Faith Page 15

  But the best fun for the girls took place late at night. There were many like-minded young people working in the area for the summer, from chambermaids to waiters and bar staff, and they soon found them, plus the more affluent men who sailed in and out of Brixham on yachts.

  Mostly they gathered at a small drinking club in the town, and as neither Jackie nor Laura was keen to have a regular boyfriend again for a while, they played the field, enjoyed the attention they got and didn’t take anything too seriously.

  It was the best of times. The worst they did was to give a few men false hopes, and suck up to the holidaymakers so they’d tip them when they left.

  But the real value of that summer job to Laura was that it gave her the confidence she so badly lacked and opened up her mind to other possibilities. She had only been to the seaside a few times in her life, and then only to Southend and Brighton. She hadn’t known that Devon was so beautiful, and the rolling hills, thatched cottages, rivers, moors and woodland enchanted her. But she had also shone a lot brighter than Jackie with the holidaymakers, for she knew how ordinary working-class people thought, and what they wanted and needed.

  Suddenly she was aware of her own potential, that she was no longer ‘Stinky Wilmslow’, the plain, skinny girl that no one wanted. Someone at the holiday camp had dubbed her ‘Lovely Laura’ and the name stuck not only with everyone she met there, but in her own mind. She realized she didn’t have to wait for a man to come along to fulfil her dreams; she was quite clever enough to do that herself.

  Both she and Jackie felt bereft at the end of the season when they had to say goodbye to all the friends they’d made in Devon. They dreaded the prospect of the London rush hour, the tedium of a nine to five job, when for the whole summer they’d never known what would happen next, and grown used to fresh air, lots of exercise and freedom.

  They talked about it endlessly as they helped out giving the caravans a final clean. They were determined they wouldn’t go back to boring office work; they both wanted exciting jobs. They thought of going abroad, but as neither of them had a passport, that would take time to organize, and in any case, the bonus money they’d get when they left the holiday camp wasn’t enough to get them very far.

  Back in London, Laura stayed with Jackie for some weeks in Muswell Hill, and it was while working for an agency as office temps that they heard about promotional work. Girls were needed for exhibitions, trade fairs and in-store promotions, and although the hours were usually longer than in office work, the pay was better and there was a lot of variety, as they could be selling tractors one week at an agricultural show, and promoting a new perfume the next. They saw some glossy photographs of a team of girls working at the Motor Show in Earl’s Court who were all as glamorous as models, wearing evening dresses. They heard on the grapevine that these girls got offered work all over the country; they were put up in nice hotels and had a great time while being paid for it. Jackie and Laura just looked at each other and knew it was for them.

  As bells rang out for the New Year of 1965, Jackie clinked her glass of champagne with Laura’s. ‘We’ve arrived,’ she whispered.

  They were in Scott’s, a very select night club in Mayfair, the guests of Colin Trueman, a businessman they’d met back in October while working at the Toy Fair in Earl’s Court. They were both in evening dresses, Laura’s cream chiffon, Jackie’s pale blue, and when they looked around them they felt equal and even superior to any of the other women in the club, for their dresses, hair, nails and makeup were perfect, evidence of their new-found elegance and sophistication.

  Gone for them were the days of the teetering beehive. It might still reign in places like Peckham or Shepherds Bush, but the models in Vogue wore their hair long, loose and shiny. Jackie had an unfair advantage as hers was thick and curly and such a glorious natural colour, but Laura wasn’t far behind. She had dyed hers a rich dark brown, with a thick, straight fringe which accentuated her dark brown eyes.

  In a few days’ time it would be her twenty-first birthday, and when she looked in the mirror, she liked what she saw. Her skin glowed, her hair shone, and she was blessed with a perfect size 10 body and long, slender legs. Men often told her she was beautiful but it was only in the last year that she’d finally realized it was true, and that the sad little girl from Shepherds Bush was gone for ever.

