Chrissie's Children

by Irene Carr

  Chrissie held on to Arkley and asked, coughing, ‘What about the top floor?’ Arkley’s room was up there with those of the rest of the staff.

  He answered, ‘I’ve cleared that and they’re all out.’

  ‘Where is the fire?’ Chrissie asked, although she had already guessed the answer.

  It came as expected, from Walter Gibson: ‘In the kitchen, Mrs Ballantyne – or back of the hotel, anyway. I’d gone round and collected all the shoes and I was sitting in me little cuddy—’ that was his small workroom ‘—cleaning them. Then I thought I could smell smoke. I walked back to the kitchen, went to open the door and soon as I did the flames were jumping out at me. So I slammed the door quick and set the alarm off, telephoned the fire brigade.’

  ‘And here they are,’ Arkley shouted above the clanging of the bells as the first engine arrived, closely followed by a second. Firemen jumped down and began unrolling hoses. Chrissie groped her way across the foyer again to reception, found the register and went to rejoin Arkley and Walter Gibson. As she reached them there came a muffled explosion. She felt a hot breath searing her back and the smoke-filled foyer was lit by a red glare.

  Arkley shouted, ‘The kitchen wall’s gone!’ and he and Walter hauled Chrissie out into the street.

  They picked their way across the tramlines and the snaking hoses to the other side of the road and the entrance to the railway station. There all the others from the hotel were huddled together in dressing gowns or bathrobes, one or two of the men in shirts and trousers, a shocked and dishevelled group.

  Chrissie called, ‘Will you answer your names, please?’ She began to read from the register by the shifting glare from the fire that now flamed from every window of her hotel. When she was satisfied that all her guests were safe she counted off her staff and confirmed that none of them was missing either. Then, at last, she heaved a sigh of relief. She caught the eye of young Sarah Tennant, her lips parted in horror, hair tousled as she had run from her bed. Chrissie smiled at her reassuringly. Then she turned around, her smile slipping away, and watched all she had worked for over the past twenty years and more reduced to a pile of steaming, smoking, blackened rubble.

  Later the fire chief would tell her, ‘It was an old building and tinder dry. It might have been an electrical fault – I don’t know. If it had happened during the day somebody would ha’ seen it and we’d ha’ caught it in time. But in the night, it had a chance to get a hold and there was no stopping it.’

  Chrissie turned her back on the fire again. She found rooms for the guests in other hotels and boarding houses and had them ferried there in taxis. Most of her staff who lived in went back to their families to put a roof over their heads. Chrissie took Sarah and another of the maids to her own home where there were rooms standing empty that had once been used by servants no longer needed.

  She was weary but she thrust aside the temptation of her bed. She bathed, dressed, breakfasted on toast and strong coffee then drove down into the town in the Ford.

  She parked it in a side street near the station and walked down to the bridge over the Wear. She stood there for some time, looking down at the ships in the river or building in the yards, listening to the clamour that meant men were at work and earning for their families. She thought about Jack, at this moment striving to find work for the men of the Ballantyne yard. She would not heap her troubles on him, nor on her children.

  After a while she walked back into the centre of the town and entered the office of an estate agent. The clerk who greeted her did not recognise her, but one of the partners, happening to come out of his office, greeted her. ‘Good morning, Mrs Ballantyne. What an awful business, last night’s fire . . .’ Chrissie accepted his condolences and waited until he came to: ‘. . . and if there is anything we can do?’

  ‘I think there might be,’ she said, and went with him into his office.

  Later she hurried back to the High Street and looked at all that was left of her hotel. The roof and the other floors had fallen in, leaving only an empty shell of four walls open to the sky. Windows and doorways were just gaping, blackened holes. She knew it would take six months to a year to rebuild. Add to that cost the loss of trade that she had built up over the years and it came to a mammoth sum, far exceeding the insurance cover. Her gaze shifted.

