Grace nodded. What they said sounded logical but she still wasn’t keen. ‘Isn’t his father in town?’
‘That’s right,’ said Snowy. ‘I saw it in the papers. He wants his son re-interred. He was upset that he’s been put in a pauper’s grave.’
‘I think I’ll take it to him,’ said Grace. They put everything back into the case and it was agreed that Grace should look through everything carefully to familiarise herself with the papers and then go to see George’s father. Archie offered to come with her but Grace felt this was something she had to do on her own. He seemed a little put out, but she couldn’t help that. It was time she took control of her life instead of just letting things happen.
Snowy accepted Grace’s invitation to stay for some cheese on toast for lunch, but Archie said he had to get back to the shop.
‘How’s Dougie doing?’ Grace asked as he was going. She remembered how excited Dougie had been to get a job, something which no one in the street would ever have predicted.
‘Actually, he does very well,’ said Archie. ‘He keeps everything in the shop clean and tidy and I’ve been teaching him how to re-cane chair seats. He can prepare the canes, and he knows how to whittle down the ends. He’s slow but he’s very thorough especially when it comes to cleaning up the chair properly. He’s even had a couple of goes at weaving. He’s not up to my standard yet, but he’ll get there.’
‘He’s lucky you’ve got the patience,’ Snowy observed.
‘And that Gracie saw his potential,’ said Archie, squeezing Grace’s fingers.
Grace saw him to the door and then went back upstairs to the bedroom where Snowy was still tidying everything away. ‘Had any more trouble with His Nibs?’ she asked as she and Grace closed the lid and pressed down hard to lock it.
‘If you mean Norris, no,’ said Grace.
‘I’m pretty sure he’s after Polly now,’ said Snowy. ‘Bloody lecher. She’s young enough to be his daughter.’
As the two women went downstairs, the cat jumped onto the bed. After all the activity of the morning, she seemed glad of the little bit of peace and quiet.
With Dinah’s birthday coming up, Bonnie agreed to meet John to help him choose a present. Having missed Rita’s birthday yet again, Bonnie was only too pleased to help him. They spent an afternoon looking around Kingston and eventually settled on a butterfly necklace on a silver chain. They bought it in H. Samuels, John joking that his father would be pleased because he had recently bought some shares when the company was successfully floated on the stock exchange.
‘Fancy some tea in Bentalls?’
‘Why not,’ said Bonnie. This would be the ideal opportunity to talk to John about their mother.
They sat at a table near the window and enjoyed the view. The waitress brought them tea and a tray of sandwiches with the promise of cake to follow. Bonnie loved the daintiness of it all. John was obviously feeling a bit hungry and complained that the sandwiches were ‘far too titchy for a man’.
‘John,’ she began cautiously. ‘Can I ask you something about your family?’
‘My family?’ He sounded surprised. ‘Nothing much to say really. Like I told you, there’s only me and my parents left now. I had an uncle but he died before I was born and my grandfather died soon after. Apparently my grandmother was never the same after that but I don’t remember much about her. Why?
‘Just curious,’ Bonnie smiled. ‘Do you and your parents get on well together?’
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t get on too well with my father but my mother is a sweetie. No matter what’s going on around her, she’s always so calm. She paints and she does this incredible embroidery. I suppose she’s what you might call creative. It must be in the blood. Are we shaped by nature or nurture?’
Bonnie must have looked uncomfortable because he frowned. ‘Why do I get the feeling you’re about to say something awful?’
‘Not awful,’ she said, ‘but I think it may be a bit of a shock.’
‘Go on …’
Bonnie decided that the best thing was to be direct. ‘John, I’ve found out that you’re adopted.’
He laughed but she didn’t return his laughter. ‘You’re serious.’
She nodded and he looked away. Bonnie could feel the tension between them. ‘No one ever told you?’
He shook his head. ‘If this is true then my whole bloody life has been a lie.’
Bonnie was appalled. She’d never expected this kind of reaction. ‘Please don’t say that, John,’ she began again. ‘If they didn’t tell you, they must have had their reasons.’
‘What bloody reasons!’ His expression was a mixture of anger, hurt and bewilderment. She felt terrible. She never should have started this. She should have waited until Dinah was around.
