Wiping her eyes, Bess laughed. ‘Any excuse,’ she said. ‘But yes, I could do with a drink. Coffee for you?’
Frank nodded. ‘And then, why don’t you go up and have a lie down? I’ll finish your shift. I’m on tonight anyway.’
‘But then you won’t get a rest.’
‘Not sure I want one. I’m better staying busy.’
‘You liked having her here, didn’t you? I knew you would,’ Bess said.
‘I did. But, she has gone home with her aunt, which we knew she would do. So, where’s my coffee, woman?’
When Bess returned with Frank’s coffee, Jack was back from lunch. ‘Right, you stay here with Jack and cover the rest of my shift and,’ she looked at the clock, ‘I’ll be back before Jack leaves.’
‘We’re both on reception tonight. It’ll be like old times.’
‘We haven’t had the hotel a year and you’re--’ Bess laughed and waved her hand in the air. ‘Forget it. I’ll see you both at five.’
Bess usually allowed herself an hour to get washed and changed for the evening. Every day, since the hotel first opened, Bess and Frank had been on duty, either on reception, or in the dining room. Even if they were in the office the rule was, if a guest wanted to speak to them they were available. The same rule applied in the evenings. It added a personal touch, which Bess and Frank enjoyed and, after the first couple of nights, the guests expected.
In the bedroom, Bess drew the curtains, kicked off her shoes and fell onto the bed. She pulled up the eiderdown and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned for a while, then got up and went through to the sitting room. Perched on the end of Nancy’s single bed she turned on the wireless. Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America was on. Bess didn’t want to be reminded that her sister was on the other side of the Atlantic; not in America, but in Canada, and rotated the tuning button until she heard the voice of broadcaster Jean Metcalf on Woman’s Hour. The magazine programme was one that Bess particularly enjoyed, when she had time. She put her feet up and laid back on the small single bed to catch the last fifteen minutes of the show. The next thing she heard was the opening music to Mrs Dale’s Diary. She had slept for two hours.
After a quick bath, she brushed her auburn curls into a loose bun in the nape of her neck, put on a grey-green dress, appropriate for the evening, and applied powder and rouge. With time to spare, she glanced through the photographs in the chest of drawers, eventually coming across the one Nancy had found of her mother, Goldie. The resemblance between mother and daughter was striking. It was a wonder Margot hadn’t noticed it. But then, Bess thought, her sister had only seen Nancy a couple of times.
Putting the photographs back in the drawer, Bess wondered why Maeve hadn’t told her Goldie was Nancy’s mother. She told her that Nancy was the daughter of her cousin. She had even told her how Nancy’s mother had died. Bess decided to ask Maeve about Goldie when she returned to work on Monday.
After checking her hair in the mirror and adding lipstick, Bess went downstairs. Jack had already left, so she took her place behind reception and Frank went up to change. When he returned, Bess looked in on Chef to see if he, or any of the kitchen staff, needed anything. They didn’t, so she checked the dining room to make sure the tables had been laid correctly for dinner. They had.
When she got back to reception, Ena was there talking to Frank. She gave Bess a warm smile, ‘Katherine obviously can’t come down for dinner, so I’ll take something up to her. I’ll ask Chef to make up two trays - one for me and one for Henry. I’ll say Henry’s working and I’m keeping him company.’
‘Have you heard from Henry? Do you know how things are going?’ Frank asked.
‘No, but I’m sure he’ll check in tonight. I hope he does anyway.’
‘We’ll put him through straight away, if he rings,’ Bess said, looking at Frank.
‘Thanks. I might risk coming down later. Katherine insisted I locked her in the room before I left just now, so when she goes to bed, I’ll come back. It sounds awful doesn’t it, locking someone in their room?’
‘When you put it like that, yes,’ Bess said. ‘How is she?’
‘Terrified, poor kid. Petrified that one of her father’s friends will come looking for her. If they do,’ Ena said, ‘they’ll have to get past me first.’
Bess felt her stomach churn with worry and she bit on her bottom lip. ‘If either of you need anything, ring me and I’ll bring it up to your room.’
