A Perfect Christmas (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
t was the muted shrilling of the telephone down in the hall that jolted Cait out of sleep at just after eight that morning. She had slept badly again and now she had overslept. She was too late to get herself ready and off to work and be there for eight-thirty. This on top of the day she’d taken off without permission would surely result in her dismissal. At this moment, though, she felt so low, she didn’t actually care whether she lost her job or not, regardless of the consequences. She could no longer hear the telephone ringing so she turned over and closed her eyes.

An urgent rapping on her bedroom door had her sitting bolt upright and staring over in fright. She was alone in the house so who could possibly be knocking on it? Her answer came in the form of Agnes Dalby, who came bustling in to stand at the bottom of her bed. She had a look of concern on her wrinkled face.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Thomas, but I was worried about you not coming downstairs this morning at your usual time, being’s it’s a work day. I was worried you might be ill.’ She scrutinised Cait’s face. ‘You don’t look good, Miss Thomas, not good at all. Shall I call for . . .’

Cait exclaimed, ‘You frightened the life out of me! You’re not supposed to be here. What are you doing?’

Agnes wanted to tell this angry young woman that she herself couldn’t get off to sleep last night for worrying how she was coping, rattling around in this big house on her own, with no one to help her through the disappointment she had recently suffered or check whether she was feeding herself properly, but she didn’t know how Cait would respond to this so she lied. ‘I realised when I got home last night that I had left my umbrella here. I’ll more than likely have need of it before your parents return so I came to fetch it. When I came in, there was no sign that you had been up and about getting ready for work or had any breakfast, just last night’s dishes still on the table, so I was worried about you.’

The mention of the dirty dishes brought home to Cait that now she no longer had Agnes to see to all the mundane household tasks, it was up to her to tackle them in the future. The thought of how to go about cooking and laundering and other household chores when she had not a clue how to do them troubled her. She wished she could ask Agnes to show her the basics but daren’t risk her mother finding out she had been familiar with the hired help. ‘I’ll tidy the kitchen later,’ she told Agnes.

‘I’ll see to it while I’m here, Miss Thomas, and I might as well see to cooking you your meals and anything else that needs doing. I’ve nothing else to do with my time at the moment so it’ll be a favour to me to let me be here, instead of twiddling me thumbs at home.’ This was another lie Agnes was telling as her daughter in Nottingham had pleaded with her to come and stay for a week or so and spend time with her grandchildren – that was after she had voiced her feelings over her mother’s employer laying her off unpaid and without warning. But as much as Agnes loved her daughter and grandchildren there was a great need in her to make sure that this vulnerable young woman was coping on her own before she felt she could go off and enjoy her short period of freedom. Looking at Cait again in concern she said, ‘As I said when I came in, you don’t look good at all. Shall I telephone for the doctor to come and have a look at you?’

‘I doubt he has a magic cure for what I’m suffering from, so don’t waste his time,’ Cait snapped back, just wanting Agnes to leave her alone so she could snuggle back under the covers and be left with her misery.

The older woman did not look convinced but said regardless, ‘If you say so, Miss Thomas. There was another reason I came up to see you. That woman has been on the telephone again. The one who called several times yesterday. She said their situation is getting critical now.’

Cait heaved a frustrated sigh and said irritably, ‘And just what
is
their situation?’

‘Oh, Miss Thomas, I didn’t feel it my place to ask. I did get her name and number this time, though. She’s a Miss Trucker and she’s calling from Rose’s Quality Shoes and Leather Goods. They’re on Bowman’s Lane, off Frog Island. It’ll be one of those factories backing on to the canal. Miss Trucker ended the call under the impression she would hear shortly when Mrs Thomas’s representative will be paying a visit.’

Rose’s Shoes? The name sounded familiar to Cait. She had seen it somewhere recently. Then she remembered. Printed inside her father’s shoes when she had been rummaging around his wardrobe, looking for family documents. So this critical problem was nothing more than a mix-up over an order for shoes for him? From the number of them in his wardrobe he was obviously a good customer of theirs whom they didn’t want to lose. Though why he needed so many pairs when he rarely left the house was beyond her. A thought struck her then. If she resolved this issue on her mother’s behalf, maybe, just maybe, it might help to rebuild the bond they had shared when she was born. It was worth a try. Besides, the Trucker woman obviously wasn’t going to give up badgering them until someone representing her mother had paid a visit.

