The Forget-Me-Not Summer (28 page)

Miranda sighed. She would have loved to see the film, especially in Gerald's company, but she was forced to shake her head. ‘Thank you very much, Gerry, but it's out of the question, unfortunately. I've not seen Steve since he got back from London and I must do so this evening.'

Gerald's voice sharpened with interest. ‘He went up to London? Did he go with Julian? My big brother means to go to Sandhurst for officer training, and had an interview last week. Don't say your Steve was doing the same?'

‘He's
not
my Steve,' Miranda said crossly. ‘You say I don't know nothin' about public schools; well you don't know nothin' about Liverpool, if you think that havin' a bezzie is the same as having a boyfriend, 'cos it bleedin' well isn't. In fact I'm not even sure that Steve's my bezzie any more. If he was he wouldn't have gone off to London without a word to me.'

‘Aha, I thought there was a rift in the lute when we went sledging. The pair of you were glaring at each other like a couple of angry cats quarrelling over a mouse,' Gerald said. He spoke rather unwisely, as it happened, since Miranda shouted into the receiver that he shouldn't leap to conclusions and now she certainly would not accompany him to any cinema, no matter how badly she wanted to see the film. Gerald began to apologise, but at that moment a member of staff entered the hallway where the telephone hung on the wall and Miranda slammed the receiver guiltily back on its rest and turned to face Mr Hardy, who was coming towards her, eyebrows raised.

‘I trust you were not taking a personal call, Miss Lovage,' he said reprovingly. ‘You know we frown on personal telephone calls. Whilst you are on the line our clients might be clamouring to get through.'

‘No, it was a business call for Mr Lawrence, only he's not come in yet,' Miranda said, crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘I gave the caller Mr Lawrence's extension number and told him to try it in about half an hour.'

Mr Hardy grunted, then handed Miranda a sheaf of papers. ‘I'll take your word for it,' he said grumpily. ‘And now have these typed up for me, please. If you're too busy to do it yourself give them to Miss Okeham; she's always very accurate and quick.'

‘Certainly, sir,' Miranda said through gritted teeth. It was just her luck that Mr Hardy had been the one to catch her using the telephone for a personal call. She knew he disliked her, and thought she had got the job of office junior not through excellence but because she was some connection of Mr Grimshaw's. Unfortunately there was enough truth in this assumption to make it impossible for Miranda to deny it, so now she took the papers from Mr Hardy's hot little paw and hurried back to the typing pool, where she had a desk at the extreme end of the long room.

All that day she worked hard and tried to forget that Gerald must be wondering why she had put the phone down on him, but it was the sort of day when things keep going wrong. As office junior, she pushed a trolley round from department to department at eleven in the morning, offering cups of tea or coffee to the assembled staff, and because she was in a hurry to get back to her desk – Miss Okeham was too busy to take on Mr Hardy's work – she forgot to avoid the loose board at the entrance to the typing pool. She grabbed the tea urn just in time to stop a real calamity but, alas, not quickly enough to prevent tea from puddling all over the trolley. She had only just finished mopping up the mess when several of the men sent her out for sandwiches. She was supposed to buy two ham and pickle, one egg and cress and four beef with mustard, and she would have done so had the baker and confectioner not sold out of beef. He assured her that her customers would like pork just as well, so she followed his advice and bought pork and mustard, only to discover on her return to the office that Mr Rosenbaum, because of his religion, was not allowed to devour any part of the pig.

Miranda sighed, and her friend Lucy, who sat at the next desk, came and took some of the letters which Miranda should have been typing, and gave her friend a sympathetic grin. ‘Haven't you ever noticed old Rosie wears a little cap thing in his hair?' she asked. ‘He explained to me once – he's ever so nice is Mr Rosenbaum – that Jewish men call that cap thing a yarmulke and they're supposed to wear it all the time; well, not when they're in bed I s'pose, but whenever they're up and doing. Anyway, Jewish people aren't allowed to eat pork, so do you want me to type up some of your letters while you go and buy him something else?'

Miranda thanked her sincerely and scurried off to the bakery to buy another sandwich; at Mr Rosenbaum's suggestion, another egg and cress.

