Better Days Will Come (9 page)

She did make contact with someone – Miss Reeves. Bonnie had remembered seeing an advertisement in the local paper with a box number for replies. That gave her the idea of going to the post office and asking about it. Bonnie discovered that, for a small rental fee, she could have her own box number with a key in the local branch. It was an ideal way of keeping in touch without anyone knowing where she lived. She reasoned that she had upset her mother enough so she would not worry her again but she was desperate for news of her and her sister. Miss Reeves was the obvious choice. At Sunday school she had made much of honesty and being trustworthy, so Bonnie wrote to her, asking for information about her family. In her letter, she explained that she could not, for very personal reasons, contact them herself, and asked Miss Reeves to send her news of her mother and sister.

Bonnie did her level best to stop thinking about George all the time but the bittersweet memories kept slipping through the crevices of her mind. She was careful not to let Richard or Lady Brayfield see her upset, but night after night her pillow was wet with tears.

Richard turned out to be a boy with a real thirst for knowledge. After a cautious beginning, he and Bonnie quickly became friends. She did her best to keep him occupied whenever he was in the house. After a while, even she could see that Lady Brayfield was less stressed with life. It seemed that if the boy was happy, everyone else was happy. The whole household was more relaxed.

Lady Brayfield visited her daughter two or three times a week.

‘She’s looking better all the time,’ she confided in Bonnie, and nothing more was said about Kenya.

Bonnie was more or less left to her own devices. So long as Richard was happy, Lady Brayfield left them to it. Richard had a fairly full timetable. Bonnie made sure he ate a good breakfast and then they walked to the prep school where he was a dayboy. He was an average student but under Bonnie’s tuition, or perhaps it was her encouragement that helped him go that extra mile, his grades began to show a marked improvement. Whenever she could, Bonnie took Richard to see the sights of London. They would walk around Trafalgar Square, or go up to Buckingham Palace. Richard’s favourite place in the whole world was the British Museum. He loved looking at the fossils and stuffed animals in cases and gradually his enthusiasm sparked a similar interest in Bonnie.

Back in the town house, she taught him to play whist and patience while he taught her the rudiments of chess. He beat her every time (which he loved) but gradually she got the hang of it. In the evenings, when he’d finished his homework, they would read together, do jigsaws or make Meccano models. Bonnie wasn’t so good at the model making, but it gave Richard a real sense of achievement to be able to show an adult what to do. He never talked about his father but at night as he knelt by his bed, he always prayed for his mother.

‘God bless Mummy and please help her to get better. I miss her very much but I pray she won’t miss me and be unhappy.’

His prayer never failed to bring a tear to Bonnie’s eye. What was her own mother doing now? With Christmas only three weeks away, she’d be sorting out the Thrift Club. It was only a small thing but it made such a big difference to her neighbours. Her mother was always thinking of others. Bonnie was proud of her and longed to give her a hug and tell her so. She missed her so much and the small house where they lived had taken on a romantic rose-coloured hue in her memories. Bonnie forgot about the lack of privacy, the freezing cold bedrooms and the fact that she had to wash in the scullery. All she remembered was the fun and laughter she, Rita and Mum shared together.

As she tucked Richard into his bed, she was thinking about the singsongs they’d had around the piano. That piano was her mother’s pride and joy, a present from Dad when they were young. Mum was a good pianist and she could pick up a tune in no time. Her father always said she could have been aconcert pianist but Mum would push his arm playfully and say, ‘Get away with you, you daft ’apeth.’

Bonnie’s voice cracked slightly as she said, ‘Goodnight, Richard’, but the boy didn’t notice.

Turning over he snuggled down under his eiderdown with a sleepy, ‘’Night.’

Bonnie’s evenings were her own. If she had no socks to darn (even the wealthy darned their socks it seemed) Bonnie could sit with Dora and Cook in the little parlour and listen to the radio or she could spend time in her own room, knitting booties and matinee jackets for the baby.

Cook and Dora had worked for Lady Brayfield for years. They didn’t talk a lot but it didn’t take Bonnie long to realise that life hadn’t been kind to them. Dora was roughly the same age as Lady Brayfield. They had played together as children.

