The Past and Other Lies (15 page)

She felt a little uncertain about the coat. It was a long black affair that reached to her ankles and was her best coat and had cost thirty shillings. But the fact remained it was still early September and autumn had barely set in. Indeed, as she glanced through the window, the lane outside was bathed in bright early afternoon sunlight and the sky was a clear, pale blue. The elms that lined both sides of the lane were still in full leaf and Mr Creely from number fifty-five was heading off to the George and Dragon in only his shirt sleeves, despite it being a Sunday.

No, the coat would be too hot, she would look absurd and feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, suppose it suddenly turned chilly, or suppose it was late and becoming dark by the time she got home? (She tried very hard not to imagine how it would be if Mr Booth escorted her home, all the way to her front door. Well, to the garden gate, at any rate.) Yes, she
would
wear the coat. Elsie Stephens at work had said it was ‘very Gloria Swanson’ and that was good enough for Bertha.

Well then. This was it! The brass clock that hung on the wall at the top of the staircase indicated she had twelve minutes to get to the tram depot.

‘Bertha!’

It was Dad.

Bertha froze, fingers halfway to her hat, two startled eyes staring back at her from the mirror. It was fine. He probably just wanted her to say goodbye before she left.

‘
Bertha!
’

That wasn’t a ‘Hope you have a pleasant afternoon out,’ Bertha. That was a ‘Get here now, I want to talk to you!’ Bertha, and for a moment she dithered with both hat and coat—take them both off? Leave them both on? Take the hat off and leave the coat on?—then she scurried out of the room, picking up her skirt and dashing down the narrow flight of stairs. Once downstairs she paused outside the lounge (there was silence from within) then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Her mother was sitting in her usual chair near the lamp in the corner, peering curiously over the top of a pair of spectacles at her knitting. The knitting, a green jumper for her sister’s youngest, covered her lap and balls of similar coloured wool crowded at her feet. She didn’t look up.

‘Bertha.’

Her eyes snapped across to her father, who was standing at the empty fireplace, one foot on the fender, hands locked awkwardly behind his back, a stern expression on his face, in a pose he had probably once seen the King adopt in a photograph in
Picture Post
.

‘Do you think you are off to meet this young man, then?’

Bertha flushed and then, because she had just given herself away, her flush deepened.

How could Dad
possibly
have found out?

The answer came at once courtesy of a slight movement of skirts and rearrangement of hands near the window, and Bertha’s gaze fixed on her sister sitting in the other corner of the room.

Jemima. Sitting meekly, straight-backed in the hardest wooden chair the house had to offer—which was saying something, in a house crowded with uncomfortable chairs—her hands folded in her lap, looking every bit the demure and dutiful youngest daughter. Looking, in fact, like everything that she was not.

Jemima. Bertha felt her face burn. How could Jemima have found out? She’d been so careful! Only Elsie Stephens knew, and Mr Booth himself of course, but Mr Booth had never met Jemima. No, Elsie it must be—Elsie, with whom she and Jemima had gone to see Charlie Chaplin at the Globe on Friday night; Elsie, who had waited with Jemima when Bertha went to purchase the tickets; Elsie, who, regardless of being Bertha’s work colleague, seemed to share more secrets with her sister than with her. Elsie, who only knew the secret in the first place because she had agreed to provide the excuse for this Sunday afternoon excursion.

‘Well? Do you not have anything to say for yourself?’

Bertha’s gaze swung back to her father, who at this moment resembled less a father and every inch the butler he had once been. Actually, Dad resembled a butler more than a father most of the time and Bertha felt like an errant scullery maid more often than someone who wasn’t a scullery maid ought to feel.

How much did he know? How much did Jem know? A quick glance at her angelic sister showed a head modestly bowed and yet the faintest hint—not that faint, in fact—of a smile. A triumphant smile. Damn you, Elsie Stephens!

Well, she would not be beaten so easily!

