Once the plumber and the rest had gone, Tony stayed just long enough to deal with the worst of the mess. As he reminded them, he had to start work at 4 a.m. Seranne and Babs looked at the once immaculate kitchen, it looked a daunting task.
‘Lucky we didn’t spend all day cleaning, eh?’ Babs whispered.
Ignoring their protests, Jessie helped, but Paul didn’t do anything. He went into the room that was now his and Jessie’s and prepared for bed.
Outwardly very little changed once Jessie and Paul were married, although a few more items disappeared without explanation. But for Seranne, his presence and the way her mother agreed with the small changes he suggested, without consulting her, was making her restless. It would never go back to how it had been, herself and her mother in complete harmony and the place running as neatly as a train on tracks, it would only get worse.
She lay awake many nights wishing she could leave, but where would she go? All she had ever done was help her mother run the tea rooms, the prospect of walking away and finding somewhere to live and a job to pay for it was overwhelmingly frightening. The awful thing was she and Jessie frequently argued and that was something that had never happened before. She knew she was at fault, her temper had always been easily roused and she knew she overreacted to practically everything Paul said. It wasn’t his presence in their lives, she thought she could learn to cope with that, it was his interference in the business they had managed all their lives.
‘There is too much waste,’ he had announced quite soon after moving in.
‘How can you say that? We throw very little away at the end of each day. Making fresh cakes in small batches throughout the day means we only cook what we need.’ Seranne protested.
‘Hush, dear,’ Jessie pleaded. ‘Paul is a businessman and he understands things we don’t. He’s trying to help.’
Because of the difficulty of keeping quiet, Seranne took to walking each evening whatever the weather. The only evenings she stayed in the flat was when her mother and Paul went out. This they did often. He took Jessie dancing and occasionally for a meal in some expensive restaurant.
He was always the first to rise and his first move was to go down and collect the post, tucking anything that came for him in his pocket to read in private. Seranne’s dislike of him didn’t wane and she began to be suspicious about his eagerness to avoid anyone seeing his letters.
Finding the sandwiches with less filling, and cakes made smaller and the jam dishes less full, made her anger towards him increase. Every day there seemed to be more so-called improvements about which she disagreed.
‘Our profits are sufficient and we don’t need to cheat our customers,’ she shouted one evening when she tried to make her mother see what was happening. ‘People are remarking on the reduced measures and some are already finding other places to eat.’
‘Quality is what they come here for and that hasn’t altered,’ Jessie insisted.
‘Quality and a fair price! You can’t reduce the quantity and expect them to pay the same.’
‘Paul says we’ve been giving too much and we should adjust our prices to other cafés to the area.’
‘Paul has a factory making leather bags! What does he know about tea rooms?’
‘I’m a businessman, Seranne, and I can see why you aren’t making the profits relating to the outlay.’
Seranne ran out even though it was past ten o’clock and slammed the door behind her. Too late she remembered she didn’t have a key. Now she would have to knock and ask to be let in. Why couldn’t she stay calm? Deal with Paul in a reasonable way, persuade her mother to agree, instead of charging about like a spoilt child?
She had nowhere to go. She couldn’t call on Babs, it was too far to go at this time of night. Disconsolately she wandered along the pavement, wishing she had slammed into her bedroom instead of out of the door. When she reached the corner she sat on the garden wall where the woman with the small terrier lived. ‘Just start barking at me tonight and I’ll be ready for your owner!’ she muttered, looking at the house and almost wishing the little dog would give her an excuse for an argument.
‘Talking to yourself?’
Startled, she looked around her and saw Luke, the man from the corner table, walking towards her. ‘I wasn’t talking,’ she retorted. ‘I’m thinking aloud.’ Without giving him a chance to say any more she hurried back home to the side door and knocked loudly, her irritability apparent. He walked past and her mood was worsened by the sound of his subdued laughter.
There was no immediate response to her knocking and she walked away, childishly hoping to punish her mother by making her worry. It was cold and she walked down the side of the kitchen to shelter from a rising wind.
Inside, Jessie was held back from opening the door by Paul. ‘Let her get chilled, it might cool her temper making her wait a little while,’ he said, caressing Jessie’s back, holding her close to him. Jessie waited about five minutes then pleaded with Paul to let her in.
Luke was still smiling as he reached his car and jumped in. She really was a hot-tempered character, but there was something almost childlike about her that appealed. He wondered whether she had always been ready for an argument or whether something in her life was causing her irritability. Not that he would ever find out. He knew her as a waitress in her mother’s tea rooms and it would never go further than that. His days of being attracted to young women were over. It seemed he would never be free.
He saw the side door of the tea rooms open but instead of seeing Seranne go inside he saw Paul come out. Curious, he waited. Paul stood for a moment outside, then walked to the corner and stopped again. He looked as though he was waiting for someone. Then he heard running footsteps and two men appeared, nothing more than crouched figures in the darkness, and to his horror, he saw them leap on the man and as one held him the other punched him.
‘Hey! Stop that,’ he called and ran across to intervene. Paul received several more blows before falling to the ground.
