London Belles

After that the day had gone from bad to worse, leaving her filled with panic and despair. She’d seen from the look that Mr Smith had given her at five past five, when he’d told her to clock off because the evening shift was about to start, that he was angry with her because of all the mistakes she’d made. She’d let Matron down, she knew, and soon she was going to have to admit to her that she’d deliberately not kept her appointment with Mrs Robbins in Article Row.

Now, still wearing her second-hand uniform, her head down, and tears not very far away, Agnes headed for the steps that would take her out of the station and into the daylight, gasping as she was almost knocked flying.

Immediately a pair of male hands gripped her, a male voice saying, ‘I’m sorry. Are you all right?’

Those words – the first of any kindness she had heard all day – were too much for her and to her shame she couldn’t stop herself from bursting into tears.

Immediately the young man – she could see through her tears that he was a young man – pulled her into the privacy of a shadowy area against the wall and announced, ‘You must be the new girl that started at the ticket office this morning. I’m Ted Jackson, one of the drivers. What’s wrong?’

‘Everything,’ Agnes told him tearfully. ‘I made a customer cross because I was too slow and I got his change wrong. Mr Smith is really angry with me, and I know he’ll give me the sack and then Matron at the orphanage will be upset because I’ve let them down.’

‘Orphanage?’

‘Yes. I’m an orphan but I can’t stay at the orphanage any more because they’re going to be evacuated, and anyway you can’t stay once you’re fourteen. I was lucky that they let me stay for so long.’

The poor kid looked as pathetic as a half drowned kitten he’d once rescued from the river, Ted thought sympathetically.

‘Look, I’m not due to start work yet, so why don’t you and me go upsides and have a cup of tea? It will help calm you down,’ he suggested, putting his hand under her elbow and leading her back towards the steps.

Agnes experienced another surge of panic, but a different one this time. Matron was very strict with her girls, and Agnes had never ever been alone with a young man.

‘Come on, it’s all right, you’ll be safe with me,’ Ted assured her as though he had guessed what was worrying her. ‘Got two sisters of me own at home, I have.’

They’d reached the top of the steps and somehow Agnes discovered that she was being bustled into a small café where the woman behind the counter greeted Ted with a broad smile.

‘Your usual, is it, Ted?’ ‘Nah, just two cups of tea this time, Mrs M.’ He glanced at Agnes and then added, ‘And a couple of toasted teacakes.’

A toasted teacake – Agnes’s mouth watered. She hadn’t been able to eat the egg sandwiches she’d brought with her for her dinner because she’d been so worked up and upset.

The café was only small but it was homely and looked clean and welcoming. It smelled of strong tea and hot toast. The counter had a glass display case in which there were some scones and sausage rolls and sandwiches. Opposite the counter was a window with a sign in it saying ‘Café’. A row of wooden tables and chairs ran the length of the wall from the doorway, past the window and into the corner of the room. There were red and white checked cloths on the table and the same fabric had been used to make curtains for the window. Brown linoleum covered the floor, and the two women behind the counter serving the customers were large and jolly-looking.

‘You don’t want to take too much notice of old Smithy,’ Ted advised Agnes once they were settled at a table, their mugs of tea and toasted teacakes in front of them. ‘His bark is worse than his bite.’

‘But I got everything so wrong.’

‘That’s only natural on your first day.’

‘I couldn’t remember which line was which, or any of the stations,’ Agnes admitted in a low voice. ‘I’ll be sacked, I know I will, and then Matron will be cross with me as well, especially when she finds out that I didn’t go to Article Row like she told me.’

‘Article Row? What were you going there for?’

‘To get myself a room. The vicar’s wife had told Matron that there was a room there for me and I was supposed to go round yesterday to see it but I didn’t . . . I couldn’t.’ Her eyes filled with fresh tears. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay at the orphanage.’

‘What, and end up stuck in the country? That’s daft. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go round to this Article Row after you and me have finished our tea? You can tell the landlady that you made a mistake and that you thought it was tonight you were supposed to go. That way you won’t get into trouble with your matron and you’ll have somewhere to live.’

Ted made it all seem so simple and so sensible. He made her feel better, somehow.

‘I’ll still lose my job. Mr Smith told me that I’d got to learn the stations on every single line, or else.’

