Better Days Will Come (21 page)

The show was amazing. Dinah was only in the chorus but Rita watched her every move. Everyone at Hubbard’s knew she wanted to be an actress and that she’d been waiting to get a place in drama school. She was so tall and elegant that Rita couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been given the lead role.

In the interval, Emilio insisted on buying her a cup of tea, but it turned out to be free.

‘Are you enjoying the show?’

She hoped her voice sounded sultry and mature but it came out a bit squeaky with excitement. Emilio smiled, making Rita melt all over again. ‘It is very kind of you to ask me.’

The silence that grew between them made Rita feel a bit awkward.

‘Are you going to work in your uncle’s shop?’

Emilio shook his head. ‘No, no,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye and Rita remembered that the show was called
No, No, Nanette
. ‘I am fisherman.’

Rita pulled a face. ‘The Worthing fishermen guard their patch very closely,’ she said. ‘Their rights go back years and years. I doubt you’ll get a pitch here.’

He shrugged. ‘Then I am lucky guy. I have a boat at East Worthing.’

Rita was surprised.

‘I share with a friend,’ he explained. ‘The waters here are good for mackerel and sea bass. I think I make a good living.’

‘So you’re staying in Worthing?’ Rita said breathlessly and to her utter joy, Emilio nodded.

As the curtain went up for the second half, Rita was trembling with excitement. Salvatore treated her like a silly schoolgirl, but Emilio was treating her like a young woman … and he was going to live here.

The show was just as good in the second half as it had been in the first. The story was a little confusing but the three couples who found themselves together in a cottage finally got the right man and everybody lived happily ever after. Rita loved the music, especially ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘I Want to be Happy’. Dinah had told Rita to wait for her after the curtain came down. They didn’t have to wait long.

‘We’re all having a party,’ she told them. ‘You must come.’ Rita felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven.

The party was in somebody’s house along the sea front. It was rowdy and the gramophone was playing Red Hot Jazz, the sort of music the council had banned from all its public venues. Rita couldn’t think why. It was fun. She felt a little out of place because most of the girls were wearing party frocks and she wasn’t, but nobody remarked it. In fact, they were all very friendly. Dinah looked so elegant as she smoked her Craven A cigarette in a short holder. ‘Enjoying yourself, Rita?’

‘Oh yes,’ sighed Rita. ‘The show was wonderful.’

As everybody squeezed in, the people who wanted to dance stayed in the spacious hallway while the rest of the cast sat around the sitting room drinking and talking. There were no sandwiches or cakes. They ate fiddly bits called
hors d’oeuvres
. Rita tasted her first vol-au-vent and her first olive.

She’d been there for about an hour when a man grabbed her hand. ‘Dance, pretty lady,’ he cried and, laughing, Rita looked around for Emilio.

‘Actually, I came with someone.’

‘The tall good-looking chap?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘He’s gone outside with Jeremy to look at the stars,’ said the man. ‘He won’t mind. Come on.’ And he swept her into his arms as somebody changed the record to a waltz.

After supper on that first day in the nursery, Bonnie had gone upstairs to check on Shirley and found her sleeping peacefully.

‘I’ll come up to give her the ten o’clock feed,’ she told the girl in the nursery, and then she went to her room. She supposed she should have stayed in the staff room and made friends, but Bonnie was tired and homesick. She collected her uniform and went back to her room to get ready for duty in the morning.

She had been told her uniform was ‘an attractive pink gingham dress’. It turned out to be a shapeless, round-necked garment with a Peter Pan collar, three rubber buttons down the front so that they could be boiled, and from what she could make out, size 20 fitted everybody. She had also been given a list of things she’d need to take with her. At the bottom of the page, alongside a toothbrush and comb it said two pairs of garden knickers. Bonnie had scratched her head. What on earth were garden knickers? Much to her embarrassment, when she had asked around the London stores, she was met by blank stares. The only real suggestion came from an old fossil who had probably been working in the shop since the age of the dinosaurs.

‘Could these be what you want?’

