Coronation Wives (2 page)

‘I know.’

Edna looked genuinely concerned. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

Charlotte smiled in the way of one who is almost smug about such things. ‘One thing I have learned about Polly is that she’s a rough diamond on the surface but a chocolate eclair underneath. In short, she deals with her insecurities by insulting other people. You can’t hold it against her. Opportunities seem to have passed her by and at times she’s quite bitter about it.’

‘You mean like Carol’s father not coming back?’

‘That and Billy not sticking with Colin. Things seem to have gone downhill ever since.’

Edna looked proudly to where Colin was standing, talking loudly and surrounded by the people who worked for him. In the war years he’d made toys from bits of discarded wood while serving in the Pacific Ocean. Somehow he’d got them sent home and sold at a time when toys were impossible to get hold of. On coming back from the war minus his legs, he’d started it up as a full-time business.

‘Making toys here at home when imports were banned was an outstanding idea,’ said Charlotte.

Edna nodded. ‘And Billy was partly responsible for it being successful. Colin did try to get him to stay, but … you know what Billy’s like.’

‘He has a definite inclination for less legal ways of making money.’

Edna agreed. ‘A waste of time and effort seeing as it never seems to go quite right. He doesn’t even have the old van any more, just a bicycle pulling an orange box on wheels behind it.
Goodness knows what would have happened if they’d had children.’

Charlotte flicked a well-manicured fingernail at a crumb that had stuck to her lipstick. ‘At least he regards Carol as his own. Not many men are magnanimous enough to accept the child of a previous liaison.’

Edna flinched, her half-finished drink pausing on the journey from table to mouth.

Charlotte saw the look and instantly regretted her comment. ‘Edna! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to resurrect old ghosts …’

Edna pushed a lock of plain brown hair away from her forehead and blinked nervously. She wasn’t always brave and never found it easy to express
exactly
how she felt, but she did so now.

‘There are times when I wish I’d been braver back then and stood up to my mother. But there – it’s all water under the bridge.’ She paused, suddenly aware of how tightly she was holding her glass.

‘And you’re happy?’ asked Charlotte, her grey eyes steadily scrutinizing Edna’s moon-shaped face and thinking how gentle she looked, how brave she really was.

Edna didn’t get a chance to answer. Colin chose that moment to come over and pat his wife on the head. Polly was right behind him, a glass of punch in each hand. She burst out laughing.

‘What you doin’, Colin? Just ’cos she got big brown eyes, don’t mean to say she’s a bloody pet spaniel, you know.’ Her speech was slurred.

Edna looked embarrassed for Colin as much as for herself. Charlotte looked amused but trusted to Colin taking care of himself.

‘My legs were casualties in the war.’

Polly was drunkenly adamant. ‘So?’

Some of Colin’s workforce chose that moment to crowd around him. ‘Sing one of them sea shanties,’ they shouted, ‘the one that’s as blue as the sea!’

Polly looked miffed. She did when she thought she was being sidelined and instantly targeted Charlotte. ‘Well?’

Charlotte lowered her voice. ‘It’s not easy to bend down and kiss one’s wife if one’s legs will not bend.’

‘Oh! I forgot.’

And that is Polly all over, thought Charlotte. She doesn’t think before she speaks.

Despite being pink-cheeked and unsteady on her feet, Polly downed both her drinks, then raised the empty glasses. ‘Anyone else for another?’

Again Edna and Charlotte declined. Before Polly had gone a few yards she was lost in the crowd that thronged around Colin and his rip-roaring voice.

‘Yes,’ Edna said suddenly. ‘Regarding your question, yes, I am happy. I have regrets, but they’re bearable. I can forgive myself, but I don’t think I will ever forgive my mother.’

‘Oh darling,’ said Charlotte. She patted Edna’s hand. ‘Don’t you think you should? After all, she is your mother.’

‘No. In fact, sometimes I hate her,’ she said quickly as though wanting to get the fact and the words out of her system. ‘What about you?’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you have any regrets?’

Charlotte had a serene way of smiling that masked her thoughts. She rarely gave much away, but on this occasion Edna had caught her unawares. She saw something flicker in Charlotte’s eyes as if a sad memory had swiftly crossed her mind.

