Emma (2 page)

‘She always is.’ I followed my mother into the sitting room, which was a good size and furnished with a modern sideboard, painted bookcases and a comfortable three-piece suite. There were several pieces of brightly coloured pottery standing about and prints of famous paintings on the walls. Father might be cautious about giving either my mother or me money, but he was fond of saying he liked a nice home, and spent his money on things that appealed to him. ‘She can’t afford much for herself these days – though she never seems to go hungry. Someone brought eggs and tomatoes for her while I was there.’

‘Aye, your Gran is well liked,’ Mother said with a nod of satisfaction. ‘My father was popular, too. Most of the lads from the railway pop in to see Mother Jacobs now and then – for his sake, I reckon. They’ve not forgotten how he warned their fathers and uncles when the signals were down that time – saved a few lives he did, and ran himself ragged to do it.’

There was a gleam of pride in my mother’s eyes as she spoke of her father, a gleam that was not often there these days. I remembered a time when I was a small child and she had seemed happier. She and my father had not quarrelled so often in those days, at least not in my hearing – but that was a long time ago.

My mother was justifiably proud of Grandfather Jack. Having been told the story many times, I knew it well. It had happened several years ago, when I was still a toddler. Some twenty-odd men had been working on repairs to the rails when a non-stop through train had been accidentally shunted on to the wrong line. Only Jack’s quick thinking and a desperate dash across the back land had averted what could have been a terrible accident.

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘Gran was well. She sent you her love.’

My mother gave me a disbelieving look. Mother Jacobs had never had much patience with her own daughter. She had been against Greta’s marriage to Harold Robinson in the first place, and thought she should stand up to her husband more – but then, she wasn’t married to him. Besides, he respected her, grudgingly. She didn’t know what a tyrant he could be if thwarted. Only Mum and I knew that.

Gran’s own marriage had been happy, producing three strapping great sons besides my mother, all of whom worked for the railways but were scattered far and wide over the country. My mother was the only one of Gran’s children who still lived near enough to visit her, so it was a pity they didn’t get on as well as they might.

‘What else did you do this afternoon?’ Mother asked. ‘Did you go for a walk?’

‘After I left Gran’s.’ I sighed as I recalled my time of freedom, which was over all too soon. ‘It was lovely by the river, Mum. Oh, and I met Richard Gillows on the way to Gran’s. He walked with me for a few minutes. Asked about you and Father, same as usual.’ I pulled a wry face: Richard was not my favourite person. ‘He always seems to have his break at the same time on my afternoon off.’

‘I expect it’s the finish of his shift. He’s on local runs at the moment, isn’t he? Just as far as Ely or Littleport. It will be different if they put him back on the Cambridge and London run.’

Richard was a train driver. In his late twenties, he was a tall, burly man, good-looking I supposed, in a rather coarse way, with black hair and narrow-set eyes. He had a decent job and was respected, though there were whispers that he liked his drink. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Most men enjoyed a few beers in the pub now and then. As long as it wasn’t any more serious, it wouldn’t be frowned on in our community.

‘You don’t fancy him, do you?’ My mother looked at me curiously as we sat down to the dining table. ‘He’s quite a looker. Most girls would go weak at the knees if he changed shifts just so as he could walk with them for a few minutes.’

‘Not me.’ I sighed as my mother pushed a plate of buttered muffins in front of me. ‘Do you think I’ll ever meet anyone, Mum? A man I could really love and respect?’

‘There aren’t many about would be good enough for you, Emma – and you don’t want to marry for the sake of comfort the way I did. Look where that got me!’

‘Oh, Mum,’ I said, feeling unhappy as I saw the disappointed drag to her mouth. ‘It’s obvious you and Father don’t get on – but do you honestly wish you had never married him?’

‘If it wasn’t for you, I would.’ She reached out and squeezed my hand affectionately. Her eyes held a sad, reminiscent expression. ‘I liked him well enough to begin with, and I thought we could make each other happy. He was kind to me, and I respected him, even looked up to him – but it wasn’t real love. There was someone else I cared for and he asked me first, but I was young and silly. We quarrelled and I sent him away. Then Harold came after me. I turned him down for a start, but I suppose my head was turned by the thought of having my own shop and house … pretty clothes and holidays at Margate or Bournemouth, that’s what I expected.’ Her whole body drooped with defeat. ‘All I got was a life of penny-pinching and scrimping. Your father says it’s all he can do to keep the shop going these days.’

