by Polly Heron
‘Yes.’
‘That’s what I like. Loyalty. Willingness. Cooperation.’ Shirl fell in step beside him as though they were the best of mates. ‘Looking forward to the end of term, are we?’
‘Yes.’ And to never seeing you again, you bully.
‘Hark at me. “Looking forward, are we?” As if I bother with school! Nah, my school days are long since over. My work never stops, you know. You do know that, don’t you, pipsqueak?’
No, he didn’t know and he didn’t want to. Jacob chewed the inside of his cheek.
‘That weren’t one of them remarks that doesn’t need an answer,’ said Shirl. ‘It was a question. You do know, don’t you, that I don’t stop my job just because it’s the school holidays? Wait.’ He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘Yes, it was one of those remarks not needing an answer, cos we all know the answer, don’t we? I said, don’t we?’
The inside of his cheek was swollen. He would have to be careful how he ate or he would chew a socking great hole in himself.
Shirl let out a roar of laughter. ‘Go on. Say yes. You’ve said yes to my other questions. Looks like yes is the only word you can remember.’
‘Yes.’
Shirl cupped a hand behind his ear. ‘Didn’t quite catch that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good lad. Good little Jemima. So tell me this: what are you saying yes to?’
‘Um…’
‘Are you telling me Jemima doesn’t know? And yet, Jemima said yes. See, I like that. I appreciate that. Trust: that’s what it shows. Obedience.’
Jacob hauled out a crumb of self-respect from somewhere. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘You mean, what have you said yes to? Think about it. If my work doesn’t stop, then yours doesn’t either. How could it?’
‘But I won’t see you, will I? I don’t live round here. I’m only here because of school.’
‘You’re not telling me they keep you locked up inside that orphanage place all summer long, are you? Course they don’t. I bet they’d let you out to visit a friend from school.’
‘I don’t have that kind of friends.’
‘Didn’t your Thad let you have friends? Well, you know something, Jemima, I’m not like that. I don’t mind you having friends, especially friends that help you do your job properly. It’s like this, see.’
Shirl looped his arm round Jacob’s shoulders. Jacob tensed. One wrong word from him and that arm wouldn’t be round his shoulders any more, it would be round his neck.
‘You’re going to make an arrangement with someone from your class to go round to his house once a week in the summer holidays. If I have a job for you, I’ll meet you on your way home.’ Shirl whipped away his arm so swiftly that Jacob almost spun round. ‘And you know what I’m going to do for you, Jemima? I’m gonna let you choose what day of the week. How’s that?’
Aaron picked up one wooden saw-horse in each hand and took them outside into the sunshine. One of the first jobs he had done when he became caretaker here was to clear the area outside the workshop, an area his predecessor had used as a dumping ground for leftover bits and pieces. Aaron had salvaged what he could and treated the children to a bonfire with the rest. Now the area was an extension of his workshop. Nothing was left lying about and he swept up after every job.
He set up the saw-horses the right distance apart, making the calculation by eye. Not like when he was a nipper, working for coppers after school in the wood yard, and needed to use a yardstick for every measurement. The door he was working on was standing propped up against the workshop wall. Grasping its edges firmly, he lifted it and swung it round, placing it across the saw-horses, adjusting it to find the right position.
Then he went indoors to fetch his tool-caddy with all its wood-handled instruments. When he stepped outside again, Miss Watson – Molly – was coming towards him. He shouldn’t permit himself to think of her as Molly; suppose it slipped out. Neither should he permit himself a swift glance to admire her slender, upright figure and that unusual colour of hair that he still couldn’t put a name to. Not fair, not gold, definitely not red but with perhaps a trace of red in it, giving it that rich hue. The colour seemed to crackle in the sunshine – it really was time to stop looking, if he was going to have daft thoughts like that.
She smiled as she approached and he couldn’t help smiling back. He ought to keep his distance, but – well, it was only a smile. Only. As if.