First, though, Cait had to build the momentum to get herself out of bed, which was the last thing she felt like doing at the moment.

She instructed Agnes, ‘If the woman telephones again, tell her I’ll call in to see her later. Oh, and while you’re at it, telephone my boss at work and tell her . . . anything you can think of that will be accepted as an excuse for my absence today.’

With that she turned over in bed and pulled the covers over her head, signalling to Agnes that this conversation was at an end.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

G
len was trying his best to listen to Harry Owens as the man gave him a brief overview on what to himself were the important matters of tea- and meal-break times, and where the canteen and toilets were. Glen’s insides were turning somersaults. Thomas had been Nerys’s maiden name; she had obviously reverted to it after she had obtained a divorce from him. That was why Charles Gray couldn’t find any trace of her after she had sold their house and moved to another. At any time they were expecting his nemesis to arrive. If they crossed paths and she recognised him, that put paid to any plan of finding out where she lived so that he could visit the house and be reunited with his daughter. All he could hope was that, should they come face to face, either Nerys wouldn’t take much notice of a mere factory worker or else he’d changed so much since she’d last seen him that she wouldn’t recognise him.

He realised that Harry had stopped talking and was looking at him curiously. Glen said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

‘No, miles away, you were, mate. You look a bit green around the gills to me. Are you all right? Only one death in this place is enough for one week.’

Glen managed to say jocularly, ‘Oh, I’m fine, just got a lot to take in as you can appreciate, starting a new job, getting used to new ways and people. It all seems a bit overwhelming right now.’

‘No different to what I felt when I first started here, and everyone else who starts a new job. It will soon slot into place and you’ll feel like part of the furniture. I can only tell you it’s a good place to work . . . well, it was under Reg Swinton, but of course it depends now on who’s brought in to replace him. I expect the owner will have to run it meantime. Such a shock, Mr Swinton going so swift like that. I’d only seen him a couple of hours before it happened. He was doing his inspection round to make sure all the workers were okay and everything was running smoothly before he went up to his office for a client meeting. At the time I did notice he looked tired and had a bit of a sweat on him, but I put that down to the pressure of getting our orders out in time for Christmas.’

Glen tentatively asked, ‘What . . . er . . . is the owner like?’

Harry pulled a face and shrugged. ‘Dunno. Never seen her in all the seven years I’ve worked here. As far as I know she comes here once a month to go over matters with Reg Swinton, but she’s never graced us lot on the shop floor with her presence. Those that have had the privilege of crossing her path said she looks a stuck-up cow and acts like she’s royalty. In all the years Nell Green took a tray of tea through to the office with a plate of best butter shortbread, she never once heard a thank-you from her. There wasn’t ever any acknowledgement when she retired after forty-odd years of service.

‘Anyway, I think I’ve shown you as much as I can and the rest you’ll have to find out for yourself. I must get on, the shoes won’t box themselves, and it don’t look like I’m gonna get much help again today, same as every day, from that lazy sod of an assistant I’ve got. If he don’t buck his ideas up soon I’m off up to see the hierarchy about getting him replaced by someone who isn’t work-shy. So excuse me, mate, won’t yer?’

Glen thanked him for his time then made his way into the maintenance room which was hardly bigger than a small cupboard, lined with old wooden shelving that groaned under the weight of the assorted tools and paraphernalia needed to carry out his work. A well-worn desk was rammed in one corner with a rickety-looking chair at the side, allowing just enough room for Glen to sit on while he answered any summons on the scuffed black Bakelite telephone. The room didn’t even have a door on it. He knew from what Harry had told him that any supplies he needed were ordered through the stores department, but all orders then had to be sanctioned by the works manager before they were placed with their suppliers. Until Reg Swinton’s replacement was on board, he’d have to make do with what supplies he had. Glen was just mortally relieved to learn that he wouldn’t personally have to approach the owner for their approval and wouldn’t come into contact with Nerys that way while she was running the place until a replacement for Mr Swinton was found.

