The Runaway (42 page)

He had been with them a month when Dana, checking the books, noticed discrepancies which should not have been there. Frowning, she checked the sums taken against the tickets sold, and her heart sank like a stone. Jimmy was so good at his job, so cheerful and efficient! The staff liked him to a man – or rather to a woman – and his willingness to ease the load, which Dana sometimes felt almost crushed her, had been a tremendous bonus. Ask Jimmy to work a double shift, see him in the kitchen poaching eggs whilst one of the waitresses made toast,
come across him in the auditorium clearing the ice cream wrappers and popcorn bags which careless customers had abandoned as they had left, and you had to admire him.

Dana, having noticed the disparities, mentioned them to Jimmy, who said apologetically that, because the job was so new to him, he had undoubtedly made mistakes. This had relieved Dana’s mind considerably. She felt that to lose his help would be more than she could bear, and so they had soldiered on. Indeed, Jimmy might still have been working at the Freeway – and creaming off money in a dozen different ways – had one of the customers not lost a gold watch. She was an old lady and it was an antique fob watch valued by its owner for sentimental reasons as well as its worth, which was considerable. Jimmy had been helping the cleaners to get the auditorium cleared and had lined the cleaners up, demanding sternly that they turn out their pockets. They did so willingly enough and Jimmy was just dismissing them and telling the tearful old lady that she must have lost the watch somewhere else when Dana appeared on the scene, demanding to know what was going on. Jimmy told her, and was repeating that the watch must have been lost elsewhere when Dana, standing by him, saw that his right hand was plunged into his pocket. Without giving herself time to consider, she grabbed his wrist and jerked his hand out of its resting place, bringing with it something which shone and sparkled as it flew into the next row of seats.

Speechlessly, Dana stared at the man she had both liked and trusted, and he stared back as boldly as though he had never seen an antique gold watch, far less had it
in his pocket. ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked in an injured tone. ‘I were just about to give it to the lady when you snatched it from my hand and chucked it into the next row of seats. I’m surprised at you, Miss McBride; anyone might have thought I meant to steal the perishin’ thing, which probably ain’t worth tuppence.’

Dana reached across and picked up the watch. She was burning with anger but realised that there was only one thing she could do. She handed the old lady her property, then turned to Jimmy Strange. ‘Well, Mr Strange, I dare say it will be no surprise to you to learn that I’ve had my suspicions of your honesty for some time. You think you’re very clever, but you weren’t clever enough to cook the books so that I wouldn’t notice. Don’t come in tomorrow – or ever again for that matter – and don’t expect a week’s salary in lieu of notice. I’m pretty sure a solicitor would say you should be prosecuted, but I don’t have the time for such goings on.’

Jimmy Strange stared at her. ‘Just you watch yourself, you jumped-up ginger-headed little bitch,’ he said, and afterwards Dana thought that the worst thing was that he kept his voice low and even pleasant, though the words he spoke were full of malice. ‘You can keep your effin’ job. I wouldn’t work for you any longer if you were to pay me a hundred pound a minute, and you won’t find it easy to replace me ’cos I’ll put the word around, so I will. Half the staff’ll leave ’cos they’ll know you set me up, and t’other half – the half what stays – ain’t worth spit.’

He spat on the words and the cleaning staff, mostly elderly ladies, who had been listening, fascinated, to the conversation, blinked. After a moment the oldest and
most vociferous of them, a Mrs Butterworth, surged forward. ‘Why you nasty, thievin’ little bastard,’ she said indignantly, pointing at Jimmy. ‘One or two of us has had our doubts about you and now we know we was right. The usherettes have missed popcorn and chocolate bars; they thought it were the delivery company and accused the chap on the van of short-changin’ us, but there were those among us – me for one – what thought otherwise.’ She turned to Dana, ‘You tell the scuffers, Miss Mac! He’d of stole that watch if you’d not acted quick. You go and get the scuffers whiles me and me mates hang on to him.’

Dana had turned to the man beside her, but he had gone. The last she saw of him was his dark figure legging it to the exit.

Remembering the incident, and how unhappy it had made her, Dana sighed to herself. When she had eventually discovered the extent of Jimmy Strange’s perfidy she had determined to pay back every penny and had done so, despite the fact that Jimmy’s little excursions into dishonesty had made up to quite a sum. All the staff had been wonderfully supportive, and Polly, dear Polly, had insisted on paying her share of what they referred to as ‘Jimmy’s debt’, because she said she had suspected him from the first – too smarmy, too eager to please, too perishin’ hard-workin’ – of not being what he seemed, but had done nothing about it.