‘Well, that’s easy enough to do,’ Ted told her.

Agnes’s eyes widened with hope and then darkened with doubt.

‘I mean it,’ Ted assured her, adding, ‘I could teach them to you if you wanted. See, my dad worked on the underground as a driver all his life, and now I’m doing the same. Grown up with knowing what the lines and the stations are, I suppose. Dad used to sing the names to me when I was a kid and lying in bed.’

‘Sing them to you? You mean like . . . like hymns?’ Agnes asked in amazement.

‘Well, not hymns, perhaps, but like what you might hear down at the Odeon, you know . . .’ He cleared his throat and began to sing in a pleasant baritone, as though to a marching tune that he had made up.

‘Here’s to the Piccadilly –

Cockfosters, Oakwood and Southgate,

Arnos Grove, Bounds Green and Wood Green,

Turnpike Lane, Manor House and Finsbury

Park,

Ar – sen – al

Holloway Road, Caledonian Road

King’s Cross and Russell Square,

Holborn, Covent Garden and Leicester Square.’

Agnes was entranced. Ted made learning the names of the lines and their stations seem such fun.

Her obvious awe and delight had Ted’s chest swelling with pride. He was an ordinary-looking lad, of only middling height and a bit on the thin side, with mouse-brown hair and vividly blue eyes. His smile was his best feature in his opinion, and his ears his worse because they stuck out so much. He had long ago accustomed himself to the fact that his looks weren’t the sort that girls made a beeline for, so he’d learned to compensate for that with his friendliness – not that he was the kind to go chasing after girls. He’d got his mum to help out after all. But something about Agnes’s plight, coupled with her awed delight, touched his heart. Ted reckoned that the poor little thing needed someone to look out for her and give her a hand, and he’d as soon do it himself as see her taken in by some lad who might not do right by her. There were plenty of that kind about, and she obviously hadn’t a clue about how to look after herself properly.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what,’ he offered. ‘How about you and me meet up every teatime when you come off work, and I teach you the names of the lines and their stations?’

‘You’d do that for me?’ Agnes didn’t even try to conceal her disbelief.

‘I’ve just said so, haven’t I?’

For a moment euphoria filled Agnes but then her ingrained lack of self-confidence swamped it.

‘It’s very kind of you but I just don’t think I’ll be good enough to learn them properly.’

‘Course you will,’ Ted assured her. ‘If my old man could teach me and I could learn, then I reckon I can teach you and you can learn.’

‘Does your father still drive the trains?’

Ted shook his head. ‘He’s dead. Got killed upsides in an accident six years back. It was a foggy night and he got hit by a bus. Didn’t stand a chance. Killed him straight off.’

He said it so matter-of-factly that Agnes could only stifle her shock to say politely, ‘How awful.’

‘Knocked us all for six when it happened, but we’ve got used to it now. Course, it’s meant that I’ve had to help Mum out with my own wages and take a bit of a firm line with the girls when they start giving her their cheek, and acting up.’

‘How old are your sisters?’ Agnes asked him shyly. She didn’t really know anyone who had a real family. She’d never met someone who was as frank and open as Ted was. His frankness enabled her to ask the kind of questions she would never normally have dreamed of asking.

‘Marie, she’s the eldest, she’s ten, and then there’s Sonia, who’s eight.’ He paused and then added, ‘In case you’re wondering how come I’m so much older, it’s because there was a couple of others – both boys – that died young. Talks about ’em still, Ma does, and then gets herself in a state about them, poor little tykes. Now, I’ve got to get on duty and you’ve got to get yourself over to – what was it? – Article Row, and get yourself sorted out. Then tomorrow teatime you and me will meet up here and get started off learning you your lines and stations.’

He was already standing up so Agnes did the same, telling him emotionally as they left the teashop, ‘You’ve been so kind coming to help me just when I thought . . . You’re like a Good Samaritan.’

‘Aw, get away with you, it was nothing,’ Ted told her, looking embarrassed. ‘I’d do the same for any kid that was in the state you’d got yourself into. Now you remember, tomorrow teatime here. Right?’

‘Right,’ Agnes told him.

