‘He called my daughter Half and Half?’
Mrs Givens nodded, the dirty handkerchief at her eyes again.
‘Why would he call her that?’
‘It ain’t that bad though, is it? He dint mean nothing by it, he –’
‘Yes yes yes,’ said Violet. ‘How did he come up with it, this name? What does it mean?’
‘Well, I don’t know, ma’am, not rightly,’ quivered Mrs Givens, who was clearly not used to lying, her eyes all over the place.
‘Tell me what it means,’ said Violet, in her old implacable child-bed voice. Mrs Givens actually gave a little squeak of fear.
‘Oh, if you please, ma’am, I’m so sorry – it’s about a drink!’
‘What sort of drink?’ said Violet icily; her views on alcohol were widely known.
‘’Tis one they take more in the north, ma’am,’ said Mrs Givens. ‘Two types of beer mixed together in a glass, mild and bitter. Chap wants one those, he says, “Give us a pint of Half and Half.” See?’ she finished timidly.
‘And George called her that?’ What nonsense was this?
Mrs Givens nodded. ‘We’re that sorry, Mrs Dimond, honest we are! Will you talk to her, please, to your sister? Only I got my children to think of, and we always do go to the field cottage at the end of March, regular as clockwork, will you, Mrs Dimond, please?’
Violet thought. ‘I will talk to my sister,’ she said at last, then interrupted Mrs Givens’ instant clamour of gratitude: ‘I’m not promising it’ll come to anything, mind.’ There seemed to be nothing else to add that would not imply criticism of Bea, so she said briskly, ‘I’ll bid you good day then,’ gathered up her belongings, and left. She still had several purchases to make, and crowds to struggle through, and then it rained; and the constant questioning in her own mind seemed to get so in the way, was a roughly jostling crowd of itself.
Don’t think about it, she told herself. Wait until you get home. Wait until you’ve seen Gracie. Perhaps like last week she’d have the supper on, good girl that she was, lovely smell to greet you, spuds all done and waiting, kettle singing. Get these leaky boots off, have a warm by the fire!
So it was extra hard to open her own front door and find Grace sitting idle in the dark with her coat on.
‘What’s this – you ain’t done nothing at all, you lazy girl!’
If he hadn’t put the letter in her hands himself – if she hadn’t, of course, known his handwriting – she might have wondered, in the days that followed, whether the note was actually genuine. Once he passed her in the street, and just touched his hat, as if to some general acquaintance. Once he was standing on the other side as Mrs Ticknell locked the door behind her at closing time, but as soon as she looked across at him he turned and sauntered away in the opposite direction, as if he hadn’t seen her at all.
Had he changed his mind? Had putting himself in her hands somehow been too much for him? It seemed to Grace that perhaps just admitting you thought about someone all the time might in itself be enough to stop you doing it, a sort of cure. If so Tommy Dando had cured himself at her expense, and passed on his affliction.
Dear Tom, I think about you all the time, too. There isn’t a single moment when you’re not there on my mind.
She sang about her work all day; despite the constant longing for him to make another move, contact her, arrange somehow even to meet, she had never been so happy in her life before, she thought. She hardly needed to eat, and often couldn’t, but luckily Violet, usually so prone to maternal nagging about three square meals, seemed not to notice, or at least made no comment, thank heaven, but then perhaps she had finally, finally! noticed that Grace was a grown woman, who could decide for herself when she wanted breakfast, or that she didn’t feel like supper.
Strangely enough, she could sleep very well, climbing happily into bed early most nights, often an hour or two before Violet, lying there in a blissful state of easy dreaming, drifting off sweetly picturing his face. Often she had pleasant dreams that made her laugh when she awoke, for while most of them seemed to hark back to the school playground, or to the classroom the year she had sat next to him, she was still her grown-up self in them, and so was Tom Dando and all the other ex-children, grown up but leaping just as they used to in and out of the great heavy washing-line skipping rope that took two at each end to turn; often a dreamland steam roundabout faintly played fairground music, and once Mr Billy Redwood had clearly said over it, ‘Look here, jolly, don’t you think?’
