Mary's Child (41 page)

Chrissie laughed. ‘Then I’m glad to have got one good meal inside you.’

That lightened the atmosphere and it became cheerful. Afterwards they wondered why they had been so lighthearted and each separately and privately decided it was because of the presence of the other.

The laughter ceased when they stood beside his suitcase again. They were serious now. This was a busy time and people passed back and forth around them. Chrissie could see her receptionist beckoning to her and Mrs  Wilberforce was waving from the door leading to the kitchen.

Jack said, ‘I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t become – involved – with anyone until the war was over. What I’ve been through recently has only confirmed that. But I want to see you again, Chrissie.’

‘I’ll be here.’ She started to turn away. ‘I’ll put on my coat and—’

His hand on her arm stopped her. It was a seaman’s hand, big and long fingered, the skin thick and rough with callouses. He turned her back to face him. ‘No. Don’t come to the train. I’ve seen enough of those partings. No goodbyes.’ He let go of her arm then but only to wrap his own around her and kiss her. Then he released her and jammed his cap on his head, picked up his case and walked out.

Chrissie watched his tall figure cross the road, striding easily, and disappear into the station. She came back to earth then and saw Mrs  Wilberforce staring, Arkley pop eyed, the receptionist open mouthed. She smiled at them all and walked straight backed and head high into her office, where she shut the door and laughed and cried.

Chrissie had told Jack that it was almost impossible to replace staff. The key word, however, was ‘almost’. She consulted her contacts in the trade and before the month was out Parsons, old George Ballantyne’s elderly butler, told him, ‘There’s a Mrs  Gubbins applying for the position of cook, sir.’

Mrs Gubbins was large, with a ruddy complexion and able to keep the secret of who recruited her. She told George, vaguely, ‘I just heard as your last cook had left, sir.’ He took her on a week’s trial, confirmed her in the job at the end of it and gave thanks for what he saw as a miracle.

Sergeant Burlinson called on Chrissie on a day of July heat and she sat him down in an armchair. He was too old for the Army, past retirement age for the police, for that matter, but carrying on ‘– for as long as this war lasts,’ he grumbled, ‘or I do.’ He sweated in the dark blue uniform and mopped at his face with a handkerchief. He balanced his helmet on his knees and fidgeted while Chrissie waited and wondered why he was so obviously embarrassed. Finally he said, ‘I have to ask you this, Miss Carter.’

Chrissie, bewildered, answered, ‘Ask me what, Sergeant?’

‘Has any person – or persons – offered to sell you food at inflated prices? I mean, not one of your usual suppliers?’

Chrissie shook her head definitely. ‘No, Sergeant.’

He looked relieved but still pressed her. ‘Have you heard of any such persons?’

That was different. Chrissie said, ‘I have, but only rumours going around in the trade.’ Walter Ferguson, at the Palace, had heard them and passed them on to her. ‘No names given but just a suggestion that “anybody who has the money can get the grub”,’ she said, quoting Walter. ‘And there was a chap in the bar here one night who said he’d heard – no names again, mind – that there were people selling bacon, pork, butter and beef.’

Burlinson nodded his balding head, wiped perspiration from it with his handkerchief and sighed. ‘Well, if you do hear of anything, I’d be glad if you’d let me know.’

‘Of course.’

The sergeant drank the beer she had given him and went on his way. Chrissie wondered who was at the back of the illegal selling of scarce food. She could think of no one who might be suspect. Max Forthrop’s name never entered her head. She thought she had finished with him. He had not finished with her.

‘Good morning, Mr  Morgan!’ Chrissie shook the rain from her umbrella as she stood in the doorway of the Bells. It was August, but a day of showers, fine rain blown on the wind.

‘Morning, Chrissie,’ Lance wheezed as he worked behind the bar.

Chrissie turned to face him and let the door close behind her. This was a Tuesday, a working day, so there were only four men in the public bar, sitting around a table playing dominoes. They were all elderly and probably retired. There was little unemployment in those wartime days.