‘Thanks. Fingers crossed, I’ll see you later.’
The following morning, while the guests were in the dining room having Sunday breakfast, Bess took the hotel’s appointments diary into the office. She hadn’t had time to check who was leaving, in order to prepare their bills, when there was a tap on the door. It opened immediately. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mrs Donnelly,’ Jack said, giving Bess an exaggerated wink. ‘There are two gentlemen in reception looking for their niece. They believe she is staying here.’ Bess’s heart began to thump against her ribcage and she got to her feet. ‘The young lady’s father has had an accident and they’d like her to return home with them. Immediately.’ Jack rolled his eyes.
‘Have you booked any young women in recently?’ Bess asked, as casually as she was able.
‘No, Mrs Donnelly. I told the gentlemen that, but they’re insisting on seeing the hotel’s appointments book, to look for themselves.’
Bess raised her eyes. ‘I haven’t taken any single bookings either,’ she said, picking up the appointments diary, ‘but it won’t hurt to check.’ Bess followed Jack out into reception. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ she said, putting on a professional smile.’ She laid the diary down on the top of the reception desk, so it was facing her. ‘What is your niece’s name?’
The two men looked at each other, then at Bess. ‘Hawksley,’ the taller of the two men said, ‘Katherine Hawksley.’
Bess ran her finger down the short list of guests that had arrived that morning, repeating the name. ‘I’m sorry, but no one has booked in today by the name of… Hawksley?’ She turned the page and shook her head. ‘Nor yesterday, or the day before.’
The taller man snatched the diary from the desk and, turning the pages roughly, scrutinised each name. When he was satisfied Bess was telling the truth, he let the book fall onto the desk with a thump. He stared at Bess through cold steel-grey eyes, then looked sideways at Jack. ‘It’s important we find her, understand?’
‘Of course. And don’t worry, if she arrives later today we’ll tell her to get in touch with you, Mr--?’
‘Smith!’
‘Smith. Do you have a card, Mr Smith, with a telephone number where Miss Hawksley can reach you?’
Mr Smith made an exaggerated show of lifting his hand to the breast pocket of his suit jacket. ‘Dearie me,’ he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Wouldn’t you know it. I’m all out of cards.’
Several guests bustled into the hall from the dining room and the shorter of the two men spun round. ‘Don’t say anymore,’ he hissed. Turning back to Smith he indicated with a flick of his head that they should leave.
‘We’ll be back later!’ Smith said.
‘As you wish,’ Bess chirped. The two men lumbered across the hall to the hotel’s entrance foyer, flung open the door, and left without a backwards glance.
Bess looked at Jack. His face was ashen. ‘My legs feel as if they’ve turned to jelly.’
‘Did that really happen, or were we watching one of those American gangster films?’
‘It happened, Jack, and if it was a film we were in it.’
‘Henry!’ Bess ran across the hall, excusing herself as she disrupted a group of guests mid-conversation, to get to her brother-in-law. ‘Did you see those two men?’ Henry looked bemused. ‘They’ve only just left. You must have passed them.’ Henry turned at the sound of a car revving its engine. ‘They were asking about Katherine. They said she was their niece.’
‘Did you tell them anything?’
/>
‘Of course not!’
‘So she’s still safe?’
‘Yes. She’s with Ena in her room,’ Bess whispered.
‘Good. Telephone Lowarth police station. Tell Inspector Masters to put every man he’s got on the streets,’ Henry said, as a white saloon car roared round the side of the hotel from the car park. ‘Tell him to ring Market Harborough and Rugby - and tell them to do the same. They’re looking for two men in a white Jowett Javelin, number plate beginning with CF and ending with 3, or 8.’
Bess ran back to reception repeating the details over and over in her head.
‘Tell Ena I’ll see her later!’ Henry shouted, before running down the steps to his car.
Bess didn’t return to the office. After what she and Jack had just experienced, she didn’t think either of them should be alone on reception. However, when it was time for her break, Jack insisted he would be fine on his own for twenty minutes - and Bess, refusing to let thugs like the two who were looking for Katherine intimidate her, went outside to get some fresh air.