Grace at work the next day remembering on and off all the time that she and Tom Dando had once been comrades, just the two of them following Mr Billy across the enormous room with the windows; Barty Small looked out at her again, once or twice, but he had lost his power to move her. It was herself and Tommy Dando that she kept seeing, standing close together, meeting one another’s eyes, and trying not to laugh.
They would laugh together again soon, thought Grace, letting the inner swooning take hold once more as she waited for Mrs Ticknell’s kettle to boil, or shook the dust from the window-dressing velvet, they would laugh together soon as adults. As sweethearts.
Oh, when, when would he speak to her again?
Violet too was preoccupied. Before she had even reached home on that market day, she had understood that there were two parts to the conundrum Mrs George Givens had presented her with. There was the silly name itself, the nickname, hardly the worst she’d heard, and certainly not the worst Grace would have come across herself, poor girl; its meaning though seemed clear. George Givens must surely have the idea that Grace herself was, well, half and half.
Only half black; half white.
Was that what he thought?
Violet could not dismiss this, mainly because it had occurred to her once or twice over the years that Grace was – surely – paler than the only other black people Violet had seen, the sick-looking sailor propped against the harbour wall at Plymouth, and the music-hall singers. She had inwardly shrugged, telling herself that if white people varied so – no one would mistake a Greek for a Norwegian – why shouldn’t all black folk have their own differing shades?
But the idea had always been there in the back of her mind, she realized. So perhaps George Givens, who had certainly travelled more than most, who had for a while, now she came to think of it, served for several years in the merchant navy before he married, perhaps he had merely noticed something true; noticed something he must have thought we all knew already, thought Violet, or how else would he have so carelessly let slip his foolish name?
And maybe he was none too bright, but he certainly seemed fond of his adoptive cousin, and Grace had often spent whole afternoons at Porthkerris, volunteering to help with the four little ones, his children. The name was not meant unkindly, thought Violet.
So why had Bea, who must surely know her own nephew perfectly well, flown into such a passion about it? Was it the name she minded? But it was merely feebly insulting compared to so many others. She must surely know that too.
Was it perhaps not the name at all, but the assumption behind it?
Why would that bother you so, Beatrice?
Even asking this question, putting it in so many words, made Violet’s heart beat so fast that she would have to sit down to ease it. Because as soon as she asked it, other ideas and questions formed themselves, dizzying questions, ideas that made her hold her breath.
She thought of the dying baby in the cot at the Home, lying back rolling and unrolling the stray end of the nightdress tape. She thought of the greyish face looking up, and being so like Ruth’s. She saw the turn of the little girl’s head, proud in her new dress at the market. She thought of Grace this morning smiling into the mirror as she adjusted her hat to the perfect stylish angle; just as once the young Bea Kitto had, vain and pretty in her sweet-faced teens. She thought of Grace’s clever fingers turning a seam so lightly you could hardly see the stitches, or working out from looking at a picture what the separate pieces of a fitted coa
t should look like, and drawing them out on paper, and making first a careful try-out version from old sheeting before she cut the fine wool.
Bea would have done things like that. If she’d stayed at home.
But she did not. She went away, and stayed away, missed our mother’s funeral, and – dear God! Oh dear God – said she’d parted brass rags with the Redwoods, and wouldn’t be a lady’s maid no more for all the tea in China; and went instead to the old Red Lion in its dirty four-ale days.
Bea who had given Grace a fine new blouse for Christmas, but sent by post; Bea who had kept Grace and Violet at a distance, more than this past year, making up paying guests for the cottage by the harbour wall. Bea who had not answered two letters. Bea who had told lies.
Violet, leaning on her spade in anguished thought for several minutes, straightened now, set the spade gently down against the wall, and without even washing her hands left her garden and went straight to St George’s to pray for strength, for the surely almost supernatural strength that she would need, to get by herself on the train to the coast, and visit her sister at home.
14
The following Saturday, Grace’s half-day nicely timed to chime with Lily’s own monthly afternoon out, he was suddenly there beside her in the slowly moving crowd leaving the Picture Palace.