  She and Jackie considered themselves seasoned promotion girls now; whether they had the glamour jobs draped across a gleaming car at the Motor Show, demonstrating oven cleaner at the Ideal Home Exhibition, or merely handing out advertising leaflets on the street, they were good at it. Sometimes Jackie joked they were born for it, a pair of life’s butterflies who hated being in one place for too long.

  They had their own flat too, in Eardley Crescent, Earl’s Court. They had started out in a double bedsitter, and luckily they were on the spot when their landlord decided to let out his own flat on the top floor. The two bedrooms were tiny, but after being cramped up in one room for so long, to the girls it was paradise to have a separate kitchen, their own bathroom and a real sitting room.

  They’d furnished it with junk-shop finds, something Jackie had a nose for, painted it all white, and got masses of cord carpeting from one of the exhibitions they were working at. Laura had even managed to sweet-talk one of the exhibition men into fitting it for them.

  Life was really good. They worked long hours, often away from London, but the pay and expenses were excellent and in the last year they’d made lots of new friends, gone to parties, dinners and clubs, and they’d had countless dates and a great deal of fun.

  Most of the men they went out with were married, and they didn’t care as long as they were prepared to show them a good time. Jackie often hankered for another Roger, someone to love and be loved by, but Laura much preferred the thrill of illicit dinners and nights away in a hotel. Married men were invariably better lovers, they gave presents, and they were easy to get rid of once she got bored. She had no intention of marrying anyone just for love; they’d have to be rich before she’d even look twice at them.

  ‘We can do even better,’ Laura replied, clinking Jackie’s glass. ‘Here’s to one day having our own company and becoming millionaires!’

  This was their private little dream, and hardly a week passed without them coming up with an idea that might make it come true. But however good their ideas were, they had no capital to get launched. One of the reasons they liked coming to parties like this one was because they might well meet someone prepared to back them.

  ‘So what resolutions are we going to make this year?’ Jackie asked.

  ‘Maybe to save some money,’ Laura suggested. ‘Or perhaps we should learn to drive?’

  ‘Good thinking, wonder girl,’ Jackie giggled. ‘If we had a car we could spend the summer doing outside promotions all over England. But right now my only resolution is to get drunk on champagne. Someone told me it doesn’t give you a hangover.’

  A few weeks later, in early February, Jackie got a couple of weeks’ work in Leeds promoting a new range of nail products. As she had met a man she fancied, she decided to stay over instead of coming home for Sunday and Monday.

  Laura had been on a training course for a cosmetics company, but it finished on Wednesday and she didn’t have to start work with the company until the following Tuesday. She was pleased to have a few days by herself. Jackie was never very good at cleaning up or doing her washing, and she moaned when Laura tried to do it when she was there. She spent Thursday going to the laundrette, and then spring-cleaned the flat. But by Saturday she had run out of things to do, and it was too cold and wet to go out to the shops.

  It was the tidiness of the flat that set her off thinking about her family. She always felt soothed when the whole flat was immaculate, the kitchen smelling fresh and clean, and the bathroom sparkling. Jackie often teased her about her love of cleanliness and order and Laura would laugh it off, but she had a real fear that if she ever allowed things to really slide, she co
uld become the way her mother was.

  Now, as she looked at the magazines tidily stacked in a rack, the fringe on the rug in front of the gas fire neatly brushed out, and the cushions on the couch just so, she wondered if her mother had finally learned to clean the house in Barnes properly. Or if Meggie had been pressed into doing everything Laura used to do.

  In the six years since she left there, she’d thought about her mother and the little ones a great deal, especially on birthdays and at Christmas. In a way it was worse than losing her family through bereavement because she knew they were out there getting on with their lives, but she could have no part in it.

  She wondered whether Mark and Paul went straight when they got out of borstal, how Meggie, Ivy and Freddy were doing at school, and what they all looked like six years on. There had been many times when she was tempted to go over to Barnes and hang around in the hopes she’d see them. But she never had because she knew a glimpse of them wouldn’t be enough, she’d have to talk to them.

