The Quality Street Wedding Read online

  ‘You know, I think it’s a terrible shame that this history isn’t written down somewhere, Mr Hebblewhite. You know so much, but will it all be lost to the next generation? I’d consider it an honour to come and work here on my Saturdays and keep the place tidy if you would tell me all you know and let me write an account of it to put into the public library.’

  Mr Hebblewhite lifted his chin the better to ponder her request. It was true he did know a great deal about the history of the building – who knew it better? – and it was only right that a young person should take an interest in it. But ‘Aren’t you a bit on the young side for a job?’ he asked.

  ‘Just means I’d cost you less, Mr Hebblewhite. And I know all these young kids by name, so I could threaten to tell their mothers on them if they got too rowdy on a Saturday.’

  ‘How much less is less?’

  ‘Five shillings a week.’

  ‘For one day’s work? Highway robbery!’ He sniffed. ‘I’ll gi’ you three shillings.’

  They shook on it. Kathleen could now move on to the next stage in her plan.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘We’re not going to the pictures tonight, then?’ Peter might not have meant it to sound like a recrimination, but the fact that he’d been sitting on a bale of hay in the chill and the semi-darkness of the old factory stable waiting for Reenie – and she was much later than they had agreed – made her feel a pang of guilt.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Reenie moved quickly to untie her horse, Ruffian, and ready him for the ride home to her parents’ farm. ‘We had an accident on the experimental line, and—’

  Peter leapt up from his makeshift seat in a panic. ‘What sort of accident? Are you all right? What happened?’

  Reenie, worked up from her confrontation with Mrs Starbeck, began to cry in exasperation and disappointment.

  ‘Are you hurt, Reenie?’ Peter cupped her face in his palms and anxiously looked for any sign of injury. ‘What happened?’

  ‘No, no, I’m all right, really; it wasn’t that sort of accident.’ Reenie sniffed and buried her face in Peter’s shoulder, hugging him to her. She was so very tired and she felt that she had got everything wrong all over again. ‘Something got into one of the toffee vats by accident. It was nothing, really. I had it all in hand, but then Mrs Starbeck turned up and it became this big palaver, then she threatened to close down my experimental line and then she said she was taking it off me.’

  ‘She can’t do that.’ Peter sounded certain. ‘It was a company director told you that you could do it. She can’t go against a director.’

  ‘But where are the directors now? They’re all down in Norwich in their fancy new offices and they never come here any more. Major Fergusson’s not going to be back any time soon, his replacement still isn’t here, and no one knows who’s in charge. Sometimes Diana’s manager pulls rank on Mrs Starbeck, and sometimes she doesn’t; it’s all such a mess.’

  ‘Well,’ Peter huffed in thought, ‘there’s always Mr Johns; we could go to him. He’s technically her manager – I think …’

  ‘Yes, but where is he? No one’s seen him at the factory for a fortnight and I’ve sent letters to the Norwich factory and had no reply.’ Reenie rested her cheek on Peter’s lapel, listening to his heart beating strong and steady, taking comfort in his warmth. He smelled of roasted hazelnuts and creamy caramel. ‘What are we going to do, Peter? Where are all the grown-ups?’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing. But it’s Friday night and there’s nothing you or I can do until Monday.’

  ‘I’m sorry I made us late for the cinema. I know you wanted to see the newsreel of the rugby.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that. I saw the results in the paper the other day.’ Peter made light of it, but Reenie knew that he’d been dying to see the highlights. It was an international match and reading about it in the paper was very different to seeing five whole minutes of moving footage in cinematic black-and-white, bold as day.

  There was another reason Reenie had wanted to go to the cinema; privately, she was very conscious that whenever they had a chance to do something romantic together it was she who got in the way of their plans. They spent plenty of time together – they worked in the same department, Peter went to Sunday dinner at Reenie’s parents’ farm, and they visited their old manager Major Fergusson in the cottage hospital together. But these weren’t the routines of a courting couple and Reenie felt a little relieved every time she avoided one of these close, intimate evenings, and then guilty that she was a little relieved. She told herself that she didn’t need to think about what it meant – they were only young and there was plenty of time to dwell on it later, when they were older. For now, she told herself that she didn’t really like the cinema because Pathé always showed so many things on their newsreels which worried her: they showed the destruction of the war in Spain which Peter had very nearly run away to fight in; they showed millions of gas masks being made in London in case Britain went to war and they found themselves cowering under gas attacks; they showed Oswald Mosley strutting around talking as though he’d be the dictator in Britain soon enough, just like they had dictators in Italy and Greece and Germany and Spain and Romania. Worst of all, people acted as though none of this was really anything to worry about, as if the sky wasn’t falling in.

  ‘There was one good thing happened today, though.’ Peter gave Reenie a hopeful smile.

  ‘Really, what was that?’

  ‘I got your friend Bess a job in the factory canteen and she didn’t burn it down, flood it, or fall in love with the porter. That’s a factory first for her. I don’t think there’s a department she’s worked in yet that hasn’t had to take out extra insurance to indemnify them against “Acts of Bess”.’