On examining the jobs book, it seemed to Glen that the last maintenance man had been very diligent. Apart from a couple of light bulbs that needed replacing in the gents toilets, situated in the clocking-in area, and a twice-daily replenishing with coal of the huge cast-iron boiler in the basement, it seemed at the moment that he wouldn’t be anywhere near the offices or in danger of bumping into Nerys. He was going to be eased into his job gently. But that was to change.

The telephone started shrilling. It was the factory foreman. A belt needed replacing on one of the stitching machines. Would Glen come straight away to avoid losing more production time? Grabbing the tool box and taking several belts of different sizes out of the stock on the shelves, to make sure he was carrying the right size replacement, he set off, praying that repairing machines was just like riding a bike. Once mastered, never forgotten.

Over in the canteen, Jan, who hadn’t worked for twenty years, was already feeling the strain and she’d only been at it two hours. Frying up two hundred sausages, then the same amount of rashers of bacon, cutting open and spreading margarine on a hundred cobs, readying the fat in pans for the fried eggs to be cooked fresh as required, and opening catering-sized tins of tomatoes and beans for those who wanted them on top of their sausage or bacon, grating cheese, slicing shoulder ham and tomatoes and onions for those wanting cold sandwiches . . . all this just to satisfy the appetites of the factory workers at ten o’clock, when they’d all swarm in demanding to be served quickly so as not to waste a second of their twenty-minute break. And there was still the dinner to be prepared yet, which today was cottage pie, peas and chipped potatoes, jam roly-poly and custard for pudding. In between this it was her job to take the trolley around the offices at eleven, but first she had to load it with the urn of boiled water for coffee and the huge pot of tea, plus a selection of filled cobs.

Jan was just putting the last of the cooked sausages and bacon in the oven to keep hot when Hilda wobbled up to her. ‘You’ve done a good job there, Jan. Some of the sausages are a bit burned, but then some of the blokes like ’em like that. Used to the burned offerings their wives dish up to ’em,’ she added, laughing. ‘You’ve earned a break. Fifteen minutes. Help yourself to a cup of tea and a cob with whatever you want in it, then sit and enjoy it at the table where Maggie and Dilys are sitting. I’ll be joining you all in a minute. Today we must be back ready to serve on the dot of ten. Not that we never are but we’d best be diligent. Mrs Thomas, the big cheese, is expected. She’s never condescended to show her face on the factory floor let alone in here before, but you can never be sure that she might not decide to lower herself. I don’t want her to have any cause to pick fault, and the new manager that’s brought in led to believe I don’t run a tight ship in here.’

She paused for a second as a thought struck. Her voice grave, she said, ‘Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know, would yer? Reg Swinton, the manager that interviewed you for the job yesterday, had a heart attack and died. So sad, such a lovely man. He’ll be a hard act to follow.’ Hilda wiped a tear from her eye and gave a sniff. ‘Right, come on, breaktime will be over before we’ve started ours.’

As Jan made herself a bacon cob, then poured tea into a cup, adding milk and sugar, she wondered if Glen had heard the news about Reg Swinton and that the owner was on her way, only she wasn’t a Mrs Trainer but a Mrs Thomas. That must mean that Glen’s ex-wife had sold the business after all, and Jan wondered where that left them in their search for his daughter.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

C
ait shivered as a blast of icy wind caught her on alighting from the bus, the second she’d had to catch to reach her destination. She had desperately tried to get back off to sleep after Agnes Dalby had left her bedroom earlier that morning, but had failed miserably. What had finally got her up and dressed was Agnes once again coming up to inform her that Miss Trucker had called yet again for information as to when they could expect Mrs Thomas’s representative to visit, and it became apparent to Cait that the woman wasn’t going to give up until she had been to see them.

There was a freezing mist swirling over the murky canal waters when she made her way over the small hump-backed bridge and down the steps at one side, on to the slippery cobbled path that led to the dozen or so factories and warehouses backing on to the canal. It was only then that she realised she had arrived at the workers’ entrance to the premises and had to retrace her steps, go further up the main road and down the next road off it which led her to reception at the front of the premises. She found herself facing an old building with a tall chimney rising from it and a faded sign on its front: Rose’s Quality Shoes and Leather Goods, Established 1921. It nestled between a coal depot and a tea warehouse. When she arrived in the reception area, the young girl behind the desk wished Cait a good morning and asked what she could do for her.