Across the Mersey (9 page)

For once in her life Bella didn’t have to manufacture her reaction. She’d been so furious with Alan that she’d forgotten all about Charlie, who was now approaching them with Mr Baxter, the President of the Tennis Club, in tow. Mr Baxter had a very stern expression indeed on his face.

Henry Baxter was in his fifties, a bachelor, and the Chief Clerk to the local council. He had rather a soft spot for Bella, being completely taken in by the flatteringly admiring manner she adopted towards him.

Bella immediately played up to the situation, sobbing some crocodile tears on Charlie’s shoulder whilst Henry Baxter took a firm grip on Alan’s arm and refused to let him go.

‘Please don’t be cross with Alan, Charlie,’ she begged her brother dramatically. ‘It’s my fault. We’ve been talking about getting engaged for so long that when Alan suggested that we come outside, I thought it was because he wanted to surprise me with an engagement ring.’

Bella could hear Alan’s enraged denial, but Charlie stepped in smartly, announcing, ‘Well, if you’re engaged … although I have to say that this isn’t the kind of behaviour a chap expects from his brother-in-law-to-be, Parker, and I dare say my father will have some pretty sharp words to say to you. It looks to me as though you’ve terrified the life out of poor Bella.’

‘I feel so ashamed,’ Bella wept. ‘What will people think? Oh, Mr Baxter …’

‘There, there, my dear,’ Henry Baxter comforted Bella. ‘Don’t know what you thought you were about, Parker, bringing Miss Firth out here instead of formally announcing your engagement inside, like any decent well-brought-up young man would.’

Alan swore. ‘I’m not getting engaged to her,’ he began, hiccuping, and then turned away to be sick on the grass, before adding, ‘and no one can make me.’

‘’Fraid you’ve no choice now, old chap,’ Charlie told Alan. ‘I dare say my father will have a thing or two to say about the way you’ve behaved towards my sister, and it won’t stop there, not now. Not the done thing at all to trifle with the affections of an innocent girl, especially when there’s about to be a war on.’

‘I shall be speaking to your parents about your
behaviour tonight, Parker,’ Henry Baxter told Alan sternly. ‘We do not tolerate this sort of thing here at the Tennis Club.’

‘Oh, Alan,’ Bella gave her new fiancé a reproachful look, ‘I’m so disappointed. I thought tonight was going to be so special and romantic, and now you’ve gone and spoiled it all. Still, at least we’re engaged.

‘Do you think we
should
make an announcement, Mr Baxter?’ Bella appealed to the President. ‘Only I’d hate people to think badly of Alan. I’m sure he didn’t mean to … to … well, I know he would have made things official tonight if he’d had time to get me a ring as we’d planned.’

‘An excellent idea, my dear. Parker, you are a very fortunate young man to have such a loyal and beautiful fiancée – far more so than you deserve. But your father will still be hearing from me,’ Baxter added grimly.

‘Bitch. Bitch.’ Alan swore at Bella the minute the President was out of sight. ‘As for me marrying you … you can go to hell …’

‘Here, I’m not letting you get away with insulting my sister like that,’ Charlie warned Alan, ‘and if you’ve taken more liberties with her than you should then—’

Bella started to cry loudly. ‘I didn’t want to let him, Charlie,’ she sobbed, ‘but I couldn’t stop him, and he promised me he wanted to marry me.’

There, let Alan try and get out of that, Bella thought triumphantly as she sobbed on her brother’s shoulder.

* * *

Grace was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. Bella and Alan had been missing for ages, and now Charlie had disappeared as well. She could see the speculative looks their now almost empty table was attracting.

‘Oh, here’s Bella now!’ she exclaimed in relief as she finally saw her cousin coming back into the room, followed by Charlie and Alan. Charlie had his arm round Alan’s shoulders whilst Alan himself looked dishevelled and was staggering slightly.

Ignoring Grace and Seb, Charlie urged Alan on to the dance floor, taking hold of both Alan’s hand and Bella’s as he held them up in the air and shouted, ‘Congratulate the lucky man, everyone. Alan here has just got himself engaged to my sister.’