‘Morning.’ He touched his cap to her.
‘Morning.’ She glanced at the contents of the tool-caddy. ‘They look old.’
‘They were my father’s tools.’
‘What’s the matter with the door?’
‘Nothing – oh, I see what you mean. No, I’m not mending it. I’m making it. The door on the BB is warped and damaged, so I’m building a new one.’
‘I hadn’t realised you were…’
‘More than a handyman?’ The way she pulled herself up before she could put her foot any further in it was endearing. ‘I’m a carpenter and joiner and I have the papers to prove it.’
‘I didn’t mean to suggest—’
He waved his free hand, dismissing it. Putting down the tool-caddy, he turned to her, determined to focus on the task at hand and not those hazel-green eyes. ‘You’ve come to see my plans for the furniture for your room.’
She laughed. ‘It isn’t my room.’
‘It’s your idea and you found the money for it. That makes it your room.’
‘Actually, someone else saw to the money side of it for me. But yes, I’ve come to see the plans.’
‘I’ll bring them out here.’ Better than looking at them in the workshop; better than being forced to stand closer to her. ‘It’d be a shame to waste the sunshine.’
He fetched the plans, laying the top one on the door. As Molly leaned over, he heard her breath catch. Surprise? Did she like his work? Or was that breath a little hitch of disappointment? Surely she wasn’t going to do a Mrs Wardle on him and declare that the visiting relatives wouldn’t require – in other words, deserve – anything more than a plain little wash-stand.
The one he had designed stood on squat round feet and had a square base, with four barley-sugar twisted legs stretching up to the top, where there was a hole for the wash-bowl to sit in the middle, a small towel-rail along each side and a hinged looking-glass at the back.
‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked.
‘How can you ask? Of course I do.’
‘Only you looked at it for such a long time, I thought you must be trying to dream up something polite to say.’
‘It’s a beauty. It’s far more than I expected.’
‘All rooms deserve the best furniture and since this is costing only the price of the materials and I’m giving my time for nothing, there’s no reason why this wash-stand shouldn’t be stylish.’ He pulled out another sheet of paper from underneath. ‘Here. You need to choose the design for the headboard. I can carve either of these into the board.’
Molly shook her head. ‘My dad and my brother are builders. If they could see these… You’re a true craftsman. You can’t imagine how this has cheered me up. I’ve gone from a run-in with Mrs Wardle, who thinks the relatives’ room is a disgraceful project that should be stopped immediately, to… this. These.’ She indicated his drawings. ‘You’re going to turn the room into something special and remarkable. I’m grateful to you.’
Her eyes were shining, her face radiant. Aaron almost gulped.
‘It’s a pleasure to work on this project.’ How formal he sounded, how stilted. What he meant was, It’s a pleasure to work with you. But he couldn’t say that, mustn’t give any indication of what was going on inside him. ‘That time you came before you started as secretary, when you arrived with Mrs Wardle and found the children helping me with the ivy and they were all covered in clippings and dust, I thought you were her flunkey.’
‘You never!’
‘I did. It was the way y
ou whisked the kids off to get them cleaned up.’
‘As I recall, I was trying to get them out of an uncomfortable situation. The way Mrs Wardle had a go at you in front of them was inappropriate and I wanted to defuse the situation. You didn’t really think I was her flunkey, did you?’
He nodded.
‘Well, I hope you realise now that I’m not.’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,’ he said. ‘There is one other thing I’d like to tell you.’
‘Oh, lord. What now?’
‘It’s not about you. It’s about me, something that I did.’ He let out a breath. ‘The day I came to Upton’s to return the stolen money, I said Danny Cropper wasn’t the thief.’
‘I remember.’
‘And you were so taken aback and guilt-stricken that you didn’t think to ask who the real thief was.’ He stopped.
‘It hardly matters now.’ But that little wrinkle of the nose told him her curiosity was piqued.
‘It was Danny. He stole it just the way you said he did, by coming into the shop along with a load of other children.’