Naturally enough this made her late and being late made her cross, and being cross led to mistakes in her typing, which normally never happened, so by the time she was about to start her last task – collecting and stamping all the letters that had been typed that day – she was simmering with annoyance, very unfairly directed at Steve because he had not told her, his best friend, either that he was going to London, or the reason for his trip.

She was somewhat mollified on finding, when she eventually left the building, that Steve was waiting for her on the pavement. She was carrying an enormous sack of stamped mail to be posted in the nearest pillar box, and managed to give Steve a small smile and a mutter of thanks as he began helping her to push the letters through the flap. But even this friendly act could not remove her sense of ill usage nor make her forget what
a horrid day she had had. During the course of it she had actually wondered if Mr Hardy might demand her dismissal, for she knew very well that Mr Hardy had hoped one of his nieces would get her job. However, until today he had really had nothing to complain about so far as her work went, so she tried to dismiss such thoughts from her mind and turned expectantly to Steve. ‘Well? Where have you been?' And then, before Steve could open his mouth, she added: ‘Not that I need to ask; you've been to perishin' London for some reason, so are you going to tell me, or would you rather tell that horrible Pearl?'

Steve's eyes opened wide with astonishment. ‘Now what makes you say that?' he asked in a wondering tone. ‘I've not seen the girl since Sunday.'

‘Nor you've not seen me,' Miranda interrupted ungrammatically. ‘You've made a right fool of me, Steve Mickleborough. I thought we was bezzies, but . . .'

‘So we were,' Steve said. ‘I asked you to come sledgin' but you chose to go with Gerald instead. Of course he's gorra car and I've only got buses and trams, but I asked you first, you can't deny it.'

‘I never said I'd go, though,' Miranda said huffily. ‘You'd been horrible to me, so why should I go sledging with you?'

The two had been standing on the pavement by the letter box, but now Steve took her arm and turned her towards the busy main road. ‘I can see you're still in a bad mood, so if we're going to quarrel we might as well do so over a cup of tea and a bun,' he said resignedly. ‘Oh, Miranda, do come down off your high horse and admit it was a rotten thing to do, to go sledgin' with the
Grimshaw boys in the very same place that you knew I wanted to take you.'

Miranda tried to snatch her arm away, but Steve hung on. ‘No, you aren't goin' to walk away from me until we've had our talk, so make up your mind to it,' he said grimly. ‘You must have guessed that Cyril and meself only invited Pearl and Ruby to come along because we thought you'd give me the go-by; well you had, hadn't you? You thought you were punishin' me for darin' to argue with you; well, I suppose I thought I was punishin' you by taking the girls sledgin'.'

Miranda stopped short and drew herself up to her full height. ‘You know very well that Gerald and Julian are just friends, but from what I've heard Pearl and Ruby are a different matter altogether. Why, if anyone wanted to punish anyone else it was you, kissing that horrible Pearl. Not that I care,' she added quickly. ‘You can kiss anyone you bloody well please, so long as it isn't me.'

Steve shook her. ‘I'd as soon try to kiss a spitting wild cat, which is what you are,' he said grimly. ‘Here's the tea room; furious though I am with you I'm prepared to mug you to tea and a bun whilst we sort things out. Oh, Miranda, don't be a fool. Don't just chuck away months and months of good friendship just because of one little falling out.'

Miranda began to protest but Steve ignored her. He pulled her into the small tea room and made her sit at a quiet table in the furthest corner. Then he ordered tea and cakes and the two sat in brooding silence until their order was delivered, when Miranda almost forgot her grievance at the sight of the cream cakes temptingly displayed on a three-tier stand. Her hand hovered
between an éclair positively bulging with cream and a meringue, but when Steve advised her to take the éclair first and to have the meringue next she returned her hand to her lap and glared at him. ‘Perhaps you're confusing me with that little tart you took sledging,' she said frostily. ‘I've heard it said that she'll do anything for a packet of crisps and a fizzy drink; well I'm not like that so just in case you get the wrong impression I'll take the custard tart.'

