‘Always was good at drawing.’ Theresa smiled.
Gwen felt relaxed and comfortable sitting in the simple room with Daniel and his mother. Lucy eventually grew bored and after her siblings had come home and polished off the rest of the tarts, she went outside with them. Theresa and Daniel took turns to go into the shop and serve people, and in between they talked about things in the news – Herr Hitler was moving troops back into the Rhineland, and there was talk that the Italians had used mustard gas in Abyssinia – but they avoided discussing politics. Gwen had the impression, with Theresa Fernandez, of a woman who was keenly intelligent and interested in the world around her, but who simply wanted an end to politics taking over her home. She wanted some peace and Daniel, at least for the moment, appeared to respect that. The only mention Theresa made of his activities was to ask if he was going out that night.
‘For a bit,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m going chalking up for the meeting on Sunday.’ He looked at Gwen’s puzzled face. ‘Haven’t you seen the signs? We chalk them up all over – for the meetings and that.’
‘I haven’t noticed,’ she admitted.
‘Obviously not doing a good enough job then, are we?’
When the shop bell rang again, Theresa got up to go into the shop.
‘Do you think . . .’ Gwen asked quickly, knowing it was time she went home. Alice was still playing on her mind. ‘I’m concerned about that girl, Alice. Would it be completely out of place for me to go and see her mother? Perhaps she never even had my letter? It’s just that I think Alice is a clever child and she’s being badly held back.’
‘I think you’re very kind to think of it,’ Theresa said carefully from the doorway.
‘But wouldn’t you think it a bit peculiar if one of your children’s teachers arrived on your doorstep?’
Daniel chuckled. ‘Oh yes – we would!’
Gwen blushed. ‘I don’t mean – I mean it was different, the night I brought Lucy home. There was no one else.’
‘And we were very grateful,’ Theresa said. ‘Don’t take any notice of him. You do what you think’s best, Miss Purdy. It’s only a rare person would think of it.’
‘Thank you ever so much for the tea, Mrs Fernandez.’ Gwen got up. ‘I think I will go and see them.’
‘Can’t do any harm, can it?’ Theresa said and disappeared into the shop.
‘I’d better be off as well.’ Daniel stood up. Suddenly she was acutely aware of him, his lean back moving under the white shirt, his hands, the soft edge of his hairline at the back of his neck. As he came towards her, she felt alive in every nerve. He drew her into his arms.
‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ he said. She sank against him with relief, as if she had come home, and felt his hand warm on the back of her neck. For a long, taut moment they held apart as if waiting, holding each other’s gaze.
‘Daniel,’ she whispered. ‘God, Daniel.’
Then her lips were silenced by his.
Twenty-Two
It was a warm spring morning. Smoke from factory chimneys hung high and still in the air. Gwen had ventured out into the sunshine without a coat, in a pretty floral frock with a soft, swinging skirt, her bag over her arm. That morning, after she had dressed, she leaned down to the mirror, saw her face smile radiantly back.
I look so happy!
she thought.
Have I ever looked like this before?
She startled people in the street with her smile. She could think of nothing but Daniel and his loving eyes, and when she might see him again, so that she was full of bubbling excitement and wanted to dance along the road, skipping and whooping like a child. Yet, in a strange way, it seemed to her she had never felt so grown up. She was away from home, deciding things for herself!
One thing she had decided was that she would get out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house in Soho Road and lodge with Millie and Lance. Not that she’d told Ariadne of her plans yet. She didn’t think she would be very pleased.
Gwen waited at the tram stop. When she was out on the streets a part of her mind was always on the lookout for Joey Phillips. After the day when she thought she caught a glimpse of him looking into the playground, there had been no sign of him. What happened to children like Joey? she wondered as the tram drew to a stop. She flinched as a shower of sparks fell hissing from the wires above. It was as if Joey had melted away into the streets.
The first lesson was arithmetic and they were starting to learn long division. Though there were a few children like Lucy Fernandez who were very sharp and picked up things straight away, a lot of them were struggling. Gwen watched as the class copied the sums down from the blackboard. Jack Ellis’s head was bent, his hand clutching his pen far too tightly. He snapped a nib off almost every week and dug holes in the paper. Gwen sighed. Jack was ever so dense. It would be a long time before he got the hang of this.