  She was totally aware that daydreams of happy reunions, June throwing her arms around her and the kids all cuddling her, were just fantasy. The reality was that June would almost certainly resent her turning up again and complicating her life with Vincent, and Laura knew she couldn’t handle seeing him again.

  But remembering what he did to her suddenly made her realize that Meggie was fifteen now and Ivy thirteen, the ideal ages for a man with a fondness for young girls. The thought that her pretty little sisters might suffer that was horrific, and all at once she knew she had to go over to Barnes and warn June.

  All Saturday night she could think of nothing else. She had always been wary of Vincent, but her sisters hadn’t. So how much easier would it be to lure them into it?

  By Sunday morning she no longer cared if June sent her away with a flea in her ear. She had to go, whatever the consequences, or spend the rest of her life feeling ashamed she’d hadn’t attempted to protect Meggie and Ivy.

  She dressed very carefully for the visit, for she wanted to convey the message that she was successful and sophisticated so that her mother would take her seriously, yet at the same time didn’t want to look as if she was showing off. Finally she settled for a navy pencil skirt and white sweater and borrowed Jackie’s string of chunky dark blue beads. With high heels and her hair fixed back with a velvet bow at the nape of her neck, she thought her image was just right. Her winter coat was navy too, and she brightened it up with a red scarf and matching gloves.

  The bus ride seemed endless because she had butterflies in her stomach. She wished now that she’d planned this earlier so she would have had time to buy the children a present each. All she’d been able to get on a Sunday was a big box of Quality Street, and a bunch of flowers for her mother.

  She stood outside the house in Barnes for some time before she plucked up the courage to push open the gate and walk through the front garden. It didn’t look so big, or as grand as she remembered, just a very ordinary double-fronted red brick house, and the dark blue front door needed painting.

  There was a fence on either side of the house now, with a gate on one side. When she’d lived here it was open all the way around and she could remember Freddy riding his tricycle right round the house. The cherry trees in the front had grown very big, and the leaves which had fallen in autumn were still lying on the grass. She thought that was odd, as Vincent had always been really fussy about how the garden looked. But she was pleased to see his car wasn’t there – that at least should make the visit easier.

  Meggie opened the door, at least Laura had to assume it was her, for she didn’t actually recognize her. She was as tall as Laura, and a lot heavier, her hair up in a beehive, her eyes dark-ringed, Cleopatra style. She looked at Laura blankly.

  ‘It’s me, Laura,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it’s you, Meggie! You’re all grown up.’

  ‘What do you want?’ her sister replied in a surly fashion, half closing the door on her body as if to prevent entry.

  Laura was taken aback by such hostility. She’d prepared herself for it from June and Vincent, but she hadn’t for one moment thought her sisters would be anything but overjoyed to see her.

  ‘I wanted to see you, and Ivy and Freddy,’ she said, her heart sinking.

  ‘Who is it, Meggie?’ her mother shouted from the back of the house.

  ‘It’s Laura,’ Meggie shouted back. She scowled at her older sister. ‘She won’t want to see you!’

  Suddenly June was there at the door, her expression one of complete disbelief. ‘You!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’ Laura felt like running away now. ‘I came to see how you all are.’

  ‘It’s taken six years to remember us, has it?’ June snapped.

  She looked good, far younger than Laura had expected. Her hair was still blonde, but a far prettier honey-blonde, and it curled on her shoulders. She was a little plumper, but it suited her, as did the pink sweater she was wearing.

  ‘May I come in and talk to you?’ Laura asked. ‘There were good reasons why I left.’

  ‘You slunk away like a thief in the night,’ June exclaimed, her voice rising to a shriek. ‘You didn’t write or phone. You could have been dead for all I knew.’

  ‘Just let me explain,’ Laura retorted. ‘But I can’t talk about it out here, so please let me in.’

  ‘You’ve come back because of the money, haven’t you?’

  ‘What money?’ Laura was confused now.