But now the debt was paid, Polly and Ernie had gone their separate ways and the cinema was doing even better than it had in Jake’s day. With the help of the cookery book from the Great War, Dana’s offerings in the cafeteria were much admired and extremely popular. Customers
often queued for tables, sometimes even people who had not attended the cinema performance, and Dana paid in at the bank two or three times a week, because the Jimmy Strange episode had taught her a valuable lesson. Dishonesty comes in various guises, and to keep more money than was necessary on the premises could be to put temptation into the way of someone who would not turn thief for a few shillings but might do so for a few pounds.

Time passed. Polly left for her training centre and wrote to Dana two or three times a week; she was very happy. Ernie joined his ship the
Sarah Jane
and wrote to Polly almost every day, though he was only able to post the letters on his return to port. Naturally enough, Polly relayed the information Ernie gave her in her letters to Dana, and Dana, writing back with stories of nights spent fire watching and days spent cooking, cleaning and doing the cinema’s books, felt tempted to invent, for hers was dull work, no matter how you looked at it. And lonely. Very soon after Polly’s departure, Dana realised that she had never been so completely alone, save for the short period – a matter of weeks – between Caitlin’s leaving Temperance Court and Polly’s moving in.

What was worse, she and only she was in command. After the awful experience with Jimmy Strange she had determined not to employ anyone else in a managerial position who might take advantage of the easy way she had always run things. Besides, as the war progressed she became a fire watcher, an air raid precautions warden, and anything else which would help when air raids began. No one doubted that eventually this would happen all over the country, though at present the
Luftwaffe were concentrating mainly on London and the south.

‘But they’ll soon get our measure and come up to ports such as Liverpool and Barrow-in-Furness,’ Ralph said in one of his letters. ‘A good job there’s a nice deep shelter only twenty yards or so from the Freeway; mind you go there as soon as the sirens sound.’

Since the sirens sounded mainly at night, and at night Dana was in the city centre fire watching, the shelter was of little use to her or to the patrons of the Freeway, long since dispersed in the home-going crowd, but she did not say so to Ralph. Instead she wrote funny, cheerful letters, knowing he enjoyed receiving them and wishing desperately that she could send the same sorts of epistles to Con. This, however, was impossible, since he had never replied to the letter she had sent in response to his own long and painful one. She got news of him through Feena and Johnny and hoped that he heard of her by the same circuitous route; if he wanted to, that is. Alone in her position as manager of both the cinema and the cafeteria, alone in her rooms at Temperance Court, Dana soldiered on. She wrote to Jake, telling him she felt a fraud because she was neither in the forces nor making munitions, but she never suggested that she might find a replacement for herself, or that she might abandon her post. Jake was in the thick of it, and his replies to her letters revealed how he longed to hear every detail about the Freeway. His plans for the cinema when the war was over were a trifle grandiose, but Dana took them with a pinch of salt. She guessed he was just dreaming, and everyone deserved their dreams, so she never said anything in her own letters which might bring him down to earth.

If I do happen to meet someone who could take my place and manage the cinema alone then I do believe I could find a second person to cope with the cafeteria, Dana told herself in bed one night, letting herself relax and turning her pillow so that the cool side was against her cheek. If I could do that then I really might abandon the cinema and join the Land Army. Oh, what bliss it would be to smell fresh air and green grass instead of dust, plush seats and celluloid! But that time had not yet come and right now, she told herself firmly, she meant to go to sleep and dream of Castletara and Con.

In fact, so tired was she that she dreamed of cinemas, and cooking, burning in her dream a great many cakes, and having to promise an indignant Jake that she would not only pay him for all the ruined ingredients but would make the cakes again the very next time she had a day off.

In the morning, still groggy with sleep, she actually thought the dream a reality, and was planning how she could possibly obtain cake ingredients when rationing – and shortages – made every ounce of sugar or flour precious, when the truth dawned and she gave a snort of amusement. It had only been a dream, and she had best get washed and dressed or she would miss her tram and be late for work – almost as blameworthy as burning a bunch of fancy cakes!