‘Why didn’t you say so? Do you have any idea how bad I felt? Not to mention what Mrs Rostron must have thought of me for flinging accusations around.’
‘I’m sorry, but I had to protect him.’ Would she understand? ‘He tried to run away that day, wanting to reach his dad in Southport. I found him and brought him back and told his school and Mrs Rostron that I’d found him playing truant locally.’
‘Why not tell the truth? It’s not as though it was his first attempt at running away. No one would have been surprised.’
‘Exactly. He’d already been in enough trouble. I felt sorry for him, poor kid. He’s lost his mum and been sent here, and all he wanted was to get to his father.’
Her eyebrows gathered in, but not in censure. A softening in her eyes said that she understood. ‘So you covered up what he’d done.’
‘Which involved lying to you and I’m sorry for that.’
‘Thank you for telling me.’
His pulse raced as his gaze caught hers. Entranced but fluttering with nerves, he strove to break the moment, reaching out a hand to indicate one of the carvings he had sketched on the top piece of paper.
‘I prefer…’ he began at the same moment as she reached out to point, saying, ‘What about…?’
Their hands brushed, awakening his skin, filling him with new consciousness and longing. Would she move closer? Might her hand…? His own hand moved, ready to meet hers halfway.
Molly took a step backwards, away from him, away from the moment. Had she felt something in that moment? If she had, she clearly wanted nothing from it.
Aaron cleared his throat and bent to fiddle with something, anything, in the tool-caddy. When he straightened up, he flicked a casual hand over the paper. ‘This one, then?’ Picking up the sheets, he rolled them up loosely.
‘I’d better get back to my desk.’
‘I’d best get on as well.’
But he didn’t, not immediately. He watched her walk away, his heart yearning after her. She still wasn’t wearing an engagement ring. That Hartley bloke needed his bumps feeling. He had claimed to be ‘much more than a friend’, so wasn’t it about time he did something about it? If Aaron had been engaged to a beautiful, capable, resourceful girl like Molly Watson, he wouldn’t wait five minutes. He would buy her the best ring he could afford so that the world could see how proud he was.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SWINGING A BROWN-PAPER parcel from her fingers by its string, Molly headed for the orphanage, enjoying the early sunshine and the snap of freshness in the air after a dash of rain overnight. As she walked along Beech Road past the rec, the green scent of the rain-washed grass and privet hedges was rich and pure, comforting and invigorating at the same time. It was a day for being outdoors. That was what Dad would have said, but he would also have said that if there was work to be done, it mustn’t be put off. Honour your commitments. It was one of the reasons Perkins and Watson was in such demand for its services. Customers appreciated reliability.
Walking through the orphanage gates, she looked automatically for Aaron, who so often started his days with a spot of ivy-clearing. There was no sign of him – well, of course not. Not on a Saturday. He worked the same days she did, Monday to Friday.
She went to find the fourteens who had been assigned to make the curtains, under her supervision, for the relatives’ room. Originally, she had also intended that they should make a curtain to go around the lower half of the wash-stand, but having seen Aaron’s design, she had ditched this idea. Aaron’s wash-stand would be a good-looking piece of furniture and ought to be seen in its entirety.
Rounding a corner, she almost bumped into him. She danced backwards instinctively. What if they had bumped into one another? What if his hands had reached to hold her steady? Mad thoughts!
‘I was just thinking about you.’ What had made her say that?
‘Something good, I hope.’
‘Well, not so much about you as about your wash-stand.’ What an idiot she sounded. ‘What brings you here on a Saturday?’
‘I was about to ask you the same question. I told the kids I’d take them to the rec for a game of rounders to celebrate the start of the summer holidays. Want to come?’
‘I’m here to supervise the making of the curtains for the new room.’
‘I won’t keep you, then.’
‘Enjoy the rounders. It sounds fun.’
