‘“Much as I delight in your company …”’
I stared wildly up at Mr Renfrew. A thin man appeared in the fog of sunshine: an ordinary middle-aged man, a head already doming through thinning hair, a pair of direct, dry eyes behind spectacles, a nose pointed at me.
‘Take the words down,’ exhorted Miss Moss, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a hiss.
I began my stenography, feeling a flush of perspiration on the sides of my neck and cheeks. I couldn’t help seeing, as he sat down behind his desk, a hairless white shin and a sock reminiscent of Edward, baggy, wrinkled. Edward as a young boy.
‘“Much as I delight in your company, I feel bound to let you know that I am nothing but a simple parson and not the rich nobleman I so insolently pretended to be. The time has come for me to be honest and truthful even if it means the confounding of all my hopes which, embarked on such a frail pinnace as this, by which I mean a pinnace constructed out of my own lies, could not but be dashed on the implacable reef of reality. With that, my dear lady, I must release you from your vows though it breaks my wretched heart to do so.”’
My squiggles came to a stop. To my own great surprise, my shoulders were shaking with laughter. ‘Perhaps I can guess the outcome,’ I said. ‘She turns out to be a seamstress herself.’
‘Something like.’ He tittered. ‘I always use romantic novels for the new young ladies. It injects a lighter note into the proceedings. Now. Miss Moss, take a peek at those squiggles, please.’
‘I’ve been following,’ said Miss Moss, somewhat wearily. Perhaps she was tired of romance. ‘No errors.’
Now Mr Renfrew was spreading a crackling paper on his desk, one long middle finger pinning the edge. ‘These are your terms. Your conditions and holidays. Miss Moss will show you where you can take your luncheon. All our new young ladies take luncheon after their tests.’
At the word ‘luncheon’ Mr Renfrew’s person swelled and swam. I felt a soft, slightly warm handkerchief pressed into my hand. ‘Congratulations, Miss Calvert,’ he said, in his nut-dry voice. ‘Compose yourself. There’s nothing to fear.’
*
‘Christ, it’ll be a hole in the ground at that price,’ Lucy said. ‘Porridge in the morning and potato pie at night, I shouldn’t wonder.’
My new home was a hostel at the back of the town hall. It was described as a place for young ladies in the employ of the municipality whose home circumstances were unsuitable due either to remoteness from the workplace or to another cause. Supervision in matters of economy and welfare to be undertaken by Miss Moss – Mr Renfrew’s secretary – and an as yet unknown Miss Careless. The words ‘full board’ preceded a dotted line on which was written a figure in black ink, followed by the phrase ‘per calendar month’. It was this figure, the only part of the document which Lucy could understand, which had prompted her comment.
‘I shan’t mind,’ I said.
I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. We were sitting by the range in her kitchen. Old Mrs Horne sat up at the table so that the window light could aid her sewing. Lucy was doing cross-stitch, neat and small. A linnet with a palest flush on the breast amid apple leaves. The needle seemed to emerge from the fabric into her small fingers as if by its own power.
‘Lucy, I’m sorry about our quarrel—’
‘It was me that started it.’ She sniffed. ‘I was in such a conniption that day.’ Her eyes were distant.
I looked again at the cross-stitch fabric and reflected that the linnet was her favourite bird. She’d said so, or at least written it, asking me the spelling on my first day at Upton School. ‘You could come to the town hall, Lucy, and have tea with me in my room.’
‘Yep.’ She ducked her head. ‘I reckon I could.’
Mrs Horne put down her embroidery. ‘You will still come to church, won’t you, dear? On the Sunday bus. You could eat your dinner with us afterwards, if you cared to.’
I hadn’t thought what I would do on Sundays. But Mrs Horne had. ‘I can bring …’ I had no idea what I would bring.
‘They do lovely treacle tarts at Priddy’s,’ Mrs Horne said. ‘Wait till late Saturday afternoon. She’ll sell them at any price.’
After tea I went to the door with Lucy. ‘You know, Ellen, if we could, we’d have you here.’
‘I know that, Lucy—’
‘Only we can’t get two beds in my room. Not even if Dad made a bunk. He’s measured and all. And it would cost you more in bus fares than your rent for your basement room. So that’s that.’
I was unable to speak, so I touched her on the arm. She suddenly grasped my hand and squeezed it.
‘You were the only one,’ I found myself saying, ‘the only one who spoke to me.’
‘I told you about Vic Small, didn’t I.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘Just to het you up.’ She did a rattle of a laugh. ‘You was so easy to tease.’
‘Goodbye, Lucy—’
‘Give over, or you’ll start me. Go on. See you Sunday.’ And with a little push on my arm, she sent me off.
It was time now to fetch my things from the Dawes’ and say goodbye. I had pressed some violets back in the spring and now I used them to decorate a card in which was written in copperplate: And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity. With boundless gratitude, Ellen Calvert, 15-xii-35. It crossed my mind to include instead the verse about God loving a cheerful giver, but I wasn’t a good Bible scholar and I couldn’t find it, and anyway, it would have been cruel.
That afternoon I took my last journey out of Upton. The bus left the tree-lined lane and we breasted the first high bare hill on the road to Waltham. It wasn’t really my last journey, of course. I’d be back on Sunday. But I’d be a visitor then.
Miss Moss took me to my room. A basement room, a long slit of a window at the top, where people’s feet tramped by on the pavement above, which I could open and close with a hooked pole. There was a bed, a desk, a chair, a chest, all diminutive. A mirror, even, and a rug on the linoleum floor. A thick red blanket on the bed, and a white pillow.
I was led without delay to the kitchen. ‘Milk and so forth, any perishable extras you may buy, go in the cold cupboard in the wall there.’ Miss Moss pointed. ‘That cupboard is common to all. Put your things in a brown paper bag with your name written on it. Nothing spoils my temper like girls bothering me with accusations of filching.’ Across a tiled corridor there was a lavatory and a bathroom. ‘Be brisk in the mornings,’ Miss Moss continued. ‘There are four of you down here. We want you all at work on time, neat and presentable. There is a tendency to linger, due to the proximity, and then at eight o’clock what do we find? Girls dashing along the corridors with hairpins falling out. Have you a clock?’
I shook my head, dismayed.
‘Tsk.’ Miss Moss showed two square front teeth. She had a thin, deeply freckled face, narrow hazel eyes, a narrow body. She looked as if she’d rather be in a woodland glade, a powerful place with blasts of magic and other elves as irritable as her. ‘Miss Careless will wake you, then.’
We went back to the bedroom. She caught sight of my bag and my box on the floor. ‘When will the rest of your things arrive?’
‘Those are all my things.’
She allowed herself a sigh. Then she said, more quietly, ‘I suppose you’re saving your good black shoes for work.’ She was looking at my feet, in their boots.
‘I had to give those shoes back. They weren’t mine.’ I was gripped by a sudden fear that they’d take it all away from me: the job, the room. ‘I’m sure I can borrow some others.’
She sighed again, this time a strong sigh of exasperation. ‘Lack and Son, in the square, will let you buy shoes from them at a small sum each week. Take your wage packet and sign in their book. I made this arrangement personally with Mr Lack Senior, for you girls. Please do not let me down.’