Starlight

A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas

CATHERINE'S LAND

AS THE YEARS GO BY

BRIDGE OF HOPE

THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS

GINGER STREET

A HIGHLAND ENGAGEMENT

THE ROAD TO THE SANDS

THE EDINBURGH BRIDE

THE GIRL FROM WISH LANE
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A SONG IN THE AIR
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THE KILT MAKER
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STARLIGHT
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available from Severn House

STARLIGHT

Anne Douglas

First world edition published 2010

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

 

Copyright © 2010 by Anne Douglas.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Douglas, Anne, 1930–

Starlight.

1. Motion picture theatres – Employees – Scotland –

Edinburgh – Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945 – Social

aspects – Fiction. 3. Edinburgh (Scotland) – Social

conditions – 20th century – Fiction. 4. Love stories.

I. Title

823.9'14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-181-1 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6858-9 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-211-6 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

Part One

One

The evening before the interview, rain began to fall. Only summer rain, of course, for this was August. But miserable, all the same.

Jessica Raeburn, looking down at Leith's Great Junction Street from the window of the flat that was her home, felt her spirits fall, along with the drops sliding down the pane. Supposing it was like this tomorrow? She'd have to go to the Princes Street Picture House wearing a mackintosh over Marguerite's two-piece. So much for cutting a dash when she arrived!

‘Think it'll fair up?' she asked, turning to face her mother and sister, who were playing two-handed whist at the scrubbed wooden table in the flat's living room. Beautiful women, both, they kept their blue eyes fixed on their cards, while to Jess, they looked as they usually did, like those classical figures you saw in the museums and such in Edinburgh. See their elegant noses and fine brows, their mouths like perfect bows!

‘Who can say?' Marguerite asked absently, her mind on her next trick. Her fair hair was newly brushed, her face lightly powdered, and she was wearing a crisp blue cotton dress into which she'd changed after coming home from the teashop where she worked. Even if only playing cards with her mother, she was always very particular about her appearance.

What young man had she put off that evening? Jess was wondering, knowing that there were always admirers hanging about after Marguerite, very few ever getting very far. Too choosy, folk said, yet she wasn't getting any younger. Twenty-nine that year! Imagine! But studying her sister's beauty, Jess ran a finger along her own turned-up nose and sighed.

Of course, she knew she was attractive in her own way. Like her long dead father, and he'd been a good-looking man, her mother always said – before the enemy gas of the Great War killed him off three years after the Armistice. How nice it would have been, Jess sometimes thought, if he'd lived. Then there'd have been four in the family, instead of three.

Soft dark hair and gold-flecked green eyes, tall, slim and straight – yes, at twenty-three, she was attractive, as plenty of young men had told her, for she had her admirers, too, even if at present there was no one special. Just as well, as all she wanted to think about, on that wet summer evening in 1938, was her interview at the picture house tomorrow morning. If only it could be fine, so that she needn't wear her old blue mackintosh over Marguerite's smart grey two-piece!

Better not ask to borrow her sister's good raincoat as well, though; it had been difficult enough to get her to lend her two-piece in the first place. Should really have saved up for something smart herself, Jess reflected, especially as she might have got it cost price at Dobson's. Too late now. Unless, of course, she didn't get the job at the Princes Street Picture House – but she wasn't going to think of that.

Suddenly, the game was over. Marguerite threw up her hands and gave her mother an exasperated smile.

‘That's it, then – thirteen tricks each. Nobody's won.'

‘I can keep all my matches?' Addie Raeburn asked, closing the lid on the box of spent matches, which were all she and her girls ever played for. ‘Och, I really thought I was going to go down.'

Though in her late forties, Addie could have been ten years younger, which always surprised Jess, who knew how much sorrow her mother had seen, and how hard she'd had to work. Before the war, Frank Raeburn had been an insurance agent and hadn't done too badly, but after his death, there'd only been a widow's pension of ten shillings a week. Addie'd had to take a job cooking in a restaurant and move from their Edinburgh flat to a smaller place in Leith where rents were cheaper.

This very flat they were in now, which was over a greengrocer's; the only place Jess really knew, as she'd been only seven when they'd moved. But her mother had progressed since those early days, and now cooked luncheons for a ladies' club in Edinburgh.

Very well, too, for that first restaurant's chef had taught her to make excellent soups and sauces, casseroles and delicious things in pastry, little cakes and meringues and all sorts of good things. Her daughters knew, for she often brought leftovers home in a basket, always saying they should make the most of them for she couldn't afford such cooking on her own budget. True, money was tight, but they considered themselves pretty lucky, eh? Compared with most in Leith.

