I’ve got to get out of home, she thought, as she sat on the bus the first day back. I can’t just stay walled up there forever. For the first time she was furiously angry with her mother, without feeling guilty about it. Yes, Vera carried a terrible grief, but why should she, Katie, give up her whole life over something that wasn’t her fault, and all of which had happened before she could even remember?
‘Talk about a face as long as Livery Street,’ Maureen said when she walked into the works to clock in. ‘You all right, Katie?’
‘Oh, sorry, yes!’ Katie said, pushing her lips into a smile. She hadn’t realized she was walking around with a frown on her face.
‘That’s better,’ Maureen said. She was always rather motherly towards Katie. ‘By the way,’ she leaned closer, ‘today’s the day
he
starts, isn’t it?’
Katie had forgotten about the arrival of Mr Collinge junior, but when she got upstairs to Mr Graham’s office, it was to find that things had already changed. Pushing open the door, she saw Mr Graham and another slender, athletically powerful man, both with their backs to her, bent over the table under the window. At another desk opposite hers, she noticed that a second shorthand typist had been ensconced in the office as well. They certainly hadn’t wasted any time.
In those seconds she felt the eyes of the typist boring into her, and took in that she was a thin person with honey-blonde, wavy hair and sharp features. Her gaze did not look in the least friendly. Then the two men straightened up and turned round. Mr Graham was looking his usual unkempt self, and made the young man beside him stand out even more in contrast. Katie took in that, as the other women in the factory had said, young Simon Collinge was the image of his father. He was tall with dark-brown hair and a healthy-looking face, which would one day fall into lines resembling those of Mr Collinge senior, attractively shaped lips and grey eyes that had a quizzical light in them, as if he found life in general rather amusing. Though he was smartly dressed, his tie was already slightly adrift, which made him look appealingly absent-minded, rather like an artist who forgets about his clothes.
‘Oh,’ Mr Graham said in his usual unexcited tone. ‘This is Miss O’Neill, who works for me.’
‘Morning!’ Simon Collinge greeted her cheerfully, but then, seeming unsure what to do next, held out his hand. Katie, blushing, reached forward to take it. Her hand was held in a surprisingly strong grip. ‘How d’you do?’
‘As you can see, Mr Collinge has joined our department,’ Mr Graham said. Katie could tell he was not best pleased about this, though it was always rather hard to tell when Mr Graham
was
pleased about anything. ‘He’s been at Herbert’s in Coventry after leaving the
University
. . . ’ This last word was uttered with barely disguised contempt. ‘And now he’s come back to join those of us who’ve been scholars at the University of Life and Hard Knocks.’
Simon Collinge laughed at this, which was the only thing to do, even though the words had been laced with sarcasm, and Katie joined in, enjoying his infectious chuckle. Mr Graham didn’t laugh, instead looking even more fed up, as if the arrival of Collinge junior was the cross he had to bear. He waved his hand towards the other typist.
‘And this is Mrs Crosby.’
The blonde woman nodded, turning her lips up insincerely.
What the hell’s eating her? Katie thought, as she slid onto the chair behind her desk. She doesn’t need to look so flaming mardy with me when she’s never even met me before.
But Katie couldn’t help noticing that Mrs Crosby must have been at least ten years older than her, and looked as if she didn’t like coming up here to find that she was on a par with someone so young.
Oh dear, Katie thought, picking up her shorthand notebook amid all the bad humour of the room. This is going to be jolly. All she could do was keep her head down and get on with her work.
‘You could cut the air with a knife in our office,’ Katie said to Ann when they met up for a coffee that weekend. ‘There’s Lena Crosby looking daggers across at me all day, because I have the cheek to have a job in the department office when I’m younger than her. And then there’s old grumpy Graham and that Mr Collinge – I mean, they’re like a pair of those . . . What d’you call them?’ She made a gesture, fingers poking up from her head.
‘Reindeer?’ Ann suggested, and they both laughed.