  ‘It’s a right mess,’ Dinsdale Arkley said heavily. He stood beside her. He had gone home to his seventy-five-year-old mother on the other side of the river and had just come over on a tram. He was haggard and depressed after the fire and a sleepless night. He was facing the fact that he had lost his job and knew he would be lucky to find another. He was very conscious suddenly of his artificial leg, the result of a wound in the Great War. There was little work for a one-legged man. He said, ‘I came over to see if there was anything I could do, but . . .’ He broke off there and shook his head. Then he said, ‘Hello, lass.’

  Chrissie turned and saw that Sarah Tennant stood a respectful yard or two behind them.

  Sarah replied, ‘Hello, Mr Arkley – Mrs Ballantyne.’ Still addressing Chrissie, ‘Thank you for the clothes. Betty Price said you’d told her I could have them.’ Sarah had accepted them with some hesitation, but was still uncertain, because the dresses and other things, down to the shoes, were much better quality than she had ever worn, would ever have bought.

  Chrissie smiled at her and removed the last doubts. ‘You’re welcome. They’ll do until you can get to the shops, but keep them anyway, if you like. Sophie has grown out of them and they seem to fit you all right.’ While the two girls were of an age, Sophie was the taller by a good two inches. Chrissie added, ‘I’d have thought you would have stayed in bed this morning, after a broken night.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m used to waking at the usual time.’ She could have turned over and slept again, only . . . ‘I wondered if I could do anything to help, but . . .’ She echoed Arkley’s words and, like him, her voice trailed away despondently. Overnight she had lost her home and her job. The job would not be easy to replace and God only knew where she would live. She would have to find a room somewhere, or lodgings, and that would soon eat away her small savings.

  Chrissie guessed what was running through their minds and said, ‘I intend to keep everyone on, for the moment, anyway.’ And she hoped it would not be at a loss for long. ‘You can keep that room, Sarah, until we see what we’re doing.’ She saw relief in both their faces.

  Arkley said, ‘What will we be doing?’ His gaze was drawn again to the empty, soot-fouled walls of what had been the Railway Hotel, pocked with holes that had been windows, like the eyeless sockets in a skull.

  Chrissie said, ‘Well, let’s see. They say two heads are better than one, so three should be better still. Come on, the pair of you.’

  She led them to the old Wiley building that was almost next door and took from her handbag the keys she had been given by the estate agent. He had offered, eagerly, ‘I’ll come and show you round,’ but Chrissie had firmly refused, preferring to take a first look herself. Now she unlocked the front door and walked in.

  Arkley limped in after her and said, ‘Dear Lord! What a state!’ When Wiley’s had closed down the creditors had ripped out everything that could be removed and sold. The ground floor now was just that, an empty floor covered with litter, scarred where the display stands had been. One of the pillars that held up the rest of the building still held a dusty mirror that reflected Chrissie and the other two as they picked their way through the debris of splintered woodwork, old newspapers and the occasional empty beer bottle – these last left by the workmen who tore the heart out of the place.

  In the centre stood the main staircase. That had been left in its old glory. The carpet on the treads was worn and dirty but the curving banisters and handrails of a lustrous, polished, dark timber still gleamed through their coating of dust. Arkley said grudgingly, ‘That looks a good job.’ Chrissie nodded and went on, her eyes everywhere, assessing, picturing. So they climbed the s
tairs to the first, then the second and third floors, finding the same emptiness, all lit by pale light coming through the tall windows with their dust and cobwebs.

  Finally they walked out of the back of the building into a yard at the rear. The gates leading out into a back street were shut. Chrissie remembered seeing them, still bearing the name ‘Wiley’s’ in faded and peeling paint. By the gate was an old stable building, once used for the horses that had pulled Wiley’s delivery vans, later as a garage for their motorised pantechnicons. Chrissie found more keys on the ring given to her. They opened the garage doors and another that gave on to a staircase leading to a flat over the garage. It was small, consisting only of a bed-sitting-room with two doors, at one end leading to a kitchen, at the other to a lavatory. Both garage and flat were stripped of everything but dust and litter.

