The thought of the hours Rebecca had spent in making the suit, and the six coupons her friend had insisted on giving her towards the material, caused Sarah’s throat to tighten and her eyes to blink rapidly, the mental picture of Rebecca, Maggie and Florrie as they had waved her goodbye on the Sunderland platform vivid on the screen of her mind. But then the train had stopped and the picture was swept away as she opened the carriage door and hauled her big brown suitcase onto the bustling platform.
Sarah had been down to London once before, when she had attended the interview for the housekeeping position she was now taking up, but that had been on a Sunday when it was much quieter and slower. Nevertheless, then, as now, the pace of the city had excited her, stimulating the need to leave Sunderland’s familiar shores and venture further afield.
She had decided to splash out on a taxi for the first time in her life - it was her first day at a new job after all - and when an obliging porter offered his services to the taxi rank Sarah gladly relinquished her tussle with the heavy suitcase and her big cloth bag, and trotted along at his side as he wove in and out of the jostling throng. ‘You new to these parts?’ he asked mildly.
‘Yes, I’m from Sunderland.’
‘Sunderland?’ There was a note of surprise in the cockney tones. ‘I’ve a brother who moved up that away some twenty years ago now, and he was speaking the lingo within months. You don’t sound as if you’re from the north.’
‘Don’t I?’ She didn’t tell him she had been practising every night for the last few years, once she was alone in her room, to remove even the slightest inflexion from her voice. Not that she was ashamed of her beginnings, she told herself quickly, it wasn’t that, but like it or not it mattered how you spoke if you wanted to get on. And she did, she did want to get on. The thought was accompanied by the pounding of her heart. And this was the first step. She was here, here in London, where anything could happen . . .
‘You had your fair share in the war from what our Bert tells me? Too near water you see, with the docks and all.’ He had raised a hand as he spoke to a taxi driver who was leaning against the side of his cab eating a sandwich. ‘Mind you, can’t compare with what we took down here. I told our Bert the last time I saw him, it’s a miracle any of us survived to tell the tale and that’s the truth. Old Hitler had it in for us Londoners, but he didn’t know what he was up against.’
She nodded as the sharp eyes turned to her, but didn’t say anything. The war had been over nearly two-and-a-half years, but for some people it was still all they could talk about.
He ushered her into the back of the car as the taxi driver opened the door for her, nodding at her as she gave the address to the driver. ‘He’s a good bloke, Brian Mullett, he’ll look after you,’ he said in a stage whisper, his head bobbing as he pocketed the tip she gave him. ‘Knows his way about and don’t take the long route, if you get my meaning.’
‘Thank you, you’ve been very kind.’
‘All in a day’s work, love. All in a day’s work.’
He stood and watched them as they drove off, and she didn’t know quite whether to wave or smile so she did both before settling back in the leather seat, her hand clutching at her throat as she stared through the window at the teeming traffic which seemed a law unto itself. They certainly didn’t drive like this in Sunderland. But it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, because she was here - she’d arrived, she’d done it! She shut her eyes tight for a moment, then forced herself to let out her breath in a long slow sigh.
‘You all right, duck?’ The taxi driver nearly made her jump out of her skin as he slid back the glass partition separating the driver from the rest of the cab. ‘Not feeling bad, are you?’
‘Oh no, no, I’m fine, thank you.’ She smiled at him before adding, the lilt in her voice telling its own story, ‘I’ve just moved here from the north you see, and everything is so fast and exciting.’
‘Well it’s fast all right, but I dunno about the other.’ He grinned at her. ‘You say you’re from the north?’
The tone suggested enquiry, and in answer to it Sarah said, ‘I’m taking up a position as housekeeper to Lady Harris. Do you know her?’
‘Lady Harris? Well, bless me soul, and there was me round there just the other day for a cup of tea and a cream bun.’ The teasing was friendly and light. ‘If I’d known you was coming I’d have put in a good word for you.’
‘Thank you.’ She was laughing now, and the eyes in the mirror smiled back.
‘So you’re a housekeeper are you? You don’t look old enough to keep house.’
‘I’m twenty.’ It was indignant.
‘Twenty? Oh, that’s ancient, that is. That explains it. Twenty you say, my, my.’
‘I’ve had a lot of experience.’
Years, endless years, of drudgery, and those before she reached the grand age of fifteen and officially became a supervisor, the title of Mother for the Home’s helpers having become redundant two years before. It had been Maggie who had persuaded her to stay at the Home as a paid helper when the job was offered to her. ‘Get a bit of experience under your belt, lass,’ she’d said stoically. ‘I know, an’ you know, that you’ve bin doin’ the work for years, but you need it on paper. Use ’em, they’ve used you since you were a bairn.’ It had been the right decision.
One year as a supervisor alongside Rebecca, who had then left Hatfield when she had married just after her sixteenth birthday; one as laundry assistant, rising to laundry manageress the following year; then two as housekeeper to one of Hatfield’s governors, before her employers, on deciding to emigrate, had recommended her for the post she was about to take up.
She had upset more than a few at Hatfield when she’d gone for the housekeeping job to the governor, Mr Roberts, she reflected quietly. The general opinion had been that she should have stayed in the background and let others who were older, and in their opinion wiser, have their chance. But Mrs Roberts had liked her, and had appreciated having someone near her own age about the place, she having married a man old enough to be her father, so that had been that. And she hadn’t been unhappy there, not by a long chalk, with a comfortable room of her own and most evenings free, as well as a half-day a week to herself.
