The Past and Other Lies (25 page)

Bertha glanced behind her to see if the smile and possible wink had been intended for someone else but the only person nearby was Mr Lake, who was getting to his feet and placing his hat back on his head.

Well, fancy! thought Bertha, putting on her jacket rather self-consciously. She made a great show of repositioning her hat, tucking her handbag under her arm, ensuring her arms were kept firmly by her sides and generally keeping her eyes averted. Her face, she felt certain, had turned a deep scarlet, though this was surely due to the oppressive climate.

‘I don’t know that the rain has eased off entirely, Miss Flaxheed, however it is rather warm in here, so shall we venture out?’ suggested Mr Lake as they set off down the aisle. As she neared the doorway the young man, and he was very young she now saw, perhaps even a little younger than herself, continued to smile, turning his head boldly to watch her pass and reaching out only at the very last minute to take hold of the door handle and open the door for her.

As she swept past, Bertha decided he must be a manual worker of some kind, as he wore a jacket with no waistcoat and his hat was an old cloth cap pushed to the back of his head. This was all she saw as she re-entered the gardens and a blast of wet, chilly, early April air hit her. The raindrops, still softly falling, doused her cheeks, cooling them, and she stood for a moment breathing in the fresh, light air.

‘Ah, that’s better,’ remarked Mr Lake, coming up behind her and raising both eyebrows expressively as though he had made an observation of some consequence. Bertha replied with a tight smile and set off down the path in what she decided must be the direction of the railway station. She wondered if the young man in the Palm House had overheard this and whether he now assumed Mr Lake to be her father. Perhaps it would be better if he did.

‘I think it must be getting late,’ said Bertha, not really having much sense of what time it was but aware that she had spent enough time in Mr Lake’s company and that she was a young lady with a life to live. She was sure she had heard the door of the hothouse open and close again, and footsteps on the path behind them.

‘It is in fact five minutes to four,’ announced Mr Lake, having whipped out his fob watch and taken a long look at it. ‘Meaning we shall catch the ten past four train, if we are quick about it.’

Bertha walked in silence, not sure what irritated her more: his ridiculous old fob watch, his precise pronouncement of the time, his memorising of the entire District Railway Sunday timetable or his insistence that they go everywhere in a terrific hurry. She deliberately slowed her pace; the footsteps behind them slowed too.

‘It was in memory of my old dad that I joined the postal service myself,’ continued Mr Lake and Bertha closed her eyes for a brief second. Did he really think she cared two bits about how or why he had joined the blasted postal service?

‘Yes, when Father died, Mother and I had to move in with Mother’s sister, Daisy—she of the gingerbread—in Acton. Oakton Way. We had lived in Shepherds Bush prior to this, you see.’

Bertha did see. She saw that this was the dullest man she had ever met, that she would as soon have spent her valuable Sunday afternoon in the lounge with Dad reading the newspaper, Mum knitting and Jemima and Ronnie coming round for tea and chattering endlessly about home-making and wifely duties.

‘When I was seventeen I tried out for an established position, only I couldn’t get one, on account of the Boer War had just ended and suddenly they were reserving all the jobs for ex-servicemen. But I persevered, took the sorters and telegraphists exam and worked for a time in the telegraph office, then became a sorter and now I am, as you know, a counterman.’

He paused but Bertha was too busy calculating his age to make comment. The Boer War had just ended? That was, well, twenty-three years ago which made Mr Lake...made Mr Lake forty if he was a day! Dear Lord!

‘It’s a good, steady profession. A man can support a family in such a profession. I have been able to assist my mother and aunt so that we now own our house in Oakton Way outright.’

Forty!

‘Eventually, I hope to advance further to the position of postmaster.’

They had reached the edge of the gardens and were about to pass through the gate and onto the street when suddenly Mr Lake paused and spun around, frowned and slapped his hand irritably against his thigh.

‘The picnic basket. I’ve left it on the bench in the Palm House. Do excuse me, Miss Flaxheed, I’ll get it directly,’ and he hurried back along the path, excusing himself as he almost collided with the young man who was standing just behind them.

It was the young man who had smiled at her in the hothouse. He was smiling now as he sauntered right up to her. Most certainly a manual worker, she decided, his clothing being quite patched and his boots being very well worn. Maybe he worked here at the gardens. She turned away and stood her ground, taking in the air and definitely unaware of anyone who might be approaching her.