The warm happy glow she felt from Ted’s kindness accompanied her as far as the entrance to Article Row, but once she could see how nice the houses in the Row looked, she felt her confidence start to slip away, and at the same time a feeling growing in her that if she couldn’t stay at the orphanage then this would be a lovely place to live. Out of the corner of her eye she could see two women walking on the pavement on the other side of the street, going in the opposite direction to her, both of them glancing at her, their curiosity making her feel self-conscious and awkward. Number 13, she’d been told; that was the next house. Now her tummy had begun to cramp nervously.

Inside her kitchen, Olive had just sunk down into a chair to drink the very welcome cup of tea Tilly had brewed for her. Although she was glad to have both her rooms let, she would really rather not have had a girl like Dulcie as one of her lodgers. Her maternal instincts told her that Dulcie was not likely to be a good influence on Tilly, who was just at that age when she wanted to be grown up and go out to dances, and, of course, meet boys.

The unexpected knock on the door surprised them both.

‘I hope that isn’t Nancy from next door coming round to complain about something,’ Olive sighed, getting up to go and see who it was.

The thin mousy-haired and obviously anxious girl, standing outside in her grey serge underground uniform immediately broke into nervous speech.

‘Please, miss, I’m Agnes and I’m ever so sorry. I was supposed to come yesterday only I didn’t. It’s about the room. Matron at the orphanage said that you had a room for me.’

Olive’s heart sank. The girl looked so on edge, and so much more the kind of lodger she had expected and wanted than Dulcie, who had now taken her room.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said with genuine regret, ‘but the room’s already gone, I’m afraid. When you didn’t come yesterday, I thought you didn’t want it.’

Olive’s words made Agnes feel as though a bucket of icy cold water had been thrown over her, drowning the hopes she had begun to build up and leaving her feeling as close to tears as she had done when Ted had found her on the stairs.

Poor girl, Olive thought, seeing the shocked despair on Agnes’s face. Tears weren’t very far away, Olive could tell.

‘Look, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ she offered kindly. ‘It’s a warm evening and you’ll have been working all day.’

‘Oh, no, you’re very kind but I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ Agnes began, but before she could turn to walk away, Olive was reaching for her arm and drawing her inside, guiding her down the hallway and into the kitchen, where a girl of her own age, but much prettier than she, with her dark curls and cherry-red lips, was standing in front of the sink, drinking a cup of tea.

‘Tilly, this is Agnes who was supposed to come yesterday about the room. Agnes, this is my daughter Tilly,’ Olive explained, adding, ‘I’ve told Agnes that I’ve already let the room, but she’s going to have a cup of tea with us before she goes home.’

Tilly nodded and set about removing a clean cup and saucer from the cupboard and filling the kettle with some water to make a fresh pot of tea, setting it on the stove and then lighting the gas.

The girl who her mother had brought into the kitchen looked dreadfully upset, and so small and thin that Tilly immediately felt sorry for her.

‘I don’t know what Matron is going to say to me,’ Agnes told them both once she had been coaxed into a chair and a fresh cup of tea put in front of her. ‘She’ll be ever so cross. I should have come yesterday, but all I really wanted was to be evacuated with them. You see, the orphanage is all I’ve got – the little ones and Matron and everyone – but like Matron says, they can’t take me with them because really I shouldn’t be there at all, me being seventeen.’

A tear rolled down her face and splashed onto her hand, followed by another.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, acting like this. It was just that I’d got my hopes up. And now I’d better go.’ Agnes looked agitated and even more upset as she finished her tea and then stood up. ‘You’ve been ever so kind.’

She was trying to be brave but Olive could see how upset she was. There was nothing she could do, though. Dulcie was the kind who would make a first-class fuss if Olive tried to persuade her to give the room up, Olive knew.

She walked with Agnes to the front door. Then, just as she was about to open it, Tilly called urgently from the kitchen, ‘Mum, can I have a word? Now!’

Olive frowned. It was unlike Tilly to be forgetful of her manners, and not wait to say whatever it was she wanted to say until their visitor had gone.

Agnes was waiting for her to open the door. Feeling desperately sorry for her, Olive did so, watching as she walked down the garden path, her head down, no doubt to hide her tears.

‘Mum!’ Tilly’s voice was even more urgent now.

‘Yes, Tilly?’