From right cross the floor Bella could see the white shocked look on Trixie’s face as Charlie made his announcement. She had won, Bella acknowledged gleefully. Alan was hers. He had to marry her now.

‘Sorry I can’t give you a lift back, old chap, but there’s this girl, you see. I’m sure you understand,’ Charlie told Seb drunkenly as everyone started to file out of the Club at the end of the evening.

‘What about your cousin? Surely you don’t expect her to make her own way back to your parents’ house?’ Seb challenged Charlie.

‘Oh, Grace ain’t staying with us. No, she’s going home. You’ll be able to catch the last bus down to the ferry if you’re quick, Grace.’

Seb was astounded and disgusted by Charlie’s
lack of concern for Grace’s safety, but at the same time he acknowledged that he hadn’t been looking forward to being driven by Charlie after witnessing just how much he had had to drink.

Grace was glad that the evening was at an end. She felt so ashamed of herself, and wasn’t surprised that Seb had gone so quiet after the announcement of Bella and Alan’s engagement.

They were outside now. For some reason Grace didn’t entirely understand, her aunt and uncle had arrived shortly after the announcement of Bella’s engagement and had taken the newly engaged couple off with them whilst she had been changing into her own clothes ready for her journey home.

Charlie too had now deserted her, and she and Seb were alone. She turned to him.

‘Thank you so much for a lovely evening. I’ve really enjoyed it. I do hope that your leg will soon be fully mended … oh.’

She looked uncertainly at Seb as he tucked her arm through his own and said firmly, ‘Now where do we catch this bus for the ferry?’

‘Oh, no. You needn’t come with me. It will be out of your way and it’s late,’ she protested, but Seb wasn’t listening.

They were just in time for the bus, having run the last few yards to arrive out of breath and laughing.

‘You are so kind,’ Bella told Seb as she stepped on to it, her eyes widening as he followed her. Was he going to travel all the way to the ferry with her? The thought gave her a warm glow deep inside.

A glow that grew even warmer when she discovered that Seb wasn’t just planning to see her safely to the ferry, he was going to escort her all the way home.

‘Oh, no, you mustn’t …’ she protested.

‘Indeed I must,’ he corrected her. ‘I would never forgive myself if I allowed you to travel home on your own, and somehow I can’t imagine that your parents would be very happy about that either.’

Grace bit her lip, knowing that he was quite right.

‘You’re quite safe with me; I give you my word on that,’ Seb assured her.

‘Oh, yes, I know that,’ Grace agreed so innocently and immediately that Seb discovered that quite shockingly he was very tempted to show her that far from being the safe brotherly type she obviously saw him as, he was very much a man. But of course there was no way he was going to risk taking her in his arms, no matter how much he might feel tempted to do so.

Bella lay in bed, gloating over her triumph. She had no idea just what her father had said to Alan’s father when he had telephone Alan’s parents and asked them to come round. She had not been privy to that discussion, and even though she had tried to listen to the raised voices from her bedroom she had only been able to make out the odd word.

Not that it mattered what had been said, as her mother had told her when she had come upstairs to her immediately after the door had closed behind
Alan and his parents. She was now engaged to Alan, and would very soon be Mrs Alan Parker. The sooner the better, in fact, it had been decided.

‘I hope Alan’s father is going to buy us a decent house, Mummy.’

‘Of course he will, darling. Especially under the circumstances. Your father was very firm about that.’

Bella’s smile turned to a scowl. She still hadn’t got her engagement ring, though, and she meant to have one, the biggest one she could get out of Alan and his horrid parents. She had seen the tight-faced look Alan’s mother had given as she looked up towards Bella’s bedroom window as they left. Well, she would soon learn that she, Bella, was going to be the one who said what Alan could and could not do, and who he could and could not see, not her.

‘Grace, what’s wrong, love?’

Jean lifted her hands from the soapy washing-up water, where she had been washing the cutlery, whilst Grace did the drying. It was a task they always shared, and one Jean looked forward to because it was one of the few occasions during her busy week when she and her elder daughter had time on their own to chat properly.

