Better Days will Come

‘It’s Arundel,’ Grace corrected with a grin.

‘Lives on his own?’ said Elsie. She was trying to appear nonchal-ant but it was obvious she was dying to know. Grace suppressed another smile.

‘That is correct,’ Manny nodded. ‘He fought at El Alamein with Field Marshal Monty and came back to find his wife shacked up with a Frenchy.’

Grace and Elsie shook their heads sympathetically. The war had a lot to answer for. It wasn’t only the bombs and concentration camps that had changed people’s lives. The French Canadians were billeted all over the town. On the whole, they were ordinary young men, three thousand miles away from all that was familiar and, as time went on, frustration set in. They had joined up to fight the Nazis, not to put up barbed wire on the beaches in an English seaside resort. As a result, their behaviour deteriorated and Saturday nights were peppered with drunken brawls in the town. Rumours circulated, although the story always came via a friend who knew a friend of a friend … When the war ended, a lot of ordinary people were left with very complicated lives.

Manny Hart was an attractive man with broad shoulders and a lean body. He had light brown hair, cut short, a strong square jaw and grey-green eyes. Nobody knew much about him except that he came from Coventry and he was a dab hand at playing the mouth organ. He’d apparently lost all his family, and considering the pasting the city had had, nobody liked to pry too much into his grief. He was very methodical, always doing everything exactly the same way, and was obviously a cut above the rest because he spoke public school English.

‘Well,’ said Manny putting his cup down. ‘I must be going. I have got a railway to work for.’

‘Thanks for the eggs,’ said Grace as she saw him to the door.

‘He’s sweet on you,’ said Elsie as Grace sat back down at the table.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Grace. ‘You read too many romantic novels from that shilling library you belong to.’

‘You don’t blame me, do you?’ Elsie sighed wistfully. ‘There’s precious little love and happiness around these days.’

Mrs Smythe gave Bonnie some money for a taxi to the address in Aldford Street where she was to meet her prospective employer. It was just off Park Lane and in a very exclusive part of London, near the Dorchester Hotel where Prince Philip, the dashing husband of the Princess Elizabeth, had had his stag night the night before his wedding just a few days ago. She smiled as she recalled the newspaper pictures of the beautiful bride in her wedding dress decorated, they said, with 10,000 white pearls.

Bonnie knew enough about child care to know that most people in this area employed Norlanders, girls from a very exclusive training college in Hungerford. She’d once seen an article in a magazine and when she’d made her career choice, Bonnie had toyed with the idea of applying there herself; but it was totally out of her league. Only rich girls went to places like that. The fees were huge. She wondered why she had been sent to such an exclusive place when there were other girls eminently more qualified than her who could fit the bill, but then she remembered how fat the file on Lady Brayfield was and that Mrs Smythe had mentioned more than once that Richard could be ‘a little difficult’.

The house in Aldford Street was up a small flight of steps. Once inside, Bonnie was shown into a large sitting room on the first floor.

‘Lady Brayfield will be with you in a minute,’ the maid told her as she closed the door, leaving Bonnie alone.

It was a pleasant room with a large stone-built fireplace flanked by a basket on either side, one containing logs and the other a pile of magazines. Bonnie couldn’t help admiring the beautiful stone-carved surround. The house was probably seventeenth century, she guessed, maybe even older. It had a large window made up of many small panes of glass which overlooked the street, but the wooden panelling on the walls made the room rather dark. A round table stood under the window with a potted fern in the middle. A snakes and ladders board was positioned between two chairs and it looked as if the players had only just left the room.

The door opened and a middle-aged woman came in. She was elegantly groomed with lightly permed hair. She wore a soft dress of blue-grey material which clung to her stiffly corseted body and a single string pearl necklace. A cocker spaniel followed her in.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said crisply. ‘You must be Miss Rogers. The agency telephoned to say they were sending you.’ She lowered herself into one of the two armchairs and indicated with a casual wave of her hand that Bonnie should sit on the settee.

The spaniel sat on the floor next to Bonnie, its haunches on her foot. She moved her toes slightly but she didn’t complain. It didn’t matter. The animal was quite lightweight.

‘I’m not sure how much Mrs Smythe has told you,’ Lady Brayfield went on, ‘but your charge is a lot older than the children you are probably used to.’

Bonnie’s heart constricted. What was she doing here? The whole idea was an idiotic mistake. How could she possibly work for this woman? She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake. She started to panic and tried to compose herself as best she could, but already her face was beginning to flame. She cleared her throat noisily and found herself saying, ‘I don’t envisage that as a problem.’ She couldn’t bear the embarrassment of having to admit to this woman that she hadn’t exactly been honest with Mrs Smythe. No. If she was going to have to go back to the London and County for a more suitable post, she would have to get Lady Brayfield to turn her down for some perfectly logical reason.