A lot more fun than being stuck indoors making curtains. It didn’t seem fair on the girls she had chosen. Should she offer them the chance to play rounders instead? No, Mrs Rostron wouldn’t approve of that. Bunking off from a job wouldn’t be good for their moral fibre, no matter what the circumstances. Honour your commitments. Molly sighed. That was all very well for an adult, but these were children and their lives were so regimented.
Now that the school holidays had begun, the fourteens were scarily close to the end of their time at St Anthony’s. How did they feel? A child with a family could leave school one day and start work the next and come home to the same place. Not so the orphanage children. An essential aspect of placing them in employment was securing their accommodation. All too soon, the girls would be live-in maids in houses and hotels. A few had been found positions as apprentice shop assistants in one of the big department stores in town, which had a dormitory on the top floor where their unmarried girls could live. It was a matter of going from one institution to another for these girls. Every year a number of boys joined the army; this year’s contingent was leaving on Monday. Others had been found jobs as apprentices to various trades, as long as they were allowed to sleep under the counter at night. That was the question that coloured every possible job: where was the child to sleep? With no family to care for them, they had to be placed in jobs that included somewhere to lay their heads.
A rising clamour of young voices rang through the corridors, showing the popularity of the outing to play rounders. Molly went in the opposite direction and entered the girls’ teaching room, where they learned sewing, knitting and patchwork as well as darning and other repairs. They also copied verses from the Bible in their best script and worked out how to keep a family on a low wage, tackling stacks of budgeting questions that looked far more challenging than any maths problems that had ever confronted Molly at school.
The three girls rose as she came in and dipped their knees to her. She still hadn’t got used to be curtseyed to.
‘Good morning, girls,’ she said, taking off her jacket and hat. ‘Thank you for giving up your Saturday morning, especially on such a beautiful day. If we get a move on, we can get this finished by midday and you can have the afternoon to yourselves. Have you got the scissors there, Beatrice? Would you like to open the parcel?’
At least they liked her choice of fabric. That felt like a good start, though Molly’s conscience tweaked her. She should have taken the girls with her to the
shop to choose. Too late now.
‘Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you how I measured the windows.’
As cramped as the relatives’ room was, for some reason it had two windows. Goodness, but it was going to be chilly
in there come the winter. Would it be an imposition on Mr Hesketh’s generosity to add an extra blanket to the list?
Back in the teaching room, it soon became obvious that, once the girls had been given instructions, they knew what they were doing.
‘It’s a nice change to make curtains,’ Ruth remarked.
‘Better than darning,’ agreed Beatrice. ‘I’m sick to death of darning the boys’ socks. I think they should be taught to darn their own.’
Presently, the door opened and one of the kitchen maids put her head in.
‘Please, miss, Mrs Wilkes says she needs a telephone call to the grocer to ask them to send round a tin of baking powder. Dolly’s only gone and dropped ours all over the floor and walked in it.’
‘Please tell Mrs Wilkes she’s welcome to use the telephone.’
‘What, Mrs Wilkes? She wouldn’t know one end from t’other. She means for you to do it, miss, if you please. Lipton’s for preference, but otherwise Aero Baking Powder.’
‘I’ll see to it.’ She got up, glancing round at the girls. At this stage, they didn’t need her.
Upstairs, she placed the call. As she walked away, the telephone rang. For a moment, she considered not answering. After all, Mrs Rostron wasn’t here today, which meant that, but for the chance that had brought her upstairs at this moment, there would be no one here.
Returning to the desk, she lifted the ear-piece and brought the mouth-piece close to her lips.
‘Good morning. St Anthony’s Orphanage.’
‘I must speak to Mrs Rostron. Is she available?’
‘She isn’t on duty today. May I take a message?’
A pause, filled by a few faint crackles.
‘There hardly seems any point.’
‘Who am I speaking to, please?’ Molly asked.
‘This is the sanatorium in Southport.’
Molly went tingly all over. She straightened. ‘Is there news about Mr Cropper?’