She’d been looking forward to hearing all about the Tennis Club dance and had expected Grace to be in the happiest of moods now that she knew she could do her nurse’s training but instead her normally sunny-natured daughter was quiet and withdrawn, and had barely said a word.

‘Nothing’s wrong, Mum,’ Grace fibbed uncomfortably. She had hardly slept, and when she had she had ended up dreaming about the silk dress, waking up with a start, her heart pounding. Why had she been so stupid and … and dishonest? As well as her dread about telling the salon manager, she also felt bitterly ashamed of herself.

‘Nothing’s wrong? Then why have you been drying that plate for the last five minutes is what I’d like to know. Come on, love, you can tell me.’ Jean hesitated. It wasn’t in her nature to criticise others, nor to talk about them behind their backs, but when it came to her children her maternal instincts came first, and she wasn’t having her Grace made unhappy by something that her sister or one of her family might have said to her.

‘If summat was said or done last night to upset you …?’

Her mother’s sympathy was too much for Grace to bear. She put down the plate she had been drying, her face crumpling.

‘Oh, Mum, I’ve done the most dreadful thing. I’m that ashamed of meself. I don’t know what came over me. Ruined me whole life, I have. You and me dad will never forgive me.’

Jean’s heart turned over and then lurched painfully into her ribs. Grace was normally a sensible girl who knew what was what and right from wrong. She’d made sure of that. Accidents happened when young people fell in love, but Jean didn’t want any of her children saddled with an unexpected baby on the way before they’d said their vows in church. What she’d never expected, though, was that her Grace would turn out to be the sort that let a lad she wasn’t as good as engaged to, at the least, persuade her into doing what she shouldn’t.

Sam would be heartbroken. He thought the
world of his children and was that proud of them, even if he didn’t always let them know that. It would be the drink, of course – that and the excitement of mingling with Bella’s posh friends. Jean’s heart swelled with maternal indignation as she thought of her daughter being plied with drinks and then taken advantage of by some young chap.

Torn between venting her shocked despair and wanting to comfort her daughter, there were a hundred things she wanted to say, but in the end the only thing she could say was, ‘Oh, Grace.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’ Grace was crying in earnest now. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done it but Susan had gone to so much trouble, even though I’d told her that I couldn’t do it and that it was wrong, even though she said that everyone borrows clothes from the salon on the quiet, even the manageress. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s been a good friend to me, but I knew the minute I put it on that I shouldn’t have done.’

Jean listened to Grace’s hiccuped muddled words and felt as though a weight had been rolled off her heart. Her daughter hadn’t gone and done what she shouldn’t with some lad. But then hard on the heels of her initial relief came the shock of realising just what Grace had done.

‘You went to the dance wearing a dress from the salon that you’d no right to be wearing?’

Miserably, Grace nodded her head. She could hear the scandalised disbelief in her mother’s voice.

‘Grace, that’s stealing.’

‘It didn’t seem wrong the way Susan talked about it. She said that everyone did it.’

Jean was angry now, her anger fired as much by relief that she didn’t have to worry about Grace getting herself into the kind of trouble no mother wanted her daughter to be in, as by her dismay at what she had done.

‘Never mind what someone else said. If this Susan told you to lie down in the road in front of a bus would you do it? Me and your dad have brought you up to know what’s right from what’s wrong.’

‘I know that, Mum. But … well, Susan was that determined I was going to wear it. She said that no one would know and that she would put the dress back for me on Monday morning but it got torn when Bella stood on it and now … I’ll have to tell the manageress what’s happened and ask her if I can buy it with me staff discount.’

Jean was horrified at what Grace had done. It ran counter to everything she and Sam had taught their children, and she knew that Sam would be even more disappointed in Grace than she was herself.

‘Well, I can’t help you out paying for it, Grace, and I wouldn’t do neither. What you’ve done is very wrong.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘How much will it cost?’

‘Seven guineas,’ Grace told her in a small voice.

‘Seven guineas!’ Jean went over to the table and sat down on one of the chairs.

‘I thought I’d ask if I could have two shillings taken out of me wages every week until I’ve paid for it.’