‘Afternoon,’ he said.
Grace immediately began to tremble all over, her knees shook. She peeped sideways up at his face, turned quickly away. But she had managed a smile.
On her other side Lily took her arm. ‘Hello, Tommy,’ she said.
‘Like the show?’
Grace hesitated; both films were nothing to her now.
‘Very much, thank you,’ said Lily archly.
Tommy smiled down at Grace. I wasn’t asking her, said his smile. I was asking you.
They reached the anteroom of the old tithe barn and the door propped open to the street. Lily tugged a little. ‘We’re off to the market now,’ she told Tommy Dando. ‘Aren’t we, Grace.’
Tommy Dando appeared surprised. ‘Why, so am I!’
Lily giggled, exactly as if, thought Grace anxiously, she really thought Tommy was speaking to her. Together they moved off towards the square, the two girls arm-in-arm, Tommy Dando on the edge of the pavement, gentlemanly. It was a bright blustery afternoon.
Outside the George and Dragon a red-faced tall fat man in an overcoat stood yelling on a soapbox, with Union Jack flags flapping on either side, held by a couple of bored-looking soldiers.
‘– any young man, any young man with a heart, with a soul, must come at last to his country’s aid!’ the red-faced man was shouting, as they squeezed their way past the small listening crowd.
‘When you going?’ Lily asked Tommy Dando.
‘Tomorrow, if they’d let me,’ he said seriously, and for the first time Grace felt a pang of fear. Stupid war, what was it supposed to be about, anyway?
They reached the square. It was past four, and some of the stalls were already being tidied for dismantling.
‘It’s later than we thought,’ Grace said.
‘It’s tea-time,’ said Tommy Dando. ‘Would you like some? Ladies?’
‘How d’you mean?’ Like Grace, Lily had never set foot inside any of Silkhampton’s various public establishments. The rough ones were only for working men, and altogether too rough; the others only for gentry, and much too posh.
‘We could try the Little Owl,’ said Tommy. ‘On me,’ he added.
Lily and Grace met one another’s eyes. The Little Owl Tearooms! Did they dare?
‘Thank you,’ said Grace, in her best polite shop-assistant manner, which was instantly too much for Lily, who giggled, her hand to her mouth.
‘Come on then,’ said Tommy Dando, and he offered Lily his arm. She took it and they walked all the way down North Street and into the Rope Walk, and there were the tearooms, the windows all steamed up. They were a fairly new venture, a place where ladies might meet and drink tea and rest during shopping expeditions; run by the two Misses Lawrence, the daughters of the General. On the far side of the road Grace suddenly stopped. It had occurred to her that she had forgotten for the moment who she was.
‘We can’t,’ she told Tommy.
‘Can’t what?’
‘Go in there. I can’t.’
‘What d’you mean? Why not? It’s only a shop.’
Miss Lawrence, Miss Jane Lawrence. Ladies both; not wool-shop regulars. What were they like? Whatever they were like, they were at home. They had opened their own home up as a tearoom when the old gentleman had died. Grace swallowed.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Lily, with her usual unexamined tact. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’
‘This is best,’ said Tommy. Grace looked at him. Did he have a clue? But he was Tommy Dando, of course: the charmer for whom everything was possible. Perhaps boldness too could be infectious.
‘Alright then,’ she said. They crossed the road and he opened the steamy door, Lily in first, then Grace, then Tommy. He closed the door behind them, the bell tinging.
Grace’s heart beat very fast. It was a long time since she had knowingly risked such public insult. All of them, she knew, were too young and too poor for the likes of the Misses Lawrence, even Tommy Dando, whose father managed one of the dye works out past the railway station, where Tommy himself was currently working. The ladies and gentlemen who usually took tea at the Little Owl would hardly appreciate sharing their pleasures with an office clerk and a housemaid. And with the addition of Grace Dimond there was every chance, Grace knew, that there would suddenly be no room, no table free, no matter how many chairs stood empty.