Still tense from having stood her ground against two fascist thugs, Bess needed to calm down and regain her composure. A stroll across the peacock lawn to the lake, she decided, would help.
She lifted her face to the indifferent afternoon sun and breathed in the early autumn air. She watched the wildlife on the lake. The ducklings, bigger now, reminded her of Nancy. She wondered how the little girl was. She hadn’t been gone twenty-four hours, but Bess missed her so much it felt like a week.
She inhaled deeply and blew out a long calming breath. All around her nature was changing. Flowers were budding less, reeds in the lake were beginning to turn yellow and some trees were already shedding their unwanted leaves. It was what Bess called the in-between time of year. It wasn’t summer, nor was it quite autumn. For the hotel, it would soon be the quietest time of the year.
Henry and Inspector Masters arrived at six o’clock. Jack had finished his shift and gone for the day, Frank was on reception and Bess was in the office, about to join her husband out front. She offered them tea, which they both refused - Henry saying he needed to see Ena and Katherine, and the inspector saying he didn’t have time.
‘I’ve only popped in to say thank you for your help today, Bess. Miss Hawksley’s bogus uncles will be enjoying the sludge they dish up in His Majesty’s prison Leicester now.’
‘Thank goodness you caught them. They were a scary pair.’
‘Dangerous too. They’ve been doing Hawksley’s dirty work for a decade or more. They’d think nothing of disposing of Katherine, or anyone else, to save their own scraggy necks.’
‘So, will Katherine be safe now?’
The Inspector’s brow furrowed. He didn’t answer immediately. ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘but I’d feel happier if she stayed out of sight for a few more days, in case any associates of Hawksley’s that we haven’t come across yet decide to crawl out of the woodwork. The major players in the Fascist Association have been arrested, and,’ he said, smiling for the first time since he had arrived, ‘we are ninety-nine percent sure that the escape route to South America has been scuppered. But,’ he put his hands up, palms together, and bowed his head, ‘until I’m certain that there aren’t any other Nazi sympathisers out there that think Katherine Hawksley is a threat to them, I’m taking no chances.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘Mrs Donnelly, could I speak to you, please?’ Maeve asked, when Bess came down on Monday morning.
‘Of course, what is it?’
‘In private?’
Leaving Jack to look after reception, Maeve followed Bess into the office. ‘Take a seat,’ Bess said, motioning to a chair on the left of the hearth. Maeve sat down and Bess joined her, sitting on the chair opposite.
Bess looked enquiringly at Maeve. Was she going to explain why she hadn’t told Bess before that she knew of David Sutherland, and that she had attended his funeral? Or was she going to explain why she hadn’t told her that Goldie Trick was Nancy’s mother? ‘How can I help?’
Maeve began to tremble. Her face was white and her eyes, brimming with tears, looked too big for their sockets. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, looking down at her lap and wringing her hands.
‘Perhaps I can start for you. Margot’s friend, the young dancer at the Albert Theatre called Goldie Trick, was your cousin and Nancy’s mother?’
Maeve shot Bess a look of hurt and surprise. ‘How did you know?’
Bess’s accusing tone became more sympathetic when she realised how difficult it must be for Maeve to talk about Goldie in the past tense. ‘Nancy told me. She found an old photograph of Margot and some of the dancers at the theatre - Goldie was in one of them. I checked the photograph against a programme from a show that I’d seen in 1939 and matched Goldie’s picture to her name. I’m so sorry, Maeve. I know from Margot that Goldie was a very special young woman.’
‘She was,’ Maeve said. ‘When she came home to Ireland, after Margot and her friends got her out of London because David Sutherland had beaten her up, I was working in England as a translator, listening to conversations between Luftwaffe pilots. I was based at Kirby Mansion and billeted at the Vicarage with Reverend and Mrs Sykes.
‘My mother wrote and told me that Goldie had come home and was in a bad way. She didn’t say more than that. She knew not to be specific in letters because all incoming and outgoing correspondence was censored. I immediately asked for leave and was given forty-eight hours. It wasn’t long enough,’ Maeve lifted her shoulders, ‘but it was all my commanding officer would give me, so I took it.