‘But you won’t be having any wages. Not with you doing your nurse’s training.’

Grace’s eyes welled with fresh tears. ‘I can’t do that now, Mum, not with this frock to be paid for. It serves me right, I know that, and I’ve only myself to blame.’

Jean looked at her daughter’s downbent head. She knew how much doing her nurse’s training meant to her and her heart ached for her. But Grace was quite right, the dress – and her ‘crime’ both had to be paid for. Even so …

‘Oh, love.’

Her mother’s soft words and warm hug brought fresh tears to Grace’s eyes.

‘I wish I could help you but—’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to do that, Mum, even if you had the money.’ Grace stepped back from Jean and lifted her head determinedly. ‘I’ve made me bed and now I’ve got to lie in it. There’s no one to blame for this but meself.’

Jean said nothing. Privately she could think of at least two people who probably shared as much of the blame as Grace although they would get away with it scot-free. One was this Susan she worked with, and the other was her own sister for making Grace feel she wasn’t good enough to meet Bella’s posh friends wearing her own clothes.

‘Even if I could pay for the dress, Mum, I’d
probably still not be able to go ahead with me nursing. The hospital will want a reference from Lewis’s. I can keep on with me St John Ambulance work, though. Alan’s cousin was ever such a nice chap. Came with me all the way from Wallasey, even though I’d said there wasn’t any need,’ Grace told her, putting on a deliberately cheerful voice.

Jean frowned. ‘I thought your cousin Charlie was going to bring you home.’

She had been in bed but awake, waiting for the sound of Grace’s key in the lock last night, and it had never occurred to her to ask how her daughter had got home, since she had assumed that Charlie had made sure she was safely delivered.

‘So did I, but I’m glad Charlie didn’t really because he’d had ever such a lot to drink. Auntie Vi and Uncle Edwin came for Bella and Alan.’

She would have something to say about the way she’d treated Grace, the next time she saw her twin, Jean decided. Fancy leaving her to make her own way home. She would never have done anything like that if their positions had been reversed. But that was it, wasn’t it? In Vi’s eyes Jean and her family were second class and unimportant, just as Sam had told her.

‘Give us the dress then, so that I can get it back on the rail before Mrs James gets in.’

Grace shook her head. She had met up with Susan as arranged a couple of streets away from Lewis’s.

‘It got torn at the dance,’ she told Susan. ‘I’ve decided that I’m going to own up to having borrowed it to Mrs James and ask her if I can buy it with me staff discount.’

Susan looked horrified. ‘You can’t do that. She’ll never let you, and we’ll both be out of a job.’

‘I’ve got to do it, Susan, but don’t worry I won’t say anything about you. My getting it torn wasn’t your fault.’

‘Give it here,’ Susan demanded, grabbing the bag from Grace before she could stop her. ‘You’ll be done for if you own up to having borrowed it. I’ll put it back just like I said and—’

‘But it’s torn and—’

‘Well then, we’ll just have to pretend that a customer did it, won’t we? Look, Grace, Mrs James will never believe that you took it into your head to borrow it on your own. She thinks a lot of you, she does. I reckon she’ll be questioning the lot of us before you can say, “Here’s your cards” and there’s not one of the girls working in the salon who’s going to want that. No, the best thing for everyone is if I put the frock back and we say nothing. With a bit of luck it could be weeks, maybe months, before anyone comes in and tries it on, especially if I put it right at the back of the wardrobe.’

Grace shook her head ‘Susan, I can’t do that. It’s dishonest and—’

‘Well, you won’t be doing it, will you? It’s me wot took it and me wot will get into trouble, you
know, not just you. Anyway, you won’t be able to say anything to Mrs James today. It’s her day off – remember? Come on, we’d better get on our way otherwise we’ll be late.’

Grace had had the most dreadful morning, jumping with nerves every time anyone came anywhere near the salon and now Rosemary, who was in charge in the manageress’s absence, had sent her to the small back sewing room ‘for a rest’ because she looked so poorly.

Susan had urged her to have a cigarette to calm her nerves, but smoking it had made her feel even sicker, and so she had stubbed it out. She wasn’t a big smoker at the best of times.