‘Arf’noon,’ he said, and Bertha continued to take in the air but she inclined her head an inch in his direction.

‘Lovely day for it,’ he ventured.

‘Is it?’ replied Bertha.

‘Thought you was never gonna be rid of yer old man,’ he said with a wink and Bertha felt herself blushing hotly. ‘Bit of a tyrant, ain’t he?’

‘I don’t think that’s very polite...’

‘Anyway, the old bloke’s gone now.’ A second wink. ‘Where is he? Gone to meet someone and left you on all yer own, I bet.’

‘Mr Lake has gone to retrieve his picnic basket,’ Bertha replied coolly, and she could see Mr Lake already at the door of the Palm House, disappearing inside. This information seemed to encourage the young man, who took a step closer.

‘Anyways, reason I come after you, I thought you must ’ave lost yer purse, miss,’ he said. Bertha frowned and turned to look at him. ‘Yer purse,’ he said loudly as though she were deaf. ‘Thought you must ’ave lost it in the gardens because I found one.’ He held out to her a small and rather tatty black leather purse.

‘Oh no, I have my purse, thank you.’ Bertha held up her bag to reassure him that her own purse was quite safe inside. In one sudden movement he snatched her bag and was off, running through the gate and across the street, then round a corner and was gone.

‘
Stop! Thief, stop there!
’ Mr Lake, having just emerged from the Palm House, dropped the picnic basket and took off after him.

Bertha stood helplessly in the gateway, staring after them both and thinking very seriously about bursting into tears. After some minutes Mr Lake reappeared, shaking his head and breathing rather heavily.

‘No luck, I’m afraid—fellow was long gone.’ He came to a stop and bent over to catch his breath for a moment. ‘Are you...alright? Did he...hurt you or anything?’

‘No, nothing like that, just—just sort of grabbed it and ran. It happened so fast.’

‘These fellows are professionals, they don’t work for a living, most of them are...socialists and union men.’ He took another deep breath. ‘Did you have much in it?’

Bertha tried to think. ‘No. Well, just some bus money. But it was a lovely bag, my favourite bag...’ She stopped because she really didn’t want to cry.

‘Well, I’m sure we can find another exactly like it. Now, I think we had better find a police station.’

‘Oh no, I’d really rather not,’ said Bertha quickly.

‘Can’t let them get away with it.’

‘I’d rather just forget about it and go home.’ She felt very cold all of a sudden and she rather hoped it might start to rain again so that if she did burst into tears it might not be so obvious.

Mr Lake took her arm, tucked it into his and patted it comfortingly. ‘Very well, then. Come on.’ They retrieved the abandoned picnic basket and he led her across the road. ‘Must say, you were very brave, Miss Flaxheed. Incident like that, a lot of ladies would have panicked, but you were very stalwart. Very stalwart indeed.’

Bertha ventured a timid smile.

‘Thank you, Mr Lake.’

‘Please, do call me Matthew,’ he said.

AUGUST 1925

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY SHE had carried an old navy handbag to work but no one had noticed.

Even apart from the handbag, she had felt rotten all day, stuffy-headed and lethargic, and she had sneezed so many times during lunch that no one had been in the least surprised when she had sent word the next day that she was ill with a violent head cold and could not come in to work.

That had been the day of the raven in the rafters and Mr Littlejohn with the pistol, an incident about which the whole switchroom still talked, five months later.

And now, finally, today was the day.

Bertha knew it with a certainty she couldn’t voice, and even had she been able to voice it she wouldn’t have, not to her family and certainly not to her co-workers. Bitter experience had taught her that if you talked about something it did not happen. And this was going happen.

Matthew had called it A Special Reason. He had arranged to meet her this evening after her shift. He had never met her straight from her shift before. It was unprecedented.

This was it
.

‘Oi, Flaxy, you been at the gin or something?’

Bertha jerked her head up and met the inquiring eyes of Nellie Trenoweth, who was perched two seats away and was scrutinising her with a piercing gaze, a lipstick poised over her mouth ready to reapply. ‘You been a million miles away all day,’ she observed. ‘Wouldn’t be keeping something from us, would you?’

Nellie had a way of reading people that was quite unnerving. The slightest retort, denial or explanation could prove fatal, but Bertha found that her headset required immediate readjustment at precisely that moment.

