‘Oh, Lyddy,’ Ryllis said, clasping her hands before her, and sitting up. ‘Tom is a wonderful man. You wait till you meet him.’
Lydia gave a little nod. ‘I’m very happy for you.’ She turned and gazed from the window, looking out across the small gardens of the houses. ‘Sometimes I wonder what it must be like – to care for someone in such a way. I can’t even try to imagine.’ She fell silent for a moment, then she said, turning back to her sister, ‘Oh, what nonsense I do talk at times!’ Smiling, she added, ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you, Ryllis. It’s
so
good.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Ryllis replied, ‘but I thought you might want to go home today. You could have gone to Capinfell today and returned tomorrow evening. It would have been very easy.’
‘I know,’ Lydia said. ‘I thought of it. I seriously considered it – but then I thought it might be better to leave Father alone for a little while. I don’t wish to be cruel, but I thought it might be as well to let him get used to the situation for a bit. D’you see what I mean?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Besides, I wanted to see you.’ Lydia smiled. ‘And now I’m going to meet your Mr Thomas Bissett too.’
‘Yes!’ Ryllis gave a giddy little laugh. ‘Oh, Lyddy, I do hope you like him.’
‘Why shouldn’t I? If he’s half as nice as you make out,
and a quarter as handsome, I should think anybody would like him.’ Lydia looked at Ryllis as she lay stretched out on the bed. She was so glad that Ryllis had met someone, and it was hardly any wonder, she thought, that Mr Thomas Bissett was so attracted to her; she was so pretty. Gazing at her as she lay on the bed with her heavy eyelids closed and her pink mouth relaxed, Lydia wondered how any young man could resist her.
She looked at her watch on the chest of drawers and saw that it was just on three-twenty. ‘We shall have to leave in a while,’ she said.
She closed the watch and set it down. There had been no response from Ryllis. She bent closer to her, and realised that she had fallen asleep. Smiling, she picked up a book and began to read.
‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep like that,’ Ryllis said as they crossed the square. ‘You should have woken me.’
‘I told you, I got reading and forgot things for a few minutes. It was hardly any time at all. We’ll only be a minute or so late.’
‘Even so. I don’t like to keep Tom waiting.’
Lydia took in the slightly anxious look on Ryllis’s face and said with a smile, ‘Ah, I’m sure he thinks you’re worth waiting for.’ Ryllis didn’t reply. Lydia added after a moment: ‘What are his parents like? Have you met them?’
Ryllis shook her head. ‘Oh, good heavens, no. They don’t know about us, that we’re meeting. Tom doesn’t want them to know just yet, so he’s keeping quiet on the matter.’
‘Why doesn’t he want them to know?’
‘He says the time isn’t right. He says they don’t want him to get – involved with anyone yet – not at his age – so he thinks it’s better to leave it for a few months. Then he’ll tell them.’ Ryllis put up a hand and gave her hair an unnecessary
little touch. ‘All this rushing. I’m going to be so hot when we get there, and I wanted to look my best. I shouldn’t have slept like that.’
‘You were obviously tired.’
In a few seconds they were turning into the High Street, and there, a hundred yards further along, was the bank with the teashop beside it. Ten yards from the entrance Ryllis slowed and touched at her hat and smoothed down her dress. Then, with a shrug she moved on and stepped through the doorway. As they entered, she said, with relief in her voice, ‘Ah, there’s Tom,’ and snatching at Lydia’s hand, led her through the crowded room.
Thomas Bissett was sitting at a table situated near one wall and he rose and smiled at the two young women as they approached him. Ryllis said at once: ‘Oh, I’m sorry to be late, Tom, but I’m afraid I fell asleep in Lyddy’s room. Anyway, this is my sister Lydia. Lydia – this is Tom.’
‘How d’you do,’ Thomas said formally over the loud babble of voices around them, and Lydia greeted him likewise, adding, ‘I’m afraid it’s my fault that we’re a few minutes late. You must blame me for it.’
He nodded and took out his watch from his waistcoat pocket, opened it and said, ‘Almost fifteen minutes. ‘And with a smile, ‘I’ll let you off this time, but next time it’s the firing squad at dawn.’ Over his patterned waistcoat he wore a light tweed jacket. His trousers were fawn twill. He looked, Lydia thought, very smart.
‘Well, ladies, do sit down,’ he said. ‘Another reason I’m so pleased to see you is because I’ve had the devil’s own job hanging on to these seats.’
