Rose of Tralee (49 page)

‘He might do that,’ her mother allowed. ‘Fancy him flitting, though – an’ him a tram man!’

‘Aye, but there’s bad as well as good in all jobs, I suppose,’ Rose said. ‘I must get dressed now, Mam, or I’ll be terribly late for work. Tell you what, I’ll pop round to the tram garage after work an’ see whether I can learn anything about him. If he’s still workin’ the trams he must know we’d catch up with him, though. But surely he doesn’t have enough savings yet to buy a lorry?’

‘Buy a lorry?’ her mother echoed. ‘What on earth . . . why should he buy a lorry? He had a good job, didn’t he?’

‘Ye-es, but he had big ideas, Mona said he was always talking about getting rich, being a millionaire by the time he was thirty. Anyway, I’ll see what I can find out,’ Rose said, heading for the kitchen door. ‘Mona an’ me will eat his breakfast this mornin’, Mam. Mona’s bound to be upset; they were quite friendly and went out together now and again.’

‘Aye, I thought they’d mek a match of it at one time,’ her mother said as Rose slipped out of the door. ‘Tell Mona grub’s ready when she is, then.’

*

Mona thought that if she lived to be a hundred she would never forget the sheer awfulness of this day. From the moment Rose had told her of Tommy’s defection she had felt as though the whole world was against her. He had been her lover and he had simply gone, leaving everyone in the lurch, not just herself. He owed Aunt Lily money, she presumed he had not given them the week’s notice at work and no doubt other peccadilloes would surface in the fullness of time. But worst of all, she must have been hoping, without even realising it, that he would stand by her after all, when she told him that she was going to Mrs Hancock’s that evening to have an abortion: Yes, that was the word she had intended to use; abortion. Not ‘getting rid of the baby’, or anything of that nature. She had meant to tell him the naked truth, which was why, yesterday, she had gone to work with two handkerchiefs, one an ordinary one and the other liberally sprinkled with pepper.

She had waited until lunch-time to bring out the second handkerchief and had then, not surprisingly, been seized by a paroxysm of sneezing. Pressing her handkerchief to her red and running eyes she had sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. And Miss Ellis, the old cat, had bidden her, tartly, to take her germs and herself out of the shop and to stay away until she wasn’t ‘oozin’ ‘orrible gairms from every pore’, as she had put it.

So Mona had intended to spend this morning making Tommy listen to her. Because she still thought that when it came to the last dreadful push he would probably stand by her. It was absurd, but she knew that whatever he had done she still felt as if he and she were meant to be together, so she was sure that the same feeling must nestle in his breast.

The trouble was, he had told so many lies, though not to her, admittedly. He had informed her quite airily that he had been brought up in a boys’ home in London, but had run away from there when he was ‘around thirteen’. So having been brought up in Liverpool was not true, nor was the fiction that his parents had moved down to London in order to get a job and had stayed there, though he himself had preferred to return to the Pool. His name had been chosen for him because he had been ‘found’ in winter, during a spell of extremely frosty weather. He might stick to it, he had inferred, but then again he might not. He seemed content with his rootlessness, appeared to prefer it to the more normal sort of background – but then he didn’t have much choice, Mona supposed drearily. And, of course, people who don’t have roots and don’t seem to want them don’t want continuity, either. Or wives and babies, homes of their own, responsibilities.

However, she had not, until this morning, admitted any of those things. She had simply told herself that he would not willingly let her suffer the pain of an abortion, knowing that she might lose not only the baby but also her life and, whilst accepting with most of her mind that she might have to go through with it, at the very back of it she had trustfully expected Tommy to turn up trumps, to find a loophole for her, or to take her on rather than see her suffer.

But now . . . well, he had gone, but that did not mean she would meekly go back to work, her ‘influenza’ magically cleared; not she! She would go along to the offices of the tram company and see whether anyone could tell her where Tommy had gone – and why. And if they had an address – and surely he would leave a forwarding address – she
would pursue him and make him listen to her.

Accordingly, Mona went downstairs, ate a hearty breakfast – the one that Tommy would have had, had he not absconded – and told Aunt Lily that she was taking a day off from the flower shop since, the previous day, it had looked as though she were going down with flu herself. She waved Rose off on her bicycle then, with a glance at the sunny spring morning, for March was well advanced, she went upstairs again, changed her old wool dress for a blue linen jacket and matching skirt, perched a white straw hat trimmed with blue violets on her shining gold hair and set off to discover what she could.