Charlotte sighed and said, ‘Yes. I have regrets. But I’ll live with them.’

Edna opened her mouth to ask what they were, but Charlotte
cut her short. ‘What a jolly crowd.’ She got up from the table as she said it, her gaze fixed on Colin and his workforce as if they were the most exotic people she’d ever seen. ‘Do you think we should join them?’ She had a fixed smile on her face, but overall, her expression was slightly stiff, like a crisp sugar coating hiding something softer, more vulnerable beneath.

Ask nothing, thought Edna, as she watched an oddly self-conscious Charlotte trying to look at ease as she joined Colin’s employees on their pre-Coronation booze-up. Whatever regrets Charlotte had, she most certainly did not want to talk about them.

Just as the grandfather clock in the hallway struck eight, Charlotte shut the study door behind her. She’d got up early to work on some reports regarding yet another batch of refugees from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Just because the war was long over didn’t mean that everyone had gone home and picked up their lives where they’d left off. Europe still had problems.

Everything was filled out in triplicate, stapled into files, and photographs attached to forms. Charlotte was still helping people just as she always had, only now she worked for the Bureau for Displaced Persons, a busy branch of the Home Office.

The clattering of crockery and the slamming of the broom cupboard came from the kitchen, evidence enough that Mrs Grey had arrived and would prefer everyone to be out of her way before she started cleaning.

Charlotte caught a quick glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror. Just enough make-up to make her look sophisticated rather than dramatic, and just enough grey among the chestnut to look distinguished rather than old.

She was about to grab her handbag and leave before Mrs Grey found something to complain about, then wondered if her daughter, Janet, might want a lift to the hospital where she worked as a secretary.

She peered towards the kitchen area. The coast was clear. Quietly, she began to climb the stairs then suddenly thought how absurd it was.
Mrs Grey works for you! You don’t have to creep around your own house.
Taking a deep breath, in an act of sheer bravado, she purposely avoided the Persian rugs on the landing and walked on the lino. You’ll regret this, she told herself. She knocked on Janet’s door. There was no response.

‘Janet?’

Silence. She tried the handle. The door opened.

A draught of chill air hit her face. She could see that the bottom half of the bedroom window was open, the curtains billowing in a stiff breeze. Beyond the window came a strange cry not normally heard in Royal York Crescent at such an early hour. Pulling the curtains to one side, she poked her head out. A hunched figure pushed a handcart laden with rags, old fire irons and a small, galvanized boiler streaked with the dried soap of a thousand washdays. His cry of ‘Ole rags an’ ole ferrule’ was almost lost on the breeze. Ferrule, she knew, meant ferrous metal. His usual haul would be iron bedsteads, brass curtain rails with rings the size of saucers, and iron ranges torn from their moorings and replaced with gas stoves in a pleasant shade of cream.

The sound of footsteps made her turn round. Mrs Grey had discovered her and looked very put out. ‘I’m very vexed with Miss Janet, ma’am. Very vexed indeed.’

Inwardly Charlotte sighed. Outwardly she smiled and said cheerfully, ‘I didn’t hear her leave this morning. Did she have any breakfast?’

Mrs Grey’s chin seemed to curl upwards with indignation. ‘She crept out. She said she wasn’t creeping, but I know creeping when I see it. She was creeping.’

Charlotte did a quick mental calculation as a means of taking a broad perspective of the situation. Mrs Grey had used the
same verb a number of times, four in fact, but had not answered Charlotte’s question so she repeated it. ‘And no breakfast?’

‘None! Not even a slice of toast with a scraping of butter! But that’s not why I’m vexed,’ she said. ‘Creeping out so no one could hear, I can cope with. Giving away good clothes to the rag and bone man is quite another matter.’

Charlotte attempted to help her strip the bedclothes, but got a disapproving glare for her effort. Mrs Grey liked to do things herself. Instead she asked, “Were they old clothes?’

‘Well, no, but that’s not the point …’

‘Did you want them for yourself? I mean, if you did I shall certainly ask Janet—’

‘Certainly not!’

Charlotte stood helplessly, waiting to be enlightened. Whatever it was, Mrs Grey looked more agitated than years back when she’d found out two rashers of bacon equalled one-ounce ration allowance for the week. She’d been devastated then and didn’t look much better now.

