Memories of You (21 page)

‘There were two of them. Which one do you mean?'

‘You know very well which one I mean. The blonde, although to call her that doesn't do her justice.'

‘What would you call her, then?'

‘The angel? The form divine? The goddess?'

‘A baby goddess as yet, I think,' Tom said.

‘So you do know which one I mean?'

‘Of course. No one could ever refer to poor lumpen Ernestine as a form divine – or any of those other hyperboles you've just uttered.'

‘So?'

‘The beautiful child is Elise Partington. She's at school with my sister.'

‘Child?'

‘I'm afraid so. She is thirteen, maybe fourteen at the most.'

‘She looks older.'

‘Oh . . . do you think so? Her face is that of a child.'

‘And may always be so,' Perry said. ‘Some women are like that. It can be devilishly attractive. But her figure, those delicious curves . . . the way she walks . . .'

Tom's puritanical instincts caused him to flush. ‘I say, hold on, old chap. I don't like the way this conversation is going.'

‘In some countries – even in some parts of America – she could be married by now.'

‘But here in England you could go to jail for what I suspect your intentions are.'

Tom tried to make a joke of it but Perry sensed his disapproval. He opened his eyes wide as if shocked at whatever Tom was suggesting. ‘My intentions are entirely honourable.'

‘That's a first.'

Perry ignored the taunt and said, ‘Partington?'

‘Yes.'

‘Hugh Partington's daughter?'

‘No other.'

‘And Elise is an only child, isn't she?'

‘Yes, but how do you know that?'

‘Everybody in society knows that the beautiful Selma Partington has one child on whom she dotes, and that Hugh Partington would spend his entire fortune on making her happy.'

‘That last is an exaggeration. Partington is very astute and he would never contemplate Elise marrying someone he didn't think was suitable. If that's what you have in mind.'

At that Perry tossed a ball up into the air and aimed a shot directly at Tom. It caught his friend in the midriff.

‘Oomph! What was that for?'

‘For reminding me that I am not, as you put it, “suitable”. I am cultured, expensively educated, some say charming, and I am from a very good family, but although I will inherit a country estate and a gloomy mansion, I am poor. Some fathers might be impressed by my background but not, I imagine, Hugh Partington.'

‘Miss Fry might be.'

‘Miss Fry?'

‘The orphaned Ernestine's guardian. Ernestine is heir to a considerable fortune.'

‘Poor Ernestine.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because looking as she does she will realize one day that anyone who shows an interest in her must be a fortune hunter.'

‘You can be very cruel, Perry.'

‘No, just realistic. And at the moment I'm also very thirsty. I suggest we go to the summer house and refresh ourselves.'

 

From her seat on the terrace Selma had observed the way Tom Chapman and his handsome friend had stopped playing tennis when the girls had walked towards the summer house. She was too far away to hear what they were saying but the way they were looking at the girls raised a prickle of unease. Tom Chapman was eighteen and having just left school he was due to go into the army. Selma did not know what Perry Wallace was going to do, but she hoped that whatever it was would take him away from London.

She had no idea why she suddenly knew this was important. Perhaps it was a mother's instinct – something telling her that her precious child was in danger of some sort. She tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling off and reached for her cigarette case which was lying on the table next to her drink. When she lit her cigarette her hands were shaking slightly. She decided that as soon as it was polite to do so she would thank Shirley's mother and say it was time to go home.

 

The hot weather dragged on into autumn. Working in a busy restaurant in the heart of London was exhausting and Helen cherished every day off when she could escape to the seaside, where at least she might find a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. Sometimes she took a trip into the country instead. She would buy a ticket at the coach station in Poland Street and take a Green Line bus to any destination that happened to take her fancy.

She was always amazed and delighted by how rural the country could be within thirty miles of London – villages with duck ponds, ancient inns, woodland walks, and everything so mellow and different from the harsh beauty of her native north country.

Sometimes she would see an old house, a dwelling that must have stood there for centuries, and she would daydream about the people who had lived there. One day, looking at such a house through the tangled stems of roses in its neglected garden, her imagination took flight. I want to write about this house, she thought. Not a history book, I'm not clever enough for that. I want to write a story about it, how it changed and grew, and what it meant to the generations who lived here over the years. Maybe it would be the same family . . . maybe not . . .

On the coach on the way back to London she began to make notes in the little notebook she carried with her wherever she went. But by the time the country lanes had given way to busy roads, and the clear, lucent light of the country sky had clouded over with the smoke and dust of the city, Helen closed her notebook and put it away in her bag. I'm an eighteen-year-old waitress, she thought. What on earth made me think I could write a whole novel? And even if I did, who would want to publish it? Something written by a complete unknown? No, perhaps I'd better forget about writing a novel for a while and set my sights a little lower.

Once she was back in her room she wrote a brief account of the day's events in the latest exercise book which, added to the pile of exercise books in the cupboard, became the latest instalment of what she jokingly thought of as
The Journal of Helen Norton, The Everyday Doings of an Ordinary Girl
.

Then, after making tea and toast for herself, she got her second-hand typewriter from its hiding place under the bed and fed two sheets of foolscap separated by a piece of carbon paper into the roller. She consulted some scribbled notes and began to write something different altogether.