Leaving Marguerite to gather up the cards, Addie now rose and said she'd make a cup of tea. As she moved into the tiny scullery where there was a gas cooker to boil the kettle, she said over her shoulder, ‘Shame about this rain, eh? We might all have gone for a nice walk to the Links.'

‘No' me!' Jess cried. ‘I'd to wash my hair and get my things together.'

‘All this fuss for that interview at the Princes,' Marguerite said scornfully. ‘It's only for a job in the box office, after all!'

‘I want it,' Jess said firmly.

‘But you've got a good job in the cash desk at Dobson's,' her mother called from the scullery.

‘I want this one, I'm really keen.' Jess shook her head, wondering how to make her interest plain. ‘It's no' just because I like going to the pictures . . .'

‘Though you do,' put in Marguerite.

‘Yes, but it's the Princes I like, too. It's my favourite cinema, always has been. I think it's beautiful and it's where I want to work.'

‘Even if they're paying five shillings a week less than Dobson's? I think you're crazy.' Marguerite was taking cups down from the dresser. ‘But you suit yourself what you do. All I want to say is, that if you spill anything on my best suit . . .'

‘I know, I know!' Jess laughed. ‘I needn't come home, eh? I'd better run away to sea – which will be handy, seeing it's just up the road!'

Two

It was true enough that the sea was just up the road, though Marguerite and her mother always declared that it could hardly be seen for all the ships and sailing craft, docks, buoys, piers and various constructions that made up the Port of Leith. There was the Shore, yes, but that was just the harbour, and as Addie said, ‘hardly a beach, eh? Hardly golden sands, like at Portobello?'

Jess, however, didn't care about golden sands. From being a small girl, she'd been thrilled by the activity and bustle of the new place where they'd come to live, and couldn't understand why her folks didn't feel the same. As for not seeing the sea, why there it was! Beyond all the ships and vessels and constructions of the port, miles and miles of exciting water that could make you think of all the places you might go and the people you might meet. Like the cinema, really.

Which was why Jess had set her heart on moving to the Princes Street Picture House. All right, she had a good job with Dobson's Department Store on the North Bridge in Edinburgh, got on with everyone, did her work well. But instinctively she felt there was nothing there to excite her, to stimulate her, to make her feel there was a world beyond her own. The box office job might be no better than Marguerite had said, but it might bring her nearer, mightn't it, to something different? Because the Princes itself was so different, and any job there would have to be different, anyway, from working on the cash desk at Dobson's. She was right, Jess was certain, to try for it. Of course, she might not get it. She still wasn't allowing herself to think of that.

In spite all that was on her mind for tomorrow, she was able to relax a little when she sat with her mother and Marguerite, having a cup of tea and a spice biscuit. The atmosphere of the living room – in fact, of the whole flat – was always pleasant, partly because Addie had the touch of a homemaker and even on her limited means had made it comfortable and even stylish, and partly because there were none of the pressures of tenement life.

They might not have the spacious rooms of some of the Old Town houses, but on the other hand, had nobody shouting down the stair, or drunks coming in late, kicking doors as they went by, or arguments over whose turn it was to hang washing on the green. Here, in the evenings, there was no one at all to bother them, and if during the day there was all the bustle of a busy greengrocer's below, that didn't matter, the Raeburns being out all day.

Besides, they got on well with Derry Beattie, who had taken over the shop from his elderly father. John Beattie had been their landlord when they'd first moved in, after he and his family had moved out to a nice solid house near the Links, Leith's fine and historic open space of park and sports field. In those days, the flat had been very basic, with just a living room and two tiny bedrooms, one for Addie, one for the girls, but over the years there'd been improvements. A little bathroom. A scullery with a gas cooker. A separate entrance and stair.

All Derry's idea, and sometimes Jess couldn't help thinking guiltily it was because he was attracted to her mother. Shouldn't think that, of course, for Derry had a wife, Moyra, who was a sweet character, and it might not even be true. It was just that whenever Addie went down to buy a few apples or a cabbage and Jess was with her, she'd see Derry hurrying to serve her, fixing his eyes on her and smiling, then knocking a penny or two off the prices.

But that was all there was in it, Jess was sure. Those lingering looks, those smiles. Probably her mother didn't even notice, and wouldn't have encouraged Derry, anyway, even if he'd been single. Her thoughts were with Frank, so long in his grave.

Och, I've probably got it all wrong, Jess would tell herself. And they did need a bathroom, didn't they? And very nice it was.

Addie, still at the table, was now unfolding the evening paper and perching a pair of reading glasses on her fine nose.

‘Still no sign of this slump ending,' she sighed. ‘Still so many poor laddies out of work, eh? When will things start looking up?'