Luke heard the attackers muttering in a menacing way as they leant over the man before one ran off. The other said quite clearly, ‘Pay him, or there’s worse than that coming to you.’ After pushing Luke aside and aiming one more punch, the second man followed the first and was quickly swallowed up in the darkness.
Seranne got to Paul almost as soon as Luke and together they helped the distressed man back to the flat.
‘Did you know them? Were they trying to rob you?’ Luke asked.
‘I’ll phone for the police,’ Jessie said tearfully.
‘No, don’t do that. What good would it do? They’re long gone and I couldn’t even describe them.’
‘The police need to be told.’
‘Please leave it. I must have been mistaken for someone else, or perhaps they were just looking for a fight. They smelt of drink. They won’t come back.’
Luke said nothing of what he had heard, following his own advice of not jumping to conclusions, he would make enquiries though, using the wide network of relations he had spread around the area. Among his army of aunts and uncles and cousins there was sure to be someone who would know what was going on. He left soon after helping Paul into bed. Jessie and Seranne sat silently staring at the walls.
‘A flood and now an attack on Paul, whatever next,’ Seranne said as she stood to go to her room.
‘Both your fault,’ Jessie said, pushing her aside and going to join Paul. ‘You insisted on the new sink and it was you going out in a huff that caused Paul to be there when those men were wandering around looking for trouble.’
Seranne couldn’t believe what she had heard. How could her mother say such a terrible thing? She sat on her bed, huddled in the eiderdown unable to sleep until the reluctant dawn showed through the curtains. She had known Paul’s arrival would mean changes, but she had never dreamt of things going so wrong between her mother and herself that she would be blamed for the flood and the mysterious attack on Paul.
CHAPTER TWO
Paul seemed unaffected by the attack. Although the following morning he was easily persuaded not to go to the factory. He sat near the fire and between serving customers Jessie ran up and down attending to his comfort. Seranne was uneasy, doubting his explanation of mistaken identity. Paul was in trouble and by marrying her mother he had involved them too.
Luke called to ask about Paul and was surprised to hear that he wasn’t at work. ‘I’d have thought that with a busy factory to run he’d have made the effort. Self-employment doesn’t allow much time off for illness, does it?’
Seranne agreed but managed not to add her own criticisms. Two days passed and he seemed fully recovered.
Luke began to make enquiries and what he learnt worried him. Paul had bought out his partner and carried a large mortgage on the business. Many of the staff had left and Paul was reduced to untrained people who surely didn’t have the skills needed for the work. He also learnt that orders were falling, faults were bringing many items back for replacement and the once good business was in serious trouble.
Seranne found living in the flat with her mother and Paul a strain. Seeing them together, interrupting them with their arms around each other, kissing, hugging, it should have been a happy experience, knowing her mother was no longer lonely should have made her happy for her, but she couldn’t warm to the man.
She was constantly apologizing when she came across them sitting close together, heads touching, hands clasped. They often put dance music on the gramophone in the evenings and danced together. As an outsider she had no alternative but to go either to her room or out to see a film she didn’t want to see, when she would have preferred to be at home, listening to the wireless and talking to her mother about the following day’s work.
She felt hemmed in with nowhere to go. Jessie was obviously ecstatically happy but seeing her so content didn’t change how Seranne felt about her mother’s choice of husband. She was more and more convinced Jessie had made a terrible mistake in marrying him.
Seeing him go into her mother’s bedroom made her want to run away. It was so embarrassing despite forcing herself not to think of them both in the double bed.
‘If it was anyone else but Paul Curtis I’d have happily accepted it, but I don’t trust him. And Mum is so besotted she agrees with everything he says,’ she told Babs one day.
‘The best thing to do is keep out of the flat as much as you can. Come to stay with us on Saturday night for a start,’ Babs suggested, but Seranne shook her head.
‘There’s such a lot to do on Sundays, and besides, I’d be afraid of what he was doing while I was away. He’s already tried to make us discard the linen tablecloths and use paper ones to cut down on laundry, and he’s taken away the beautiful china teapots and plates from the shelves to save washing them every week. Those things set the scene for a pleasant interlude, it’s all a part of what we offer, but can he see that? No, he can’t! I have the horrifying thought that he will ruin everything then leave her.’
‘You think your mother is so unlovable that you can’t believe he married her for anything less than love?’
‘No, I … I’m being overprotective I suppose, but she’s made so many mistakes in the past I presume this is another to add to the list.’
‘Try not to show it, you could be wrong, mind. It has been known,’ she added with a smile.
Hiding her feelings was something Seranne didn’t find easy. When she went into the tea rooms to begin preparations for opening one morning, she saw that the bread rolls to serve with soup, which they had always made on the premises, were already made and cooling and had been cut to about half the usual size. Her mother would have done the baking but it was to Paul she went with her complaint.
‘What do you think you’re doing persuading Mum to make the rolls so small? How can I serve that as a bread roll?’ she asked, poking one near his face. ‘It’s little more than a marble!’
