After the War Is Over (6 page)

“Are you offering it to me?”

He looked her straight in the eye, surprising her with the strength of will she glimpsed
behind his cheerful-Charlie good looks. “Yes,” he said.

“How many other women have you interviewed?”

“None. You were the first to apply, and I can’t imagine for a moment that anyone could
surpass you. When can you begin?”

He seemed so certain of himself—of her. “I don’t . . . I mean, I hadn’t thought of
it,” she said.

“Why don’t we say the beginning of July? That will give you time to finish up here
and pay a visit to your mother and father.”

“What about your parents? Won’t they need to meet me first?”

“Leave them to me.”

He beckoned the waitress, settled their account, and steered Charlotte outside. “Do
you mind if I leave you here? I’m late for my Greek tutorial.”

“That’s quite all right, but—”

“Let me know how you get on in finals. I’ll send you your train ticket to Penrith—that’s
where we’ll be in July, at my father’s house in Cumbria—and I’ll also advance the
first quarter of your salary to help with your traveling costs. I thought eighty pounds
a year? Ninety? Yes, ninety seems right.”

“But that’s at least double what I’d thought to be earning. Are you quite certain,
Lord Ashford?”

“Enough with the ‘Lord Ashford.’ Call me Edward. May I call you Charlotte?”

“I don’t think that’s advisable, given that I’ll be under your employ.”

At that his eyes brightened. “So you’ll do it? Splendid. I must go, but I’ll send
everything along soon. Good luck with your finals, Charlotte.”

He shook her hand and set off at a run, east along the High Street and, presumably,
back to Merton, his gown billowing behind him in a quite comical manner. If only the
rest of their encounter had been something she could laugh away.

Somehow, without precisely agreeing to do so, she had become the governess to a sister
of Lord Edward Ashford—and that, apart from his sister’s name, was all she knew of
him and his family. In little more than a month, she would begin work as a governess.

A servant. Despite her own upper-middle-class upbringing, her superior academic qualifications,
the outrageous salary she would receive, and the compliments Lord Ashford had attached
to his offer, she would be a servant, living with strangers, employed by aristocrats
who were sure to deplore a modern woman such as herself.

It was not the grand and noble future she had once envisioned for herself.

Charlotte stood on the pavement outside Boffin’s a minute longer, trying and failing
to take everything in, and then set off for Blackwell’s. She might as well begin her
new future by looking up Lord Edward Ashford in
Debrett’s Peerage
.

Liverpool, England

April 1919

C
harlotte was at her desk, trying to make sense of her notes from the Pensions Committee
meeting of the evening before—why, oh why had she never thought to take a course in
shorthand?—when Miss Margison stomped past. The woman didn’t seem capable of simply
walking; no, she telegraphed her every footstep throughout the constituency office,
no matter if her mood was good or bad, no matter if she was wearing court shoes or
galoshes. This morning her mood was vile, for reasons that Charlotte had yet to deduce
and, frankly, had no interest in exploring.

She’d worked alongside the woman since 1911, excepting of course the interval during
the war when she’d been in London, and in all that time they had never become friendly.
Miss Margison didn’t appear to have friends, or if she did she kept them well hidden.
She never sat with the other women in the office during their break for tea, never
went to the pictures after work with any of them, never in Charlotte’s recollection
had so much as asked after their families or beaux. At the end
of the day, the woman seemed to vanish, and as no one had any notion of where she
lived, or with whom, they had nothing to chat with her about the following morning.

A voice rang out from Miss Rathbone’s office. “Miss Brown! Could I trouble you to
come here for a minute? Miss Margison has a question for you.”

Charlotte stifled a groan and got to her feet. What could it be this time? She approached
Miss Rathbone’s desk, studiously ignoring the third woman in the room.

“Yes, Miss Rathbone?” she said, her voice beautifully calm.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, my dear, but Miss Margison had some concerns about the
invitations for the annual general meeting of the National Union. I gather the approved
proofs were to have been returned to the printers last week?”

“Yes, ma’am. I put them in the outgoing post myself.”

“I see. The difficulty, I’m afraid, is that Miss Margison has only now had a call
from the printer, saying he didn’t receive the proofs.”

Not again. This was the third time an item had been pinched from the outgoing post
and the finger of blame pointed at her by none other than Miss Margison.

“I assure you, ma’am, I did place them in the outgoing post.” And from today onward,
she vowed to herself, she would personally place every item of post that left her
desk directly in the pillar-box down the road.

“I quite believe you. There you have it, Miss Margison. Now, I believe we still have
a copy of the invitation at hand? Very well. Since you are at loose ends this morning,
would you be so kind as to take it over to the printers? It shouldn’t take you above
an hour to travel there and back on the tram.”