If Steve had merely passed her the custard tart all might still have been well, but instead he gave a loud guffaw, snatched the éclair and plonked it on her plate. ‘Don't be so daft, Miranda Lovage, and don't be so unfair to Ruby and Pearl. I don't know what folks say about them but to my way of thinkin' they're just a couple of girls full of energy and fun, without an ounce of vice. And since you'd been invited to come sledging and didn't even have the good manners to say yes or no, why shouldn't I ask a couple of girls I've known most of me life? Now, for God's sake eat it, and drink your tea; here's hoping it'll sweeten your temper. And then you can tell me what's wrong.'

Miranda ignored the tempting éclair. ‘All right, I was wrong to fall out with you and not agree to go sledging,' she muttered. ‘But next day I went round to your house to say I was sorry only you'd already gone to work. I did try to catch you there but I had no luck. So go on, I know you were in London but you've been away for three days and I don't know why you had to go there at all.' Despite her intention to treat his trip with indifference she could feel her brows beginning to draw together. ‘Well? Are you going to tell me or aren't you?'

Steve took one of the cakes and bit into it. He chewed and swallowed infuriatingly slowly, before picking up his cup of tea and taking a long swig. When he spoke it was slowly and distinctly, as though to a small child. Miranda gritted her teeth and took a bite out of the chocolate éclair, not deigning to say a word, but waiting for Steve to speak first.

‘Well, after I'd called for you on Sunday and you weren't there, I were walking along the Scottie headin' for Jamaica Close when someone shouted me. It were Cyril Rogers; do you remember him? Tall feller, wi' a big conk and what you used to call a puddin' basin haircut.'

Miranda giggled. ‘He's changed a lot,' she observed. ‘I saw him on your sledge. He's got himself a proper haircut for a start and he was wearing pretty nice clothes considering he was sledging with you and those two – young ladies.'

‘Yes, well, he's joined the air force,' Steve explained. ‘We talked about it all the afternoon – when we weren't actually on the sledge, I mean – and then he came home to Jamaica Close and Mam gave us both pie and chips and we went on talking. He's rare keen on the service, and it made me think I could do worse than join up as well. You see, everyone knows there's a war comin' despite what Mr Chamberlain said, and Cyril told me what I've heard others say – that them as volunteers before war is declared get the best choice of jobs – so I went to the recruiting office and filled in about a hundred forms . . .'

Miranda gasped. She suddenly realised that if she had missed Steve so badly when he was only away for three days, she would miss him a whole lot worse if he joined
the forces and left Liverpool, if not for good, then for a very long time. ‘Steve Mickleborough, if you've joined the Royal Air Force then it's the most unfair thing I ever heard,' she interrupted, her voice rising. ‘It's not fair! I can't do the same because I'm too young. Oh, do say you're just kidding. Do say you've not committed yourself!'

Steve grinned. ‘Well if I said it, it'd be a lie,' he announced cheerfully. ‘I took the recruiting sergeant's advice and went up to London with Cyril. We booked ourselves into a YMCA hostel – it was quite cheap – and I went to a place called Adastral House where I filled in even more forms, and had an interview, and then they sent me to somewhere in the suburbs where I had a medical. I passed A1 – well I would, wouldn't I? – and I'll get a letter telling me where to report for training in a few weeks.'

Miranda's mouth dropped open. ‘Without telling me?' she said. ‘Without a word to your bezzie, just because we'd had a teeny little falling out? Steve, how
could
you? Oh, if only I were a couple of years older . . .'

Steve began to say that he had only forestalled the authorities by a few months because he was sure they would start recruiting his age group very soon, but Miranda was not listening. She pushed her teacup and the plate with its half-eaten éclair away from her, put her head down on her arms and began to weep in earnest. Steve, clearly alarmed, for everyone in the tea room was staring at them, reached across the table and tried to brush the hot tears from Miranda's reddened cheeks. ‘Stop makin' an exhibition of yourself, and me too,' he hissed. ‘Everyone will be thinkin' I've done or said
somethin' bad to make you carry on so. What's so wrong with me joinin' the air force anyway? I don't want to go into the Navy, 'cos I'm always seasick, and I don't fancy the army either. But I'm interested in aero engines, because that's what we make at the factory. Oh, Miranda, do stop!'