Chrissie's Children (6 page)

‘And this,’ added Helen.

They sat on the bed up in Sophie’s room and wound her gramophone, played the records that were stacked up by the dozen. Sophie’s wardrobe doors stood wide open as she had left them
that morning, showing the dresses hanging ranked inside. Sophie sang and practised stances and gestures, lifting her skirt with one hand, watching herself in the mirror.

‘Don’t look like that,’ ordered Sophie as Helen pursed her lips in disapproval. Sophie pouted, mimicking, and Helen had to laugh.

‘You really ought to study for another career,’ Helen chided. She knew Sophie was determined to be a singer, but did not take her seriously. She did not believe this girl who had
grown up alongside her for three years could be an entertainer like those who appeared on the stage of the Empire Theatre in the town. Helen had only been there once, to a pantomime. She had
thought it a world of magic, but not
real
. Now, nursing, that was a worthwhile profession, demanding dedication and commanding respect.

‘Now we’re into the New Year things might look up.’ Jack said it with more hope than confidence. He struggled with the stud on his winged collar and grunted
with satisfaction as it slid into place, then he tweaked his black tie into a neat bow.

Chrissie smoothed the printed velvet evening dress over her haunches and picked up her stole to cover her bare shoulders. ‘Who’ll be there tonight?’

‘All people you know.’ Jack slipped his dinner jacket off its hanger and worked his wide shoulders into it. He went on, ‘Except one. That’s Tourville, Randolph Tourville.
He’s boss of an oil company. He’s up this end of the country because he has a tanker building on the Tyne. Davenport’s invited him because Tourville does a lot of business with
Davenport’s bank. He thinks he might get him to do some more with one of the builders on
this
river, but he’s wrong.’

Chrissie picked a shred of white cotton from his jacket and told him, ‘Don’t be pessimistic.’

Jack grinned. ‘I’m not. I just know Randolph. He’s a devil for the women and he never changes his mind. He’s happy with the ships he gets from the Tyne and he won’t
move.’ He slid his arms around her and kissed her. ‘You’re gorgeous.’

Chrissie detached his hands and said firmly, ‘We’re going out for the evening.’

They sat down to dinner a full score, all couples except for Tourville, the bachelor. The men were in business, most of them shipbuilders like Jack Ballantyne, and their host was Davenport the
banker, chubby and urbane. Chrissie was the only businesswoman. Tourville was partnered by Davenport’s daughter, pretty, unattached and in her twenties, obviously smitten by him.

He was a man who looked taller than he was and walked with a self-confident, straight-backed strut. Handsome in a square-jawed, hard-eyed way, he could grin to show strong, white teeth. Chrissie
thought that in anger that mouth could probably also close like a trap.

No places were marked, except that the chairs at the head and foot of the long table were left for Davenport, the host, and his wife. Tourville sat directly opposite Chrissie.

Conversation was general. Davenport twice steered it gently round to ships and the need for orders on the river. Tourville equally gently turned it away. The third time Davenport attempted this,
halfway though the meal, the oilman looked the banker in the eye and told him with a smile, ‘I always go to the Tyne for ships and always will.’ The message was clear and Davenport got
it. He did not try again.

Chrissie glanced at Jack and he lowered the lid of one eye in a wink that said, ‘I told you so.’ He addressed Tourville: ‘I looked over one of your other interests a week or so
ago.’

The oilman’s brows lifted a fraction. ‘What would that be?’

‘A Tourville film. I believe you are a major shareholder as well as managing director.’

Tourville laughed. ‘I hold most of the shares, it’s true, although it’s not so much an interest as a distraction. Tourville Films Ltd makes the films, but when I go to the
studios it’s as a spectator. I like backing a man and an idea, and that’s all I do: put up the money. The films are made by a lot of other people.’

Davenport put in, ‘That’s a bit of a gamble, though. Suppose people don’t like the film and don’t pay to see it?’

Tourville gave him the tolerant smile of the wealthy man who could afford to lose. ‘I find it profitable. And more fun than backing horses.’

A little later Chrissie realised that while Tourville was talking in turn to his neighbour on either side, one of them being Davenport’s infatuated daughter, he was always watching
Chrissie. He saw the dawning of that realisation and smiled at her. She felt the flush rise to her face and bent her head over her plate, although she was no longer hungry.