‘That’s not true, Mum. We make a reasonable profit but …’ I frowned. ‘He takes the money out every night, says he has to pay bills, but I see the bills. He can’t spend it all, because he only goes for a drink twice a week and then he comes home sober. So what does he do with the rest of it?’

‘I wish I knew,’ Mother said, sighing. She broke off, looking guilty and a bit frightened as she heard the tread of heavy boots on the stairs. ‘You’d best get off, Emma. You know what he’s like.’

I wiped the butter from my mouth with a spotless, starched white napkin, then pushed back my chair. My mother was a good housekeeper, but then my father was a particular man and would have complained if everything wasn’t to his liking.

I met my father at the top of the stairs. He was a large, heavy man with dark hair greying at the sides and a sour expression. He always dressed in black, with a striped waistcoat and a white shirt, come summer or winter. He was usually fair enough in his dealings with me, but that evening he was clearly out of temper, because he glared at me, his eyes an unforgiving grey.

‘Gossiping with your mother I suppose? Get down there before someone comes in, Emma. Who knows what that idiot I employ will do if he’s left alone for five minutes.’

‘Yes, Father.’

I ran down the stairs, relieved to escape. Father’s assistant – a spotty-faced, ginger-haired youth of sixteen, who received no more wages than I did – was selling Woodbines to a boy I knew wasn’t old enough to smoke.

‘Ben!’ I stopped him as he was about to hand over the cigarettes. ‘Have you asked how old he is?’

‘I’m seventeen, miss,’ the boy squeaked. ‘Honest I am.’

‘No, you’re not,’ I contradicted. ‘I know you, Tim Green. You’re not yet fourteen. Give him his money back, Ben.’

‘You ain’t got no right. I’ve paid me money, I want me fags.’

‘I’ll tell your mother – and she’ll give you a strapping.’

‘Ah, go on, miss. Let me ’ave just the one. I can pay. I ain’t after stealing it like some.’

‘Buy some humbugs or liquorice pipes instead. You can have some of those sweet cigarettes if you like. Besides, smoking stunts your growth, haven’t you heard that?’

As he was nearly my own height, that hardly seemed much of a threat, but it was all I could come up with on the spur of the moment. It was glamorous to smoke; all the film stars did it, and most men I knew – and quite a few of the women, too, though the more refined of them did it in private, because some people still felt it wasn’t quite nice for ladies to smoke in public. And this was 1938!

‘And it stops your
thing
growing,’ Ben supplied helpfully. ‘You’d best have a barley twist instead.’

‘Oh, go on then,’ the lad said reluctantly. ‘But I don’t believe you about the
thing.
Our Mark’s is as long as that—’ he measured an impossible twelve inches on the counter, ‘—and he’s bin smokin’ since he were nine.’

‘Get away with you!’ I said, hard put not to laugh, and gave him the biggest barley twist in the jar, which should have cost more than the smaller ones. ‘And don’t try that here again until you’re older.’

Tim Green laughed and ran out, clutching his sticky sweet triumphantly, well aware he’d done well for his halfpenny.

‘I’m sorry, Emma,’ Ben said. ‘I never thought to ask how old he was … and he only wanted the one. All the kids do it. It don’t do them no harm. Me Dad says it’s good for your lungs – clears him out when he has a good cough in the mornings.’

‘I know, but we’re not supposed to sell them to children. Besides, my father doesn’t encourage them in here. He says they steal more than they buy – and it gives the shop a bad name.’

Ben was about to continue his protest when the bell went and two customers entered. Ben served one of our regulars with an evening paper and some pear drops, while I waited for the second customer to speak. He was a stranger. Dressed in a smart grey pin-striped suit, Homburg hat, starched white collar, plain waistcoat and spotted tie, he was obviously a gentlemen. We didn’t get many in dressed like that, and when he spoke I knew he was from what my father would call the upper class – one of the gentry, but not an aristocrat.

My father was very class conscious. He thought of himself as middle-class, because he owned his own business, and looked down on anyone who ranked beneath him in the accepted hierarchy.