‘How the devil do you know so much about me and my family?’ His voice had an edge to it. ‘Have you been snooping into my private affairs?’
Embarrassed, Bonnie looked around. ‘This is difficult for me too,’ said Bonnie. ‘Apparently your private affairs are mine as well.’
A couple of women were watching them, but everyone else seemed to be making a deliberate attempt not to notice them at all. The dead give-away was the fact that all other conversation in the restaurant had died.
‘Perhaps this isn’t the best place to deal with this,’ she apologised. ‘I’m sorry I brought it up.’
‘You can’t stop now,’ he challenged. ‘What exactly are we talking about, Bonnie?’
Bonnie put her hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve upset you …’ she began.
‘Too right you have,’ said John. ‘But I want to know why we’re having this conversation. What has my adoption got to do with you?’
The waitress came back with the cake tier. ‘Leave it,’ John snapped at her as she tried to find a space on the table. The girl hurried away, taking the plate with her.
Bonnie reached into her bag and handed him his grandfather’s letter. John read it carefully. Bonnie’s heart was thumping and as she looked around she wanted to say to the people on the adjoining tables,
Stop earwigging and get on with your tea!
She looked at John. He was still staring at the letter. What was he going to do? What if he made a scene? Or stormed out of Bentalls and refused to speak to her again? Shirley would be devastated not to have him in her life but she was still young enough for him to be a person she would never recall. As she watched him, she saw the tension leave his body.
He was looking at her now. ‘Is this for real?’ he said quietly.
She nodded. The whole restaurant held its breath.
‘Who is Grace Follett?’
‘My mother.’
He looked her straight in the eye and although he said nothing, she could almost read his thoughts. ‘So, according to this,’ he said sitting back in his chair and flicking the end of the paper, ‘you and I are brother and sister.’
‘Half brother and sister,’ she corrected. ‘We have the same mother but different fathers.’
His expression remained unchanged as he continued to stare. Bonnie shifted in her seat. How did he feel about that? Did he hate the idea?
‘Am I older than you?’
She nodded again.
‘Ha!’ he said, his face suddenly wreathed in smiles. ‘This will take some getting used to but I always wanted a sibling.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Mind? Of course not. And I’m not surprised either.’ He paused, adding after a moment’s thought, ‘You know how sometimes you get the feeling that there’s a secret nobody’s telling you? I think I may have already guessed.’
It seemed to Bonnie as if the whole restaurant heaved a collective sigh of relief.
Later, when they told Dinah, her one thought was that John was now Shirley’s genuine uncle and when they married, she would be her aunt. John was obviously still trying to come to terms with what he’d been told. He insisted that Bonnie tell him all about their mother and as she did so, she was struck by the similarities in their personalities. Her mother loved playing the piano, her pride and joy. She enjoyed telling a good story and entertaining, just as John did. Bonnie told him about her happy childhood, of days spent on Highdown Hill, or High Salvington where before the war, they could have tea in the Windmill Tea Rooms. She told him about lazy days on the beach, or pond-dipping in the rough ground between Sea Lane and George V Avenue when her mother would take them out for the day on the bus. As she told him, Bonnie’s heart began to constrict again. How she missed her mother and Rita. How she longed to see them playing with Shirley. Every grandmother enjoyed spoiling her grandchild but by staying away she had denied Shirley that pleasure. Was it possible, after all this time, to start again? She had totally underestimated John’s reaction. Could it be possible she was wrong about her mother as well?
‘Weird,’ he said. ‘And even more of a surprise finding out about you.’
‘It must have been very hard for your mother,’ said Bonnie, thinking how gracious she must have been to adopt someone else’s child. ‘To bring up your husband’s child by somebody else is such a totally unselfish act.’ Just as difficult, she thought to herself, as her own mother giving up her baby son.
‘I think it makes me admire my mother all the more,’ said John gravely.
Me too, thought Bonnie, but she didn’t voice it.