At the end of the evening, when they were all about to take their leave, Davenport shook Tourville’s hand, admitting defeat. ‘So you don’t expect to find anything you want
here?’

Chrissie was aware of Randolph Tourville’s eyes on her again as he replied, ‘You never know,’ and she knew he was attracted to her.

She slept badly that night and it was days before she could put the man out of her mind.

Sarah Tennant hurried, almost running, along Herbert Street, passing through a succession of pools of yellow light cast by the streetlamps. The wind brought the rain in from
the sea, but she had a winter coat now – secondhand, well worn and too big, but warm. She carried two baskets of shopping, bought in the covered market just before the stalls closed, when
they sold off stock cheaply.

She paused as she pushed open the front door and stepped into the passage. One low-powered bulb shed a meagre light and filled the corners with shadows. The cheap linoleum covering the floor was
slick with water and mud, and reflected the light dully. Sarah set down the baskets, wiped rain from her face and tossed back her wet hair. As she picked up the baskets again, Joshua Fannon stepped
out of the shadows and waddled heavily along the passage to meet her. He wheezed, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

Sarah held the baskets in front of her like a shield between her and Fannon. She used them to hold him off and pushed past him, hurrying on to the end of the passage and the door into the
Tennants’ kitchen. Once inside she put down the baskets, took the rent book from a drawer and told her mother, sitting by the fire, ‘I’m just going to pay the rent.’

She found Fannon had retreated to the far end of the passage again and now waited by the front door. Sarah went to him, took her purse from her damp pocket and counted out the six shillings and
sixpence. Fannon took it, entered the amount in the book and initialled it with his fountain pen. Sarah reached out for the book but he held it against his chest. ‘You got behind wi’
the rent last winter.’

‘It’s up to date now.’ Sarah held out her hand. ‘Give me the book, please.’

Fannon ignored that, and gripped her arm with a damp hand, warning, ‘If that happens again you might need a friend to keep a roof over your heads.’ He smiled, face oily with sweat.
‘And nothing’s lost that’s given to a friend.’

He tried to fondle her, but then a door opened upstairs and a neighbour clattered out on to the landing. Fannon’s attention was distracted for a moment. Sarah seized her chance and the
rent book, tore away from him and ran back into the kitchen.

Fannon swore as the door slammed behind her. He lumbered out of the house and set off along the street, buttoning his raincoat.

When he got home he found a familiar scene. Meggie was slumped and snoring, mouth sagging open, in her armchair by the fire. An empty bottle and a half-empty glass stood on the floor beside her
and the room stank of gin.

Fannon cursed her under his breath as he spilled the money he had collected out of the pockets of his raincoat on to the table. He muttered, ‘You can check it yourself and bank it, you
cow.’ She always did Joshua Fannon knew there had to be a bank book in the house but he had never been able to find it. He went to the fire and warmed his hands – and himself at the
thought of Sarah. He only had to wait his time.

Sarah stared into her almost empty purse. The shopping and the rent had taken the last of her mother’s savings and nearly all the wages paid to Sarah that afternoon. A
young girl was paid less than a grown woman, and the law said she could not be allowed to work overtime, that the number of her working hours was restricted. Sarah faced the fact that she and her
mother needed more money.

She knew only one way to make it.

February 1936

A month later, on a day of grey sky and driving rain, Chrissie took the train to Yorkshire and Jack’s old school. Her dark eyes apprehensive, she sat in the
headmaster’s study with its photographs of cricket XIs and rugger XVs and listened to the Head: ‘. . . Good of you to come . . .’ That was purely courtesy: he had sent for her. Or
one of them, and Jack could not leave the yard because he was awaiting the visit of a Brazilian millionaire, hoping for an order from him to build a ship. Chrissie had left the running of the
Railway Hotel to Dinsdale Arkley and come to face the music.

The Head’s message was not new, it had been spelled out in successive term end reports, but now it was more forceful: Matt was not keeping up. Chrissie sat in the aroma of chalk dust and
leather and listened to the droning of the Head against the background of a slow-ticking longcase clock, its pendulum swinging inside its glass door. A cane, long and whippy, stood in a corner.