‘Am I missing something interesting?’ said Fliss Cutler, looking up from her call with a sparkle of curiosity in her eye. ‘So sorry, caller.
Do
be a sweetie and hold the line, would you? Thanks so much.’

Thank
you
very much, Nellie, thought Bertha, jabbing a jack into a new call. ‘Operator. May I help you?’

‘S’obvious,’ Nellie was saying. ‘Read her like a book, that one. Something’s up, sure enough... Battersea nine-two-double-six, that line is engaged. Would you like to try again later, caller?’

‘Perhaps she’s anticipating a special delivery courtesy of the Royal Mail,’ replied Fliss with a wink. ‘Do please stay on the line, caller. Shan’t be too much longer... There we are, you have a connection.’

A special delivery from the Royal Mail, yes, most amusing. Well, she’d made no secret of her weekly excursions with Matthew, not since Elsie had seen them at the Lyons in High Street a few months back and made it her mission to broadcast the news as far and wide as possible. Anyway, there was no shame in it—Matthew was a very respectable man, no one could argue with that. And in these times, well, a girl had to look out for herself and take what she could. Elsie had recently been courting the awful Bernie Sampson from the Switch Adjustment team who wore a too-small bowler hat on the weekends and had a thin moustache and lived in a sordid little flat above a greengrocer’s in Ealing with his sister, according to Elsie.

The bell went for the early shift’s lunch break.

‘Time for tiffin!’ announced Fliss, ripping off her headset and slipping off her stool. ‘Come on, Nance,’ she said, grabbing the hand of Nancy Probart, who was seated on Fliss’s other side, and leading the charge for the lunch room.

Finishing her own call—a belligerent old woman from Belgravia who kept getting a crossed line with a young man in Islington—Bertha removed her own headset, climbed down from her stool and followed Elsie and Nellie and the rest of the early shift as they trooped out for their thirty-minute lunch.

By the time she reached the lunch room most of the bench space was taken. Bertha found a spot and squeezed in beside Nellie and Elsie and opposite Nancy and Fliss and contemplated her lunch. It was potted shrimp paste sandwiches again. She bit into her sandwich and listened to the lunchtime chatter.

‘Well, far as I’m concerned we’ll all be out of a job,’ said Elsie, launching resignedly into her usual ham and tomato sandwich.

‘They’re always gonna need operators, though, ain’t they?’ said Nellie, shaking her head at Elsie’s defeatist approach. ‘Stands to reason. Some muggins has gotta push the button and pull the lever. Always ’ave, always will.’

They were discussing the new Telephone One-Fifty, a subject they’d all been discussing with boring repetitiveness on and off for most of the year. The Telephone One-Fifty had been introduced the previous year and was a new type of handset which had an automatic finger-dialling facility, meaning callers would now be able to dial their own numbers and no longer need to go through the operator. It was not yet widespread, and if you wanted to make a trunk call you still had to go through the operator, but the long-term implications for exchange staff were ominous.

Bertha took a bite of her sandwich and smiled to herself. She too had been worried about the Telephone One-Fifty only a few short months ago, but soon it would no longer be her concern. None of it would. Not Miss Crisp, not the mythical Mr Littlejohn, not Elsie’s trials and tribulations with the awful Bernie Sampson or Nellie’s gossiping or anything really. In a few short hours it would all be over. That is, in a few short hours she might—probably would, in fact—become Mr Matthew Lake’s intended. And knowing Matthew as she felt she now did, he would be unlikely to ask her to marry him if he were not entirely ready and in a position to carry it through pretty much at once. She could be married and out of here in a few weeks. Perhaps less.

She listened as the conversation followed its usual pattern and she pitied them. She pitied poor Elsie who had only managed to land herself the horrid Bernie Sampson and whose future married life looked dismal. And Nancy, her husband killed in the Battle of Jutland, with a little girl to care for. What were Nancy’s prospects? And Nellie, who tried so hard to give the impression that she knew all there was to know about men when the reality was she had never managed to keep one for longer than three weeks. There was no denying Nellie had fun—or she gave the impression of having fun—but what was it all for, in the long run, if not to find a husband? And at the far end of the lunch table sat Miss Crisp, opening her little wooden lunch box, pulling out her two fish paste sandwiches, her stick of celery and her orange, as she did every day, in silence and on her own, a wide space either side of her and not a soul in the place speaking a word to her.