She walked along between the desks, noticing that even now some of the children cringed as she passed, used to being cuffed and whacked for getting a sum wrong.
‘No, Ron.’ She leaned over Ron Parks, whose tongue was out, almost touching his nose in the effort to concentrate. There was a slug of snot on his upper lip and around him hung an aura of grime and sweet stickiness. ‘You have to carry that one down. Yes, down there. Then how many times does twelve go into one hundred and fifty?’
Ron’s brow furrowed, then his face lit up with inspiration. ‘Seven?’
Gwen walked back to the front. ‘Let me hear you all say the twelve times table!’ she commanded. The children obeyed, droningly. She went through the sum on the blackboard.
‘If twelve twelves are one hundred and forty four, how many do we carry over?’
Joan Billings timidly raised her hand. ‘Six?’
‘Very good. Now try the next bit.’
She went to the desk where Lucy sat beside Alice Wilson.
‘Have you got the sums copied down all right, Alice?’
‘Yes, Miss.’ Alice squinted up at her. Her face was forever screwed up with the effort to see and it made her otherwise sweet face look tense and sly.
‘And did you do the sums by yourself?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
Gwen looked at Alice’s page of numbers. The girl had understood and worked it all out straight away. But if she hadn’t had Lucy to help her she would have looked dimwitted and slow.
At breaktime Gwen went into the staffroom, determined to have a word with Lily Drysdale. As soon as she walked in, however, she could sense a strange atmosphere. To her surprise, Mr Lowry was sitting drinking a cup of tea. Usually he hardly ever mingled with his staff, but instead kept himself aloof up in his office. The problem was obvious. Mr Lowry was sitting beside the new teacher, Charlotte Rowley. Across the other side of the room sat Agnes Monk, whose entire body, not just her face, seemed to consist of one gigantic glower.
‘I’m delighted to hear you play the piano as well,’ Mr Lowry was saying.
Miss Rowley, dark-eyed and inscrutable, stared back with cold politeness and Gwen saw her lean further away from him, drawing her skirt closer round her primly set knees. This only seemed to provoke Mr Lowry to try harder.
‘Do you play any other instruments?’ Gwen heard him say as she walked past with her cup of tea. Miss Monk was reading her book, her face and neck an angry red. On the noticeboard above her head was pinned a sheet of paper headed ‘Empire Day Pageant’.
Lily Drysdale was sitting to one side of the room, knitting what appeared to be baby clothes. The delicate rows of white stitches looked incongruous in her big hands. Gwen saw that her fingernails were stained with green.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said as Gwen sat beside her. She gave a wry smile suddenly and leaned in closer, whispering, ‘Trying to keep away from the love triangle as well, are you?’
Gwen was so startled she didn’t know what to say.
‘Er, yes!’ She blushed too easily, as ever. ‘But I came to ask you something too.’
Lily laid her knitting down on her lap. ‘For my niece’s baby,’ she said with a smile.
‘Oh how lovely.’ Gwen felt faint surprise that Lily had family and infant relatives like anyone else.
‘What is it, dear?’
Gwen poured out her worries about Alice Wilson and how her eyesight was holding her back. ‘I just can’t understand why her mother doesn’t do something about her,’ she finished indignantly.
‘You have to remember, they’re probably living on very slender means,’ Lily pointed out. ‘I find that paying a call is often the thing.’
‘D’you think I should?’
‘Best thing. Would you like me to come with you?’
Though she was grateful for the offer, Gwen felt instinctively that she should do this by herself. Two teachers turning up at Alice’s house would surely feel far more alarming than one. She thanked Lily, and said she would try and go that afternoon.
‘T’ra then – see you tomorrow,’ Lucy said, limping to her front door in Alma Street.
‘T’ra,’ Alice echoed.
Lucy turned on the step and Alice could just make out through the blur that she was smiling before she disappeared through the front door. Alice felt a pang go through her. How she’d have loved Lucy to invite her in! She liked Lucy’s mother with her kind blue eyes. She was always in the shop, and the house usually smelt of cakes cooking. There was something comforting about Mrs Fernandez and Alice liked all the hubbub of the family, with Lucy’s brothers coming in and out. She thought Rosa was the loveliest person she’d ever met – after Miss Purdy, of course. And sometimes Dominic would give her a ride in the old wheelbarrow up and down the pavement, until she screamed at him to stop. The combination of Dominic’s crazy speed and the fact she couldn’t see made the rides thrilling and petrifying at the same time.