‘My mother worked in the big ’ouse,’ Dora told her with pride. ‘She cleaned the master’s rooms. Lady Brayfield says she were the best cleaner they ever ’ad.’

When she was sixteen, Dora had fallen for a smooth-talking man and been ‘put in the family way’ as Cook put it. Her baby was stillborn and Dora was so upset she had been declared mentally unstable and put into an institution. It took Lady Brayfield more than twenty years to get her out. The years of incarceration had left Dora deeply scarred. She was a slave to routine and became upset at any deviation but she was a hard worker. Grey-haired, even though she couldn’t be more than forty, Dora was a heavy woman with square hard-working hands.

If Dora was chunky, Cook was dainty. Standing at less than five foot tall, Cook was reluctant to even tell anyone her name. She was an intelligent woman but she found socialising difficult. Bonnie had no idea what had happened to Cook but a chance remark from Lady Brayfield made her wonder if Cook had been the victim of child cruelty. The pair of them were quite content to live together as friends, supporting each other and devoting themselves to the care of the woman who had rescued them and given them their lives back again. They never intruded on Bonnie’s privacy but they were welcoming whenever she wanted to share her off duty time with them.

But tonight Bonnie was in no mood for company. As she climbed the stairs to her room, Lady Brayfield called her downstairs into her sitting room. Bonnie’s heart began to beat faster as Lady Brayfield closed the door behind them.

‘Bonnie, I haven’t been disappointed since you came here,’ she began. ‘But the time has come … You cannot stay here in your condition.’

Bonnie nodded miserably.

‘Although you hardly show at the moment, I think you will agree that we must act before Richard has the slightest idea that you may be pregnant. Have you had morning sickness?’

Bonnie shook her head. ‘That finished long before I came.’

‘Have you said anything to Dora and Cook?’

Bonnie shook her head.

‘When you came I proposed that you might stay until the end of January,’ Lady Brayfield continued, ‘but I overheard Dora mentioning to Cook that she thought you might be in the family way. They had no idea I was there, or I am sure they wouldn’t have said it. However, it’s left me wondering if you’ve said anything.’

‘No, Madam,’ cried Bonnie. ‘Honestly I haven’t.’

Lady Brayfield looked thoughtful.

‘I shall start looking for somewhere to live straight away,’ Bonnie said quickly. She was struggling with her emotions. She would be sad to leave this house and her generous employer, but she had no wish to cause any embarrassment.

‘Have you any idea what you would like to do?’

Bonnie smiled wistfully. ‘I always wanted to look after children,’ she said, ‘but it’s hard to imagine how I could with my own baby to look after.’ Her eyes were brimming with tears and she willed them not to fall. ‘I would like to try and keep the baby but if I can’t, I’ll have to let him go for adoption.’

‘It’s not widely known,’ Lady Brayfield said softly, ‘but the government has made provision for single women to keep their babies. Would you like me to make some enquiries?’

Bonnie’s face lit up. ‘Would that mean I could keep my baby?’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Lady Brayfield. ‘You’ll have to find somewhere to live and you’ll probably have to run the gauntlet when it comes to mean-spirited judgemental moralists.’

‘I don’t care what people think,’ Bonnie said fiercely. ‘I made an honest mistake.’

‘Perhaps it might be better to pretend you had a husband who was killed.’

Bonnie looked thoughtful. Eventually she said, ‘I hate lies. My mother always said a liar had to have a good memory.’

‘Your mother sounds like a remarkable woman,’ Lady Brayfield remarked. ‘Bonnie, are you sure that you couldn’t go back home?’

‘No,’ said Bonnie.

‘If it’s a question of the train fare …’

‘It’s not that. It’s the shame. I could never go home and shame my mother.’ She stood to leave.

‘Then I shall make some enquiries.’

‘May I ask one thing?’ Bonnie asked cautiously.

Lady Brayfield held her gaze.

‘May I ask why you are helping me like this?’

‘You remind me of someone I once knew,’ said Lady Brayfield turning towards the drinks cabinet. Keeping her back to Bonnie, she reached for the sherry and Bonnie knew she would not be drawn further.

As Bonnie opened the sitting room door she hesitated.

‘Is there something else, Bonnie?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and the two women smiled.

