Coronation Wives (16 page)

Later, as she snuggled down beneath the shiny satin of a pale mauve eiderdown and her eyes closed in sleep, it was Jonathan she heard in her head. The foreign voice, the one who had told her not to scream, had melted away – at least for now.

Charlotte wrenched open the bottom half of the study window. The morning air was humid and she found herself praying for rain. In gathering the files she needed, her gaze lingered on the small drawer in which she’d placed the letter from Josef. Such a lovely man …

‘You look pensive.’

David’s voice made her start. The desk lid rattled as she rolled it firmly shut. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

David raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘At least Janet’s got over hers, or I presume she has. She seems a lot brighter this last week, don’t you think?’

Charlotte agreed though felt guilty that David had noticed and she hadn’t. Damn the letter, she thought, and made a vow to rip it up the moment she got back.

On reaching the office she headed straight for Brookman’s door, knocked and entered without waiting for his invitation.

‘Do not say a word, dear lady,’ he said before she had a chance to open her mouth. ‘I have something …’ he began and reached for the post in his tray.

More Home Office documentation, she decided, in triplicate and couched in the most convoluted English ever invented. She waved it aside. ‘I went back to the building site I told you about. The men I suspected of being Polish were gone, whisked
away in case I asked any more difficult questions. But I’ve got a suspicion that they are being employed illegally and are being paid the most meagre of wages. I would think it unlikely that they’re paying any taxes on their earnings either.’

He was less than congenial. ‘You have no proof!’

‘If I get proof, will you investigate? I’ll ask the people concerned – I mean the Poles. Not the employers.’

Brookman sighed and flung down his pen.
‘If
you can get them to talk. Just remember that if they are being paid the going rate English will suddenly be a completely unknown language to them.’

His attitude annoyed her. These men were
not
being paid the going rate for their labour. Something about their appearance convinced her of it. Now, what was it? Suddenly it came to her. Wellingtons! Wearing cheap Wellington boots on a sunny day was not the norm for men earning good wages.

‘I’ll find someone to talk. I know I will.’

‘Before you go …’

Brookman took a large brown envelope from the tray he’d been fussing with earlier and handed it to her. ‘It’s from our German friend.’

‘Oh!’ It was all she could say. The envelope felt fairly bulky. She took it into the other office to read. The covering letter was from Josef. The other was from Sherman’s adoptive grandmother.

My dear Charlotte
,

Signora Carlotti is most concerned that nothing has been resolved following the death of his parents with regard to the future of the little boy who she knows as Carlos. Because she is so far away and is concerned for the boy’s welfare, she has asked me to trace the father of the child with a view to the boy going to live with him in
the United States of America. She found a letter from one of the clothing parcels that her father used to send over. The orphanage gave it to her when Carlos was adopted along with the name given him at birth and his mother’s name. Matron had broken the rules, but in this case we are glad she did. The father had signed his name on the letter. Using my contacts in both the Red Cross and the US Military, I have indeed traced the boy’s father. As you will see from the enclosed letter, Signora Carlotti has written to him and is presently awaiting a response. I have asked her to let me know as soon as she receives this. As you know the child is still in our care here in Germany. We look after him well and keep him occupied on one of our projects, trades and skills with which to build his own future, but nothing can replace a proper family life with people who love him. If his mother does not want him, perhaps you will let me know.

I know you will do your best. The warmth of your humanity has stayed with me over the years and I thank you for letting me into your life.

With warmest regards
,

Josef

Warmest regards. Was that all he could say? Had she expected too much?

Feeling slightly wounded by what she could only regard as the sort of signing off one would receive from a close friend, she ripped open the letter from Signora Carlotti. She read it quickly. The Signora was getting concerned. The boy was with strangers in a foreign land. He should be with someone who loved him.

I’ll deal with it later, she told herself as she left the building. She also promised herself she’d make enquiries regarding the men on the building site regardless of what Brookman might
think. Eventually that is, once she’d coped with the business of the day.

Feeling single-minded rather than curious, she pushed her way through the early morning crowds on their way to shops, banks and offices.