The door to the sewing room burst open and Susan came in, her face flushed with excitement and her eyes sparkling.

‘You’ll never guess what’s happened. A chap has just come in and bought that ruddy dress.’

‘Bought it? A man? But how? What about the tear …?’

‘Asked to see Mrs James, he did, at first. Then when I told him that she wasn’t in, he said he’d come about a dress. Described the green silk to a T, he did an’ all. You should have seen his face when I told him that it was hanging up in the closet. “The frock is still available for purchase?” he asked me, ever so posh, like. “Of course it is,” I said back.’

‘Susan …’

‘Offered to go and get it for him to have a look at too, I did. Of course I didn’t show him the bit wot got torn.’

‘Susan …’

‘Told me to wrap it up for him and he paid cash. Ever so good-looking, he was. Pity he’d got his leg in a plaster mind … Here, what are you doing?’ she demanded indignantly when Grace sprang from her chair and ran to the door.

Seb. It just had to be him, Grace felt sure, but where had he gone? Was he still in Lewis’s or had he left? She ran all the way down the dark cold staff stairway, and out into the street. Lewis’s main entrance was on Ranelegh Street so she ran round the corner of the building, heading for those doors to ask the uniformed doorman breathlessly if he had seen a man leaving with his leg in plaster and carrying a Gown Salon box.

‘His leg in plaster, you say?’ The doorman was a veteran from the Great War and a bit hard of hearing. ‘We’ll be seeing plenty of them before too long, and worse an’ all, if you was to ask me.’

Grace tried not to feel impatient. She looked up and down the busy street and then across the road, shading her eyes from the sun, and then felt her heart turn over as she saw Seb walking into a café further down Ranelegh Street.

Thanking the doorman, she ran across the road, dodging the traffic, just managing to catch up with him as he opened the café door.

The moment he heard her calling his name he turned towards her.

‘I was in the sewing room. Susan came in and told me what you’d done. Well, at least she told me what had happened and I knew it must be you and so … oh, Seb …’ Her voice broke and she started to tremble.

‘Come on, let’s go and have a cup of tea, or will that get you into trouble?’

‘No. Mrs James is off today. She’s the manageress and she’s a bit of a tartar. Rosemary is in charge and she won’t mind if I take my dinner hour.’

Five minutes later they were seated at a small table amongst the other shoppers, drinking the tea Seb had had to pour for them both because Grace’s hands had been shaking too much.

He had insisted on ordering her some welsh rarebit as well, saying that she looked as though she needed something to eat.

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t deserve it. What I did was wrong and I should be punished for it.’

‘It was wrong,’ Seb agreed, ‘but you weren’t entirely to blame.’ Privately he felt that most of the blame lay with Grace’s snobbish aunt and uncle and her dreadful cousin. ‘I’d planned to have a word with your manageress and offer to cover the cost of the dress, thinking that you would have handed it over to her before I could get to speak with her.’

‘I would have done if she’d been in,’ Grace admitted. ‘Susan grabbed it off me before I could stop her and said she was going to put it back. I told her she mustn’t but she said if I owned up
it would get her the sack as well as me. I couldn’t believe it when she came rushing into the sewing room and said that someone had bought it. It made me feel sick with guilt to think that she’d let someone buy it, knowing what had happened to it, but then she said about the man who had bought it having his leg in plaster and I just knew that it must be you.’ Her eyes were shining with gratitude and relief.

‘You still shouldn’t have done it, though. I don’t deserve so much kindness. I’ll pay you back of course, but …’

‘You will pay me back, Grace,’ Seb agreed, suddenly becoming serious, ‘but not with a few shillings a week that you can’t really spare. A lot of men like me are going to need a lot of young women like you before this war is over. Doing your nurse’s training is far more important than paying me back. This country needs girls like you.’

‘Oh, Seb.’

‘Now I want you to promise me that you won’t go and make a silly martyr of yourself by confessing to something that no one else needs to know about now. And I want you to promise me too that you’ll work hard to become the best nurse you can be.’