Chrissie thought, It’s just as well there aren’t many customers, with Lance here on his own. She asked, ‘Where’s Millie?’ and glanced towards the sitting-room. Its door was open but she could not see the girl in there.

Lance Morgan took a rest and held on to the bar, his face grey and chest pumping. ‘She’s not turned in yet. I was just wondering if there was summat the matter with her.’

So was Chrissie, because the girl was never absent or late. She said, ‘I’ll go round to her house and see.’ And she warned, ‘Don’t you do too much while I’m away. Just sit yourself down and wait till I come back.’

‘Right y’are.’ Lance Morgan was glad to agree and sank down on to a stool behind the bar.

Chrissie hurried through the rain to the house down by the river where Millie rented two upstairs rooms, one of which she had let to Jimmy Williamson when he was on leave. Chrissie had been born in the next street. Half a dozen small children, dirty, near naked and barefoot because this was summer, played in the downstairs passage. Chrissie edged through them with a pat, a smile and a ruffling of a boy’s hair. They stared at her in her good dress and polished shoes. She climbed the bare wooden stairs, scrubbed clean – Millie would have done that.

Chrissie stopped on the landing outside the kitchen door, knocked and called, ‘Millie! Are you in?’

‘Who is it?’ The voice was distant, muffled.

‘Chrissie Carter.’

She heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back, dragging footsteps and then the door was opened by Millie. Her face was lumpy and stained by grief. Her hair had come down so it hung in strands about her face. She said chokingly, ‘You’d better come in, Miss.’

Chrissie followed her into the kitchen and exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake, Millie, what’s happened?’

The girl collapsed into a straight-backed chair at the table as if her legs had given way. A buff-coloured rectangle of paper lay on the table and she pushed it towards Chrissie. ‘It’s Jimmy. It came this morning.’ She dropped her face into her hands, fingers running into her hair. That was how it had come down.

Chrissie read the telegram, praying it would say ‘wounded’, but Jimmy Williamson had been killed. She laid her furled umbrella in the hearth to drip, pulled up another chair and sat down beside the girl, put an arm around her. She stayed an hour in Millie’s kitchen, comforted her, made her a cup of tea and listened. Millie poured out all her worries and fears for Jimmy over the past year and more while he had been in France.

‘I know it was wrong, I should have said no, but he was going back to that hell-hole again and I loved him.’ Now she was expecting his child. She blinked at Chrissie. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

Chrissie did, remembering Frank Ward, and could have wept herself.

But at the end of the hour she steeled herself to face practicalities. She dared not leave the girl alone like this and Lance Morgan needed help. She urged, ‘Come on, now. We’ll tidy you up and go round to the Bells. You’ll be better for a bit o’ company and a bite to eat. I’ll bet you haven’t had anything today.’ The girl shook her head miserably, uncaring, but she washed her face, put up her hair and went out with Chrissie.

They worked together at the Bells and after the dinnertime rush at noon Chrissie found time to talk to Lance Morgan. Then she took Millie aside.

‘Mr Morgan says he’ll pay your wages through your confinement and keep your job open for you afterwards.’

Millie had shed tears more than once during the day and she wept again now. But she was more herself. She had not got over the shock of Jimmy’s death, that would take years, but she was ready to deal with life again. Chrissie left her to handle the evening trade with Lance and returned to her work at the Railway Hotel. But she realised Lance Morgan and the Bells were becoming a problem.

She managed to take on two girls, straight from school at fourteen, who were suitable for the hotel. Then she persuaded one of the hotel barmaids, with the promise of a raise in pay, to move to the Bells. That solved the problem – or so she thought.

The summer had reached its bloody end but the ‘big push’ was still going on in Flanders and the casualty lists were still posted every day, the long columns of names of the dead. As October came in with gales, rain and a chill dampness, Lance Morgan told Chrissie, ‘I’m going to have to sell up, lass. The doctor tells me I won’t get through another winter here.’