‘He reads a great deal and draws well . . . Only works enough to keep out of immediate trouble . . . A rebel, might be a very good wing three-quarter but—’ and shocked now
– he doesn’t
try
. . . didn’t want to play for the school First Fifteen this afternoon, I had to
order
him . . . Not a good advertisement for the school.’

Chrissie listened to the accusations and sighed inside herself for her son, Oh, Matt, my baby.

Chrissie promised the Head, ‘I’ll talk to him, take him into the town for tea, if that is all right?’ It was a request made out of courtesy.

The Head acknowledged it, ‘By all means.’ He then went on, ‘We do not want to lose him, he is a good boy and his morals and manners are not in question, but he is not learning
here.’ He paused, then summed up: ‘He is
drifting
.’ Chrissie had heard that before, from Jack.

She walked out into the afternoon with the Head and put up her umbrella against the drizzle. The crowding boys hastily made room for them on the duckboards laid along the side of the pitch and
Chrissie, huddled in her long winter overcoat, watched the game and her son. Her feet, in their neat, black glacé court shoes that had cost her two guineas, grew steadily colder. She told
herself she should have worn wellingtons, as she would usually when she went to a match, as she had when she was first married and watched Jack play.

Matt had been changing, pulling his jersey over his head and reaching for his boots, when his captain came to stand over him, asking, ‘Are you sure you’re all right to
play?’

Matt had looked up as he tugged on laces, ‘’Course I am. Why?’

‘Well, you said you couldn’t turn out.’

Matt had explained patiently, ‘I said I didn’t want to play, not that I couldn’t.’ He had been pulled in because the two boys who were first choice and reserve for the
position had both been injured. Matt had moved on from reading the adventures of The Saint and Bulldog Drummond and was now deep into Hugh Walpole and Thackeray, and did not want to leave them to
play football. His captain had not understood that at all and went away baffled and outraged.

Chrissie understood the game well enough to realise after only a few minutes that her son’s heart was not in it. The ball was greasy with mud so it was not surprising that he dropped a
pass or two, but he looked awkward and ill at ease. Matt was tall for a winger and now seemed clumsy, all arms and legs. Chrissie thought with a pang of sympathy that he looked miserable.

He was. And bad tempered. He had not wanted to be out here, freezing on the wing, a spectator except when he failed to hold a pass. Then his peers on the touchline groaned, ‘Oh, come on,
Ballantyne!’

At half-time they were losing eight points to nil. His captain trudged through the mud to where Matt stood alone sucking on a slice of lemon and told him, ‘You’ve got to buck up and
get into the game.’

Matt glared at him and snapped, ‘I can’t get into it if I don’t get the bloody ball!’

‘You’re a wash-out.’ The captain glared at him and walked away.

Matt turned his back on his team and found himself facing the crowd on the touchline. His captain, his team and the gang over there could think what they liked. He didn’t care. Then he saw
his mother, standing under an umbrella in the thick of the crowd where she would hear all the jibes they hurled at him.

She saw his start of recognition, waved and smiled. Then it was time to restart the game.

He lined up with the others, and now the situation had changed. He didn’t care what they thought about him, but he wouldn’t have them running him down in the presence of his mother.
He would show them. So when his opposite number took a pass and raced down the wing, Matt felled him with a crunching tackle that left the boy winded. Matt started yelling at his forwards, urging
them on, and calling for the ball. But he did not get it. It was passed out to the other wing with monotonous regularity, and with equal regularity somebody in the centre failed to hold it and the
movement broke down.

The game raged up and down the field, and with ten minutes to go one of the opposition broke through the defence, sidestepped the full-back and made for the line. Matt chased and caught him,
bringing him down only feet short of scoring. The touchline crowd cheered him then, but he was oblivious to it. The scrum was formed and the ball was won by the opposing side. Matt watched it
bobble through the booted feet churning the mud and he caught the glance the other team’s scrum-half threw at the winger facing Matt, so when the ball came out Matt was already running. He
cut between the scrum-half and the winger as the former passed to the latter, intercepted the ball and snatched it out of the air – then he was running.