The Second-last Woman in England (2 page)

Mrs Wallis continued to study Jean’s papers, holding them at arm’s length, her head held back like a long-sighted person who refused to wear their glasses. Or like someone reading something distasteful and rather beneath her.

Jean turned her face towards the window and the street outside. Athelstan Gardens was in South Kensington, situated in a confusing maze of streets wedged in between Fulham Road and Old Brompton Road. Except the streets weren’t streets at all—they were gardens and terraces and crescents. In Stepney a street was a street. Here, elegant white-painted four-storey villas lined the west side of the road, each with black painted railings, four steps leading up to a buttercup-yellow front door, a number picked out in polished brass, a perfectly symmetrical orange tree in a little red tub on the front step and, as often as not, a car parked outside. And not just an old black Ford either—on her way here she had counted a Daimler, two Bentleys and three Rolls-Royces, cars scattered casually about like toys in a nursery—well, how she imagined a nursery might like look, had she ever seen one. The east side of the street was bordered by black railings and a newly painted wrought iron gate, securely padlocked, and beyond by a very dense privet hedge tall enough to prevent passers-by from seeing over it—though not tall enough to prevent someone in a first-floor room in a house opposite from seeing what lay beyond. Jean could see a large, leafy private garden with a wide lawn recently mowed, beds of rose bushes and dahlias and four wooden benches, one on each side of the lawn. She had a brief view of a young man in a hat seated on a bench on the far side of the park. The young man stood up agitatedly then at once sat down again.

A park—but a park that was padlocked and only for people who lived in this street.

Jean turned away to concentrate on the room and the interview. She had been advised that the agency had vacancies for a nanny—indeed, it had turned out that the agency had eleven such vacancies. In these post-war days nannies, it appeared, were as much in short supply as eggs and sugar. A girl could take her pick, even a girl with somewhat limited experience.

‘I am a product of the Norland Nursery Training College, myself,’ Miss Anderson of the agency had explained that morning, passing Jean’s letter of application back to her. ‘Nowadays, of course …’

Miss Anderson had not completed her sentence though from her tone it had been clear that things were no longer as they had once been and that if the young woman sitting opposite her was the very best that the world could now offer, well, one would simply have to make the best of it.

From the eleven vacancies offered to her, Jean had selected this one, the Wallises in Athelstan Gardens. There were two children, and Mr Wallis, explained Miss Anderson at the agency, was Something Important in Shipping. Jean understood she was to infer from this that Mr Wallis was not a sea captain or anything in that line, but instead was the owner of a ship or perhaps of a whole fleet of ships. Yet a glance around the room presented no miniature ships cleverly mounted in glass bottles or oil paintings of three-masted sailing ships tossed by turbulent seas—or any evidence at all of maritime endeavours.

‘The agency implied you had a certain amount of prior experience, Miss Corbett,’ Mrs Wallis was saying. She handed Jean’s papers back and reached over to the silver cigarette case which lay on an occasional table beside her, opening the lid and selecting a cigarette. The lid snapped shut and she placed the cigarette in her mouth.

Jean watched and knew that this brief interlude provided her with time to present a good response. She knew that she had prepared a good response to this question, that Miss Anderson from the agency had raised this very question herself at their interview that morning, had even provided her with that very response. And yet for the life of her she couldn’t recall what the response was.

Opposite her, Mrs Wallis produced a slim gold cigarette lighter and flicked the lever with a sharp rasping sound. A blue flame shot out and a second later a thin wisp of smoke slowly rose ceiling-ward. The lighter was then laid carefully on the table beside the cigarette case and still the question of Miss Corbett’s prior experience remained unresolved.

‘Yes,’ said Jean, nodding to give her reply added emphasis. ‘I mean, that would be correct. I have a great deal of experience, one way or another.’

(‘Remember, Miss Corbett,’ Miss Anderson at the agency had said, with a shrewd glance over the top of her half-lens glasses, ‘there is a chronic shortage of nannies—or indeed any sort of domestic staff—in these austere times. The ball, one might say, is entirely in our court. Your court, Miss Corbett.’ There had been a delicate pause before she had resumed: ‘Naturally, this agency would only wish to supply the absolute cream of suitable personnel to its clients; however, it must be said that when demand outstrips supply our duty to supply must take precedence over our need to excel.’)

All of which was intended to inform this most recent addition to their books that they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with her but that they could, in all probability, get away with it if they all played their parts correctly. Jean tried to remember her part.

‘I come from—came from,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘a large family and I was the eldest child, you see. Well, naturally it fell to me to look after the other children, particularly the elder ones. Mum—my mother—had the little ones to see to, you see.’

She paused. Somehow she did not think Mrs Wallis did see.

No one said anything for a moment. Mrs Wallis drew on her cigarette and another wisp of smoke joined the first somewhere above their heads. The cigarette was a du Maurier. At home people smoked Craven A’s or Players or Woodbines. Jean waited.

Mrs Wallis tapped the cigarette on a small silver ashtray with a sharp rap.

‘And this was in …?’ she said.

‘Oh, before the war. And during.’

‘I meant, where was this? What place?’ Mrs Wallis asked as if inquiring after some distant land one had heard of only in fairytales or in newspaper reports.

‘Stepney,’ said Jean.

Mrs Wallis nodded slowly. No doubt she had heard of Stepney.

‘And afterwards I cared for Mrs McIlwraith’s two little ones. Mrs McIlwraith was our neighbour. Her husband having left.’