‘Oh, but Dad, I thought you’d be pleased! Elsie and I are going to Hyde Park to listen to the speakers. You know how inspiring you said they are, all standing on their wooden boxes...preaching the word of the Lord.’

That was pushing it, that last bit, but it was worth a try, and Jemima’s head came up, no pretence now of not listening.

‘Preachers! If you want preachers we’ve got preachers enough at our own church,’ retorted Dad, meaning St Mary’s, at which they had all taken communion that morning. ‘And it’s not men of God you’ll be hearing if you go to that place now, it’s unionists and socialists. And communists too, if I’m not much mistaken.’

‘Oh Dad!’ said Bertha with growing frustration as the clock sped beyond two o’clock. Of course there would be unionists and socialists! That was why she was going—Mr Booth was one of them. As for communists, well, she’d never even seen one, and as far as she knew Dad hadn’t either, though the way he went on about them you’d think folk were tripping over them at Crown Street market.

‘I understand they are all sorts, not just socialists and unionists. Men speaking about all manner of things, and I’m twenty-two. I shall be able to vote in eight years... If I become a householder...’

‘Ha!’ said Dad. ‘How do you think you’ll become a householder? You’ll never vote and so you never ought to—a woman has no place in the parliamentary process, nor in the industrial or commercial processes neither. A woman’s place is—’

‘Yes, but in whose home?’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘How shall I meet a husband if I never go out?’

‘So. There is a young man.’

Damn. She saw Jemima’s smile reappear but Bertha stuck her chin out defiantly.

‘I expect there will be a great many men, Dad, seeing as how only men are allowed to speak, but Elsie will accompany me—’

‘I understood Elsie was unable to come.’

So that was it! Jemima had undone her alibi. Judas!

Bertha faced defeat, her shoulders drooping. What would she say to Mr Booth? How long would he wait? Would he notice she wasn’t there? Would she ever see him again?

‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll go with her,’ said Jemima and Bertha heard these words but she didn’t look around because that would be to admit defeat. Jemima coming with her? But this was exactly what she did not want and she felt giddy, faced with the sudden choice of taking Jemima or not going at all.

Fortunately, the choice did not appear to be hers to make.

‘Well. Alright. So be it,’ said Dad as though he were passing judgement on some great act of God rather than simply allowing his two daughters to take a tram into town. Then he reached for the
Gazette
and shook it out purposefully. ‘And mind you be back before tea,’ he added.

‘I think they should go,’ said Mum, looking up from her knitting now that the disagreement had been sorted. ‘I’m sure they’ll come to no harm.’ But Dad was deep into the latest carryings-on of Mr MacDonald’s government and Bertha and Jemima had left the room.

‘Oh! We shan’t make it!’ wailed Bertha as they sailed around the corner of King Street and into High Street.

The coat had been a mistake. The afternoon sun was beating down and her full-length skirt with her best coat over the top of it was making her perspire in a fashion that was hardly becoming. As for running to catch a tram, that was out of the question in the long coat. She could do little more than shuffle rapidly. The alternative, picking up both skirt and coat, was not worth the frowns of the Sunday afternoon folk who seemed to be out and about in Acton with the sole purpose of getting in her way and staring at her.

But Bertha’s shuffle was an Olympic sprint compared to Jemima’s saunter, and with one eye on the brick walls of the tram depot ahead, one eye on her dawdling sister Bertha felt she would burst with the frustration of it all.

‘Oh,
do
stop being so hysterical, Bert,’ called Jemima from twenty, now twenty-five yards behind. ‘The 36 is always late anyway. And there’s another afterwards.’

The 36 was not late when it was leaving the depot, only when it was returning to it during the evening rush. And as for there being another, the next one was not due to depart for a whole hour, which would mean they would not arrive at Hyde Park till nearly four o’clock, by which time Mr Booth would have long given her up.

‘Oh do come
on
, Jem!’