  ‘The money Vincent left,’ Meggie chimed in. ‘Well, you won’t get anything, so you might as well sling yer hook.’

  The thought flashed through Laura’s mind that Meggie might as well have stayed in Shepherds Bush; she looked and sounded like the tarts that hung around the market.

  Laura glanced from Meggie to her mother. ‘Are you trying to say Vincent’s dead?’ she asked.

  ‘As if you didn’t know,’ June retorted.

  ‘I didn’t. How would I know? I haven’t kept in touch with anyone from around here. I only came to see you and the kids. I had no idea he was dead, and I certainly don’t want any of his money.’

  She held out the flowers and the box of sweets. ‘I’ll go right now if you don’t believe me, Mum. It was because of him that I left, and he was the reason I didn’t feel able to get in touch. But I got to thinking that it wasn’t right not to know how you are, that’s all.’

  June hesitated, then begrudgingly said she’d better come in, but she flounced off towards the kitchen as if this offer was only because she wasn’t prepared to stand at the front door.

  Laura followed and to her horror found the once beautiful kitchen was a complete shambles. The table in the middle was strewn with dirty plates, the sink held even more, and the tiled floor was so dirty it was clear it hadn’t been washed for weeks.

  June sat down and immediately lit up a cigarette, and the smell of it and the mess took Laura straight back to their days in Shepherds Bush. She automatically began stacking up the dirty plates and wondered how long some of them had been on the table. ‘So when did he die and of what?’ she asked.

  ‘Back in November, of a heart attack,’ June said curtly. ‘Since then I’ve hardly slept, I feel lousy, and it hasn’t helped that people keep coming here and wanting what’s mine.’

  ‘Who has been here?’

  ‘Oh, his sons, his sister and his niece, not to mention the woman he was carrying on with.’

  Laura had hoped against hope that Vincent wouldn’t be in today, but however much she disliked and feared him she was shocked that he was dead. It was clear from the chaos that June couldn’t cope, and judging by Meggie’s surly attitude, she was no help. Yet although Laura felt concern, she couldn’t help but feel this was like a re-run of the old days, and that once again her mother was burdening her with problems that were not of her making. Had she looked ill or very tired Laura might have felt real sympathy, but someone who could get up and do their hair and makeup could certainly wash the dishes.


  She looked round and saw Meggie was standing insolently in the doorway, arms folded. ‘Help me clear up, Meggie,’ she said. ‘And while we do it Mum can tell me everything.’

  ‘I’m not sodding well clearing up,’ Meggie snarled. ‘Why should I? I give her three quid a week for my keep and Sundays is me only day off.’

  ‘What a charitable soul you turned out to be,’ Laura said sarcastically. ‘If you can’t or won’t help around the house you should go and live in a hotel. But you won’t get one of those for three quid a week.’

  Meggie turned on her heel and disappeared. ‘Is she always like that?’ Laura asked her mother. ‘She used to be so sweet and helpful.’

  ‘She’s been a cow since she was about fourteen. She seems to hate me and everyone else. She left school the minute she turned fifteen and now she seems to think it’s my fault she only got to work in a baker’s.’

  Laura put the kettle on, and continued clearing the table. ‘You’d better explain everything to me,’ she said.

  By the time Laura had washed and dried up, made tea and was sitting down with her mother at the table, she had learned that her parents got divorced three years ago, while her father was still in prison. ‘I got pregnant again, soon after,’ June said gloomily. ‘I didn’t want it, I was too bloody old for another baby, but Vince thought it was wonderful and married me. Well, I lost it at six months and it made me go a bit funny. Next thing I know he’s going out till all hours of the night, and he’s got another woman.’

  Laura made sounds of sympathy for it was sad for anyone to lose a baby, even if they said they didn’t want it. But she could imagine that what June meant by going a bit ‘funny’ was that she’d stopped looking after the home and herself. Vincent had always been fussy, and no doubt he came to regret marrying her. Laura didn’t think a man in his sixties ought to be still playing around with other women, but maybe June drove him to it.