  Reenie laughed and wiped at her tears with her handkerchief. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t go to Spain, Peter.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m glad or not. Maybe if I’d gone with my cousins and helped them at the port they’d have arrived without a hitch. Maybe we’d all be there doing some good.’

  Reenie couldn’t help but think of the newsreels they’d seen of shattered towns and cities all over Spain and hated the thought of Peter caught in all that hopeless chaos. ‘It’s not your fault they were arrested. They knew the law when they set off, knew they were taking a risk, and you don’t know that you’d have made any difference. I think we’ve got enough to fight here.’

  Reenie had no idea how much.

  Chapter Eight

  Mary returned home to the little one-up one-down back-to-back house she shared with her mother and sister Bess. She was angry at the thought that Mrs Starbeck should be allowed to poke her nose into her correspondence at all, let alone that she should have to provide her with a suitably businesslike letter from among the stash of correspondence she had saved. It was galling, and a sign of just how chaotic the factory had become that there was so rarely anyone there to stand up to Mrs Starbeck when she began interfering in departments outside her own. However, Mary hoped there might be an early letter from Albert which she could give to Diana and pretend was recent, but she knew in her heart that there were very few, if any, which solely mentioned work.

  Mary sat beside the stove in the parlour, waiting for the flames which licked the coal to fully catch and make them glow so that she could boil water and make the tea. Now that she was alone and wouldn’t be overlooked, she took Albert’s most recent letter from her pocket, unfolded the sheets of neatly-written Germanic script and read them for the first time.

  My Dearest, My Darling, My Maria,

  I sat up until dawn rereading your letters. Your words were so like your voice that I could almost have imagined you were here beside me. The morning took me by surprise because when I am thinking of you it is as though no time has passed at all. If only all people in Germany were loved as dearly as I know I am by you, there would be no more anger here.

  Maximilian and Greta ask to be remembered to you. They do not go to their
schooling any more, but they are content to read at home with my sister and ask every day when they will come to England to meet you. They have drawn more pictures for you, and Greta has changed her mind again about which doll she will bring when we leave here. Maximilian remains faithful to his fireman’s helmet. Their bags have been packed for months in readiness to leave, but still no word comes. The waiting is unbearable.

  Our neighbours are still missing and there is no news of them. It is now six weeks since they were arrested, and we still do not know why. It is awful that this is normal here now.

  I must keep reminding myself I am one of the lucky ones; I have not been barred from working. If I had worked in the civil service or one of the professions we would be destitute by now. There are so many learned professors turned out of work. The factory, however, it is permitted. I work still, and we keep our apartment. I am not permitted to work in the confectioners kitchen any longer, but Mackintosh’s keep me in the technical library at the factory and I make a useful researcher for my old colleagues.

  I count myself lucky because I have work, I have a home, I have my sister to care for the children, and I have hope. I have the hope that soon we will all of us leave for a new life in England. I count myself lucky because I know that you are waiting for me there.

  And so now I come to the good news which I had saved until last: by the time you read this I will be on my way to you. I have watched for morning because I know that I leave at first light. I have a short permit from the Home Office to allow me to come to Halifax and sign a lease on a house and complete preparations for our arrival. Laurence Johns has made arrangements, but I will explain them all when I see you again, and I will see you very soon.

  You are all my thoughts and more …

  Mary choked back tears. After all the anger and injustice she’d felt that day, this was the most wonderful news she could have imagined. They had been apart for so many months and although this was only a temporary permit, it was hope. It made her want to read his letters again and again until morning and cry with relief because she couldn’t believe she would finally be able to see his face again.

  Mary climbed the small, narrow flight of stairs to the bedroom she shared with her sister and was so lost in her excitement and her thoughts and her letter that she almost didn’t notice Bess sitting on the edge of their bed. Then her brain deciphered what her eyes were seeing, and she gasped.

  ‘You’re going to spill that all over the floor if you’re not careful!’ Mary said sharply, frowning at her sister’s precarious arrangement of books piled up on their lumpy bed and topped with a water basin.

  ‘I’m propping up the basin so that I can read my colour magazines while I’m washing my hair.’ Bess was clearly about to soak their bed in violet-scented water, but foreseeing the consequences of her actions had never been one of her strong points.

  ‘Why don’t you leave it until I can wash it for you? You know you always get the Amami powder in your eyes.’ Ordinarily Mary would have forcibly intervened in this clearly doomed enterprise, but she was intent on her own occupation. Under the loose floorboard on her side of their creaky bed was her secret hoard of Albert’s letters. She took out one at random.

  One day I shall take you to see the place where my grandmother taught me to sail. There are lakes here which would take away your breath. I remember thinking, as a boy, that there could be nothing so beautiful in all the world as the lake where my grandmother lived, but then, as a boy, I had not seen you.

  At first – when there were only one or two letters – she had kept them with her in her pockets all the time, but within a matter of weeks the volume of correspondence had become so large that she needed to select which of the precious epistles she would leave at home and which she would carry closest to her heart.

  If I live to be one hundred and nine, and you to one hundred and one, we will look back on this short time apart and wonder why it troubled us so. But I am not yet one hundred and nine, and you are not one hundred and one, and I am troubled, Maria. You are so far away and I feel the distance like a knife.