As it turned out, she did not have to go out to the tram depot, since the first tram she caught had Perky Perkins as conductor. He was an old friend from school and had known Tommy as well as Tommy allowed anyone to know him, and the minute he set eyes on Mona he came over to her, his lips forming a whistle. ‘Well, who’d ha’ thought it?’ he said, leaning against the arm of her seat and pushing his navy peaked cap to the back of his head. ‘Tommy gorraway just in time, so they tell me. Don’t suppose he paid his rent, eh? Cor, wharra feller!’

‘Just in time?’ Mona echoed innocently. ‘What d’you mean, Perky?’

‘He’s been runnin’ some sort of a scam for weeks, so they say,’ Perky said. ‘He’s been conductin’, as you know, handlin’ money, an’ he’d got friendly wi’ one of the gals in the offices an’ he used to help her cash up. ‘Course, he wasn’t supposed to, but no one said nothin’. In fact, if he’d not got greedy no one would likely have noticed the discrepancies. But he did an’ they did, an’ the very day they’d decided to pounce,
he goes off early an’ don’t come back.’ He chuckled. ‘Oh aye, he’s a fly one, Tommy Frost.’

‘Oh. So he didn’t leave no forwarding address?’ Mona asked rather wistfully. She should have known it would not be that easy! ‘He owes a week’s rent, no more, but he may have took more’n he owned. I don’t know, me aunt hasn’t checked yet.’

‘A forwardin’ address!’ Perky chuckled. ‘No, but he did leave a fair-sized clue. A newspaper, one o’ the national dailies, in his locker. It were marked in the “Situations Vacant” column, so they reckon he’s gone down there. The scuffers here are goin’ to get the fellers in the Met to check the jobs out, though I don’t suppose they’ll find him. No, our Tommy’s too fly for them soft southerners.’

‘You sound as though it were a good thing to cheat on the tram company,’ Mona said, folding her hands in her lap and lowering her eyes to gaze at her blue linen skirt.

Perky looked shocked. ‘No, we all know it were wrong, but he were a laugh, were Tommy. I’d not like to think of him bein’ chucked in a cell, like.’

‘Nor me. But me aunt . . . well, that were a mean thing to do, Perky. She’s widdered, makin’ her livin’ through her lodgers ...’

‘Mebbe he’ll send the rent money on,’ Perky said hopefully. ‘Hey up, there’s an inspector waiting at the next stop. I’d best look busy.’

‘Right,’ Mona said. ‘I’m off at the next stop, anyway, Let me know if you hear any more, Perky.’

Mona got down off the tram and stood quite still on the pavement, thinking hard. Tommy had left nothing in his locker but a newspaper, and the paper had an advertisement marked in pen, which seemed to indicate that he had gone back to London.
Newspaper, newspaper, she mused. Now why did that sound so familiar? Odd, when you thought about it, that Tommy should clear everything out and leave just about the only thing which might give folk a clue as to his whereabouts.

She had got off the tram on William Brown Street and glanced around her. The free library was handy, and the museum, the Walker art gallery ... but it was a glorious day and she wanted to think; surely nowhere would be better for that than St John’s Gardens? She walked along the pavement and in through the wide stone pillars. Sunshine fell through the trees, softly dappling the paths and grass, and illuminating a green painted seat set amidst a glorious display of spring flowers – crocuses in full, brave blossom, daffodil spears, greeny yellow still, and several bushes of the brilliant yellow forsythia made her feel suddenly hopeful. There was an answer to the puzzle of where Tommy had gone and she was suddenly convinced that she was the only one who could possibly find that answer. She walked across to the wooden seat and sat down on it, staring down at the gold and purple of the crocuses at her feet. Concentrate, Mona, she told herself grimly. He talked to you in a way he talked to no one else, so just sit here quietly and think with everything you’ve got. Where would Tommy go, with his supply of illicit money? He would have left the newspaper on purpose, of course – it was just like him to lay a false trail. But there was something else . . . something important, if only she could think of it ...

She concentrated and saw her cousin Rose’s face, heard her voice: He’s cleared out all of his things, even the stuff in the wastepaper basket, except for an
Echo
about a week old, and his bed’s not been slept in.