‘Yoohoo! Mrs White! Mrs White!’

Charlotte turned round. Mrs Grey was the only person she knew who didn’t use her full surname. And there she was, her face pink with effort, she rushed up, her hat tipping to one side and a shopping basket rattling with tins of Spam, beans and corned beef over one arm. She clapped her hand to her mouth before speaking, her eyes two chips of bright blue above her blotchy cheeks.

‘I forgot you were out this morning. Polly don’t have a key! She won’t be able to get in.’

Charlotte glanced at her watch then unlocked her car. ‘Never mind. I can dash up and let her in. I’ve got time.’

The traffic was light and although a bus had broken down on Park Street, Charlotte made good time. As she pulled up Polly was walking through the front gate.

‘I’ve got the key,’ Charlotte shouted and rushed breathlessly through the gate too. ‘Mrs Grey forgot,’ she explained. ‘I’ll let you in, but I’ve got to go out again. Can you manage?’

Polly stood saucily, hands on hips. ‘No! Them dusters are a bit awkward to use and that whistle on the tea kettle gives me the willies.’

‘Sorry!’

‘You look all in. Fancy a quick cuppa?’ Charlotte’s watch told her she had enough time. Polly began to tell her how busy they’d been at the pictures the night before. ‘They ’ad
Brief Encounter
on last night. God knows, but it’s been on enough times. But there you are. Good film, though. Married woman
carrying on with married man – at least – I think he was married. Real naughty. Lovely, though. Made me think of the first time I went to see it after the war. Remember who I was supposed to be seeing it with too.’

Polly’s reference to adultery infiltrated Charlotte’s thoughts and the letters from Germany came into her mind. She asked, ‘Would you ever want to turn the clock back – or have the clock catch up with you?’

Polly frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well …’ Charlotte paused. What was the best way to put this? The same way she’d put it to Edna? ‘What if something or someone from your past came back?’

‘To haunt me?’

‘No. I mean
actually
came back and wanted to see you. Your American, for instance.’

‘Canadian.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t know.’ Polly shook her head. Normally her blonde hair would flop over her eyes. Today it was tucked up in a turban and although there were more lines on her face than there used to be, she wasn’t bad for her age.

Charlotte sighed. ‘Not an easy question, is it? Old loves. Old indiscretions.’ She looked down into her tea and clicked her neatly trimmed nails against the rim of the cup. What would she do? The funny thing was she ached for Josef to be here, but perhaps she was only feeling that way because it could not be so. The unobtainable was bewitching.

‘If Carol’s dad came back I’d have to let him see her,’ said Polly.

‘What about Billy?’

‘I’d talk to him first.’

Polly tilted her head to one side, her eyes fixed on Charlotte’s face. ‘Got yer own skeleton in the cupboard then,
Charlotte? Some bloke you ’ad a bit of a fling with come back to claim you for ’is own?’

Charlotte almost blushed, but she was used to Polly trying to make her embarrassed. ‘No! Nothing quite like that.’

And the strange thing was she was telling the truth. It wasn’t like that. The letter sitting in her bureau and the ones that had arrived this morning covered a very specific subject. But she couldn’t possibly pass it on until she had gleaned some idea of its likely effect. Edna and Polly had answered in a similar vein. She’d think upon their answers for now and make a decision when the time was right – whenever that was.

‘I must be off now,’ she said and headed quickly for the door before Polly could ask her anything else she didn’t want to answer. She needn’t have worried. Polly threw her a perfunctory wave and turned on the vacuum cleaner.

After cutting through Ashley Down and onto the Gloucester Road, she took a left and entered the St Paul’s district of Bristol, a place of once superior merchants’ houses built in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Number 191 Little City Road was a four- or five-storey building with steps leading up to the front door and flanked by an ostentatious though crumbling portico. Another flight led down to a basement through a gap in a row of railings that leaned dangerously outwards, their iron spikes a hazard to passers-by.

