Seventeen
Irene’s Aunt Martin had never married. There were tall tales at the school that Aunt Martin’s fiancé had been killed in the Great War and that she was one of the two million women who couldn’t find a husband.
Irene was secretly convinced that even if there had been a surplus of men when Aunt Martin was young she would still have had problems. She must have been pretty once but it was gone now. She was a tiny thin-figured woman with a sharp red face, a small mouth and lank grey hair. When Aunt Martin was amused, which was not often, she uttered a high pitched noise which turned her face purple. Aunt Martin had a temper so fearsome that Irene shuddered at the idea of going to stay with her even for a short while.
During and after the fight with her father Irene had wondered through tears whether there was somewhere else she could go and finally came to the conclusion that she was ill-equipped to go alone into the world. All she had that belonged to her were her clothes, her books and a string of pearls which had been her mother’s. This made her feel so frightened that she went to her Aunt Martin’s but she was resolved to stay there no longer than she had to.
Aunt Martin was not one of those clever women who used their brains and did not have time or desire for marriage. Her school had been born of necessity because she had no money.
She lived in a drab draughty house in a quiet street on the edge of the city and there she took in boarders. They must have been, Irene thought, the kind of girls whose parents were too busy for them but hadn’t enough money to send them anywhere they would be kindly and intelligently taught. Here they spent long hours sewing in silence, being taught manners and plain cooking and a little French and music.
The house was dark and cold and in December icy draughts swept across the brown linoleum in the halls. Aunt Martin greeted Irene in a stuffy little room at the front of the house with the words, ‘So, your father wants rid of you? Nice behaviour, miss, for a girl of your breeding. He wrote and told me all about it.’
Irene immediately resolved to leave Aunt Martin’s house as soon as possible but that night when she lay in her bed in the tiny room which she had been allotted she didn’t see a way out of the situation and that was the hardest thing of all. Aunt Martin would give her no money. She knew nobody here. If she left there was nothing but the streets and it was almost winter. She knew from spending her life in Sunderland what happened to women who broke the rules. There were poor streets in the East End where the children had no shoes and the women wore filthy tattered clothes. Irene was so frightened by these prospects for her future that she couldn’t sleep and overslept the six o’clock bell.
She was told to see to the girls and she did try from that very first day to make their lives more pleasant but it was a hard task considering that her aunt spent as little as possible. The weather was bitterly cold, the fires in the rooms were meagre, Irene was not allowed to go out. She spent her days straining her eyes in the dim light, sewing and trying to correct the girls’ mistakes before her aunt should see them.
She forgot what being warm was like, she forgot leisure and good food. Her aunt ate alone in the little front room. She ate with the girls in a room off the kitchen and the food was neither plentiful nor interesting. The tea was invariably lukewarm and Irene had got to the stage where she dared not question anything. At night before she slept she let a picture of David Blake flood her mind and even then she found difficulty in gaining any happiness from it because she knew that he had lost his job. She didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him and she knew for certain that he was unhappy because of the girl who would not have him. Irene could not imagine how the girl could not have wanted him – she had wanted nothing in her life as much – and the days and nights dragged more and more slowly. She clung to the idea that her father would send for her before Christmas but he did not. Even though she wrote, asking penitently to come home, there was no reply. She wrote to Simon to see if he could do anything but though she watched from the upstairs window each morning there was never a letter. It was almost as though she didn’t exist.
Irene soon realised that there would be no merrymaking in her aunt’s house. She dreaded the thought of being left there in the echoing darkness with her aunt and the one or two boarders who did not go home.