‘Something like that, yes! Both trying to make out they’ve got the biggest whatsits – antlers. It’s been the same all week – especially Mr Graham. If you even mention that Mr Collinge has been to the university, he starts to swell up . . . And I get home and Mom’s not well and she’s feeling sorry for herself. I can tell you, it’s good to get out!’
‘It sounds it,’ Ann laughed.
But Katie’s joking complaints were the nearest she ever got to telling the truth about things – especially about her mother. She had been so conditioned never to say anything about her home life that she would have felt disloyal even hinting at how things really were.
‘What you need,’ Ann said, ‘is a good walk round the shops.’
Katie groaned. ‘What, with a handful of coupons? And that’s if there was anything decent to buy. I’m saving my coupons for a proper pair of shoes. I keep getting to work with my feet all wet!’
‘I know,’ Ann said gloomily, her hands curled round her cup of coffee to warm them. ‘Still, at least you can make things for yourself. You always look nice, no matter what, Katie.’
‘Thanks,’ Katie said. She did take pride in her appearance and there was nothing she liked more than a new outfit, given the chance. ‘But I’ve had most of these clothes for years. It’s not as if we’ve got any spare curtains to cut up!’
‘This flaming war’s sucked the fun out of everything,’ Ann said gloomily. Then her eyes began to twinkle. ‘Well – maybe not everything.’
‘Go on.’ Katie grinned. ‘Tell me.’ Hearing about Ann’s evenings of fun with Gordon was about the nearest she was going to get to a social life for the moment. She sat back and listened to Ann chatting about dancing and going to the pictures. But she found her mind wandering.
It was true that things were difficult at the works. Mr Graham’s grudging working relationship with Simon Collinge, and Lena Crosby’s obvious resentment of her, had made the week difficult. On the first dinner break Katie had wondered whether she and Lena would eat together and maybe get to know each other. It would have been nice to share chats and jokes about work with someone in their office. It wasn’t looking very promising, but Katie lived in hope. Lena Crosby got straight up from her desk and walked out, without even acknowledging Katie’s presence. She left a strong smell of stale cigarettes behind her. Only the men were allowed to smoke in the office. She was clearly desperate for a puff.
‘Huh, be like that then,’ Katie muttered under her breath.
She went down to the canteen and ate with the other women she already knew.
‘Where’s that new one who’s working with you?’ Maureen asked.
‘I don’t know – she must’ve gone out,’ Katie said.
Maureen grimaced. ‘Ooh – like that, is it?’
‘Well, she’s not very friendly so far,’ Katie said, shrugging.
‘And what’s
he
like?’ Maureen was full of curiosity.
‘Seems nice enough. I don’t really know.’
‘Goodness . . .’ Maureen eyed Katie’s already empty plate. ‘You must’ve needed that.’
‘I’ve got to nip out,’ Katie said. ‘If I hurry, I can just make it to the Bull Ring – get a bit of fruit for my mom. She’s going down with a nasty cold.’
‘Aren’t you a good girl!’ Maureen’s words followed her as she dashed out.
As the week went by, Lena Crosby did not get any less chilly and disappeared each dinnertime. When they were all eating one day, someone said, ‘I heard she’s got a husband who’s a prisoner-of-war in Germany.’
Everyone looked a bit more sympathetic after that.
One afternoon, when they were all working away in the office, Katie was typing a great sheaf of correspondence that Mr Graham had dictated to her earlier, and he was busy at his desk. Simon Collinge was standing close to Mrs Crosby, giving her dictation in a low voice so as not to disturb the others. Miss Crosby sat very correctly at her desk, her feet neatly together, rapidly taking shorthand. Katie looked up, fingers pausing on the keys of the Remington, hardly realizing she had stopped work. She looked at Mr Collinge’s tall figure, one long arm bent to rest a hand on his hip in his relaxed-looking manner, his expression one of intelligent concentration. A physical sensation went through her at the sight of him. It was the shape of him, the way he stood. And he looked so intelligent. Gosh, he’s really nice, she thought. She didn’t realize she was staring.
