Charity Read online

  Charity hesitated at the door, tempted to go and ask Carol’s advice, but the lack of communication between them in the last couple of weeks daunted her. Carol was so outgoing, so full of fun and laughter … maybe she thought Charity was a drip?

  Peeling off her overall, Charity lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. Her room was on the top floor of the tower, looking out across the quadrangle. She could hear the boys playing rugby and their shouting reminded her painfully of Toby.

  Her hands throbbed and she lifted them up wearily. They were identical to those of the woman who used to run the baths at Greenwich: swollen and red with her fingernails broken. There were small lacerations on each of her fingertips and one on her thumb was oozing a mixure of blood and pus.

  She missed the children so much she felt like a part of her had been torn off. For as long as she could remember they had been everything to her and without them she was empty. She missed Lou and Geoff too. For the six months in their house she’d felt secure. She missed all those discussions with them, the joy of just being like any other teenager, their warmth and laughter. Now there was only work, no one to care if she was tired. No one interested in her. Letters were the only link, read and reread, but only to find she was guilty of jealousy. Sometimes it smarted like her sore hands as she imagined Prue bounding home from school to tell Lou about her day, or Toby playing with friends on the Common. Who had ever cared how she did at school? She had never played like other children.

  Was this how it would be for ever? Too tired to do anything but lie on a bed once she’d finished work. Just a kitchen maid at everyone’s beck and call, with no life outside the scullery.

  She had thought this room nice when she arrived. Now it looked like a prison cell with its iron bed and plain green walls. She had intended to explore Tunbridge Wells on her day off, buy some posters, but the room was just as impersonal now as it was when she moved in.

  She must have fallen asleep, but woke later to find herself even more unhappy. She turned her face into the pillow and wept bitterly.

  A tap on the door startled her, but before she could compose herself, it was opening.

  ‘Coo-ee!’ Carol called out. ‘Fancy a cup of tea and a slice of cake?’

  She was in the room too quickly for Charity to do more than try to dab at her face. Carol stopped short in the middle of the room, the tea and cake on a small tray in her hands.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ she said, her brown eyes wide with astonishment. ‘How long have you been like this?’

  The sympathetic tone was enough to make the tears run even faster.

  ‘I can’t bear it here,’ Charity sobbed. ‘The work’s so hard, I’m tired all the time and I miss home.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Carol laughed, but not unkindly. ‘It’s the commonest cry in this place. What you’ve got to learn is how to cope with it.’

  ‘I can’t. No one likes me. The women shout at me all the time.’

  ‘They shout because the kitchen’s noisy.’ Carol sounded exasperated. ‘They all think you’re a nice little thing. The trouble is you take it so seriously.’

  ‘I have to, Mrs Cod’s on my back all day.’

  ‘She isn’t. She says you’re the best maid she’s ever had. But the more you do, Charity, the more they’ll put on you, that’s human nature.’

  The bit of praise from the indomitable Mrs Cod was like a shaft of light coming into a dark tunnel, but still Charity couldn’t stop crying.

  ‘But all those pots, all those vegetables. If I didn’t do them who would?’

  A look of puzzlement and concern swept across Carol’s pink and white face and her smile vanished.

  ‘Are you trying to say you do it all alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charity raised a tear-stained face. She and Carol were on opposite shifts; the only time they saw one another was at a distance, when Carol went into the refectory to serve. ‘I wash everything, don’t you?’

  ‘Not on my own, someone always helps me. Don’t you ask?’

  ‘No, I thought that was my job.’

  ‘You silly pudding,’ Carol laughed, her brown eyes twinkling. ‘They must think they’ve died and gone to heaven since you came here. Are you stuck in the scullery all the time?’

  ‘Mostly, except for getting the stores and cleaning the tables.’

  ‘You do that too?’ Carol’s voice rose to a squeak of indignation. ‘No wonder you’re always asleep when I’ve finished work. I’ve looked round the door loads of times and you’re always spark out.’