That was it! The clue! Why should he take such care, clear everything out, except for an old copy of the
Echo
? The only sensible answer was that he didn’t think the newspaper important, but had wanted to look again at something in it, just before he left the house for the last time. Of course he might have ringed an advertisement in that paper too, hoping to put them off the trail . . . but somehow she did not think it likely. He must have known full well that his landlady would not pursue him down south – or up north, for that matter – just to get a week’s rent.

Right. So the newspaper might tell her more than he meant it to. She would go home presently and read it from cover to cover. But now, whilst it was quiet and peaceful, she must go over and over in her mind everything that Tommy had ever said to her about his future. The lorry, for instance. The garage. The fact that he wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty. But those were all lovely day-dreams really, not the sort of thing which happened to people like them.

She thought for a very long time and came to several different conclusions. There were things that Tommy wanted ... but she would go home now and read that newspaper.

Back at the house, Lily and Agueda went about their housework, and naturally they talked a great deal about the wickedness of such a handsome and charming young man, and speculated as to where he was now. When they had cleaned through downstairs and done the bedrooms they marched purposefully into Tommy’s room. Rose said he had taken the key, which seemed a strange sort of thing to do, but if he had left it somewhere they intended to find it.

They did. Under the paper lining the drawers in which until recently Tommy’s underwear and shirts had lain. Agueda gave a cry of delight. ‘There’s the key, thank goodness, you won’t have to have the lock changed, my dear. Now when this room has been turned out you must write out an advertisement and put it in the newsagent’s window, that nice man in Heyworth Street has a good one. The advertisement will do for both Colm’s room and Tommy’s, for my dear Lily, it is just foolishness to continue to keep Colm’s room empty. His father does not think he will return and, quite frankly, it would be a far from comfortable situation if he did. He and dear Rosie were so close once, to live under the same roof with neither speaking to the other would be dreadful indeed. So let the rooms and tell yourself that we are starting afresh.’

‘I know you’re right, really,’ Lily said as they stripped the bed with practised ease and threw the bedding out onto the landing. ‘But I feel so guilty over poor Rosie. She’s pining for him you know, Agueda, though she don’t say much. Pass me them clean sheets, love.’

They began to make up the bed and were just pulling the fresh bedspread over it when they heard someone come into the kitchen. A voice shouted: ‘Aunt Lily it’s me. Mona. Where are you?’

‘Upstairs, doin’ the bedrooms,’ Lily called back, adding quietly to her friend: ‘Eh, dear, these young things! Here we are, doin’ Tommy’s room out for someone else, and a couple of months ago I would have sworn that he and Mona ...’

‘Excuse me, Aunt, but I wondered . . . have you thrown away the newspaper you found in Tommy’s wastepaper basket?’ Mona said, appearing in the
doorway. ‘I thought it might be worth taking a look at it, to see why he didn’t chuck it out wi’ the rest of his rubbish.’

‘It’s in the kitchen, along wi’ the lining paper from the chest of drawers,’ Lily said. ‘But it weren’t the latest edition, chuck. I don’t know as you’ll find out much from that.’

‘No, probably not. But I mean to look,’ Mona said, turning to go down the stairs again. ‘You never know – we might get your rent money back yet.’

‘We’ve got the key,’ Agueda said. ‘It was under the lining paper in the chest of drawers. I half hoped for a note, or the rent money, but it was just the key. I wonder why he hid it there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mona said, sounding genuinely puzzled. ‘But then he was an odd mixture. Shall I make you some elevenses whilst I’m down there? Say tea an’ some buttered toast?’

‘That would be very nice,’ Lily said gratefully. ‘You’re a good gal, Mona, especially as it’s your day off. You’ll find a tin with some of my jam tarts on the second shelf in the pantry if you’d like to set them out as well.’

‘Right,’ Mona called; she was at the bottom of the stairs now. ‘Ready in ten minutes, ladies.’

The newspaper had not been marked, or at least Mona did not think so at first. But when she began to look hard, she noticed that one or more advertisements had been carefully cut from the paper. They were not all advertisements for jobs, either. One was, but another was in the “for sale” section. You blighter, Tommy Frost, you aren’t goin’ to make this easy for me, she told herself, carefully tearing out the appropriate sheet and folding it into her jacket
pocket. But I’m not beat yet! This paper is dated 5 March, that’s a fortnight back. I wonder if I can find up a whole copy somewhere in the Vale? But that means going from house to house, asking, and that will make people start to wonder. No, the best thing to do is to go down to Victoria Street and ask in the offices there. They’re sure to have back copies of all their editions.