Rags to Riches, page 19
The vestibule had become a blur before her eyes; she let him help her off with her fur-collared coat, bought for this occasion. He handed everything to the maid who gave a small bob, her arms full, while Alice took off her deep cloche hat and handed that over as well.
Concentrating solely on what she was doing, she hadn’t noticed that a door to one side of the wide vestibule had opened until a strong almost strident voice made her start and look up to see a tall woman with shingled blonde hair standing there. She had obviously been observing her, like a tiger, while Alice had been preoccupied with taking off her hat, and there was surprise in her tone at what had been revealed.
‘Oh! You’re a fair girl! Come on, Richard darling, do. You’re late and your father’s getting fed up. Now come along. Let’s meet your lovely Alice. You’re right, darling, she is lovely, isn’t she?’
The woman, who Alice deduced to be his mother, disappeared through the doorway without waiting, her appearance, and flood of words having taken Alice’s breath away.
There followed several weeks of debate between Sir John and Lady Pritchard, both at their home in London and the one at Lyttehill in Surrey where John Pritchard loved to go on occasion, before a decision could be made about Richard’s intended. Richard thought she was his intended. His father didn’t. His mother merely wondered, her highly active mind churning over all sorts of ideas to settle it all, and not a few thoughts on the diversion to her normal life that might be got out of it.
Not that she didn’t have her son’s future in mind, but she could see the possible dire results of forbidding him this girl, and she didn’t want her enjoyably smooth life disrupted by a family dispute.
At Lyttehill Manor, as Christmas approached, she confronted her husband’s continuing adamant opposition to his son’s ridiculous whim, her manner as ever light.
‘We’re going to lose him, John darling, if we forbid him to see this girl. Besides, I like her. She’s sweet.’
‘So are puppies, even mongrels.’
Margaret gave a little squeak of laughter. ‘Oh, John! What an analogy. A mongrel!’
‘She’s hardly thoroughbred, is she, this … Alice? How can you even think of welcoming such a person, a common working girl, sweet as she is, into our family? It’s utterly unthinkable and the sooner he gets over this episode the better.’
Margaret’s smile had faded. She became serious. ‘I mean it, John, when I predict the possibility of us losing Richard. He is desperately in love. Anyone can see that.’
‘Then he can fall out of love.’
‘How can you expect him to do that? It’s not a tap to turn on and off at will.’
‘You don’t think so?’ he challenged in his deep voice. He wasn’t a big man in height, but his girth made him appear bigger than he was, his face full to podgy with good living, his attitude authoritative from the continuing success of his industrial empire.
‘You don’t think so, Margaret?’ he repeated, embarking now on a favourite theory of his. He had many theories which he loved to air. ‘When someone loses a partner in life, what does it profit them to go on mourning for ever? In time one has to pick up the pieces and get on with life, even find another partner. It’s a natural process. If this Alice were to fall down dead, would Richard go on yearning for her? No – he’d have to get on with his life. If a man can do that, he can also apply it to giving up a girl.’
Margaret shook her blonde head, her face, strikingly young for one her age, tight with irritation at this outpouring of cracked philosophy. ‘Oh, stop rambling, John. You sound so ridiculous. The difference is that the girl is alive and on this earth and Richard is deeply in love, and I will not have him sneaking off to marry her in the dead of night and you cutting him off without a penny and all that rubbish. I’ll not see my only precious son prostrate with misery. Besides …’
A cunning smirk spread over her face. A narrow delicate hand came up to touch her cheek with one finger, provocatively. ‘She needn’t be a disaster. I do like her, John. I really do. I could nurture her. She’s halfway there already, with her nice manners, and her speech is impeccable – well, almost.’
‘That’s no recipe for a decent society marriage,’ John grumbled, a little deflated as he always was by his vivacious, overpowering wife, his high-flown logic put down as ramblings. ‘If this is another one of your crack-brained schemes, Margaret, remember this time you’re playing with Richard’s future. We want no Pygmalion situations here. Leave that for the stage. It’s not real life. Can’t be.’