  Carol had welcomed Charity’s arrival. The last girl had been sullen and unfriendly and everyone had been glad when she left. In the first few days after the long holiday she had seen the small blonde girl as a potential friend and ally and had been baffled when Charity seemed to withdraw into her shell once the new term started.

  Now she understood. This kid needed help and support and she felt a pang of remorse that she hadn’t made sure the other women were being fair.

  ‘The other staff are supposed to share that work with you,’ she said, flushing with shame. ‘If Miss Hawkins found out she’d be livid. But don’t worry, I’ll sort it out for you, Charity. Mrs Cod is a dragon, but she’s fair and she likes you. Those cows from the village are taking advantage and it’s got to stop. Let me look at your hands.’

  Charity held them out.

  ‘Good God!’ Carol exhaled noisily. ‘Don’t you wear gloves for the washing-up?’

  Charity shook her head. They’re all too big, I’d drop the plates.’

  ‘But they’ve got small ones in the store. Oh Charity, fancy getting yourself into this state and saying nothing.’

  Carol got up and went into her room. She came back with a pot of handcream, opened the top and scooped out a dollop.

  ‘Is that soothing?’ she asked, rubbing it in with her big, capable hands. ‘You must stand up for yourself, silly. This is the big adult world, we’ve got no mummies here to tell us what to do.’

  Carol had a bright, perky nature. The middle one of six children she was as used to hard work as Charity had once been. The difference was that Carol wasn’t afraid to speak out about anything and she was much stronger.

  She was a big girl, at least five foot seven, with a sturdy body honed by farm work from an early age. Her curly hair couldn’t be contained by her cap, her overall gaped in the front as if her bosom was trying to escape too and her wide hips had a seductive wiggle as she carried the trays of food from the kitchen to the refectory.

  Now as she spoke with such warmth and understanding, Charity felt a real desire to become her friend.

  The next day at twelve when Charity walked into the kitchen, there was a marked change in the atmosphere.

  ‘Hallo, love!’ Pat from the village yelled out. ‘How’s yer poor little hands today?’

  There was no sarcasm in the question, just concern. Clearly Carol had spoken to them all. Mrs Cod asked to see Charity’s hands and said she was just to help dish up the food into serving trays.

  ‘People always take advantage if you let them,’ she said, her plump shiny face bent over Charity. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t notice it was getting too much for you. I thought you was one of them as likes being on your own.’

  ‘I didn’t dare say anything,’ Charity admitted. ‘I thought that was the job.’

  It was still hard work lifting heavy trays of food and stacking them on a heated trolley, but suddenly she was part of what was going on in the kitchen and the women began to include her in their conversation.

  In the days that followed Charity even felt a little guilty about describing Mrs Cod’s body as a sack of blancmange to Geoff and Lou. Pat might have stringy greasy hair, a long nose and a sharp tongue, but she wasn’t a viper. Poor Jill with the wide body and long arms shouldn’t be nicknamed Orang-utan. After all, she couldn’t help being simple.

  Now Charity found out that Mrs Cod had been widowed at the start of the war, and had come here to work with her b
aby son, doing the very same job Charity was doing now. Her whole life was the school, and even now that her boy had gone on to university she still had no life of her own. For twenty years she’d worked from six to three, for much of that time with a small child in tow. That made Charity feel she’d no right to complain about anything.

  Pat had three children, ranging from thirteen to seven. Her pale face was the result of running herself ragged when her husband drifted from job to job. It was no wonder she never had time to wash her hair.

  Jill might be simple but she worked like a demon. Now that Charity knew that Jill could neither read nor write, but was the sole provider for a mother of eighty, and that they lived in a two-roomed cottage with no electricity, how could she feel sorry for herself?

  It struck Charity that it was a home for oddballs, at least in the kitchens. Even the other part-time women who came and went each day weren’t exactly ordinary. Freda with a port-wine birthmark on her face. Janice who was expecting her seventh child, and Alice the quiet older lady who sang sad songs as she worked – they all had something unusual about them. It was like being back in the baths in Greenwich listening to the gossip.