They parted friends although she could tell John was still very much in shock at the revelation she’d dropped in his lap. Talking at such great length about Worthing had had a profound effect on Bonnie. She was homesick. She hadn’t felt like this since she was at Lady Brayfield’s place. It gnawed into her bones and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. It became almost an obsession. There were times in the days that followed when she’d be walking past the kitchen in the nursery and she could almost smell her mother’s cooking. The lavender polish on the floors began to remind her of the lavender bags her mother put upstairs in her chest of drawers, and the smell of the laundry room reminded her of the damp washing on the clothes horse in front of the fire. She longed to see how Mum was getting on with her little garden. She’d always hated being out there when she was young, but now she wanted Shirley to have the chance to pick peas, or carry a cabbage indoors, just as she had done when she was a child. She remembered silly things too. The scribbled drawing on the stairs that Rita had got into big trouble for doing when she was six. The bedside lampshade in their bedroom which was burned on one side because they’d put it too close to the bulb. When Matron Bennett came into the Tweenies nursery to play some nursery rhymes on Sunday afternoon, Bonnie thought about her mother playing the piano while she and Rita sang together. For too long she had told herself she didn’t want to upset her mother again, that she was too ashamed to go back, but now something was tugging at her heart. A call she was finding hard to ignore.
‘Worthing … I want to go back to Worthing.’
‘Does this bus stop at the pier?’
‘I should hope so, darlin’. We’ll all get flipping wet if it doesn’t.’ To the sound of laughter, Rita took three florins from her passenger’s hand and searched her leather pouch for change. She issued the two tickets from the machine around her neck, giving him a bob and a tanner change. Rita moved along the bus. ‘Any more fares? Any more fares?’
She was more than happy to be a conductress on the Southdown buses. It felt so right, so Rita. The uniform was more attractive than most. In summer the drivers wore a cream linen jacket and the conductors had a lovely shade of evergreen. Everyone wore a peaked cap with the Southdown logo. The men wore white shirt, black ties, black trousers and black shoes. Rita had a black tie, a crisp white shirt and black knee-length skirt. She wore flesh-coloured stockings and black lace-up shoes. The company was quite strict about uniform. Anyone turning up for work ‘inappropriately dressed’ was likely to be sent home and lose a day’s pay. That would never happen to Rita. She was always on time and always smartly turned out, but just like every other raw recruit, she’d been caught out on her first day.
‘If you’re on the last run up Salvington Hill,’ one of the older drivers had said, ‘don’t forget to bring the litter bin back.’
Rita never thought to question the order and when she got back to the depot with the bin safely stashed in the luggage compartment, everybody fell about with laughter. She knew at once that she’d been had, and although she could feel her cheeks warming with embarrassment, Rita laughed along with the rest of them and they loved her for it.
The passengers loved her too. If she wasn’t too busy, she’d listen to their tales of woe, or she’d enjoy their excitement if someone was getting married or had won a bob or two on the football pools. They treated her as if she were a personal friend. Rita let them into her private life too, although she did hold back on some things. They knew she was married to Emilio but few of them knew she had a sister.
It had come as a bit of a surprise when she’d been partnered with Bob. She thought about making a fuss but she didn’t want to risk being labelled a troublemaker on her first day. It was all right though. It had obviously come as a shock to him that she was married, but now he treated her as a friend and work colleague.
She loved his little jokes.
‘I wanted to get a dog for my granny but the pet shop don’t do swaps.’
‘Here, old Taffy was walking down the street when he saw a runaway bus. I said to him, what steps did you take? And he said, long ones.’ If Rita repeated them they weren’t half as funny, but when Bob did it, meal times in the bus canteen were filled with laughter.
As the bus pulled up at the next stop, Rita walked back to the platform. ‘Hurry along now. Two in the upper circle and three in the basement,’ she quipped as more passengers climbed aboard. It was turning out to be a busy day.
As the bus made its way through East Worthing, she stood on the platform and leaned out to catch a glimpse of Emilio. His boat was on the shingle but there was no sign of him. Disappointed, Rita climbed the stairs to collect more fares. Two of her female passengers were talking confidentially; Rita couldn’t help overhearing.
‘What you want to do,’ said a middle-aged woman in a brown felt hat, ‘is make him a nice meal. Save up a few coupons and buy a chicken if you can, or a nice leg of lamb. Make sure everybody else is out and then you can talk.’