(‘Be precise, Miss Corbett. And at all times stick to the point in hand,’ advised Miss Anderson from the distance of their interview that morning.)

‘Mrs McIlwraith’s children were a boy aged seven and a girl aged five. I looked after them for some years, provided their meals and made sure they got to school.’

‘I see. My own children are, of course, a little older than that.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Jean, understanding that by ‘older’ Mrs Wallis was only partly referring to their ages and was in large part referring to their social standing.

‘Therefore I require someone who is able to provide general home-help duties as well as nannying. The agency will have explained that?’

The agency had not explained that.

Jean nodded vigorously.

‘And your own family have no further need of you, Miss Corbett?’

‘I’m afraid my family were all killed by a V2 rocket that landed on our house, in 1945. February. I was out, you see, that day so—’ Jean made herself stop.

There was a pause. She ought not to have said that. A flicker of panic began to rise in her stomach. Stupid,
stupid
to say that.

‘Oh, my dear, how simply ghastly for you,’ said Mrs Wallis and she leant forward, gave a slight frown and flashed a quick smile of sympathy in Jean’s direction.

It was so unexpected, such a complete reversal of her earlier detached coolness, that Jean replied with a somewhat stiff smile of her own.

She hadn’t intended to mention the bomb. Had told herself she wouldn’t under any circumstances—well, you didn’t, did you, not to a prospective employer? And not if you intended to present yourself as a calm and emotionally unencumbered person capable of taking charge of some stranger’s precious offspring. But there, now she
had
mentioned it, it had just popped out and perhaps, if Mrs Wallis’s smile was anything to go by, it was all for the best.

There was a silence that began to stretch for longer than was entirely comfortable.

(‘Your credentials, Miss Corbett—do not forget to present your credentials. They are your passport to employment.’)

Jean held out the two sheets of paper, one typed, one handwritten, that contained her reference from Mrs McIlwraith and another from the head teacher of the small local school she had attended during the war.

‘My references,’ she explained as Mrs Wallis merely stared at the outstretched pages as though they contained lewd pictures.

‘Ah. Quite.’ Mrs Wallis took them and leant back in her chair. A moment passed as she read first one page and then the second. She took a sharp pull on her cigarette and her eyes narrowed dramatically as she read and Jean felt herself slowly tensing. What could she see? What error had Mrs McIlwraith made in her reference? Were the dates wrong? Was her name misspelt? Did they, perhaps, look fake?

Just as the moment seemed stretched to breaking point, Mrs Wallis looked up.

‘And you are how old, Miss Corbett?’

‘Twenty. Last birthday. April.’

‘And have you a young man?’

(‘Your prospective employer will no doubt enquire as to your status vis-à-vis a young man, Miss Corbett.’ Miss Anderson had paused significantly at this point. ‘Naturally she will wish to be reassured regarding your long-term loyalty, and, of course, as to the welfare of the children she places in your care.’)

‘Oh no, no young man. Nothing like that.’

Mrs Wallis made no response other than to smoke silently for some moments. Had she got her heart set on employing someone who was twenty-one? Or nineteen? Someone respectably betrothed to a steady young chap instead of dangerously unattached and flighty?

Mrs Wallis smiled with alarming suddenness. ‘Well. No doubt you will wish to meet the children?’

‘Yes, indeed!’ said Jean smiling brightly in reply.

Did this mean she had got the position? Or was it part of the interview? A test to see how she got on with the children?

‘Good. I shall fetch them. Please wait there, Miss Corbett,’ and Mrs Wallis uncrossed her legs and arose from the chair in one fluid movement. Hastily Jean half rose, then gingerly lowered herself down again on to the rich crimson velvet, realising just how tired her thighs were becoming.

There were voices outside the door. A man’s voice, quite deep and speaking from a distance, but becoming more distinct as he approached.

‘…
devil’s
going on? We’re supposed to be at Leo’s at twelve.’

‘Don’t be tedious, Cecil. He’s hardly going to miss us for half an hour. And if you care to cast your mind back approximately two hours you may recall my mentioning to you that I intended to interview a new nanny this morning.’

The man now moved away from the door so that Jean could not make out his reply, only the tone, which was cross.

Mrs Wallis, however, was evidently still standing beside the closed door:

‘Oh heavens, Cecil, I really haven’t the faintest idea who she is. Some wretched orphan from Stockwell. Family wiped out en masse in the war—no danger of this one running off home to nurse an elderly parent, at least.’

In the drawing room, where Jean sat, a chrome-plated clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarter-hour then fell silent. On the small occasional table Jean’s credentials and the letter of introduction from the agency lay discarded. One of the references had slipped down between the chair and the table and lay on the thick pile carpet.

Jean released her aching thighs and sank down into the crimson velvet of the settee waiting for something to break or rip, but nothing happened.

Stepney, she thought, not Stockwell.

She looked down at her feet. Her shoes had been Mum’s shoes once. A new pair of wartime shoes when new shoes in wartime were as scarce as good news. They had survived the blast. It had been surprising what had survived, considering so much of the house, so much of the people in it, had been destroyed. But Mum’s shoes had survived. Navy, they were. Stout, practical. Low-heeled. Not fashionable, even when new, but built to last. Built to withstand a V2, at any rate.

Against the chaotic pattern of the Wallises’ drawing room carpet and the rich crimson velvet of the lop-sided settee they looked indecent. Jean stared silently at her feet and on the mantelpiece the chrome-plated clock ticked discreetly.