  These women had hard lives, their clothes were shabby and their families’ survival depended on their small wage packets. Yet they kept their dignity, laughed at misfortune and were always optimistic, believing that things could only improve.

  ‘Feeling better today?’ Carol asked as she took off her apron at the end of her shift. Charity was sitting down at the kitchen table, having a cup of tea with Mrs Cod.

  ‘Much better, thank you.’ She was nervous at speaking out in front of cook.

  ‘Carol knows what goes on here.’ Mrs Cod smiled at the girl. ‘She had it hard when she first started too, same as we all did. I thought I was going to drop dead my first couple of months. My Christopher was in a playpen out there beside the sinks and I had to keep the job because of him. But there was times when I’d have just walked out, left him an’ all, I was so tired. But with a bit of a laugh and a joke with the other women, another pair of hands sharing the work, it ain’t so bad.’

  She asked Charity about her background and when she heard about the fire and the other children, her fat face clouded over.

  ‘Well you’ve had your share of troubles love, and no mistake. But you’ve landed in a decent place, there’s plenty of people here will give you a helping hand if you want it. It will get easier.’

  ‘You aren’t reading again are you, Swot?’ Mrs Cod called back with laughter in her voice. ‘If you are I’ll take the ladle to your backside!’

  Charity smiled. Mrs Cod had given her the nickname because she often had a book propped up in front of the sink and she insisted it was a better name than shortening her real one to Char. She pulled out the plug in the big sink, and idly watched the greasy water gurgle down the drain. Today, however, there was no book; her mind had been on going home for Christmas.

  Almost four months of working at the school had brought new maturity and sense of purpose to Charity. She still missed the children terribly, she still got very tired, but she’d learned to live with it and most of the time she actually enjoyed her work. All the other staff were impressed by her thirst for knowledge and her persistence with her studies. But perhaps Mrs Cod was the one who encouraged her the most.

  ‘Read us a bit of poetry, Swot,’ she’d shout out across the kitchen in a lull between meals. Charity got used to scouring books for a new passage, studying the words carefully so she had the full meaning at her fingertips should anyone ask, as they so often did. While the staff ate their lunch sometimes Charity read them a book as a serial and Jill would sit with her great long arms folded across her chest, drinking in every word.

  Her confidence was growing daily. She began to look around her and ask questions – about everything from nutrition and recipes from Mrs Cod to childbirth and pregnancy from Janice and Pat. Her letters home were full of the characters she worked with, sparkling little anecdotes that Lou and Geoff informed her they read and reread.

  But perhaps it was her friendship with Carol that opened her out the most.

  There had never been time as a child in Greenwich to have close friendships. But each day the girls grew closer. At eight-thirty in the evening the one who had finished earlier in the day had tea and cake ready and then they either walked down the lane to the village in the darkness for one drink or, if it was wet and cold, curled up in one of their rooms just to chat. They examined each other’s clothes, shared magazines, did each other’s hair and discussed the sixth-form boys in detail.

  Although Carol was always talking about boys, she had no wish to find one and settle down. Her ideas were big: she planned to go to America as a nanny.

  ‘I shan’t stay, of course,’ she said with a wicked twinkle in her eyes, running her fingers through her curly hair. ‘I’m going to make my way to San Francisco and get a job as a secretary for someone important.’

  To Charity’s surprise she had it all worked out. She had been doing a home-study course for over a year, and practised typing on a portable.

  ‘I’ve got nearly enough money saved for a six-week course in London,’ Carol said, showing Charity a glossy brochure. ‘I can type and do shorthand now, but they’ll get my speeds up and give me a diploma. Then I go for the nanny’s job and get my fare paid over there. I’ll stay just long enough to learn how things work, then whoosh! I’ll be off.’

  She had this wonderful, simple philosophy that all ambition meant was writing down where you wanted to end up, then charting each step of how to get there.

  ‘Doing typing at school was the first step,’ she explained. ‘Then I came here because I knew I could save and study with no distractions. London’s the next step. I’ll stay with my aunt there while I do the course.’

