Mary's Child (26 page)

As Lance turned back to the bar, Chrissie said brightly, ‘I’ll get it, Mr  Morgan. Would you like something? I can look after the bar.’ This was a Tuesday morning, shortly before noon. There were only two customers in the public bar and one old woman in the snug.

‘Aye, all right, I’ll have the same.’ So Lance settled down in a chair opposite Walter and asked, ‘How’s business?’

Walter answered, ‘Business is good. But  . . .’

Chrissie heard snatches of their talk as she poured the whiskies, put the glasses on a tray with a jug of water and carried them through.

‘. . . Said he’d got the offer of this better job in Birmingham and he was taking it. Gave no notice. Put on his coat and walked out . . . been with me ten years . . . so I’m left to do the books and the rest of the paperwork myself and I don’t—’ Walter broke off to say, ‘Thank you, lass.’

Lance Morgan nodded. ‘Thanks, Chrissie. This is on me.’

‘Right you are, Mr Morgan.’ Chrissie’s skirt swirled as she spun on her heel to go back behind the bar. And Lance went on, ‘You’ll have to get somebody else then.’

Walter dripped water into his whisky and grumbled, ‘Easier said than done. I need somebody that knows the trade and I can’t find one  . . .’

Chrissie was busy for a while after that as a few men drifted in, the first of the lunchtime trade. They talked loudly after coming from the din in the yards but Chrissie was used to that and still caught a word or two of the conversation in the sitting-room. It soon turned to Lance’s problems.

‘I’m just about making a living; that’s all I can say. The Frigate was nearer the yards and I got a lot of custom from them. This place is too far off the beaten track. I’m hoping trade will pick up but if it doesn’t improve by the end of the month I’ll have to lay off one of the girls.’

And then, some time later, she heard the scrape of chairs and Lance bidding farewell, ‘Cheerio, then, Walter. I hope you find somebody soon. You’ve enough to do with a place that size without having to handle the paperwork and books.’

Walter laughed, cheered by the whisky. ‘We’re a right pair! I’ve got too much work and you’re wanting more  . . .’ His voice drifted away as he went off down the passage to the street, Lance going with him.

Chrissie stood still for a full minute until Lance returned. Then she jerked back to life and gasped, ‘Sorry!’ to the old woman now rapping impatiently on the bar of the snug with her threepenny bit. Chrissie gave her another glass of beer, closing her ears to the muttered ‘Young lasses standing about dreaming  . . .’

Then she turned back into the public bar and said, ‘He’s right, Mr  Morgan.’

Lance looked at her. ‘Walter? What about?’

‘I couldn’t help hearing, with it being quiet in here this morning.’

Lance replied gloomily, ‘It’s quiet every morning – and the rest of the time. But what are you on about? You say Walter was right?’

‘When he said he had too much work and you didn’t have enough.’

‘Oh, aye. He hit the nail on the head then.’

‘Well, I thought, suppose you kept on Millie – she could look after the bairns and the housekeeping like I do – and let me go and work for Mr  Ferguson. I could do his books and I know the trade.’

Lance blinked at her, shocked. ‘I couldn’t sack you. You’re my right hand.’

Chrissie urged, ‘I could still work for you at weekends and in the evenings.’

‘Ah. Well’ – Lance put in craftily – ‘suppose things pick up like you say they will? Suppose we start getting full during the day? Where will I be then?’

‘You could always get somebody else to help in the bar.’

Lance was silent a moment, then sighed. ‘’Course, you don’t need to ask me. You could just ha’ given your notice and walked out.’

Chrissie shook her head, ‘No, I couldn’t. You’ve always been good to me, Mr  Morgan.’

‘And you’ve deserved it.’ Lance sighed again, accepting the inevitable this time. ‘Well, you’ve got your heart set on it. I’m not surprised. I’ve thought for a while that you’d go further than just being a barmaid. All right, I’ll write you a reference, then you put your coat on and go round and see Walter. If he has any sense he’ll give you a try at the job, anyway. And if you find that—’ he paused to pick his words, discarding ‘It’s beyond you’ – ‘you don’t like it, then you come back to me.’