Once long ago she had gone with Aunt Bea on a picnic in the country with a troop of other children from the Home, a great wagonful of them, climbing down in a meadow at the other end, where several ladies were waiting, and the ladies had handed every child a paper bag with a pasty and an apple in it, and there had been games, and races, and a man with a thing like a wide wooden barrel, with seats inside, and a handle; it held four children at once, and the man turned the handle, and spun the barrel round and round, like a tiny roundabout, and the children sitting in it screamed with joy, whizzing round in tight circles, laughing and giddily collapsing on the grass afterwards. They had all queued up for a go, but when Grace reached the roundabout the man had turned her away. At first he had pretended not to see her, then he had given her a little push, in the small of her back, to get her to go away. He had not spoken to her, not one word.
Grace had gone to her aunt and wept, for she had only been four or five, and not able to grasp yet what the problem might be. Aunt Bea had gone and talked to the man, and presently called Grace over, and picked her up and set her down in the barrel with the three other children waiting there, except that they were all sitting directly on the seats, and Grace was sitting on her Aunt Bea’s shawl, spread out there, though it was her best paisley.
‘Don’t want you getting splinters in your bum,’ she said to Grace, and though her words were jocose her tone had not quite matched it, so that Grace was still uneasy, and hadn’t really liked being spun round anyway, glad when it was all over and she could jump out with the rest and lie on the grass pretending to laugh with the others.
‘Can I help you?’ One of the Miss Lawrences, the younger one, Miss Jane. The place was nearly empty, someone turning round briefly to stare. It was lovely, Grace thought; like Ticknell’s wool shop, only a tearoom, all clean and cosy and designed to allure, clean white tablecloths, pictures on the wall with little gas lamps, and such fine china, flowered and delicate, and silvery teapots.
‘Tea for three, please,’ said Tommy Dando cheerfully. He was taller than Miss Lawrence. His smile, Grace saw, was ravishing. Miss Lawrence, Jane, was a woman after all, despite her poor scrawny frame, her frizz of greying hair and white bony nose. She was ravished.
‘Well, ah, yes – it is quite near closing time, but ah –’
‘We’ll be ever so quick,
’ said Tommy, and Miss Lawrence swung her poor old head almost coquettishly, and with a girlish simper pulled out a nearby chair. It was at a table half in the alcove at one side. Lily let Grace take the most hidden alcove seat and Tommy pulled out the chair opposite for Lily, so that he himself must sit between them. He shifted the chair just a little, so that he was closer to Grace. He hid her, too, from the doorway, Grace noted.
‘Well, Miss Houghton, well, Miss Dimond,’ he said, mock-grave, and suddenly it was all any of them could do not to giggle, the three of them sitting in the Little Owl Tearooms, as if they were gentry!
‘How you gonna pay for this?’ whispered Lily; shared daring had made them all suddenly intimate.
‘I got money,’ said Tommy, with a shrug. ‘What would you like, Gracie?’ He gave her a direct look and for a long, dizzying moment she looked back. He had to swallow, she saw, before he could say anything else. ‘Cake?’ It came out slightly squeaky and they all laughed again.
‘Tea,’ said a voice, flatly. It was Miss Lawrence, the fatter, older one that the place was named after, Tommy said, when the tray was unloaded and she had made her grim way back to the kitchen.
It had been an uncomfortable moment, sitting still and quiet while Miss Lawrence set out the tea things. Grace had looked down at the tablecloth, careful not to risk meeting her eyes. It seemed to Grace that looking up would indicate that she, Grace Dimond, was enjoyably, even sneeringly, aware that she was being served tea by the daughter of a general.
I’m such a come-down for her, she had thought, as a side plate was set in front of her. It was not the first time Grace had felt a confused pity for someone clearly unhappy in her presence, dismayed by her own existence. They’ve been taught something wrong, Violet used to say: they know no better than to mind what colour another good Christian is. But while that might be ignorant, cruel, ungodly even, almost-thought Grace, it was still minding. The pain was still real, the dismay still genuine, and if hardly intended still all down to Grace: her fault. Poor Miss Lawrence!
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