Chapter Fifteen

June 1940

DANA WAS COOKING
for the cafeteria when the knock came at the door. Sighing, she was about to dust off her hands and answer it when the door was pushed open and Ernie’s grinning face appeared in the aperture. ‘Hi, Dee!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Didn’t expect to see me, did you? I thought I’d pop in just so’s you could drop our Polly a line, let her know I’m still in the land of the livin’ so to speak. All right if I come in?’

‘Course it is, and it’s wonderful to see you,’ Dana said at once. ‘We’ve been worried about you, though of course we realised you’d had no chance to write home. I take it you’ve been involved in this rescue thing that everyone’s talking about?’

‘That’s right; the old
Sarah Jane
was one of the ships sent to Dunkirk to get the BEF back from the continong, but the troops are all home now – well, all the ones who made it to the beaches – so as soon as the old girl is patched up we’ll be off on another Atlantic run.’ He came right into the room as he was speaking, put the kettle on and peered inquisitively at the paraphernalia of baking spread out all over the kitchen table. ‘Have you taken in lodgers or something? There’s enough food here to feed an army!’

Dana laughed. ‘No, no, I’m still on my own, apart from when Polly is on leave of course. I’m baking for the cafeteria; just scones and stuff like that. But I’m making a mince and onion pie, so if you’d like to share it you can stay for lunch. And whilst the kettle’s boiling you can jolly well be useful. There’s a bag of peas in the pantry waiting to be podded …’

‘Peas!’ Ernie’s eyes glistened. ‘Cor, that’d be a treat and a half that would. We don’t get much fresh food of any description whilst we’re at sea, which is most of the time of course. We’ve just come back from America with a load of grub, weapons and so forth, and some stupid clerk made a mess of revictualling us. We ran out of food just off Ireland except for half a bag of spuds, so even the thought of fresh peas sets all me juices goin’.’ He emerged from the pantry with the bag of peas, shed his jacket and sat down opposite Dana. ‘Mind if I eat a pod or two?’

Dana was beginning to say that he could help himself when her eyes widened and she peered more closely at her companion. ‘Ernie, you’re wounded! And that bandage is all bloodstained. Whatever happened? Do you want a fresh dressing?’

Ernie, grinning bashfully, shook his head. ‘Nah, it’s fine,’ he said airily, and then, apparently seeing the concern on Dana’s face, continued, ‘It ain’t nothin’ really, only a scratch. Someone said the dockers – the thieving buggers – had left some pineapples down in the hold, and of course there was a rush to be the first to get ’em. Me and a mate made for the companionway at the same moment, and I caught my arm on a nail sticking out at the side.’ He grinned as Dana laughed. ‘But don’t you
go tellin’ nobody ’cos everyone thinks I got it in mortal combat. Poll writ to you lately? Last time I heard from her she was waiting for her posting. Could be anywhere in Great Britain, she said; fancy that, hey? I can just see our Poll eatin’ haggis and wearin’ a kilt.’

‘She’d not had the posting last time she wrote,’ Dana told him. ‘I’m hoping she’ll come in this direction so we can meet occasionally. I suppose I could telephone her – I’ve done it a couple of times – but it’s not really very satisfactory. She’s awfully shy on the phone; first of all she shouts and then I ask her questions and there are these long pauses. I’ll tell her that you’re safe and that your ship was one of the ones getting the BEF to safety, though.’

Ernie, expertly podding peas, nodded his agreement. ‘Ta, Dee. As for callin’ her station, I ain’t comfortable on the phone either,’ he acknowledged. ‘But tell me where you got these peas from. Fresh veggies and fruit is like gold dust, so how come this here bag is bulging with pods?’

‘I’ve a pal with an allotment just a bus ride from the cinema; he’s agreed to go shares with his produce if I help with the heavy digging, planting and weeding.’

‘Cor, Dee, that ‘ud be great, especially the peas,’ Ernie said enthusiastically. ‘Who’s the feller? Ought I to tell Ralph? He might not be all that pleased.’

‘Tell anyone you like,’ Dana said rather crossly. Ralph, she knew, was writing to a South African girl and hoped to marry her once the war was over. But there was no point in telling Ernie that. Because she and Ralph exchanged letters, everyone took it for granted that they were a couple, which was downright daft, since she wrote
to Jake as well without anyone getting the wrong idea. She supposed it was because Ralph was younger than Jake and had taken her out a few times before the war had started. Now, she looked consideringly at Ernie before answering. ‘But don’t go getting all excited. My pal is old Mr Levitt the projectionist – Bruce’s replacement. I’m sure you remember him.’