‘Thank you, Mr Morgan.’ Chrissie ran upstairs to fetch her coat.

That afternoon she started work at the Palace.

By the end of the week she had settled in. At the end of the month the receptionist left to marry a seaman. His ship sailed out of the Tyne so she moved to Newcastle. Chrissie took on her duties as well for a rise in pay. Walter Ferguson told Lance Morgan, ‘That’s a right good lass you sent me.’

Lance replied drily, ‘Aye, I know that.’

‘She does a marvellous job wi’ the books,
and
she looks after all the other office work. She does twice as much as the lazy bugger I had before.’ Walter lowered his voice. ‘And she’s sharp. She spotted the head barman was dipping his fingers in the till. He’s gone, with a flea in his ear and knowing he’s lucky not to be in jail. He would ha’ been if it had been left to me.’

‘Didn’t you charge him?’

‘Well, your lass pleaded with me, said he had a wife and little bairns and they would suffer. So at the finish I gave him a week’s money and showed him the door.’ Walter shook his head, ‘She has a way o’ getting round you.’

Lance answered, drily again, ‘I know that an’ all.’

The Palace Hotel was a big, bustling place, the grandest in the town. At first Chrissie was overawed by the sheer size and opulence of it, the forty bedrooms, the huge dining-room and the numerous bars, all hushed with thick pile carpets. The foyer was spacious, with a long reception desk, and Chrissie worked behind it at a desk of her own. There she kept the books, had her typewriter and dealt with the hotel’s correspondence.

The forty bedrooms were usually full, often occupied by ‘theatricals’, the artistes appearing that week at the Empire Theatre in the town. Monied and professional people lunched and dined there at the big, white-clothed tables under the chandeliers hung from the high ceiling of the dining-room. It boasted a French chef and claimed to serve the best meals in the town.

Jack Ballantyne was a frequent visitor. He stared when he first saw Chrissie at her desk in the foyer. ‘Hello, Chrissie!’

Walter was passing and paused, disconcerted. He asked, ‘You know Miss Carter, Mr  Ballantyne?’

Jack nodded solemnly. ‘Yes, Miss Carter and I have met in the way of business.’ So it’s Miss Carter now, he thought.

This girl was not wearing a well-worn dress with a white apron over it. Her dark frock was businesslike but smart, showing off her small waist and high bosom. It looked new. It was, and had cost Chrissie nineteen shillings and sixpence. She blushed under the men’s gaze and looked down at the work on her desk.

Jack Ballantyne strode on, pausing for a moment to exchange a few words with a group of local businessmen, his dark thatch showing above the heads of the others. Then he went on to the dining-room and out of Chrissie’s sight.

He paused then, looking for Hector Milligan and his wife, then saw them at a table by a window and crossed to join them. Hector was chairman of a ship-owning firm and had come to visit the Ballantyne yard. He and his wife had dined with the Ballantynes the previous evening and this morning Richard had ordered Jack, ‘I want you to entertain the Milligans. I can’t get away from the yard at present. Stand them lunch and I’ll send the Rolls round at two to bring Hector down to the yard. You stay on at the Palace and escort Mrs  Milligan if she wants to visit the shops or go for a stroll. And don’t look like that! Selling the ships is just as important as building them and we want an order out of Milligan.’

Jack had grinned. ‘Sorry! Don’t worry, I’ll do my best to butter them up.’ Now he joined them with a wide smile and a bow for Rhoda Milligan.

Meanwhile Walter Ferguson asked of Chrissie, ‘So what business have you been doing with the gentry?’

Chrissie laughed. ‘He was joking. He did the business with Mr  Morgan when he sold the Halfway House – I was just there at the time.’ Then she went on, trying to shrug off her acquaintance with Jack Ballantyne, ‘One of the maids on the first floor says the light in her cupboard doesn’t work and she needs more sheets and pillowcases.’

Walter said, ‘I’ll get an electrician to see to the light. Tell the housekeeper about the linen.’

Chrissie reminded him, ‘Mrs  Cassidy has gone home poorly.’

‘Damn!’ Walter chewed his lip then asked, ‘Will you deal with it?’

‘As soon as I’ve finished typing these letters and sorting these invoices.’