The festive season was almost there. The shops had in them coloured decorations and the bigger shops had shiny gifts. In the churches people were practising carols. This was the only time Irene went out, on a Sunday morning to church. She found herself thinking of what last Christmas had been like when she had presided over wonderful meals in her father’s house. When every room had roaring fires, when she had a maid to herself, the running of the household, the ordering of delicious food and drink. When she could do almost exactly what she wanted, go out shopping, walk in the parks, read by the fire, have music and conversation and comfort. She thought of Robert Denham and how perhaps she had made a mistake. She even thought of writing to her father and telling him that she had changed her mind and would marry Robert. Not that Robert would have her now but anything, anything at all to get out of this place.
The snow fell beyond her window. She thought of taking walks in the country with the holly berries and the icy ponds. Simon did not write or come to see her. He had been her last hope and even though she wrote again both to her father and to Simon there was no letter from home.
The girls went away, the house was silent, the wind blew down the halls, the trees in the garden were black and bare, the nights were bright with stars, the windows were frosted with patterns.
Two days before Christmas, early in the afternoon, when she was huddled before a tiny fire with the two girls who were left, trying vainly to cheer them by reading them
A Christmas Carol
, her aunt’s little maid, Susan, came up the stairs.
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said, looking surprised, ‘a man.’
Irene stared at her for a few moments. It had to be Simon, she thought in delight.
‘A young man?’
Sally blushed.
‘Yes,’ she said.
It must be Simon. Her heart lifted. She put down the book. Her father had relented and she would go home for Christmas, maybe even for good. She wouldn’t have to stay here in this awful cold house with her miserable aunt any longer. She had known in her heart that it would be so and she could go back to Sunderland and there she would be a model daughter. She would never ever defy her father again. She would never leave it any more.
She ran out of the room and along the hall. She stopped at the top of the straight flight of stairs. The young man who stood in the hall was not her well-dressed brother and at first she didn’t recognise him because he didn’t look up. Her heart twisted with hurt. It was a mistake, it was nothing to do with her, it was nothing to do with her father or Simon. She would not go home for Christmas. She would stay here maybe for always. They didn’t care about her after all. They had not sent for her, not thought about her even now. They didn’t love her.
And then he looked up and even by the ill-light in the hall she could see the straight fair hair. He was wearing a suit and had a cap in his hands and she saw the blue eyes and the tentative smile and the day suddenly took wings.
‘David.’
She held herself back. She made herself stay there for seconds and then come slowly down the stairs. She made herself act like a lady. She put out her hand when she reached the bottom of the stairs, hoping that her feelings were not showing on her by now carefully-schooled features. She must pretend that she was pleased to see him but not delighted. He must not know that he was her last thought at night and her first in the morning. He must not suspect that she loved him.
‘How very nice to see you,’ she said as he took her hand. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I just wanted to know how you were getting on.’
‘I’m very well.’ Irene was not deceived. Unless he actually lived somewhere near he could scarcely have been passing her door. She badly wanted to invite him into one of the downstairs rooms and give him tea but she couldn’t and as she hesitated he said, ‘Will you come out and I’ll buy you some tea?’
Her aunt, Irene thought swiftly, was not at home and she had little to lose so she put on her coat and went with him. He took her to what was, she well knew though she had never been to it, the best teashop in town and she was much too polite to suggest to him that it was out of his reach. Instead she revelled in the warmth, the mahogany, the brass, the waitresses in their black-and-white uniforms, the starched white cloths and the silver cutlery. He didn’t look out of place there, he didn’t even look nervous. He smiled so well at the waitress that he got everything he wanted instantly and Irene sat back in her chair and thought that he had changed. There was a cool reserve which stilled her lips.
When the sandwiches and scones and cakes and tea arrived she fell on it and only recovered her manners when she saw him watching her curiously from the other side of the table.
‘I didn’t eat much lunch,’ she excused herself.
And then she saw the girl she was in the mirror behind him and knew that he was undeceived. She had lost weight and more than that. She looked down so that whatever he did not perceive he would not read from her eyes.
‘I thought you might have gone home for Christmas.’
‘So did I. My father hasn’t forgiven me.’
‘For what?’ The words were brutally plain. Irene poured out more tea and didn’t answer. ‘Irene, what are you doing here?’