‘I should like a box of those cigars, please,’ the stranger said, seeming to notice me at last. ‘A box of Cadburys’ milk chocolates, the evening paper – and twenty Players.’

‘Yes, sir.’ I reached down the items he had indicated from the shelf behind me. ‘These are the best Havanas. That will be ten shillings and threepence altogether, sir.’

‘Cheap at the price, I expect?’ His eyes were deep blue and very bright, as though he was laughing at me. I noticed his hair looked dark and thick where it was visible beneath his hat. ‘You weren’t here when I popped in for a newspaper earlier, were you?’

‘No …’ I felt myself growing warm beneath his quizzical gaze. I had never met anyone quite like this; Father would have served him himself if he’d been here. ‘It was my afternoon off. I went to see my grandmother.’

‘And now you have to work again. What a shame.’

‘I don’t mind, not really. Father will come down when he’s had his supper. It’s only for an hour or so.’

‘Fortunate for me I didn’t leave it until later, then.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Paul Greenslade.’ He tipped his hat and I saw his hair was thick and wavy. He was rather handsome, a bit like the film stars I’d seen in magazines. ‘I suppose you would think it an awful cheek if I asked you to come to the pictures with me this evening? I’m on my own, you see, and feeling lonely.’

I could feel my cheeks turning a bright red. This wasn’t the first time a customer had asked me out, of course, but it was usually just one of the local lads being cheeky, and I always said no. And I’d only been to the pictures a couple of times, with Mum and Gran as a birthday treat. I hadn’t ever been asked out by a stranger before – nor had any man looked at me in quite this way. It made me feel a bit wobbly inside.

‘No, I don’t think it’s a cheek,’ I said, my voice sort of breathy and excited. ‘It’s very kind of you – but I can’t come.’

‘Why? You don’t have to work after your father comes down, do you? We could just about catch the last showing.’

‘I’m finished for the day then.’ I dropped my gaze as he gave me an amused, questioning look. ‘Father wouldn’t let me go out with you. He’s very strict.’

‘Now that is a shame.’ He took a pound note from his wallet and handed it to me. ‘Do you think your father might relent if I asked him?’

‘No, please don’t,’ I said. ‘It would make him angry.’

He looked disappointed. ‘Another time then.’ He tipped his hat again, going out as three working men came in together. ‘Goodbye – Miss Robinson, is it? It was nice meeting you.’

I was too busy serving the men to reply. For several minutes both Ben and I had a succession of customers; after a while it tailed off and finally the shop was empty.

Ben gave me an odd look when we had time to breathe again. ‘You should have gone out with the toff, Emma. Missed your chance for a good time there.’

‘I didn’t know him,’ I replied, thinking how much fun it would have been if I’d dared to accept his offer. ‘Father would never have let me go out with a man I’d never met before. Only common girls let strangers pick them up just like that.’

Girls like me didn’t do that sort of thing, but I thought perhaps the ones who did had a lot more excitement in their lives.

‘You’re not common,’ Ben said, giving me an admiring glance. He daren’t say it, of course, but I suspected he had a bit of a crush on me in his way. ‘I never meant that, you know I didn’t. I just thought you would’ve liked it, Emma. Most girls would jump at the chance to go out with a man like him.’

I shook my head and turned away to tidy the shelf behind me. I agreed with him in my heart, but I knew what people thought of girls who went off with a man at the drop of a hat. Especially in a town like ours, where everyone knew each other, and a stranger walking down the street caused heads to turn. I wasn’t fast and I wasn’t cheap – but I had liked the stranger’s smile. If we had met properly, been introduced by someone Father knew … but there was no point in dreaming. Mr Greenslade had probably been passing through and I would never see him again.

The shop began to fill up once more. Three girls came in. I knew them all by sight, though they were older than me. They all worked at the railway canteen. Two had scarves wound round their heads like turbans; they were both wearing bright red lipstick and one of them had a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth – exactly what Father meant when he spoke of the factory women as common. The third girl, however, looked different. She was pretty, with soft fair hair that she wore in a pageboy bob. Her perfume wafted towards me across the counter, flowery and rather nice.

‘Hello, Emma,’ she said in her usual friendly manner. ‘Could I have a small bar of Fry’s milk chocolate please – and a quarter of Tom Thumb drops for our Terry? He’s had the measles and I promised him a treat.’