Charlotte peered up at it through the car windscreen. The area had gone downhill somewhat since its heyday, but this house looked worse than most. Raw brick showed where flaking stucco had finally fallen off. Net curtains dimmed from white to dog’s tooth yellow hung behind windows of scum-covered glass. Charlotte hazarded a guess as to what it was like on the inside and made a mental note to have it inspected.

The three Polish men she was to take to new lodgings and
jobs at Pensford, a mining village to the south of Bristol, greeted her with politely shy smiles as they piled into her car.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, and smiled back, barely managing to suppress the urge to wrinkle her nose. The stench of male sweat and mouldy clothes filled the car. Unthinking, she reached for the window handle then paused. What was she thinking of? She couldn’t possibly upset their sensibilities. It was her job to be friendly but efficient, to make them feel at home.

She pushed in the clutch and pulled away from the kerb. Perhaps it might be an idea to run a class on personal hygiene. A vision sprang suddenly to mind.
This is soap. This is a flannel.
Upturned faces, both foreign and British men and women being told that if you didn’t bathe regularly you didn’t smell too sweet.

Her attention was brought back to reality as the man sitting beside her dealt with the immediate problem.

‘We open window?’

Charlotte breathed a sign of relief. ‘Yes. It is a little warm, isn’t it?’

‘No. We stink. The woman in there is dirty.’

‘Her house is dirty. So we are not clean,’ said a second man who had broad shoulders and a crumpled face that looked as though it had been slept in and refused to flatten out.

‘And she won’t use bath – won’t let us use it,’ said the one who had opened the window.

At moments like these, Charlotte was ashamed to be British. Some landladies were pretty fair. Some, like this one by the sound of it, were less so, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Notices were appearing in many boarding house windows saying ‘No Pets. No Poles. No Children’ and just lately ‘No Blacks’. Unlike the Eastern Europeans at least the latter had British passports. They didn’t have to carry a document around with ‘
Alien
’ stamped on it.

Blasted woman! Well it would have to be dealt with. It took a right Tartar to deal with a Tartar in this profession – and she was it!

‘You must insist on using it,’ Charlotte proclaimed stridently as if her word alone was enough to break down the bathroom door. ‘A man is entitled to a bath after work. Either she complies or she won’t be getting her rent money. There cannot be any logical reason for her denying you a bath. Water is no longer rationed.’

‘That is so,’ said the first man who had spoken, ‘but coal is.’

Charlotte frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Her coal house is full for the winter so she keeps more coal in the bath,’ he explained nonchalantly.

Charlotte noticed how he used his hands to add emphasis to what he was saying as his eyes took in the passing scene. He looked to be in his late twenties and had chiselled features. In the Hitler years, his looks would have been termed Aryan.

‘And in the kitchen, and in the cupboard in my room,’ echoed the man with the crumpled face.

The third man, who had sunken dark eyes and prominent cheekbones, said something in Polish. The man who had explained about the coal grinned as he interpreted what he’d said. ‘He wants to know when he can have a proper home with a bath like he used to have. He will not worry about servants.’

Charlotte’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘No landlady will supply servants!’

The blond man explained. ‘You do not understand. He used to have servants.’

‘Oh!’ Charlotte concentrated on the road ahead. She was learning things about these people all the time. She was also learning more about her own people, and some of it was not very attractive.

‘Have you all had breakfast?’ she asked as she made off
towards Bedminster and the Bridgwater Road that would take them out to the village of Pensford, one of the many mining villages fringing the south and east of the city.

‘Oh yes.’ It was the first one again. ‘Bread and jam.’

‘Is that all?’ This was terrible.

They all nodded and told her it was so. Her anger at Mrs Halifax, the landlady, plummeted to new depths. Working men needed a decent send-off first thing in the morning. Perhaps the woman had compensated by giving them a packed lunch and it was hidden away in their pockets. But she wouldn’t ask just yet. She had to deal with the landlady at the new boarding house. It wouldn’t be fair to take her annoyance out on her and Charlotte prided herself on always being fair. She also had to deal with the foreman at the mine.