  Outside in the High Street again, Chrissie locked the front door then stood back on the pavement to stare up at the Wiley building. She was busily recasting a lot of old plans, nurtured over months, to meet this new crisis – or opportunity. She saw the others waiting, watching her, and laughed at them.

  ‘Sorry! I was dreaming. Now, I’ll tell you what I want you to do: work out how you would turn this place into the Railway Hotel.’

  Arkley could not believe what he had heard and that Chrissie could laugh at such a time. He exclaimed, ‘This place?’

  Chrissie nodded. She could guess what he was thinking, but he did not know how the excitement of this new challenge was gripping her. ‘I’ll call a meeting as soon as I’m ready to compare notes.’

  She left them then, almost running, to seek an architect and a builder.

  At the end of the week Matt and Sophie returned from London, and Tom from his job at Newcastle. They were ready to console their mother but found it was not needed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Chrissie when they offered their help, ‘but this is a job for professionals.’ She hugged them, grateful and proud, then turned to Arkley and Sarah.

  They produced sketches of how they thought the new hotel should look. At first the sketches were small and simple, almost childish, but soon they became much bigger and detailed. Arkley, Sarah and Chrissie would pore over them, and Chrissie’s own sketches, spread out on the silkily polished surface of the table that ran the length of the dining-room in the Ballantyne house. The architect stood at Chrissie’s elbow making notes and suggestions, issuing tactful warnings as to the practicality of constructional details: ‘I don’t think you can do that, Mrs Ballantyne.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He grinned. ‘If we take that pillar away as you suggest then the building will collapse because it’s one of those bearing the load of the upper floors.’

  Chrissie laughed. ‘We don’t want that! All right, we’ll cover it with mirrors on all four sides and put a bench seat around it so people can sit with their backs to it.’

  When Jack returned from the Balkans one evening a few days later he found her excited and exciting. She was waiting for him on the station platform. She waved as she saw him leaning out of a window and ran into his arms as he stepped from the train. He kissed her, then held her off to look at her. Despite the poor lighting in the station he could see the high colour in her cheeks, her dark eyes sparkling. It brought a smile from him. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

  Chrissie thought he looked tired and fed up, guessed that the trip had been a failure, and that Jack had come home more worried than when he had left. She laughed up at him. ‘I’m just glad to see you home.’ That was true, but not all of the truth.

  They climbed into the Ford and drove out of the station with Chrissie at the wheel. Jack exclaimed, ‘My God!’ He had seen the boarded-up shell of the Railway Hotel, like a haunted house in the yellow light of the streetlamps. He put a hand to his head, appalled.

  Chrissie said drily, ‘Yes, indeed.’ She swung the Ford through the gap between the pavement and a tram. ‘It happened just a few nights after you left. We woke up to find the place on fire . . .’ She told him all about it as she drove home.

  The children claimed him then through dinner, plying him with questions about his trip. Jack casually dismissed the fact that he had not secured a contract to build another ship: ‘We’ll have to look elsewhere, that’s all.’ He was cheerful and amusing.

  Later in the sitting-room Jack sprawled in his chair and Chrissie sat on the rug, leaning on his long legs. They were alone, the embers of a dying fire in the hearth. She told him about her plans and how they were proceeding. He listened, asked questions, looked increasingly concerned and finally asked, ‘What about the money for all this? Where is it coming from?’

  ‘The insurance on the Railway Hotel.’

  ‘But what about the cost of rebuilding that?’

  Chrissie shrugged. ‘It will have to wait – for a year or ten years if necessary – until I can raise the cash. The main thing now is to get back into business and I plan to do that in three months. That way we won’t lose the clientele we’ve built up over the years.’

  Jack was silent a moment, then said low voiced, ‘I wondered why you were so excited when I saw you first tonight. It was this new hotel business.’