She held up a pair of voluminous powder-blue silk drawers with an elasticated waist and long legs which stretched as far as the knee. As soon as Bonnie saw them, she recognised them as the type of garment her granny used to wear.

Bonnie smiled as she recalled the shocked look on the old biddy’s face when she’d said, ‘If that’s what they are, I’d sooner work in the garden with no knickers at all!’

After she’d put her things in the wardrobe, Bonnie got out her small box of private things and tipped them onto the bed. A few old birthday cards, a little round of hair she’d collected from Rita’s hairbrush the day she’d left home and Mum’s best hanky. It was probably a good idea to keep all her important documents in one place. After all, that’s what Mum did. She rounded up her allowance book, her post office book and Shirley’s birth certificate, all lurking at the bottom of her handbag, and put them in the box. Then she remembered her own birth certificate. George had told her to bring it with her because she would need it in order to get a passport. She kept that folded up in the lid of her jewellery box. She didn’t know why she still kept the box. She’d lost the pretty locket George had given her with it. It had upset her dreadfully when she’d realised it was gone and although she’d racked her brains, she couldn’t really remember where she’d last had it. She remembered she’d been fiddling with it when she’d gone into that rundown factory where George used to work. The place was in an awful mess and yet George had told her he was personally in charge of cleaning it up. There were paper and boxes strewn everywhere. It would take ages to clear up. And then the caretaker, wearing a long brown overall and a hat pulled down over his eyes, had come out of that little room at the back and shouted at her.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

He had given her such a shock, she’d dropped her handbag and everything had spilled out. Stuffing it all back inside, she’d just turned on her heel and fled. Luckily, the bus was coming along the road and she was right beside the stop. From the safety of the lower deck of the speeding bus, she saw him come out onto the street, look up and down and then go back inside, slamming the door shut behind him. Her little locket was somewhere in among all that rubbish but she hadn’t missed it until she got to London and by then it was far too late.

Bonnie found the certificate and spread it out. She recognised her own certificate, but there was something else folded with it. It was a tissue-thin letter addressed to her mother in her maiden name. Bonnie opened it and read with mounting horror.

It was dated 12th May 1924 and began:

My dear Grace,

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to hear of the birth of your baby yesterday. John is such a nice name. Please keep in touch. My son loved you very much. He should have done the right thing by you, but we will welcome your son into the family. My dear, I do not have long to live and I would welcome the opportunity to see my grandson before I die.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Finley.

Bonnie took in her breath. The envelope was addressed to Grace Follett. Her mother’s maiden name was Follett. What did this mean? Five years before she was born, her mother had had an illegitimate child? Bonnie’s hand trembled as she put it to her lips. And that child was called John Finley. She knew a John Finley. Didn’t he used to come to the WMCS shows with Dinah? Surely it couldn’t be the same person. The only other Finley she knew was the man who had been George’s boss … and come to think of it, her mother’s boss too! Was he John Finley’s father? Bonnie looked at the certificate again and her blood ran cold. Norris Finley was a horrible man. He’d come to the shop one day with his wife. He’d been so demanding, even shouting at Miss Bridewell, and by the time they left, nearly everyone was in tears, including his poor wife.

The door opened and her roommate came in. ‘Sorry. Hope I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Not at all.’ Bonnie pulled herself together and wiped her face with her thumbs. She glanced at the clock. ‘I’ve got to go and feed the baby in a minute anyway.’

She tumbled everything into the box and shut it in the only drawer with a lock and key. ‘What time do we have to be on duty in the morning?’

‘Seven,’ said Doreen, ‘but I think you’ll be earlier, won’t you?’

Bonnie nodded. ‘The six o’clock feed.’

Doreen groaned in sympathy. ‘Sooner you than me.’

It was April 30th. Grace dragged herself to work but she had no appetite for it. She hoped against hope that Norris was away on business but it wasn’t to be. His car was in the parking space outside the factory and he was already in his office.

‘You look a bit pasty,’ Snowy remarked as they had their mid-morning break.