‘Seranne, dear, don’t blame Paul, I made them,’ Jessie said. ‘It seems a good idea, they’re often only half eaten and I thought….’
‘You thought? Or was it Paul?’
Seranne knew she was upsetting her mother but holding her temper was simply not easy. Also, she wanted her mother to know how she felt so that when it all fell apart, Jessie would know she could talk to her about Paul. It had all happened before, with boyfriends who were wonderful for a few weeks and then began to lose their charm. The only difference was that this time Jessie had married the man.
Other changes were made, none of them discussed. ‘Why don’t we serve scones on serviettes to save washing dishes?’ An outraged Seranne shouted one morning. ‘Serve tea out of jam jars? Soup from pickle jar lids?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Seranne. You’re acting like a child these days just because of a few improvements suggested by Paul and not you!’
They continued to work together but spoke only when necessary. Seranne stayed out of the flat as much as possible. One evening Seranne was coming back from a walk in the chill of the evening when she saw Paul putting a notice on the tea room window: ‘This establishment will be closed from midday on Saturday until Tuesday morning,’ it announced.
‘Paul? What’s happened, is my mother ill?’
‘Not ill exactly, but if you and I don’t manage to sort out our differences she might well be ill and very soon. Can’t you see what you’re doing to her?’
‘What I’m doing to …’ she began. ‘It’s you, interfering with the way we run this place, lowering the standards for which we’re famous.’ He said nothing and she asked. ‘How will closing the tea rooms change anything?’
‘The three of us are going away for the weekend, staying at an hotel and perhaps we’ll find a way of getting on together, for your mother’s sake,’ he said. This is a treat for her and I want you to come, but not if we’re going to continue this arguing.’
‘I have no intention of going anywhere with you and my mother. The fact is—’
‘The fact is, Seranne, I’m worried about her. Did you know she was crying the other day, after you’d complained about the reduction in the size of a bread roll?’
How petty that sounds, Seranne thought, but that was just one incident among many. She looked up at Paul prepared to argue further, but she stopped. She heard echoes of her voice, high pitched and filled with resentment. What was happening to her that she could behave in such a way? All the years with her mother without a single disagreement, and since her mother’s marriage she had allowed the situation to change her into a nagging woman. There had to be a better way of dealing with this.
‘All right, I’ll come,’ she said, doubtfully.
‘You can pay for yourself if it will make you feel better,’ he said.
‘Yes, I will!’
She packed a small suitcase with comfortable outdoor clothes, determined that apart from mealtimes when she would be calm and polite, she would leave them alone. Paul drove her mother’s car to the hotel and the atmosphere in the car was tense, conversations limited. None of them wanted to be there, each was doing it for someone else and they were all longing for Monday evening when they would be on the way home.
Paul was attentive and at his most charming best and she smiled and ignored the anger bubbling inside as he treated her mother like a delicate china doll, the capable woman she really was completely hidden.
The weather had been awful, low temperature, rain and wind keeping most people indoors, and she had been forced to spend more time than planned with her mother and Paul, who were clearly making a great effort to please her. On Sunday morning, ignoring the warning of worse weather to come, she left the hotel and began to walk. She sensed rather than saw her mother and stepfather watching her as she hurried out putting her coat on as she ran, the wind trying to steal it from her, gusts almost succeeding.
This was more than a windy early winter’s day, the weather was threatening. The clouds were a dark swirling mass so low it seemed they were being torn by the trees th
at swayed like dancers to the wind’s wild, discordant music. She could feel rain on the wind, which was increasing in strength minute by minute and knew she ought to turn back, but an hour later she was still walking away, her speed increasing, far from the shelter of the hotel, along an unknown country lane. There was something exciting about being out in the storm, the wind matching the turbulence in her head. She appreciated the freedom as she tried to sort out the difficulties between herself, her mother Jessie and her stepfather, Paul Curtis.
Coming away for a couple of days, leaving behind the routine of their work, had been a good idea and despite her constant resentment towards Paul she had enjoyed it. Away from the confined activities of the business, in the cold, quiet countryside, meeting the occasional lone walker and sharing no more than a few words had rested her. Now, as the time to leave drew near she felt tension rising with every remark Paul made, aware the fault was mostly hers as she misconstrued the most innocent of comments. How could she be expected to watch him interfere with the business she and her mother had nurtured? She would have to be a saint.
That the business was a success was in no doubt, so why change anything, she had argued and, pulled by both loyalties, her mother had become upset until it had reached the point where they could hardly bear being in the same room.
She had doubted her mother’s wisdom in marrying Paul, considering him rather dull, but had expected things to settle down, with herself and her mother continuing as before, but Paul was spending less and less time at the factory and more time with them. That in itself was a mystery and a subject which he refused to discuss.
‘Oh why did she have to marry him?’ she shouted into the wind, as she fought against it, battling her way between trees that lined the long, dark lane.
The lane turned and began to rise as she passed an estate of new houses and bungalows on her right. At the top of the hill she staggered as she faced the wind that roared through the woodland on her right and whistled around the roofs and chimney pots of a few detached houses on her left.
Time to Move On Page 3