  Chrissie shook her head. ‘I was full of it all through the day but not when I came for you.’ Chrissie got up from the rug and stood over him, saying softly, ‘I’ve missed you, Jack. Come to bed and I’ll show you how much.’

  Helen Diaz was frightened but steeled herself for the task. She rehearsed her speech from the early morning when she washed the front doorstep and whitened it with the ‘stepstone’. It was her father’s payday, and she waited until her brother had gone out with his friends for an evening round of the local pubs. As Paco Diaz pushed away his empty plate after finishing his supper, Helen asked, ‘Can I have some more money, please, Dad?’

  Paco scowled at her. ‘What for you want more money? I have give you the housekeeping money. Is enough.’

  That would have silenced Helen a few months ago when she was at school and her mother was alive to hush her, but now she was nearly sixteen, running a home and she had buried her mother. She stood her ground, though her stomach churned with fright, and insisted, ‘I want some money of my own. I’m not a child. I need to buy clothes and I want to go out now and then. I think it’s only fair.’

  Paco shrugged that off. ‘I don’t think so.’ He reached for the evening paper, the discussion finished as far as he was concerned.

  But Helen was not finished. ‘I want five shillings a week. I think that’s the least I should have for looking after this place. I could make a lot more than that if I got a job outside.’

  ‘Five shilling!’ Paco slammed down the paper. ‘Five shilling! Is impossible.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. You can always find ten bob to lend to Juan when he’s broke on a Monday, so you can find it for me.’

  ‘I tell you, no!’ her father shouted, shoving up out of his chair and lifting his hand.

  Helen retreated as far as the kitchen door and held it open ready to flee into the passage. As he strode towards her she stood fast there and warned him, ‘If you try to lay a finger on me I’ll scream for the neighbours and the pollis.’

  That stopped him dead. Paco had never been completely sure of his rights as a citizen in this country where he was still a visitor – he had never become naturalised. The word ‘pollis’ was to him full of menace, threatening arrest and possibly deportation. And then there were the neighbours. Paco liked to think he was a respected figure in his neighbourhood, head of his family, man of the house. But if his young daughter shrieked for help and proclaimed his tightfistedness . . . For once he was uncertain how to deal with her.

  Helen saw it, wanted to make up the row, hug him and tell him she loved him, but knew that would do her no good. She had to obtain his respect before she could hope for his love. Now she said, more quietly but still firmly, ‘I’m going to have that money if I have to take it out of the housekeeping. I earn it, I need it and I deserve it
as much as Juan.’

  Paco gave in. ‘A’right.’

  Helen persisted, determined to establish the principle, ‘Now. And every payday.’

  ‘A’right!’ he shouted, and dug into his trousers pocket. He pulled out two half-crowns and threw them at her feet.

  Helen bent and picked them up. ‘Thank you.’ She closed the door behind her and walked off down the passage. Her hands were shaking and her knees wobbled. She wondered if it was worth it for five shillings.

  A month later she was glad she had fought as she had. Sophie Ballantyne came seeking her, asking, ‘Come over and see the new place they’re working on,’ and because of the money Paco threw at her every payday Helen had a new dress. She had bought it at Binns, the big department store in Fawcett Street, for three shillings and sixpence. The two girls walked across the bridge into the town and found the old Wiley’s building full of workmen. They had to pick their way through gangs of men building new dividing walls, others plastering walls already completed, electricians running out miles of wiring, plumbers putting in more miles of piping.

  They were stopped more than once by busy men in overalls demanding, ‘Here! Where do you two lasses think you’re going?’

  Sophie would answer, ‘To see my mother, Mrs Ballantyne. Isn’t she here?’

  Then they were grudgingly allowed to go on. ‘Aye, she’s up on the second floor. But mind how you go. This is no place for lasses like you.’ Then the men would watch them, Sophie looking older than her nearly-sixteen years, sauntering long legged.

  Helen hissed at her, ‘Stop it! They’re all looking at you!’ Sophie only tightened her lips to keep the giggles in and went on posing.