‘I’m having tea with you.’ She bit her lip over the flippant reply and looked carefully at him. ‘I can’t be long. My aunt mustn’t know that I went out. Have a scone.’
‘I don’t want a scone.’
She put down the plate she had picked up and offered him, and then she said, ‘I’m sure you think it’s very feeble of me but I don’t know what else to do. I have to stay here.’
‘Until when?’
‘Until my father lets me go home.’
‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Irene thought desperately. She hadn’t imagined beyond the desire to go home. Perhaps there would be another man like Robert Denham. Perhaps there would not. Perhaps she would end up like her Aunt Martin, sour and red-faced with a pepperpot by the bed in case some man attacked her.
‘Your father has no right to treat you like this.’
Irene managed a smile. ‘You’re going to go and tell him that, are you?’
‘He had me thrown out.’
‘Yes, I imagine he did.’
‘For nothing.’
‘I expect he thought it was something.’
‘I’m going to see my day with him.’ And that was when Irene understood the difference. Her father could not have called David Blake ‘my lad’ or ‘my boy’ any more. He was not.
Suddenly she didn’t want her chocolate cake or her tea but neither did she want to leave and go back to her Aunt Martin’s. There was nothing else to do. Blake paid the bill, they went out into the cold wet street. They walked in silence, he seemed so tall and so remote that Irene couldn’t think of a thing to say and when they were back and standing outside her aunt’s front gate her heart twisted for all the things she couldn’t tell him.
‘I’d like to invite you in,’ she said, ‘but I can’t.’
And then her aunt opened the door and came out into the street.
‘And what on earth do you think you’re doing, Miss?’ she said.
‘This is David Blake, Aunt. David, my Aunt Martin. David used to work for my father—’
‘Yes, I’ve heard all about him.’ She gave Blake a look that would have felled trees and then turned to Irene. ‘Get inside,’ she said.
Irene would have gone too, shaking, but a grip descended on her wrist.
‘You’re not going back in there,’ he said.
Her aunt glared. ‘I’ll call the police,’ she said.
‘Call them. You have no right to keep Irene here.’
For the first time ever Irene saw her aunt falter.
‘David, I have to.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I have nowhere else to go.’
‘You can come with me.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘I understand very well. You don’t really want to go back in there?’
Irene hesitated.
‘Have you left anything of value?’
Irene was already wearing her pearls. She shook her head.
‘Come on then.’
It was like a dream. Her aunt stood there, shouting, her face getting redder and redder. He took her by the hand and walked her away and Irene, like someone she wasn’t, went with him.
It began to snow. He walked quickly. His hand kept hers warm. She pushed the other into her pocket.
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Don’t tell me you wanted to stay there? You look ill.’
‘I’m not ill. I just hate it but I can’t walk out with nowhere to go and I can’t stay with you.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m lodging with friends. They’ll have you.’
‘David, it isn’t respectable.’
‘This is the real world now, Irene. It isn’t very respectable and it’s the only thing you can do. Now come on, I’m getting soaked.’
* * *
It was one of the strangest afternoons of Irene’s life and parts of it were rather pleasant. They travelled back to Sunderland and Irene was full of cake and tea and warmer than she had been. He looked after her. He held her hand. Nobody had ever looked after her before that. Nobody had ever needed to. She had always had her father’s protection, his money, his status, his house. Since leaving there she had felt vulnerable and alone but she didn’t feel like that any more, she felt grown-up in a way in which she never had and proud as though David Blake was her young man or even her husband and though he was not there was no harm in a pretence that he did not know about. She thought that other people would think so too and it brought a smile to her cold lips.
They left Sunderland, she felt the wrench, she thought of her father and what he would be doing. She strained her eyes in the station for sight of Simon or anyone she knew. She wished she could even have gone to within a street or so of her home. She had never wanted to be there so badly.