It occurred to her that Jemima was deliberately going slowly so that they would miss the tram. But that would mean they would have to go home and give up the whole idea and why would Jemima have volunteered to accompany her if she did not wish, for her own devious reasons, to come? No, it must just be her usual perverse need to make her older sister squirm. Bertha took a deep breath and resolved not to squirm, no matter what.

‘And they’re bound to be on strike,’ continued Jemima as though the thought had just that moment occurred to her. ‘The trams are always on strike.’

On strike! Bertha felt that she might collapse. As they neared the brown brick archways of the tram depot, a double-decker London United tram lumbered out of the entrance and onto Uxbridge Road with a terrific clanking and screech of metal, a large 36 stuck above the driver’s cab, and Bertha gasped in dismay.

‘Wait! Wait a minute!’ she cried, raising her hand and running alongside the tram.

It had barely got up speed and the conductor, perhaps taking pity on the flushed young lady with the inappropriate winter coat, or perhaps seeing her prettier younger sister tripping merrily behind in a charming light summer dress and a sudden smile in her eyes, pulled his bell and let them on board.

‘Two to Hyde Park,’ gasped Bertha, as they settled themselves upstairs on the top deck and the conductor swung his ticket machine at them.

‘Off for a Sunday stroll?’ he asked conversationally, aiming this remark at Jemima.

‘No. We are attending a political rally,’ said Bertha haughtily, handing over her money.

‘Pretty girls like you shouldn’t be wastin’ a lovely Sunday afternoon on no politics,’ came the reply, still aimed firmly at Jemima.

Jemima smiled briefly and dismissively. ‘We’re not the ones wasting our Sunday afternoon. You’re the one who’s stuck on a tram all day.’

The tram conductor, who until that moment had appeared to be enjoying his job, shuffled off, scowling, and Bertha, a deep beetroot colour, stared fixedly out of the grimy window.

‘Why do you have to be so rude to people?’ she hissed, not turning around in case the conductor had returned.

Jemima pouted. ‘Rude?
He
was the rude one! Didn’t you see how he was ogling us? Disgusting. He was older than Dad.’

Bertha had not noticed that he had been ogling them, she’d thought he was just being friendly. Well, it was over now and she would not think of it again.

The tram gathered speed and was soon trundling at a heady twelve miles per hour eastwards along High Street. A breeze gusted in through the open windows and they clutched their hats. Bertha gazed out the window. They were already passing the new aircraft and motor vehicle factories where so many people seemed to work nowadays. She saw them every morning, slow lines of pasty-faced girls with stooped shoulders and filthy overalls, girls who before the War would have been in service. Think they’re too good for it, Dad said, and what was so good about stuffing aircraft parts into other aircraft parts anyway, he wanted to know.

‘Shove over,’ complained Jemima, wriggling her hips on the narrow seat they shared.

Bertha, annoyed, wriggled back at her. ‘Well, I don’t know why you wanted to come in the first place,’ she replied tartly, glaring at the sailors’ cap worn by the little boy on the seat in front and refusing to look at her sister.

‘I could hardly let you go on your own, could I?’ said Jemima sweetly.

‘I wasn’t going to go on my
own
, was I? Elsie was going to accompany me.’

‘
Elsie was going to accompany me
,’ mimicked Jemima, putting on the posh voice Dad used when he was reminiscing about his butlering days. ‘Elsie wasn’t going to accompany you anywhere. You were going off on your own to meet some man.’

Damn and blast Elsie!

‘I’m twenty-two, and I shall come and go on my own if I wish to. I go off to work on my own every day and no one gets excited about that.’

‘That’s because you’re not meeting some man at work.’

‘Ha! How do you know I’m not?’ replied Bertha.

Jemima sniggered and Bertha, humiliated, resumed her observations through the bus window.

And Jemima was right, of course; she was not likely to meet a young man at work seeing as how there were forty women operators at the West Western Telephone Exchange, and one woman supervisor, Mrs Crisp. There was a manager, of course, Mr Littlejohn, who was married and whom she had seen only once in the two years she had worked there. She was more likely to meet a young man on the top deck of the number 36 tram than she was at work.