As the girls sat down, Lydia looked around them. The place was so crowded she couldn’t see an empty table, and she reflected that they were very lucky. When Thomas asked them what they wanted, they said they would have tea and a pastry, and he said he would have the same,
though he had already drunk a cup of tea while he was waiting. He turned then and tried to catch the eye of the waitress, lifting his hand in the air. He certainly was handsome, Lydia thought, and proud looking too with his high, arched nose and strong brow.
‘These serving girls,’ he was saying irritably, ‘they take their own sweet time, don’t they?’
‘The poor thing’s so busy,’ Lydia said. ‘She’s run off her feet.’
‘Even so,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got all day.’
Eventually the girl came over to their table, and Thomas crisply gave the order and she went away again.
‘Well,’ he said to Lydia after the girl’s departure, ‘it’s so nice to meet you after all this time. I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘And I about you,’ Lydia replied.
He smiled at this. ‘And now, luckily,’ he said, ‘you’re living and working here in Redbury. That’ll make it easier for you and Ryllis to meet.’
‘Yes, it will.’
They had to raise their voices over the babble around them, and a couple of times Thomas looked about him, impatiently frowning at the noise. With no sign of the tea after a while, he caught the young waitress’s attention, and five minutes later she brought her tray to their table and set out the tea and pastries. Lydia poured out the tea and they began to eat and drink. As they did so, Lydia said to Thomas, ‘Ryllis tells me you’ve been living in London for a while . . .’
‘Yes, I have,’ he replied. ‘My uncle owns a small engineering company there, in Peckham. I’ve been learning some of the business.’
‘Have you enjoyed it – the work?’
‘Oh, in some parts. And living in London! Well, it’s very different from country life. Have you ever been to London?’
‘No. I’d love to go one day.’
‘Yes, I would too,’ Ryllis said. ‘I hear it’s a different world.’
‘Oh, it is,’ he said. ‘It is. You can’t imagine just how different.’
‘Will you stay with the engineering work, then?’ Lydia asked.
‘I don’t know. I’ve come back now for these summer months to help my father out on the farm. He needs all the help he can get at such a time.’
‘I’m sure he must,’ Lydia said. ‘And when summer is over? What then?’
‘Nothing’s decided, but my folks have hopes of this and that. My father wants me to go to university.’
Ryllis said, ‘Go to university? Then you’d go away again.’
‘Oh, nothing’s settled,’ he said. ‘All kinds of things can happen.’
Ryllis then spoke up to say that Lydia had just finished her first week at Seager’s store, and Thomas politely asked Lydia a question or two about her work there. He did not seem unduly interested, however, Lydia thought, and she soon brought the subject to a conclusion. As she did so a small child nearby started up a crying wail and Thomas leaned across the table to murmur just loud enough for Lydia and Ryllis to hear, ‘God knows why people insist on bringing their squalling offspring into such places. I suppose they’re so used to the noise themselves they don’t notice it any more.’
The little girl ceased her crying after a while, and, pacified with a treat, was soon all smiles again. ‘There,’ whispered Lydia, ‘it’s amazing what a bit of cream cake will do.’
Five minutes later the child had left her seat and was coming to their table. ‘I had some cake,’ the little girl said to
them. She was probably three years old. ‘I had some cake.’
Indeed, there were still traces of the cream cake on her hands and about her mouth. Not that this seemed unduly to concern her parents who gazed after her in a besotted way, as do most who think their children must of course be loved by every passing stranger. ‘Now, now,’ the young mother beamed after her child, ‘come along, Maisie. ‘We can’t’ ave you botherin’ people.’
‘Oh, she’s no bother,’ Ryllis said, turning to the young woman. And then to the child, ‘You’re no bother, are you, Maisie?’
At the soft words, which could have been taken as encouragement, the little girl began to chatter away in her limited vocabulary, and Ryllis responded. While Lydia looked on, indulgently smiling, Thomas could barely hide a scowl. Then his expression changed, for in another second the child was turning to him and saying, ‘Cake, look,’ and holding out to him a battered cream-smeared fragment. As she moved closer to him he shrank back a little, holding up a hand to ward off the proffered gift. ‘No, thank you, miss,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘I’ve had mine.’ Then the child’s mother, obviously having discerned, not before time, that her child was not welcome for quite so long, said, ‘Come’ ere, Miss Maisie, and stop botherin’ the nice people. They don’t want your cake.’ Getting up from her chair she took the child under the arms and carried her away. The look of relief on Thomas’s face was not quite hidden. The next moment he was saying, ‘Well, I think we might as well leave, don’t you?’ He dug into his pocket for change and got up. ‘Oh, just a minute more,’ said Ryllis, still holding her cup. ‘I haven’t quite finished.’