‘Would you rather he went off, married against our wishes?’ She displayed no frivolity now. ‘Because I can guarantee that he will. He can be as stubborn as I, as you, in some things. And this is one of them. For this girl he’ll fly in the face of all your threats to disinherit him. We’d lose him, his love, and we’d gain a daughter whether we acknowledged her or not. We are faced with a situation, John, that we have to confront, something we can’t dismiss with a flick of a finger. If we can’t alter things, then I do have a scheme, John, that will work perfectly. I know it will.’
‘I think you’re mad. Margaret. Don’t you know that we’re going to have to face society with her if we let him have his way? Have you thought about that? Knowing they’re all gossiping behind our back, poking fun at me for letting my son get married to some scheming little gold-digger.’
‘Oh, I don’t think she is entirely, dear.’
‘Of course she is, and I forbid it.’
‘Oh, don’t be stuffy. Of course she’s overwhelmed by Richard’s place in the world. Any girl would be. That’s what girls – all those of our standing – get married for, isn’t it? Wealth, position, an assured future. What else? It’s quite acceptable to people like us. Often love comes a poor fourth. But this girl, this Alice, I could see at first sight that she is head-over-heels in love with him.’
‘Love! Marriage is more an alliance between families, to cement things.’
‘Old hat, darling! Things are changing. Disinheritance! Richard will call your bluff. That’s what love does, dear. Nothing moves it. No, my dear, let me play it my way. I shall make something of this little Alice, and no one will be any the wiser. I know exactly what I am doing.’
‘I rather doubt that you do.’
Her laugh was tinkling yet self-assured. ‘Just trust me, my dear.’ When her mind was set, she always got her way, and this idea in her head was not as hare-brained as he imagined.
Alice didn’t spend Christmas with her family. She spent it with Richard’s.
‘Ain’t good enough fer ’er now, I s’ppose,’ commented her father.
To which her mother replied: ‘It’s all new to ’er, luv. Give ’er a little bit of rope. She’s spent every Christmas of ’er life with us. Now this one’s ’ers, ter be spent with her fiancy – or ’e will be, come the new year, ring an’ all. It’s only natural she’d want ter spend it with ’im.’
‘They could’ve come ’ere ter spend it.’
At which Mrs Jordan let out a vast rolling laugh. ‘What? An’ spoil our ’ole Christmas? With ’im ’ere, we’d all be creeping about ’avin’ ter mind all our p’s an’ q’s an’ frightened to be our nat’ral selves. Better all round fer ’er ter spend ’er Christmas with ’er prospective in-laws. She’s goin’ ter be something, our Alice. Ain’t you pleased at that, Arthur? Ain’t you proud of ’er? Don’t ’appen ter us all, yer know.’
Arthur rubbed balefully at his pale bristly moustache. ‘Yer didn’t mind yer p’s an’ q’s with that Amy ’Arrin’ton when she first came ’ere.’ He still used their lodger’s full name.
Again his wife laughed. ‘It was different with ’er, she’d got ’erself down on the same level as us, worse, ’er carryin’ another man’s baby and not married. No better than she ought ter be then, and all ’er ’oity-toity ways didn’t mean a thing. But she’s different now, Amy, just as Alice is different, and me fer one – I’m proud of her – of ’em both. I wish Alice well. I wish both of ’em well. So fer Gawd’s sake let’s stop blessed worrying about Alice an ’ave our usual good time.’
Arthur Jordan sucked at his pipe as he stared into the back room fire above which a garish string of home-made paper chains moved in the rising warm wave of air. ‘Thinks she’s too good fer us,’ he grunted, not having wanted to take in one word she had said, and, leaning forward a little, spat dark tobacco-stained spittle into the burning coals where it sizzled briefly before being consumed by heat.
Now that Amy’s first Christmas with the Jordans was two days away; she couldn’t prevent her thoughts turning to her own parents, what they would be doing in two days’ time. Most likely spending it at home with a good circle of friends, the drawing room the backdrop to a quiet sedate mutter about work and politics, the dissection of other friends, the latest fashion, the latest play, as they stood around holding brandy and cocktail glasses or fastidiously helping themselves to dainty finger food on the side tables.