“But, Miss Rathbone—” Miss Margison protested.

“I am so glad that is settled, ladies,” Miss Rathbone finished, her attention already
turning to the papers on her desk. “Oh—Miss Margison?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Before you leave, if you could fetch me a cup of tea? Thank you.”

Charlotte returned to her office, acutely aware of Miss Margison’s disbelieving stare,
wondering yet again what she had ever done to deserve the other woman’s dislike. She
knew herself to be a decent person, a friendly person, and yet for entirely mysterious
reasons she had earned the enmity of another.

Before the war, she would have forced a confrontation and cleared the air with the
woman, just like that, but something held her back. Everyone had their reasons for
behaving as they did, and one day she would surely figure out what made her odd and
unpleasant colleague behave as she did.

A
LL THROUGH SUPPER
that evening, Norma entertained them with stories of her day at work. Most seemed
to revolve around customers who were so enthralled by her face and figure that they
abandoned their brains at the door. It would have been worrying if Norma hadn’t been
so funny at the retelling.

“So he said to me, ‘Dearie, why don’t you come round that counter and show me all
those darns in your stockings,’ and I said, ‘Not if I was on a sinking ship and you
was the only lifeboat on the sea.’”

“Oh, Norma. You mustn’t say such things, especially to a stranger. What if he had
taken offense?” chided Miss Margaret.

“Then Joe and Daniel and the rest of the men from the warehouse out back would have
had a talk with him. They don’t let anyone give me guff.”

“Miss Margaret’s right,” Rosie said. “You can’t know what sort
of men you’re talking to, and if one of them gets it in his head that you offended
him, and the men from the back aren’t around—”

“Fine, fine. But you wouldn’t believe the sort of things some of them say to me.”

“I would. Trust me, I would. The men I deal with are lying flat on their backs in
hospital beds but they still talk a load of rubbish. Best thing to do is ignore it.”

“I suppose. Say—now that we’ve all finished our tea, does anyone feel like playing
a round of cribbage in the sitting room? Rosie? Charlotte?”

“No, thank you, Norma. I’m feeling rather tired tonight. I think I’ll just read in
my room, if you don’t mind.”

All through supper Charlotte had scarcely said a word, longing only for the meal to
be over so she might crawl into bed, read something comforting, and let the weight
of her long and dispiriting day slide from her shoulders.

After helping Janie clear the table—it was Charlotte’s task to shake out the tablecloth
and fold it away in its drawer—the Misses Macleod and their boarders, all except Charlotte,
moved to the sitting room. It was just across the hall from her bedroom, and even
with both doors shut she could easily hear the conversation and laughter from where
she sat, in her chair by the window, trying to concentrate on her new book. She had
been keen as mustard to read
The Return of the Soldier,
but tonight, and the night before, too, she hadn’t been able to follow the narrative
for more than a page before losing steam.

She shut her book carefully, using a braided paper bookmark that Lilly had made for
her years ago, and set it aside. Standing, she went to her bureau, intent on fetching
a fresh nightgown.

A knock at her door, then a whispered voice she recognized as Rosie’s. “Charlotte?
Are you in bed?”

“No, not yet. Do come in.”

Rosie shut the door behind her and sat in the chair that Charlotte had just vacated.
“Are you all right?”

“Hard day, that’s all. Ann Margison was at me again.”

“What did she do now? Sprinkle arsenic in your tea?”

“At least that would be cut-and-dried. No, it was her trick with the outbound post
again. This time it was proofs that were meant to go back to the printer. I know I’ve
said it before, but now I mean it—from now on, no matter how busy I am, I’m to walk
down the street to the pillar-box and put my post in directly.”

“How did you find out?” Rosie asked.

“She said she’d had a telephone call from the printers complaining that the proof
hadn’t arrived. Of course the call wasn’t for her; we’ve none of us our own telephones,
apart from Miss Rathbone. But her desk is close to the one at the front, and if ever
Gladys is away she pretty much leaps on the thing to answer it. For all I know they
didn’t even call, and she only said so because she was certain of the proofs having
vanished.”

“Do you have any idea at all why she’s so nasty?”

“I don’t know, not really. I have my suspicions, chief among them that she’s jealous
of me in some way. Perhaps because I left and then was welcomed back so readily by
Miss Rathbone. Perhaps she thinks I’ll take her place . . .”

“Isn’t she one of the clerks? Who does the typing and filing and things like that?”

“Yes, and I’m one of the aides, which means I have my own office, rather than a desk
in the main room. I thought of that, but it’s always been that way, mainly so that
I can speak to visitors, constituents and the like, with some degree of privacy. It’s
not as if I took her office from her.”

