce ordered two pints. After handing one to Bruce he gestured to a table in the corner by the window. ‘Let’s sit down.’
They sat facing each other amid the wreaths of smoke made by the pipes of several old men at the bar. A couple of mangy-looking fox terriers slept at the feet of one individual. After a moment or two Perce said, ‘A little bird’s told me Amy is getting wed to that ponce from the south.’
Bruce’s antennae pricked up. He didn’t like Perce’s tone. ‘She’s marrying Charles Callendar, aye,’ he said.
‘And you’re happy about that?’
Bruce’s brow wrinkled. ‘It’s nowt to do with me, man, who she marries.’
He was aware Perce was staring at him very intently as though trying to work something out. After a moment or two, his brother said, ‘You’re really not bothered?’
‘About Callendar? Of course not. Mind, if it’d been some wrong ’un she’d got herself mixed up with that would have been different. But she’s done well for herself with him. She won’t want for nowt, that’s for sure.’
Perce settled back in his seat and took a long pull at his beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’d got it wrong then. I always thought you were sweet on our little cousin.’
‘Me?’ Bruce’s eyes narrowed.‘The boot’s on the other foot, isn’t it?’
Perce looked at him. ‘Been talking to you, has she?’
‘She didn’t need to. I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?’
Perce said nothing to this. After some seconds he lifted his glass and drained the contents. ‘Want another?’ he offered. ‘I’m having one.’ Bruce reached into his pocket. ‘Don’t be daft, man,’ Perce said as he rose to his feet. ‘I can buy me own brother a drink or two, can’t I?’
Once they had two fresh pints in front of them, Perce said, ‘In the family way, is she?’
Bruce choked on a mouthful of beer. ‘What?’
‘Well, it’s all a bit quick, isn’t it? Come on, she talks to you, she always has done.’
And you have never liked that. Bruce stared at him. Why hadn’t he clicked on to that before? Perce was jealous of how well he and Amy got on. Bruce put his glass on the table. ‘If you don’t know by now that Amy’s not that sort, you’ll never know,’ he said coldly.
‘Oh, you.’ It was said with contempt. ‘Never have been able to see the nose in front of your face, you haven’t. She played us off against each other for years, can’t you see that? And all right,’ he raised a hand as Bruce went to speak, ‘I know now you didn’t think of her in that way but
I didn’t then. She’s laughed up her sleeve at me, kept me dangling on a bit of string and used you to keep me fired up.’
Bruce couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was truly astounded. ‘You’re barmy,’ he said at last.
‘Aye, barmy I might be, but you tell me why she’s getting wed in such haste then if her belly’s not full? It’s the oldest trick in the book to catch a lad. But he’s no lad, this Callendar, is he? He’s rolling in it and that’s why she’s given him what she wouldn’t give me.’ Perce’s face had gone red and the veins either side of his nose had swelled but he wasn’t shouting. In fact his voice was low. Bruce genuinely didn’t know what to say to convince his brother he was wrong on all counts.
‘Well, she’s caught her toe, she’s took the wrong fella for a ride. She’s not wed yet, is she, and she’ll find that walk to get up the aisle is longer than she thinks. I’m not going to be made a monkey of. She made me feel like the lowest thing on two legs and all the time she was whoring for Callendar. I expected you to see it. I thought you’d be as riled up as me.’ Perce paused for breath and looked at his brother. Bruce’s expression disconcerted him. It dawned on him that he’d said too much.
The Rainbow Years Page 16