The children would be taken care of upstairs by nannies and nurses who would have their own Christmas dinner below stairs. A line of private cars would stand in the small gravel drive or outside at the kerb. The house staff and a couple of outside help would move silently among the gathering, hardly noticed. Cigar and perfumed cigarette smoke from ivory holders would drift up to the chandeliers and the latest, not too jazzy, tune would be playing on the radio-gramophone.
Her brother Henry would be home for the Christmas vacation, she imagined. She wondered briefly if he had grown much, but she so seldom saw him that it felt like wondering about a stranger. Kay would be there, probably dressed in pink, perhaps eyeing one of the young sons of Mummy or Daddy’s friends, her hopes up. Amy hadn’t heard from her at all since leaving. Like her parents, Kay had never written to her, but then girls of fourteen had empty heads. Hers had been empty at that age. She forgave her, but it hurt.
On the Boxing Day the younger set would go off, maybe to see car racing, parties of young people all bundled into motorcars, giggling and making a din. Later they’d go to see a pantomime, cram into the boxes to lean over the parapet and aim cocktail biscuits at the audience below, shrinking back out of sight and spilling champagne all over the seats they lolled in as offended people glanced up. They would poke fun at the theatre staff and ridicule the working classes in the ‘gods’ with their children howling back in response to the quips and goading of the entertainers, and they would join in the singing as noisily as those they ridiculed, full of champagne and joie de vivre.
She missed it all so terribly. For several hours at a time, oh, how she missed it. So much that her heart ached and her stomach felt sick and her limbs felt weak. But there was no chance to share that special aching loneliness with anyone. Vi and Rosy wouldn’t understand, at this time of year rushing off up West to ape the rich and to dance in cheap dance halls with boys despite their father trying to stop them. Tom wouldn’t understand, he with his pub mates and girls on his mind. Willie was of no consequence, interested only in what halfway decent present would appear in his Christmas stocking. Mrs Jordan wouldn’t understand, busy with her cooking ready for Christmas dinner when every relative she had came to sit down at her table. This year it was her turn, next year it would be at some other relative’s table. As for Alice, she no longer considered Alice as a confidant, for Alice was too preoccupied with Dicky.
With a deep sigh, Amy turned away from the upstairs window where she had been gazing out but hardly seeing the narrow street below, the houses opposite, their flat faces identical to this, hardly aware of the cold feeble December sunshine that struggled over the rooftops, to peer eerily through a curtain of chimney smoke that one could smell even with the window closed and which yellowed the curtains a week after washing and left a permanent black line around where each window was supposed to open whether it did or not. And with her sigh, she went downstairs to see if there was anything she could do to help Mrs Jordan with her preparations for Christmas.
Christmas Day saw the Jordan house full of relatives as expected. The festivities would spill over into Boxing Day, so Amy gathered, some leaving to sleep at their own homes just a walk away before returning the next day. Many more, too drunk to find the immediate street door let alone their own, would spend what was left of the night finding sleep as best they could, menfolk kipping down on armchairs, two on the sofa, one who couldn’t have cared less where he was on the floor with a pillow and blanket, the rest, women and kids, in the main bedroom upstairs.
Those who’d gone home came back for the Boxing Day meal of leftover cold pork and to pick over the cold chicken carcass, with mashed spuds and pickles, followed by the lesser part of the Christmas pudding Mrs Jordan had made weeks before, eaten cold with custard; at teatime consuming as they had the day before bread and butter, shrimps and winkles and the remains of the Christmas cake, washed down by tea and later what was left of the beer and a little sherry.
Most of the fare had come by courtesy of the docks where Tom and his father worked – over the year clever sleight of hand conveyed out the odd tin of this, the odd packet of that, a bottle of something here and there, all for consuming over these two days and on New Year’s Eve. The first day back to work after New Year would start the process all over again, carefully, stealthily, not too much, not too blatantly, never get careless, mustn’t get caught, as that would mean instant dismissal and no likelihood of ever being taken on again.