‘They weren’t ever so best, but good enough to wear out weeknights or shopping or to the pictures – that sort of thing.’

Charlotte went back to the window and glanced out again. The rag and bone man was leaving the crescent, his handcart loaded.

‘Pictures?’ she said casually.

‘Yes,’ hissed Mrs Grey.

Charlotte got the gist of where this was going. For Mrs Grey, to be occupied in polishing, making beds and cooking, was akin to being divine. Pleasure, as opposed to work, was almost wicked.

Her voice dropped as low as when she went to confession up at St Patrick’s just off Dowry Square. ‘She wore them the other night when she went to the pictures.’

‘Goodness,’ said Charlotte wondering how best to make her escape.

Gripping the window sash with both hands, she slammed it shut. Mrs Grey nearly jumped out of her skin.

‘Perhaps they’d gone out of fashion,’ Charlotte suggested.

Mrs Grey looked extremely affronted. ‘Fashion is no reason for giving away good clothes.’

‘Never mind. I expect the rag and bone man will sell them cheaply to someone who really needs them,’ said Charlotte. ‘There are so many people out there with no clothes and not much of anything, Mrs Grey. And I have to get to my office and see what I can do for a small proportion of them.’

There wasn’t time to fuss. She left Mrs Grey in Janet’s bedroom where she appeared to be taking her annoyance out on the feather-filled pillows and the unyielding mattress.

The fact that Janet had given some old clothes away did not trouble her unduly. Perhaps she’d ripped them or perhaps they didn’t fit her any more. Her daughter must have had good reasons and she had no intention of questioning her motives.

The clock in the hall struck quarter past. Neatly attired in a smart green suit and black suede court shoes, she was ready to leave.

With the aid of the mirror in the hall, she fixed a trilby style hat on her head then headed for the front door. On reaching it, she called over her shoulder, ‘I must be off now, Mrs Grey. Would you take some tea into the doctor before he goes to surgery?’

Mrs Grey appeared at the top of the stairs with an armful of sheets destined for the laundry. ‘S’pose I will,’ she sniffed, then marched off along the landing.

Bridewell, the central police station, was not far from the Odeon Cinema and close to the Broadmead Shopping Centre, which was still being built.

A crime had been committed. It was only right that it should
be reported. It didn’t occur to Janet as odd that she countenanced telling the police about it, but could not bring herself to tell her own mother. This
thing
had happened to her. It was an intimate thing, an invasion of her privacy, of her body. Telling her mother would intensify the effect of the violation. Reporting it to the police as a crime
against
her person was somehow different. They would go out, catch him and put him in prison and that would be the end of it. He would be locked away, just as the incident itself would be locked away in her mind.

Before leaving home, she had dressed in a brown checked suit matched with a pale orange silk blouse and low, sensible shoes. After surveying herself in the mirror, she changed her mind. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark suit. Dowdy, she thought, he’s making you dress dowdy.

No! She would not have that. Even now, just forty-eight hours after the event when despair had fought tooth and nail with determination, she would not let herself be intimidated by him. The brown suit came off. A red dress with a black patent belt and matching patent sandals made her feel much better. She found black button earrings and red lipstick too.

When she entered the police station, she willed her legs not to shake as she took her place in the queue behind two other people. Stiffening her calves and gritting her teeth, she forced herself to concentrate on those in front of her. Their problems might take your mind off yours, she told herself determinedly.

The first in line was a man in a tan overcoat that smelt of mothballs. The collar and shoulders were liberally speckled with dandruff and, despite the muggy weather, his belt was tightly fastened giving him the look of a badly packaged parcel. He was reporting the loss of his dog.

‘Black and white. Part collie. Part terrier. About this high.’ He bent down and indicated height from the floor with a flattened palm.

She saw the raised eyebrows of the uniformed policeman behind the desk as he twiddled his pencil and said with a hint of mockery, “We’ll circulate the details, sir. What did you say his name was?’

‘Gloria!’

The policeman, who she now saw from the stripes on his sleeve, was a sergeant, raised his eyes to heaven as if to ask relief from such suffering.

‘
Her
! Gloria!’

As the man left and the woman in front of her shuffled forward, Janet felt a great urge to use the lavatory – or take flight.