She had been able to visit Maggie and Florrie in the evenings, more often than not with Rebecca, whose husband had been working permanent night shift in those days; but she’d known even then she wanted more. She had always known it, right from when she could remember thinking at all, but the self-knowledge had clarified and sharpened since the incident with Matron Cox when she was ten.
It entered Sarah’s mind, and not for the first time, that it was funny how things worked out. Who would have thought the explosion that wrecked her life then and made her grow up overnight would carry the seeds that, growing and flowering, would encourage her to follow her own star? Because she couldn’t have left Maggie all alone in Sunderland, she just couldn’t have done it. But she hadn’t had to, Florrie was with her. And the two women’s friendship had begun that day ten years ago . . .
She had still been very ill with the pneumonia that had nearly snuffed out her life - the result of her attempted escape from Hatfield - when Maggie had asked if Florrie could come to see her in the Sunderland infirmary. She hadn’t wanted her to but she had said yes anyway, because Maggie had indicated Florrie wanted to apologize for the part she had played in her troubles, and she had been curious to see the Mother Shawe she knew saying sorry to anyone - especially to her. But as Florrie had stood by the side of her bed, she had hardly recognized her old enemy in the white-faced, broken woman looking down at her, and it had seemed natural to hold out her hand when Florrie had falteringly asked her forgiveness. That the moment had been portentous hadn’t been clear at the time, but it had begun a steady metamorphosis in Florrie that had transformed not only their relationship, but also Florrie’s with Maggie and Rebecca.
As the taxi bumped over a large rut in the road it jerked her back to the present, and to the taxi driver saying, ‘This Lady Harris. One of the top nobs, is she?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Her main home is in the country.’ Sarah didn’t feel it was quite right to discuss her employer with a stranger, but he didn’t seem to notice her reticence as he said, ‘How the other half live, eh? Don’t know they’re born, some of ’em. Mind you, there’s some that are all right, I’m not saying they’re all the same, but most of the folks round these parts counted themselves lucky if their place was still standing at the end of the war. Old Hitler weren’t too particular where he dropped his bombs, I can tell you. I don’t know about your Lady Harris, but there were a good few who nipped off to their country mansions and saw the war out behind velvet curtains. They say money can’t buy health but I don’t know so much.’
‘No.’ Sarah nodded sympathetically but made no further comment.
‘What do your family think about you moving down here then? Bet they weren’t too keen?’ The eyes in the mirror flashed over the beautiful face and slim body - she was a looker if ever he’d seen one.
‘They didn’t mind.’ Her family. Well, Maggie and Florrie and Rebecca were the nearest she’d got to a family, and they hadn’t minded, although she knew Rebecca in particular would miss her badly. But she spent a good deal of each day at Maggie’s house now Maggie had given up working. Not that it was Maggie’s house; it was Florrie who paid the rent. And it wasn’t a house either, just the downstairs of one, but since Florrie had got the job of laundry manageress at the Sunderland infirmary three years before, enabling her and Maggie to move out of Hatfield, the two women had never been happier.
‘Didn’t mind, eh? Well, times are changing that’s for sure. You can’t expect women to do men’s jobs while there’s a war on, and then be content to sit at home minding the kids and getting the dinner, can you?’ He sounded as if that’s exactly what he did expect. ‘Mind you, I tell you straight, if my old lady decided to hop it every mornin’ there’d be fireworks. Not that I don’t think women aren’t capable . . .’
Sarah let him ramble on, putting in the odd monosyllable when necessary as she gazed out of the window. Her family. Why, after all this time, did it still hurt so much? A few casually spoken words and all her fine clothes and carefully cultivated composure went out of the window, reducing her to a ten-year-old child inside. Her face stared back at her from the glass, her eyes expressing something that caused her to look quickly away. But just because she had taken this step it didn’t mean the dream of finding her mother one day was finished with. Sunderland was only a train ride away, and this didn’t have to be for ever - it was up to her. It was all up to her.
‘’Ere we are then, love. Nineteen Emery Place. You make yourself known, an’ I’ll bring your case. Feels like you’ve got a baby elephant in there.’
He was trying to be kind and Sarah forced a smile in response, even as a dart of panic sent her blood racing. She must be mad, coming here like this. This wasn’t Sunderland, and Lady Harris wasn’t Mrs Roberts. She had always felt years older than her former employer - aeons - and it had given her an edge she’d been grateful for at the time, but there was nothing girlish or immature about Lady Harris.
She had learnt as she’d gone along at the Robertses, and no one, least of all her young mistress, had been aware of any shortcomings. But here . . .
‘All right, love?’ She was aware the taxi driver had opened her door and was peering at her, his leathery face slightly perplexed, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to drive round the block again to give her some time to find her courage, but the certain something inside, that had drawn her to London in the first place, wouldn’t let her. And then the door to the large, imposing, double-fronted terraced house opened, and the trim little maid she had seen on her one and only visit stood framed in the doorway.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. It was one of Maggie’s pet sayings and perfectly suited to the moment as she climbed out of the big black cab, walking across the pavement and into the small railed front garden, before mounting the eight or so white scrubbed steps to the front door where the maid was waiting. Little did they know this wasn’t her, this calm, well-dressed woman in the neat suit and smart shoes; inside she was scared to death she had bitten off more than she could chew. But Lady Harris had chosen her from all the other applicants for the post because she had convinced her prospective employer she was up to the task.
And she was
. She took a deep, silent pull of air. She would make sure she was, even if she had to work twenty-four hours a day. The alternative - staying in Sunderland for another few years at a mundane sort of job, or worse, doing what Rebecca had done and marrying the first man who asked her - held no attraction whatsoever. She wanted to see life, experience new things,
feel
them . . .