‘Good lass.’ Walter was still thinking of Jack and there was a note of wary respect in his regard for Chrissie now. She seemed to be in the good books of one of his valued patrons – the Ballantynes, father, son and grandfather, frequently lunched at the Palace Hotel and engaged rooms for businessmen visiting the yard.

Another regular was Max Forthrop. He had an oily smile for the manager as he walked through the foyer but he looked through the girl behind the desk as of no importance, not recognising her. It was not surprising, since this young woman was much changed from the fifteen-year-old skivvy of two years before. But she knew him at once and stayed bent over her work as he passed.

Instinct told her that if Forthrop recognised her he could make trouble for her. She remembered how he had spoken to her when she had been the junior servant in his household, as if she were some lower animal. She would not submit to that now. The memory alone angered her. She realised she was scowling with jaw set and forced herself to relax. She thought, Chrissie, you can’t hide for ever. Just treat him like any other customer.

So when he passed her desk again she made a point of greeting him with a radiant smile, as she did all the other customers. ‘Good morning, Mr  Forthrop.’

That was a mistake. He still did not remember her, but he noticed her and drew conclusions from that smile. He had come to see a client who was staying at the Palace and was on the way up to his room. But he thought that when his business was done  . . .

As Chrissie walked through the dining-room a few minutes later she saw Jack Ballantyne sharing a table with Hector Milligan and his wife. She knew them as guests in the hotel. Milligan was a man of sixty, but his wife, plump and corseted, was thirty years his junior. Her eyes were fixed on Jack Ballantyne as he talked to her husband. Chrissie scarcely noticed her and was careful not to stare at Jack herself.

She went on to the kitchen, clangorous, steaming and redolent of roasting beef, to check a batch of invoices with André, the French chef. She could not see him and asked one of his assistants, ‘Is André about, Joe?’

Young Joe looked up from the joint he was basting and laughed shortly. ‘Not today. There’s a race meeting at Newcastle. He’ll be there.’ Then he nodded at the invoices. ‘But if you only want to ask about them, see Mrs  Wilberforce.’

Chrissie glanced at André’s deputy, working at the other end of the kitchen. Mrs  Wilberforce was a wide-smiling, big, bosomy woman of forty or so, quick and light on her feet. Chrissie said doubtfully, ‘Mr  Ferguson told me when I started work here that I was to ask André about kitchen invoices.’

Joe grinned. ‘Aye. Well, André’s the chef, so Walter – Mr  Ferguson – told you to ask him. And it looks posh, having a French chef, but the one who really runs this place is Mrs  Wilberforce. When André takes the day off – and he takes a few because he’s fond o’ the gee-gees – everything goes on like clockwork. But if Clara Wilberforce isn’t here it’s bloody chaos!’

Chrissie took his advice and got the answers she wanted from a beaming Mrs  Wilberforce in half the time it would have taken dealing with André. She told herself she had learnt something and hurried back to her desk.

She left the invoices there and walked quickly through to the linen room at the rear of the hotel. She collected an armful of sheets and pillowcases then ran up the stairs to the first floor. The maid’s cupboard was halfway along a corridor. When she reached it she was opposite another side corridor. She did not look into this as, laden with linen to her chin, she turned to open the door of the cupboard. If she had she would have seen Max Forthrop emerging from his client’s room, his business completed. But Chrissie cast a glance back the way she had come and saw Jack Ballantyne at the end of the corridor striding towards her.

She shoved open the door and walked into the cupboard that was really a small room. It was windowless but enough light spilled in from the corridor for her to see the shelves stacked with linen and cleaning materials. She found the place for the sheets and set the new pile there, straightened the edges neatly. Then the door closed behind her and she was plunged into darkness.

Chrissie clicked her tongue in exasperation, started to turn but then hands pinioned her own brutally and breath was loud and close on her face. She kicked out, felt her booted feet connect and heard a grunt of pain. The grip on her arms relaxed. She spun and twisted then, tore away and lashed out, hands flailing. Her palm stung and she heard the
crack!
as it smacked into a face. Then she was free, stumbling to the door, fumbling at the handle and snatching it open. She was out and running along the corridor and down the stairs.