Mrs Jordan told Amy she would die several deaths a year for thinking of what would happen if her men did get caught. ‘There’s some what do,’ she said, ‘but they’re the stupid greedy ones – they ask fer it. There ain’t nothing stupid about my Tom and my Arthur. They’re good providers and Gawd knows we need a little providing for. They’re good workers. Trusted.’
So Christmas Day saw the Jordans and all their relatives – Amy couldn’t tell one from another, whose sister, brother, old aunt or uncle, cousin, niece or nephew was who – living like lords, the house near to bursting with them, eating, drinking, singing, laughing uproariously at every seamy joke, taking turns to entertain each other. There was no worry about disturbing the neighbours, who came in to share the fun if they hadn’t a party of their own going. These two days of their working lives were reserved for themselves, the next being the Easter, Whitsun and summer bank holidays when a trip to Southend was sometimes on the books although it hadn’t been this year. Perhaps because of her presence.
Throughout the Christmas party Amy had sat at the end of one of the hard scaffold boards that had been ranged around two walls of the back room, supported on beer crates, the same in the front room where the bed had been curtained off for the children to sleep as they grew tired, all the softer chairs reserved for the older members of this, she’d discovered, vast family.
She had sat near the door of the back room for air in the fast growing airless confinement of cheap cigarette, cigar, pipe smoke and bodily fumes pressing back down on everyone from where it had all wafted up to the ceiling like a party all of its own and just as congested as the bodies beneath. Now and again she had wended her way through the busy crowded kitchen where Mrs Jordan and those of her relatives who wished to help made sandwiches while men came out to pour beer, and wandered into the concrete back yard with its dustbin and ramshackle wooden outside wc and its tiny strip of sooty soil meant to hold plants. It seldom did because cats came gleefully over the fence to piddle and shit in it. The soil stank. The back yard smelled of it, but even so it was to some extent better than the fug indoors.
Boxing Day evening found her repeating her exercise, glad to stand in the back yard with a slight chill breeze moving the tainted air away from her to adjoining yards. Alone for a while, she listened to the sounds of the East End celebrating Christmas: muffled by doors and windows closed against the night chill, singing coming from houses a few doors away; someone some way off ringing a bicycle bell, another erratically blowing a discordant trumpet; a dog or two barking – no sound from the cats who would withhold their celebrations for when people had gone to bed, whenever that would be.
Behind her the raucous bellowing of the Jordans’ party made her small space out here seem silent, another planet. Amy folded her arms across her breast and gazed up into the shrouded night sky. But a sound came from just behind her right shoulder. She turned to see Tom had come to join her. They hadn’t spoken much these last few days with all the things she’d been doing to help his mother prepare for Christmas. Not that they ever spoke to each other all that much.
Now he said, ‘You should be wearing a coat or something out ’ere. It’s a bit on the chilly side.’
‘I’m warm enough,’ she told him, gazing up again at the sky which should have been full of stars if smoke from every chimney in London had not obliterated them.
She felt a light touch on her left shoulder, and realised Tom’s arm had stolen across to rest on it. For an instant she wanted to let herself lean against him, but continued to hold herself stiff. Was he taunting her? She’d make a fool of herself by relaxing against him, her guard lowered.
She began to ease away, very slightly. ‘It is a bit chilly. I’d best go in.’
The hand on her left shoulder tightened. ‘Not yet. I’ve ’ad enough of in there fer a while. Let’s just stand ’ere, quiet, enjoy a bit of fresh air.’
‘Fresh air!’ she laughed suddenly.
He didn’t join in. She felt him looking down at her and turned her head to look up at him, seeing his face lit one side by the glow from the uncurtained kitchen window. His eyes were dark, his lips tight, his nose a strong line.
‘I know we ain’t much ’ere. Not ter you. We ’ave ter live among ’undreds of ’ouses with back yards what stink of cats and dustbins. We never ’ad the privileges your sort ’ave, but we do ’ave our own sort of pride. We ’elp each other and we don’t let down our gels what get themselves inter trouble …’