‘By the way,’ Bonnie reminded her, ‘I’m taking Richard to buy some Christmas presents. We plan to go to Selfridges after school.’

Lady Brayfield nodded. ‘Does he have enough money?’

‘He’s saved almost £5 of his own pocket money,’ said Bonnie closing the door softly.

As she walked upstairs, it occurred to her that she would have to use some of her precious savings to buy presents for Lady Brayfield, Richard, Dora and Cook. She groaned inwardly but the moment the thought skittered through her mind, she was eaten up with guilt. How could she resent buying gifts for the very people who had been so kind to her? Wasn’t giving to others what Christmas was all about?

When the Christmas cards started to arrive at the house, Bonnie decided that she would at least send a card to her mother and sister. Woolworth’s had single cards, and she’d bought one. She didn’t have to put her address on it and even if her mother saw the London postmark, London was a very big place.

Alone in her room, Bonnie got the card out again but she couldn’t think what to write inside. Was it wise to rake up all those memories? Her mother would most likely have settled back down to normal life. What right had she to upset her again? How different everything had been last Christmas when she and Rita had put up the decorations together. They hadn’t been up to much. The same things had been up and down for all the Christmases Bonnie could remember. ‘I’ll get you some new ones next year, Mum,’ she’d promised.

‘Get some pretty ones with plenty of glitter,’ Rita had said.

A lump formed in Bonnie’s throat. She wouldn’t be keeping her promise and she wouldn’t see the old ones going up either. Sick at heart, Bonnie wrote a short note inside, addressed the envelope and stuck on a stamp, but she put the Christmas card in a drawer.

As a Saturday girl, it was left to Rita to put the dresses back on hangers in the department once the customers had tried them on. It was also her responsibility to make sure each customer was given a chiffon scarf to put over her face so that she didn’t get powder or lipstick on the dresses. Most of Hubbard’s clients were happy to comply with the rule but occasionally she would get a complaint. Miss Bridewell usually handled that, and although she was politeness itself, somehow the customer knew not to argue with her if she wanted to try the dress on.

As well as Miss Bridewell, there were three other girls in the department: Sonja, a petite brunette with very high heels; Susan, a rather timid girl with bitten-down nails who seemed terrified of Miss Bridewell; and Dinah Chamberlain. Dinah was a little older than the others. She had been Bonnie’s best friend when she worked at Hubbard’s. She worked as the mannequin and spent all day modelling the clothes. She only came back into the department when she wanted to change her outfit for something else.

At the first opportunity, Rita was determined to talk to the girls about her sister. It was now December 6th, a whole month since Bonnie had left home. She still hadn’t told her mother about George but then what was there to tell? Bonnie had been frugal with the details. Rita hadn’t even know his last name and who knows, perhaps they had broken up anyway and Bonnie had left Worthing to get away from him. She told herself not to worry but in truth she was as worried as her mother. If anyone was likely to know Bonnie’s plans, it would be one of the girls at work. Rita found her opportunity to talk about her sister when she was called into one of the cubicles.

‘I remember her,’ said Sonja. ‘I was downstairs in the glove department when she worked here. She was going to London, wasn’t she?’

They were helping Dinah out of a charcoal grey wrap-over coat with big shoulders which was nipped in at the waist.

The New Look from Paris had swept the country. After years of ‘make do and mend’, Dior had been extravagant with material. Although expensive, Hubbard’s wasn’t up to Dior standards but they were a highly fashionable store. Rita loved the flowing lines and small-waisted dresses and jackets. It was obvious that Dinah loved wearing them too.

Dinah would stroll around the store carrying a card with a number on it. She frequented the restaurant where shoppers met their friends for morning coffee or afternoon tea and lingered if she thought a customer was especially interested in what she was wearing. When she got back to the fashion department, the customer would only have to remember the number on the card Dinah was carrying for Miss Bridewell to know exactly which outfit she had admired.

It was Rita’s job to put the items back on display as soon as possible in case a customer had followed Dinah back to the dress department and wanted to try it on.

‘I can’t believe my sister went so far on her own,’ said Rita, choosing her words carefully. She folded Dinah’s long sage green gloves and put the matching hat back into its hatbox.