  ‘But it will be awful again when you go,’ Charity said wistfully.

  ‘It won’t, you’ve settled in now,’ Carol insisted. ‘We can write to one another. Who knows, you might want to come out and join me. You’d be a far better nanny than me!’

  Charity swilled down the sink, wiped the draining boards then took off her apron. It was just after two, time for a quiet cup of tea round the kitchen table with the other women, then she’d walk into the village and look for some Christmas presents.

  The school looked wonderfully Christmassy. A huge tree in the big hall, paper chains and foil lanterns in the classrooms, holly and ivy entwined round the banisters. Next week they would be cooking the Christmas dinner for the boys with turkey and all the trimmings. There was the Christmas play to see, a carol service and all the staff were to have a party in the refectory on the last night of term. But all these events were merely pleasant interludes to Charity, things that made the days pass quicker till she got home to Clapham.

  At times she could hardly contain her excitement. Her first Christmas with Lou and Geoff, the first when she’d had money to buy presents. But most of all it was the thought of seeing the children. Of holding James in her arms again, kicking a ball with Toby and finding out how well Prue was doing at the grammar school.

  Mrs Cod was turning out a huge slab of fruit cake on to a cooling tray as Charity got out the teacups, when Miss Hawkins came into the kitchen.

  The staff called her Hawkeye behind her back. Certainly her sharp eyes missed nothing. But although her straight, skinny body didn’t suggest there was a real human being beneath her starched uniform, Charity liked her.

  She ran the housekeeping side of the school with an iron hand. If one pillowcase went missing, she knew. When the younger boys were using one of the top landings as a slide, she heard them. She checked every bill with meticulous care and was on to anyone wasting food or cleaning materials. Her cleaning staff all came in daily, and many of them grumbled about her high standards.

  ‘Anyone would think it was Buckingham Palace instead of a school,’ was a cry often heard. But Miss Hawkins just sniffed and claimed, ‘Our boys come from good ho
mes, their parents pay for the same standards.’

  ‘Thank goodness you’re still here,’ Miss Hawkins said to Charity. ‘I was afraid you’d already gone off duty when I got no reply at your room.’

  ‘You get your money’s worth out of our little Swot,’ Mrs Cod joked. ‘First here in the morning, last to leave. You don’t get many of them to the pound!’

  No alarm bells rang in Charity’s head. Miss Hawkins often popped in to ask her to buy something in the village shop.

  ‘I’m just making tea,’ Charity said. ‘Would you like a cup too?’

  Miss Hawkins’s eyes flitted round the kitchen, but seeing only Charity and Mrs Cod left behind, she nodded.

  ‘I was going to suggest you came up to my sitting room,’ she said rather hesitantly. ‘But if you don’t mind, we can talk here.’

  Charity filled the big brown teapot with hot water and put it on the table. She knew she wasn’t in trouble, as Miss Hawkins always sent a messenger with a summons for that kind of thing, but she was curious.

  Odder still, Miss Hawkins poured the milk into the cups and took over the tea pouring.

  ‘I’ve had a phone call from Mr Charles,’ she said, handing Charity her tea and patting a chair for her to sit down at the big table. ‘I’m afraid it’s sad news, Charity, and he asked me to break it to you gently.’

  Charity clutched her stomach with fear.

  ‘Someone’s hurt?’

  ‘Not as serious as that, my dear.’ Miss Hawkins looked terribly strained and the way she looked round at Mrs Cod suggested she was unsure if she should continue here. ‘No, the children are well, it’s just that your Uncle Stephen has taken them to his house.’

  ‘For Christmas?’ Charity asked. ‘Without me?’

  Miss Hawkins squirmed, hardly able to continue.

  ‘Not just for Christmas. Permanently.’

  For a moment Charity thought it was a bad dream. Only a week ago she’d had a letter from Toby saying they were putting up the Christmas decorations and he was to be Joseph in the Nativity play. It felt as if someone had opened a trapdoor beneath her and she was falling into a black hole.