‘Me?’ said Grace brightly. ‘I’m fine. Poor old Elsie is wondering what to do with her Dougie,’ Grace went on, desperate to change the subject. ‘He’s left school and he needs a job.’

‘That lad’ll never work,’ sighed Snowy. ‘I know he gets there in the end but who’s got the patience with him?’

Grace had to agree.

They were working on another knitwear order, this time for America. They were pretty lacy jumpers with short sleeves in two-ply wool. Grace loved the feel of them. They were so soft, like lambswool or cashmere.

They went back to work but her thoughts were all over the place. Was Norris serious when he said she had to decide by the end of the month? He couldn’t make her do it, could he? She worried about it and yet she knew he wouldn’t have to. Much as she hated the idea of being alone with him, if he really meant to tell the police about Bonnie’s locket, she would walk to hell and back again to stop him. Then there was Archie. He was such a lovely man and she really enjoyed being in his company. They had always loved walking together but now he took her for meals, or to the pictures. Last Friday, her half day and now his, he’d held her hand as they went along that bit of pier that was still open.

He’d opened up a bit about the war. Grace had felt she was privileged at the time. She’d realised quite early on in their relationship that Archie was a private man and that he chose his friends carefully. Every Sunday he visited his grandmother who lived in a nursing home, but he’d lost his parents in the bombing in Cornwall of all places.

‘I’ve been thinking about the Fair Rents panel,’ he said. The countrywide panels had been set up by the government after the war to make sure people were not being overcharged by unscrupulous landlords. ‘I reckon if we banded together, we could force our landlord to take notice. It’s against the law not to have a rent book now.’

Grace looked thoughtful. ‘So you think if we draw attention to his wrongdoing he’ll be forced to comply?’

‘Exactly,’ said Archie. ‘The thing is, you know the people round here better than I do. You could persuade them to sign the petition.’

Grace had been sceptical. She might be able to persuade her neighbours but in her present predicament how would it leave her? Norris already had the upper hand. He was sure to give the locket to the police if she went ahead with a petition.

‘The landlord doesn’t need to know about it,’ said Archie as if reading her thoughts.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. The trouble was, the more she thought about it, the less she liked the idea.

‘You coming on the works outing?’ Snowy asked as later that morning they made their way back to the canteen.

‘Try and stop me,’ laughed Grace. ‘Exbury Gardens, isn’t it?’

Snowy nodded. ‘You’d better put your name down. The coach is filling up fast.’

Snowy carried on to the canteen while Grace stopped by the notice board.

‘Save me a place,’ she called.

Grace picked up the pencil and added her name to the list. ‘When is it?’

‘It’s the end of the month,’ said a soft voice behind her. Her blood ran cold. She turned and looked up into Norris’s face. He was smiling.

‘I can’t,’ she said helplessly. ‘I can’t.’

He raised an eyebrow, nodded sagely and walked away. She was immediately seized with panic. If Bonnie had been in there, in that factory the day that boy died, she must have known something. If she were only a witness, why hadn’t she come forward? If she had nothing to hide, she would have told the police. Grace stared at Norris’s receding back. What was he going to do? If she said no to him, she might as well put a noose around her daughter’s neck herself.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘Wait!’

He paused by the iron staircase. ‘Mrs Rogers,’ he said stiffly and without turning to look at her, ‘I wonder if you might come up to my office for a moment?’

Grace turned to look in the direction of the canteen. Snowy had gone; in fact most of the factory girls were either inside already or queuing up to go in. Grace followed Norris up the stairs, her eyes smarting with unshed tears. She was doing this for her daughter – she had to, she had no choice.

‘Shut the door,’ he said as she came in.

Grace closed the door and stood with her head bowed. ‘Why are you making me do this?’

‘Let’s get one thing clear, Grace,’ he said coldly. ‘Nobody ismaking you do anything. You are here because you want tobe.’

She looked up but any faint hope that he might not make her go through with it died instantly. He had Bonnie’s locket in his hands and was playing with the clasp. As soon as he knew she’d seen it, he put it in his pocket.