‘I’ve been thinking. There’s two beds in my room, and if Agnes doesn’t mind sharing with me then we could double up.’

Olive could almost feel her heart swelling with love and pride. Her wonderful kind daughter had not been rude; her impatience had been caused by her desire to help another girl whom she had recognised was desperately in need.

‘Well—’ she began.

‘Please, Mum,’ Tilly pleaded. ‘She hasn’t got anywhere else, and if she doesn’t like sharing with me then at least she’ll have somewhere until she finds another room.’

‘It won’t be easy, Tilly,’ Olive warned. ‘You’ve always been used to having your own room.’

‘I know, but I really want to, Mum. Can we?’

‘Very well. If you’re sure,’ Olive agreed.

‘I am sure.’ Tilly flung her arms round her mother and kissed her before running to the front door and pulling it open.

Agnes had almost reached the end of Article Row when she heard the sound of someone running behind her. She stopped and turned round, surprised to see Tilly, her black curls dancing in the early evening sunshine.

‘Agnes,’ Tilly called out breathlessly, ‘wait. I’ve got something to tell you.’

Silently Agnes waited.

‘I’ve spoken to my mother and, if you’re in agreement – that is, if you want to – you can share my room. There’s a spare bed, and it’s a good size. I know it won’t be the same as having your own room, but I thought that, well, for now, until you find somewhere better, it might do?’

Somewhere better than number 13 Article Row and Tilly and her mother? Could such a place exist? Agnes didn’t think so.

‘You really mean it?’ she asked, hardly daring to believe it. ‘You’d really share your room with me?’

‘Yes,’ Tilly assured her, taking her arm and leading her back.

* * *

Half an hour later, after another cup of tea in number 13’s kitchen, it was all arranged. Agnes would return to the orphanage to inform Matron that she was moving into Mrs Robbins’ house.

Her heart flooding with joy and gratitude, Agnes thanked her saviours, and this time when she headed back down Article Row she held her head high, her tears replaced by a smile.

Chapter Five

‘So you’re doing it then? You’re really going to go ahead and move out?’

Despite the fact that she could hear disbelief and censure in her brother’s voice, Dulcie tossed her head and demanded, ‘Yes I am, and so what?’

They were in the cramped shabby living room of their home, empty for once apart from the two of them.

‘So what?’ Rick repeated grimly. ‘Have you thought what this is going to do to Mum? We’re a family, Dulcie, and in case you’ve forgotten there just happens to be a war about to start. That’s a time when families should stick together.’

‘That’s easy for you to say when you’re leaving home to go and do six months’ military training. Have you thought about what that’s going to do to Mum?’ she challenged him, determined to fight her own corner.

‘I don’t have any choice. It’s the Government that’s said I’ve got to go,’ Rick pointed out.

‘And I don’t have any choice either, not with Edith treating my things like they belong to her and Mum backing her up.’ There was real bitterness in Dulcie’s voice now. ‘Mum always takes Edith’s side; she always has and she always will. All she wants me for is my wages.’

‘Aw, come on, Dulcie, that’s not true,’ Rick felt obliged to protest, but Dulcie could see that he was looking uncomfortable. Because he knew the truth!

‘Yes it is,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘Mum’s always favoured Edith, and you know it. It’s all very well for you to talk about families sticking together, but when has this family ever done anything for me? Mum hasn’t said a word to me about wanting me to stay. If you ask me she’s pleased to see me go. That way she can listen to Edith caterwauling all day long.’

There was just enough of a grain of truth – even though Dulcie had deliberately distorted and exaggerated it – in what she was saying for Rick to fall silent. During their childhood his sister had always been the one who seemed to get it in the neck and who had borne the brunt of their mother’s sometimes short temper, whilst Edith was indeed their mother’s favourite. Despite all that, though, he felt obliged, as the eldest of the family, to persist doggedly, ‘We’re family, Dulcie, and families like ours stick together.’

‘Fine, but they can stick together without me.’

‘You’ll regret leaving,’ Rick warned her, ‘and I’m only telling you that for your own good. Moving in with strangers – no good will come of it.’

‘Yes it will. I’ll not have a thieving sister helping herself to my clothes, nor a mother always having it in for me. Besides, it’s a really nice place I’m moving to, and you can see that for yourself ’cos I need you to give me a hand getting my stuff over there tonight.’