After a moment he must have felt her looking at him and turned. Their eyes met for a couple of seconds and she could see he was curious, meeting her gaze. She looked down, blushing in confusion. He’d caught her staring at him! But she kept thinking about it afterwards. Hadn’t she, in that very brief look, seen the beginnings of a smile in his eyes?
Most of the time they had little reason to talk. She was not his typist, after all. But the next afternoon, when Mrs Crosby was sitting in her usual frigid silence and Mr Graham was at his desk muttering grumpily to himself about something, it was her turn to glance up and see Mr Collinge looking at her. To her extreme annoyance she blushed, thickly, and was about to turn away when he gave a mischievous glance round the office as if to communicate something to her, as if to say:
What a shower!
Without thinking, before she could stop herself, Katie pulled her cross-eyed face that she and Em used to make at school when they wanted to be cheeky about the teacher. She saw Simon Collinge look bemused, before a grin broke over his face and he turned away so that Mr Graham didn’t see. Katie was mortified. What on earth did she go and do that for? But at least he had looked amused – she hoped to goodness he’d carry on seeing it that way.
That evening as she hurried home she kept thinking about it, about the way he had looked at her, worrying about how badly she had put her foot in it. She had plenty of other things to be thinking about, like seeing to the tea because her mother’s cold was obviously turning into something worse and she was becoming more and more feverish, and about stoking the fire and washing up. But it was his face that kept coming back to her. That wide smile. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.
Vera O’Neill’s cold turned into a nasty bout of the flu. She took to bed in her little room with the pale-blue walls and white window frames, the pretty flowered coverlet flung to the bottom of the bed when she was too hot to bear it, then pulled up again as she grew cold and shivery. Katie, attending to her every need, lit a fire in the grate and made drinks and refilled the hot-water bottle from time to time. There was a wicker chair by the bed with a cushion made of floral material that matched the coverlet, and Katie sat with her mother and kept her company.
‘It’s a good job it’s the weekend,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’d be worried about leaving you to go to work.’
Vera smiled glassily and said in a rasping, martyred voice, ‘I expect I’d have managed. But I’m glad you’re here. Could I have another sip of water, dear?’
Katie reached over for the glass of water on the bedside table and helped her mother take a mouthful. She saw the muscles in Vera’s neck strain as she lifted her head, and the crinkly look of the skin of her neck and chest, which made her see once again that her mother had aged. Lying there, she looked vulnerable. It was a rare thing for Vera to be ill as she was usually a very healthy woman, but Katie realized she also seemed to be enjoying it, lying back and being looked after, almost like a child.
Vera slept fitfully on and off. Katie sat reading
Dombey and Son
. As the day passed into evening, she turned the lamp on so that she could see her book. The room was cold, so she rebuilt the fire, but Vera grew more and more feverish, tossing and turning, delirious. Katie thought she should not leave her for too long. Should she call a doctor? she wondered. But she didn’t like the idea of walking the dark streets and calling on Dr Radnor, who was a rather sour man.
She cut herself some bread and cheese and ate it sitting upstairs on the little Turkey rug by the fire. The room was softly lit and the only sounds were the coals hissing and Vera’s restless murmurs from the bed. It all felt rather stifling and, to escape, Katie lapsed into a dream: in the flames she kept seeing Simon Collinge as she’d seen him that first day, so different from the bantering lads downstairs, long-limbed, energetic, leaning over the work table, then turning with that energy of his, his handsome smile, which turned into the impish grin he had given her when she pulled that face. She found herself smiling back as if he was actually in front of her, then she caught herself. How stupid she was being! There was she, a little typist, and he not only the boss’s son, but someone who’d been to the university, somewhere she couldn’t even imagine! She really was going to have to pull herself together and stop mooning about like this.
A gasp came from the bed behind her. Vera was thrashing her head from side to side.
‘Is that him . . . ?’ she said in a slurred voice. ‘Spots, Spots, come here!’ A moment later, more loudly, she cried, ‘Daddy! Is that you, Daddy?’
Katie got up and went over, alarmed. She sat down and reluctantly took her mother’s hand. This felt awkward. Being in any way close to Vera was not comfortable. But soon Vera had gone back to sleep.