Chapter 23

October 1918

They were talking in the Bells. Lance Morgan never went out on those winter days when the weather was bad. He sat in the kitchen now while Maggie Gurney, the girl transferred from the Railway Hotel, tended the bar. Millie had ceased work now because an obviously pregnant girl could not work in the bar. Lance looked up at Chrissie miserably and said, ‘I feel ashamed o’ meself but there’s nowt I can do. I can’t go on like this. Another six months will see me in my grave.’ He was haggard and his laboured breathing could be heard in the next room.

Florence Morgan stood at her husband’s side. She explained, ‘He feels badly because if it hadn’t been for you making such a success of this place and the Railway Hotel, he mightn’t have been able to retire this early wi’ plenty o’ money to see him through. But he hasn’t any choice, Chrissie.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘And I don’t want to lose him.’

Chrissie said firmly, ‘We all want what’s best for him. He should do as the doctor says and move to some place warmer and milder where he’ll be better.’

Florence nodded eagerly. ‘I thought about the south coast. We could get a little bungalow so he wouldn’t have to cope with the stairs.’

Chrissie agreed, ‘That’s a good idea.’ And she told Lance, ‘You put the Bells and the Railway on the market straight away.’

Florence asked, ‘How much do you think the Railway should fetch?’ Lance knew how much he would get for the public house.

Chrissie thought for a minute, doing sums in her head, then said, ‘Ask for £5,000 but don’t take less than £4,800.’

Florence stared at her, round eyed and round mouthed. ‘As much as that? Are you sure?’

Lance Morgan laughed, coughed and said, ‘If Chrissie says so, it’ll be right. She manages the place and does the books, remember. She knows the worth of that place and everything in it.’

That was true. Chrissie left them easier in their minds, but she was not. The new owners of the hotel might keep her on but not in the position she held now. She knew that as a young woman she was an oddity as the manager of a hotel. So she would be out of a job. Whoever took over the Bells might keep her on as a barmaid, but that would be a big comedown.

As she walked over the bridge on her way back to the hotel she told herself, ‘Cheer up. You’re young and you can work. You won’t starve.’ She had saved some money in the two years since she had given nearly all she had to Phillip Massingham. She thought of it as given, despite the share certificates she held, because she had not heard from him in those two years. ‘So you’re not too badly off.’ But it was still a bitter blow. All her working life she had striven for a place of her own and now she was almost back where she had started. But her head was high as she swept into the hotel and smiled brilliantly at the staff working in the foyer. She was not beaten yet.

She needed all her courage. The Railway and the Bells were put up for sale on a Monday, and on the Tuesday Max Forthrop strode into the hotel and shoved open the door of Chrissie’s office without knocking. He stood wide-legged in the doorway, hands in his pockets and hat on the back of his head. He wore a well-cut, expensive suit that almost hid the paunch he had grown. Behind him stood a younger man of slighter build with a thin moustache and wearing a cheaper, flashier suit. Chrissie recognised Victor Parnaby.

She sat back in her chair and looked Forthrop up and down with a cold stare, then told him, ‘Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want it.’

Forthrop showed his teeth, stung but not put down. ‘I’m not selling, I’m buying. This place will be mine inside of a month, so make the most of your time. You haven’t got long.’ He spun on his heel and stalked away. Victor Parnaby gave Chrissie a sneering grin then followed him.

She shut the door and started back towards her desk but then changed her mind; she knew she would not be able to settle to any work now. Instead she sat in an armchair by the fire and stared into the flames. Forthrop was going to have his revenge. If Lance Morgan accepted his offer – and he would not dare refuse in case there wasn’t another – then Forthrop would inherit the fruits of all her labours. She felt sick.

She had no doubt Forthrop would pay Lance’s price in full. She was sure he had plenty of money, had heard through the trade that he had bought a dozen public houses in the last five years and knew the style in which he lived now. He would put up the cash and not need a mortgage  . . .

She shoved up out of the chair and paced about the room as she thought. She wondered if she could do it? And decided, Well, there’s only one way to find out and that’s to try.