  The bundles of soft blue envelopes which Mary had amassed since June were as perplexing to Mary as they were precious. When her manager, Mr Albert Baum, Mackintosh’s Head Confectioner, had left his post at the start of the summer he had told her that he would try to come back, that he would try to return for her; however, he hadn’t said why. At first Mary had spent a great deal of time turning that moment over in her mind and chastising herself for speculating that Albert Baum’s motives might have been anything more than professional.

  When we are together at last will you promise to write me letters each day still? When we are apart I miss you, but when I have you with me always I think I shall miss your letters.

  He had taken his leave of her at the last possible moment before he left for his old life in Düsseldorf and, at the time, she had assumed that this was because she was the last on his list of priorities, not because he wanted to hang on to her until the last possible moment …

  I think of you without ceasing. I think of the work we will embark on together, I think of the things I will invent and name in your honour, I think of the places we will go and the things we will see. I think of the great partnership we will forge, unstoppable and unmatched in the whole history of sweet makers. We will make a sweet pair, you and I.

  It wasn’t easy; he was a German Jew who wanted to move to England with two small children and his sister in tow and the Home Office were not well disposed to allowing foreigners into the country at all, but for some years they had shown a particular mistrust of Jewish immigrants, particularly Jewish immigrants like Albert who had a tenuous claim on Polish citizenship through a grandparent. The suggestion was always the same: ‘Go back to Poland’, even if he had never seen Poland, and never known the grandfather who hailed from there.

  The British government had allowed Albert Baum onto their shores on a three-month work permit, but if he wanted to return with his family he needed to apply again in Germany and that was where he now resided, writing to Mary from the Mackintosh’s Düsseldorf toffee factory. Mary’s letters by return were all passion and fury, for she was anxious for his safety and that of his little family and she was enraged by the way he was treated in his own country, was frustrated to the point of tears by the Home Office in England who sent back application after application, with never a reason why. Albert told her that he loved her for it; he had never known anyone care so much as she did. I care too much, she had told him, everyone says so. And he had replied, Not me.

  Mary was lost in her pile of letters when the wave of violet-scented water hit the back of her neck and ran down her shirt sleeves. ‘What in God’s name!’ but it was too late; Bess had toppled her pile of books and her basin of shampoo suds and water was lapping across the floor to engulf Mary’s precious love letters.

  Chapter Nine

  The main reason Diana had come to the Hunters’ house that Friday evening was supposedly for a committee dinner but truthfully it was to see Gracie. However very shortly after Diana arrived the children were taken off to bed. This happened more and more often now. Diana would arrive to see Mrs Hunter under some pretext – perhaps the accounts of the Spanish Refugee Fund, or the minutes of the Women’s Progressive Society – and after a quick hello and a hurried embrace Gracie would be trundled off to the nursery to eat her supper, or to be bathed, or to have her hair brushed and plaited.

  It was not intentional on the part of Mrs Hunter or her household – she was not trying to keep Diana away from the child she believed to be Diana’s half-sister – it was just the habit of the house: children were indulged on Sundays, but the rest of the week they had their routine with Nanny.

  By the time Diana had escaped the factory, changed her dress at her boarding house, and arrived at the Hunters’ home the evening had taken on a very different quality. The Hunters didn’t live in rarefied splendour, but their sizeable mansion house on the edge of tow
n was certainly a contrast to the world she had grown up in, and to that of everyone else she knew.

  Diana was conscious of the difference in her station and theirs, but she always had a feeling that, as long as she maintained a reserved and dignified air, hiding in plain sight, her position in the family would remain secure and she could continue to see the child who was in reality her secret daughter. Something that night, however, made her feel uneasy; was it the mention of marriage when an alderwoman asked her how long she intended to keep working at Mackintosh’s? Or was it the insistence from a stout matriarch that Diana must meet her nephew? A fear was creeping in; a fear that some of these society women who flocked to the Hunters’ charity soirées would matchmake her out of her daughter’s life. Only as a single young woman with time on her hands could Diana make herself indispensable to the adopted mother of her child; only as a secretarial assistant to Mrs Hunter’s charity work and her Spanish Refugee fund could Diana drift in and out of the family unnoticed. A wedding was the last thing she wanted.

  Diana did not notice being ushered in to dinner, or taking her place beside an elderly matron with pince-nez. A dish of mock turtle soup was placed before her, clear and mocking her for being as artificial as itself. The fish course arrived and a Dover sole was placed before her, baked in sherry and the juice of an orange, with a gratin of breadcrumbs, walnuts, and orange zest. A sharp steam of citrus and strong drink caught her full in the face and her eyes stung. As she fought her watering eyes, the elderly lady with the pince-nez asked, ‘Have you ever been to Spain, my dear?’

  Diana cleared her throat delicately. ‘I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘A wonderful country; wonderful people. Such a tragedy all this is happening to them. I do worry, though, about all these child refugees we’re bringing here without their mothers. A child shouldn’t be separated from its mother, don’t you agree?’