‘Are you used to travel?’

‘No,’ Bonnie admitted. She was beginning to feel a bit sick. Instead of coming clean she was getting in deeper and deeper.

‘How do you feel about going abroad?’ Lady Brayfield asked.

‘It would be a challenge,’ said Bonnie. The dog placed his head in her lap. She felt almost comforted by it and smiled faintly as she placed her hand on his head.

‘You are between jobs …?’ Lady Brayfield ventured.

‘Yes,’ said Bonnie. There was an awkward moment when Lady Brayfield again waited for her to elaborate but Bonnie’s only response was to pat the dog’s head. What an idiot she’d been. It was only the lure of riding in a taxi and going to a posh address that had got her here. She had to get herself out of this and quickly. Think, she told her panicking brain, think …

They were interrupted by a footfall and the door swung open. A young boy about ten years old, dark haired and in his school uniform consisting of grey short trousers, a grey blazer with the school emblem on the breast pocket, a white shirt with a yellow and black striped tie, long grey socks and black lace-up shoes came into the room. His hair looked wet, as if someone had made an attempt to tidy him up. Bonnie could see the marks of a comb running through it, although on the crown of his head three spikes of hair stood defiantly up on end. The door closed behind him.

‘Ah,’ said Lady Brayfield, ‘this is Richard, my grandson. Come and say how do you do, Richard.’

Obediently but sullenly, Richard said, ‘How do you do.’

‘Miss Rogers is going to take you to your father,’ said Lady Brayfield. Bonnie’s heart sank. Oh no, she’d got the job.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Richard protested loudly. He stamped his foot and the spaniel began to bark as he kicked the closed door several times.

Lady Brayfield tried to placate the boy. ‘Richard, darling, you mustn’t get hysterical.’

‘I don’t want to go and you can’t make me!’ he cried.

This was Bonnie’s chance to extricate herself. She rose to her feet slowly. ‘Lady Brayfield …’ she began.

The boy threw himself onto the older woman’s lap. ‘Don’t send me, Granny. I’ll be good. I promise.’

‘But your father wants you out there with him, darling,’ said Lady Brayfield helplessly. ‘What can I do?’

She patted the boy’s back and looked at Bonnie as if seeking advice.

Bonnie chewed her bottom lip. ‘I’m sure …’ she began, but at the same moment Richard stood up, turned and launched himself at her, causing her to stumble backwards onto the settee.

‘No, no,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t make me. I hate it there. I won’t go, I tell you.’

Lady Brayfield was horrified.

Bonnie could see at once that he was clearly very spoiled and out of control.

‘Richard,’ his grandmother demanded, ‘stop that at once!’

Bonnie struggled to her feet and righted her hat but as she bent to pick up her fallen handbag, the boy aimed a kick at the settee. The toe of his heavy lace-up shoe made contact with Bonnie. Her hands automatically went to her stomach as she cried out in excruciating pain.

Lady Brayfield gasped. ‘Oh Richard, what have you done?’

They both stared in horror as Bonnie screwed up her eyes and fell back onto the settee with a loud cry.

Three

Rita was having a history lesson. Normally the Georgian period fascinated her. Unlike her bored and sleepy classmates, she revelled in the romance of England at the time of Jane Austen, but she would have hated to live back then. It was mainly the treatment of women which horrified Rita. That far-off time was a world of arranged marriages when women had to be submissive, obedient and above all, quiet. Despite her mother’s best efforts, Rita wasn’t a bit domesticated. She would have failed miserably at weaving, sewing and cooking, and she didn’t know the meaning of quiet either!

‘For homework,’ said Miss Rastrick as she wrote on the blackboard, ‘read pages 37–54.’

Rita found the page. ‘A wife’s duty,’ she read in her textbook, The History of the Georgians, ‘was one of absolute obedience to her husband. It was considered extremely disloyal if she was tempted to be disparaging or critical of him.’

Rita shook her head. Thank goodness things were different now. The war had meant that when the men were called up, the women had to do their work. She was confident that now that the mould had been broken, it would be impossible to go back. Her future and the future of the girls in her class was a lot more promising than her mother’s had been and certainly more than her grandmother’s. Rita lived a world away from Regency England. She had no idea what she wanted to be when she left school next Easter, but she was determined to be mistress of her own destiny.