Helen could only do this when Dorothy was not at home. She did not want anyone to know what she was writing and she knew that the sound of the typewriter would bring her curious flatmate to her room. But as Dorothy seldom came home early, and even stayed out all night now and then, keeping her secret was easy. The difficult part was knowing when to stop. Or knowing if what she was writing was any good. There was only one way to find out, and the time was approaching when she would have to do something about it or put away her dreams.

I'll set myself a deadline, she thought. It's the only way. I'll put this lot in a big envelope and make sure to post it before Christmas. Or maybe I should take it round personally. No, they might think that was presumptuous of me, and in any case I'm hardly the type of person they would expect to walk into their office. One look at me and someone would take the envelope, tell me they would be in touch and dump it in the wastepaper basket as soon as I'd walked out the door.

Helen kept her promise to herself, and once the restaurant began to get busy over the Christmas holiday season she had hardly any time to brood about the lack of response from the magazine she had finally chosen to send her manuscripts to. In fact what caused her more anguish was the absence of Matthew Renshaw.

According to Dorothy, Matthew had gone to Spain where some anarchists were causing trouble in Catalonia and Aragon.

‘How do you know this?' Helen said.

‘Simple, I asked one of the other reporters. Honestly, Helen, I guessed long ago that you're sweet on him but you'll get nowhere unless you learn to put yourself forward a bit more.'

For the rest of Helen's shift that day and long into the night, Helen didn't know whether to be more upset that her feelings for Matthew had been so obvious or that the man himself was in Spain and probably risking life and limb reporting on a bunch of lawless people who, rightly or wrongly, wanted to overthrow their government.

Helen had always kept up to date with the news by reading the newspapers that customers left behind. But recently she had started buying her own newspaper – the paper Matthew worked for, of course – and scanning it quickly for reports from ‘our foreign correspondent'.

If Matthew had returned to London after he had been to Spain, he had not come into the restaurant. But then why should he? Stefano's wasn't the only good restaurant in the area and Matthew, like some of the other customers, might like to try somewhere different for a while such as the new Pizza Paradiso in Store Street or an Indian meal at Veeraswamy's.

She read his reports and learned that, no longer in Spain, he was still risking life and limb covering such events as the riots in Paris, where there was a political crisis, and then he went on to Austria where there was actually a civil war. Talk at the tables in the restaurant often turned to the events in Europe these days, especially amongst the refugees. There was gloomy speculation that the maelstrom of turbulence and destruction was in danger of plunging the whole world into another war.

Helen's nineteenth birthday passed and still she hadn't heard from the magazine she'd submitted her work to. She'd first come across
Potpourri
some time ago when a customer had left it in the restaurant. Dorothy had found it first and after glancing through it during her tea break she'd passed it on to Helen.

‘Not bad,' she'd said. ‘But I don't get why they've called it after a bowl of dried flower petals.'

‘Potpourri can also mean odds and ends,' Helen told her. ‘A miscellaneous mixture of things.'

‘If that means it's a hotchpotch then it's just the right name for it. I mean, personally I like something like the
Woman's Illustrated
. For threepence – that's half the price of what
Potpourri
is – you get a bit of fashion, a nice recipe and a romantic story or two – oh, and the readers' letters, of course; some of them are good for a laugh. This
Potpourri
has all of those, I give you that, but it's also got more serious stuff. I mean, people discussing things.'

‘What things?'

‘There's an article about working in a cotton mill in a northern town and another one about town life versus country life. I mean, as if it isn't a foregone conclusion! Who would want to live in the country? But here, see for yourself.'

Helen had saved the magazine to read that night and she'd enjoyed every page. She couldn't remember when she had first had the idea that she could write something for the magazine and send it in, but she did know that if she did it wouldn't be a romantic story. She had another idea. There was something she was bursting to write about and, conceited or not, she thought the readers of
Potpourri
would be interested.

She had a vague idea that any submission would have to be typed rather than handwritten and a trip to the library, where she consulted the
Writers' And Artists' Yearbook
, confirmed this. So she'd bought her second-hand typewriter, a box of foolscap and a box of carbon paper. The
Yearbook
had also advised that the writer should keep a copy. The first box of foolscap had been used, and one or two more, before the day Helen decided she was ready to send something in, making Christmas her deadline. Finally, in the New Year, a month after her nineteenth birthday, the postman delivered a large envelope. Her work had been returned.

For a whole week Helen didn't even open the envelope. She had put it under the bed alongside the typewriter and brooded about it. All my hopes dashed, she thought dramatically. And then she remembered another piece of advice offered by the
Yearbook
:
Read your rejections carefully. The editor, although not wanting your work, might have found the time to offer suggestions on how to improve it
. So, one night after a busy day at the restaurant, she opened the envelope and after reading the letter that was enclosed with her typescript she remained sleepless for the rest of the night.

She had already wasted a week and now she had to wait for her day off before she could go to the magazine's premises in Russell Square. The office was on the very top floor of a large old house which had once been the home of a well-to-do family. This was probably where the most junior maid slept, Helen thought as she climbed the seemingly endless flights of stairs.