She always walked home with Lucy, although it took her a little out of her way, because it put off going home for a bit longer. She dawdled now along Alma Street and crossed Wellington Road, squinting hard. She was always afraid of something coming at her that she couldn’t see and knocking her down. Bicycles were the worst because you couldn’t hear them. When she turned into Franklin Street the rag-and-bone man was calling out from somewhere along the road. She was so busy peering to try and see him with his cart and his supply of goldfish that she didn’t notice the boy swinging on a rope tied to the lamp post near her house. One minute she was walking along and the next a body came flying at her and knocked straight into her from the front. Alice fell over backwards, jarring her back and scraping her elbow hard on the kerb.
‘You blind or summat?’ the boy jeered, skidding to a halt. ‘Why don’t you watch where you’re going?’
Alice got up carefully, rubbing her back. She didn’t want to show him how much it hurt, but she couldn’t stop the tears running down her face. She hurried to her house, wiping her eyes. As she went to open the door, she noticed the state of her sleeve. Round the elbow her blouse was all muck and blood.
‘Oh no, don’t let it be torn as well!’ she muttered. Frantic, she struggled to see, pulling her elbow up as near to her face as she could. It looked as if the sleeve was intact. She hurried down the entry. Maybe if she sneaked in quietly, she could get it washed without her mother finding out.
She was already used to the scrubby little yard behind the house and the wall with the loose bricks at the top looking ready to topple off. Her mother still couldn’t accept that they lived in such a place, instead of their lovely house with the garden and the tubs of flowers outside the front door. No one else in the family knew they lived here, not even her grandma. Mummy said she would die of the shame of it if anyone came and saw . . .
The back door squeaked open. Alice cringed, but no sound came from inside. If she could just get her blouse washed so that Mummy didn’t see how dirty it was, she wouldn’t get angry and cry.
There was no sign of her mother downstairs. Sometimes when Alice came home she was sitting in the back room. This meant today was one of her bad days and she was in bed. Normally that would be a bad sign, but at least it meant she wouldn’t see the blouse.
Alice hurried into the scullery and took out the wash pail, managing not to clank it against the basin. While it was filling with water she hurriedly undid the buttons, wincing as she peeled the sleeve from her arm. The pain made her eyes water. She shoved the blouse down into the pail. Standing in her little vest she examined her skinny arm and saw a blur of red. The arm stung, but it was nothing serious. Reminding herself to hurry, she seized the lump of wash soap and scrubbed at the sleeve, bringing it up close so she could see what she was doing. To her enormous relief, with each scrub and dunk in the water the blood washed pinker and lighter till it had almost disappeared. She scrubbed at the dirt. It would show a bit, but maybe not enough to cause trouble. Just as she was trying to wring the blouse out over the sink, she heard her mother’s slow tread on the stairs. Quickly! She fled outside in her vest and pegged the blouse, still dripping, on the line.
As she came in again, her mother came down into the back room. At least she was dressed, Alice noticed, in her black skirt and blouse, which always looked nice against her blonde colouring. But she had no stockings on, she was standing in bare feet on the lino and she hadn’t combed her hair. Alice couldn’t see her face properly, but her voice was dull and expressionless in a way that Alice had come to dread more than her anger.
‘What’re you doing, Alice?’
‘I . . . I got my blouse a bit dirty. But it’s all right. I washed it.’
Her mother sank down on the chair, almost as if she hadn’t heard.
‘Put the kettle on for a cup of tea, will you?’
Alice ran to fill the kettle, feeling her chest unknot a little. Mummy didn’t mind. She hadn’t even seemed to notice! She peered out at her mother. Poor Mummy on that awful old horsehair chair with the stuffing hanging out! There was a rickety table and chairs and, apart from the two beds, nothing else. Every stick of their lovely furniture had been taken with the other house. Before, there had been armchairs covered with a pretty pale green material and shiny tables with vases of flowers and rugs on the floor. Alice felt tears rise in her eyes again and her throat hurt. She didn’t often think about before, about where Daddy was or what had happened to Mummy because she was too busy trying to survive from day to day, but every so often it all welled up and spilled over and she found herself crying as if she’d never stop. But not now, she told herself, digging her nails into her palms. She must be quiet and not make Mummy upset.