“No, of course not. But I wonder . . . perhaps she envies how easily you were able
to fit back in, as if you hadn’t been away at all.”

“I suppose. Though it makes no sense—no one is unkind to her, and we always make sure
to invite her if we’re going out as a group for lunch. I don’t even go half the time,
for heaven’s sakes.”

“Why don’t you confront her? Simply ask her why she is doing such things?”

“I could, but she’d probably say it’s all in my imagination and I’m simply stirring
up trouble. I think, for now, I’ll leave it be, and hope she eventually realizes that
I’ve no intention of undermining her.”

“A sensible approach. Now—on to more important things. Have you any plans for Friday
night? Norma wants us all to go dancing at Holyoake Hall on Smithdown Road. Even Meg
has said she’ll come. We can have our supper here and then walk over after.”

“I’m not sure, Rosie. I don’t know any of the new dances.”

“We can fix that easily enough.”

Somehow, before Charlotte could utter a single syllable of protest, Rosie had led
her across the hall into the sitting room, where the sofa and easy chairs had been
pushed to the side and the rug rolled back.

“Hooray for Charlotte!” Norma cheered. “Take my hand and let’s get you started. Why
don’t we start with the fox-trot—you do know it, don’t you?”

“Yes, Norma. I haven’t been living in a nunnery.”

“I’ll play,” said Meg. “I don’t feel quite like dancing tonight.”

“Let’s start with ‘My Rainbow Girl,’” Norma suggested.

“Let me run through it first?” Meg asked. “I won’t be a moment.” She set her hands
to the keys and joyous, heartfelt music filled the room, a tonic for their battered
spirits. As she reached the chorus, she began to sing, and after a few bars they all
joined in, even the Misses Macleod.

           
“When you are near, girl, you bring me good cheer, girl

           
The love light shining from your eyes

           
Is like a rainbow, radiant in the skies

           
For you’re the sunlight that gleams, dear

           
Thro’ clouds in my dreams, dear

           
You set my senses in a whirl

           
My little rainbow girl!”

It had been an age since Charlotte had listened to music, and even longer since she’d
danced. When had she last stood on a dance floor and let a man hold her as they moved
together? Was it as long ago as Oxford?

No . . . a memory stirred of a night at the hospital, a long, dark night in the summer
of 1916, when every ward had been packed full of broken men. She and her colleagues
had all been so tired, so downcast, but then someone had pushed aside the tables and
chairs in the mess hall, and someone else had produced a huge old gramophone, of all
things, and they’d danced for hours, all together, the nurses and doctors and orderlies.
How strange that she’d forgotten it until now.

With Norma in the lead, Charlotte soon felt comfortable with the conventional fox-trot,
and then with the Baltimore and the Peacock Strut, variations that her dance partner
assured her were all the rage.

“Do you see the music for ‘Let’s Toddle at the Midnight Ball’?” Norma called to Meg.
“Let’s do it next. It’s an older one, but they were playing it last week at the Palais.
Almost exactly like a fox-trot, except you bounce on the balls of your feet, like
this.” She demonstrated to Charlotte, her bobbed curls bouncing against her cheekbones.
“See? It’s ever so easy.”

“ ‘Let’s toddle, come on and toddle, toddling and waddling along. Listen to
the music of the shuffling feet, oh, what a rhythm we’re going with them,’ ”
Meg sang, her voice sweet and light, and soon they were all singing and bouncing
together, even Miss Margaret, who had been coaxed out of her easy chair to dance,
somewhat unsteadily, with Rosie as her partner.

As soon as Meg had played the closing chords of the tune, Norma was over to the piano,
shuffling through the pile of sheet music that rested next to Meg on the bench. “Here—we
have to try this one. My friend Edith played it for me on her gramophone the other
night. It’s ‘The Tiger Rag,’ straight from America.”

“I’ve heard it, but I’ve never played jazz music,” Meg protested. “And the music is
so . . . so
different
.”

“Please try—please do. You’ll love the sound of it. You all will, I promise.”

“Very well. But it’s going to be a bit bumpy at first.”

Meg ran through the piece by sight, stumbling here and there over the unusual rhythm
of the piece, though normally she was an accomplished pianist who could master a tune
at first viewing. As she gained in confidence, the music from the piano grew louder,
the syncopation more compelling, and though Charlotte had no notion how one ought
to dance to such music, her feet were simply itching to dance.

“It’s a one-step,” explained Norma. “Ever so easy once you get started. Dance with
me, Rosie, and we’ll show the others.”

They danced and danced until the clock on the mantel chimed ten o’clock and the misses,
who normally retired at half past eight, declared that they were for their beds. So
the women rearranged the sitting room and went to their respective rooms, and Charlotte,
for the first time in weeks, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.