‘I spent a day with Doreen-- Goldie.’ Maeve fell silent and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, ‘According to my mother, by the time I got home, Goldie’s physical injuries had begun to fade. The cuts on her face were healing and the bruises on her arms and legs had grown fainter - but the mental scars hadn’t. To tell you the truth I don’t think they ever did. She was terrified that David Sutherland would find her. She had terrible nightmares. She would wake up in the night screaming. I suggested she leave the light on when she went to bed, but it didn’t help. She stopped getting undressed, and eventually she stopped getting into bed altogether. At first she laid on top of the bed fully dressed, then she sat in a chair facing the door, and dozed.’
Maeve fell silent again. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. Then, as if she had somehow been fortified, she took a deep breath and started speaking. ‘Goldie became paranoid. She looked for Sutherland everywhere, and she saw him everywhere she looked. She said she’d seen him in the grocery shop, and walking along the street. She even said she saw him in mum’s garden.’ Maeve began to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping the flat of her hand across her face. She took a deep breath. ‘Mother said she went out less and less until one day she announced that she was never going out again. And she didn’t - until she became ill.’
‘What was wrong with her?’
‘She was being sick. She stopped eating because of it. My mother said her face became gaunt, and she was so thin she looked skeletal. Mother didn’t know how to help her. She begged her to see our family doctor, but Goldie refused saying she was too frightened to leave the house. Eventually mum got the doctor to visit her at home. He did some tests and said Goldie was dehydrated because she hadn’t been drinking liquids, and thin because she hadn’t been eating - and she was three months pregnant.’
‘Nancy?’ Bess said.
Maeve’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes. Mother said from the moment the doctor told her she was having a baby, Goldie changed. It was as if all the pain she had suffered, the beatings and mental torture she’d endured at the hands of Sutherland, just melted away. She had never known Goldie so happy.’ A faint smile spread slowly across Maeve’s face. ‘From the minute she learned she was having a baby, Goldie started to look after herself. She began to eat properly, she went back to sleeping in her bed, and she swore the nightmares had stopped. Although Mum
said she often heard Goldie crying in her sleep.
‘For the most part, the old Goldie was back. She lived for the day she had the baby. Our next-door neighbour gave her a Moses basket and she lined it with pale pink cotton. She sewed sheets and a pillowcase to match it, and bought two pink blankets.’
‘She wanted a girl then?’ Bess said.
‘Oh yes! She wrote to me and said she was praying for a girl. A boy, she said, might remind her of him, of Sutherland.’
Smiling, Maeve shook her head. ‘My mother was happy because Goldie was happy. “Being sad is not good for the baby,” Goldie would tell her. And she would caress her tummy and say, “Mummy loves you, Nancy.”’
Maeve pressed her lips together tightly and looked up to the heavens. As if a black cloud was bearing down on her, Bess watched Maeve’s expression change from one of joy and loving memories to heartbroken and vengeful. ‘She didn’t go full term. She wasn’t much over seven months when she went into labour. Mother sent for me straight away and this time I was given two weeks’ compassionate leave.
‘From the moment I saw Goldie in the hospital, I didn’t leave her side. She did her best to bring the baby naturally, but she wasn’t able to push when they told her to, because she kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘The doctor told us that Goldie was bleeding internally and they needed to operate. He said that if the worst came to the worst and it was a matter of saving the life of the mother, or the child, which should he save? Mother broke down. It was unfair to ask her to make such a decision, but she had no choice, she was Goldie’s next of kin.’
‘And she chose the child?’
‘No. Mother chose Goldie. But Goldie rallied before the operation. She was conscious for an hour or more before they took her down to theatre. During that time she was talking and smiling. The day before she had looked exhausted, her skin had a grey pallor to it and her eyes were dull and watery - but suddenly all that was gone. Her eyes were bright and she no longer looked tired. She looked like Goldie again.
Foxden Hotel (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 5) Page 23