Rick sighed. He knew when he’d lost a fight, especially with Dulcie, who had her own ideas and opinions about everything, and who was as sharp as a tack when it came to making them plain.

‘All right, I will help you,’ he agreed, ‘provided you promise me that you’ll come home every Sunday to go to church with Mum.’

Dulcie was tempted to refuse, but she needed Rick’s help if she was to get her things to her new digs in one trip, and besides, something told her that her new landlady was the sort who thought things like families and going to church on Sunday were important. If she didn’t accept Rick’s terms she could end up finding herself dragged off to church by Olive. It would be worthwhile coming back once a week, if only to show off her new – unborrowable – clothes to Edith.

‘All right,’ she conceded.

‘Promise?’ Rick demanded.

‘Promise,’ Dulcie agreed.

Sally looked round her small Spartan room in the nurses’ home. The few possessions she had brought with her from Liverpool – apart from the photograph of her parents on their wedding day, in its silver frame – were packed in her case, ready for her to take to Article Row. As soon as she’d come off duty she’d changed out of her uniform, with its distinctive extra tall starched Barts’ cap, much taller than the caps worn by any nurses from any of the other London hospitals. Sisters’ caps were even taller, and even more stiffly starched, Sally guessed.

Workwise she’d fitted in quite well at Barts. She loved theatre work and had been welcomed by the other theatre staff, most of whom were down to be evacuated should Germany’s hostile advances into the territories of its neighbours continue and thus lead to a declaration of war by the British Government. Normally, of course, Sally would not have been allowed to ‘live out’ but these were not normal times.

Not normal times . . . Her life had ceased to be what she thought of as normal many months ago now.

She sat down on the edge of her narrow thin-mattressed bed, nowhere near as comfortable as the bed waiting for her in Article Row, and nowhere near as comfortable as the bed she had left behind her in Liverpool in the pretty semi-detached house that had always been her home. The house that she had refused to enter once she had known the truth, leaving Liverpool in the pale light of an early summer morning to catch the first train to London, with nothing but a recommendation to the matron at Barts from her own Hospital, and the trunk into which she had packed her belongings. Heavy though that trunk had been, it had been no heavier than the weight of her memories – both good and bad – on her heart.

She hadn’t told her father what she was planning to do. She’d known that he would plead with her and try to dissuade her, so instead she’d asked the taxi driver to take her first to her parents’ house, from her temporary room at the nurses’ home, where she’d put her letter to her father very quietly through the letter box, before going on to Lime Street station.

Her father would have read her letter over breakfast. She could picture him now, carefully pouring himself a cup of tea, sitting down at the blue-and-white-checked-oilcloth-covered table, with the paper propped up against the teapot, as he read the words that she had written telling him that she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Pain knifed through her. She had loved her parents so much. They had been such a happy family. Had been. Until the person she had thought of as her closest friend – close enough to be a sister – had destroyed everything.

A mixture of misery and anger tensed her throat muscles. The death of her mother had been hard enough to bear, but the betrayal of her closest friend; that had left a wound that was still too poisoned for her even to think of allowing it to close. As with all wounds, the poison must be removed before healing could take place, otherwise it would be driven deeper, to fester and cause more harm. Sally could not, though, see any way to remove that poison or to salve its wound with acceptance and forgiveness. She couldn’t. If she did she would be betraying her poor mother, who had suffered so dreadfully. She reached for her photograph and held it in both her hands as she looked into the faces of her youthful parents, her father so tall and dark and handsome, her fair-haired mother so petite and happy as she nestled within the protective curve of his arm.

Her mother had been such a happy, loving person, their home life in their comfortable semi so harmonious. Sally had grown up knowing that she wanted to be a nurse and her parents had encouraged her to follow her dream. Her father, a clerk working for the Town Hall, had helped her to enrol for their local St John Ambulance brigade as soon as she had been old enough. Those had been such happy days, free of the upsets that seemed to mar the childhoods of others. In the summer there had been picnics on the sands at Southport and Lytham St Annes; visits to Blackpool Tower and rides on the donkeys, trips across the Mersey, of course, in the ferry boats that plied between Liverpool and New Brighton, whilst in the winter there had been the excitement of Christmas and the pantomime.