She drank down the last of her tea and stood up, and after Thomas had paid at the counter the two sisters went out on to the street. He joined them almost immediately, and met Ryllis’s smile with a frown, saying to her, in a gruff mutter,
‘I can’t imagine why you had to encourage that little brat. As if she weren’t bad enough as it was.’
‘Oh, Tom,’ Ryllis said, ‘she was a dear little thing.’
‘A dear little thing?’ He threw a glance back over his shoulder towards the teashop’s doorway. ‘All that disgusting muck over her hands. I felt sure she was going to wipe her fingers on my jacket. She would have done, given half a chance. I can’t understand why parents think their children are to be loved and admired in whatever circumstances.’ Then, his scowl giving way to a smile, he added, ‘Anyway, we won’t let that spoil a nice day, eh? What d’you say we head for the coach? I think we should. It’s quarter to six.’
‘Are you going already?’ Lydia asked.
‘We’ve got to,’ Ryllis said. ‘Tom’s parents are expecting out of town visitors, and Tom’s promised to be there.’
‘I see. Well – I’ll walk with you and see you off.’
The three of them set off through the town, heading towards the railway station, from where many of the coaches left on their various journeys.
As they skirted the square they approached a blind man on a corner who was selling boxes of matches. Ryllis immediately came to a stop and bent her head to look in her bag. ‘What’s up?’ Thomas said. ‘What are you doing?’
Keeping her voice low so that the match-seller shouldn’t hear, she said, ‘That poor blind man. I must buy some matches from him.’
‘For goodness sake, don’t be foolish,’ Thomas said. ‘Keep your money in your purse. He doesn’t need it.’
‘But Tom –’
‘Half the time it’s an act,’ he said. ‘Half the so-called blind can see as well as you or I. Like all the perfectly able cripples you see – they’re only out for what they can get.’
In seconds they had passed by the blind man and were heading on towards the station.
*
The coach stop was busy with traffic and people coming and going constantly. On arrival, the three found there were already a number of people waiting to board the Barford-bound coach, and, doing a quick head count, Thomas said it didn’t look as if there’d be room for Ryllis and himself. ‘We shouldn’t have left it so late,’ he said.
The coach drew in and let its passengers off, and while the outgoing passengers boarded, the horses were changed. Seeing it fill up so quickly, Thomas said irritably that there was nothing for it but to wait half an hour for the next one – at least they should be guaranteed seats on that.
When the coach was fully prepared, Lydia stood watching as it moved off along the street and disappeared from view around a bend. Then at her side, Ryllis was saying to her, ‘Lyddy, there’s that man we met.’
Lydia turned to her sister. ‘Who? What man?’
Ryllis nodded off in the direction of a carriage that had just pulled in near the entrance to the railway station. ‘The man in the square the other week. The one you spoke to when you came here for your interview.’
‘Ah, yes.’
Lydia’s keen gaze saw him now, the familiar-looking tall man helping an elderly woman out of a trap that stood at the kerb. As she watched, the man handed the reins to a small boy who waited nearby, then escorted the woman into the station.
‘Who was that?’ Thomas asked, following the girls’ gazes.
‘A man I met the other day when I came to Seager’s for my interview,’ Lydia said. ‘Ryllis and I had lost each other and he helped us.’
‘You want to be careful who you talk to,’ Thomas said. ‘There’s no shortage of mashers around. You’d do well to steer clear of’ em.’
‘Oh, but he was very nice,’ Ryllis said, ‘and very well spoken.’
‘Yes, and there’s many a young girl has thought such a thing to her lasting regret.’
Some minutes passed and then Lydia, who had kept her eyes on the station entrance, saw the man reappear and move towards his carriage. ‘Here he is again,’ Ryllis said unnecessarily, and Lydia nodded, and murmured, ‘I know. Don’t stare,’ and then a moment later the man was turning slightly, looking their way.
As his gaze fell upon her, Lydia saw his eyes widen in surprise, and saw his mouth move in a smile. The next moment he was coming towards them.
‘Well, the Misses Halley! This is a surprise.’ The man’s smile was broad as he looked at the two young women. ‘I hope you haven’t been losing each other in Redbury again.’