The Quality Street Wedding Read online

  Diana did agree, and murmured as much. But she could see that sometimes these things were inescapable, especially if it were for the good of the child. She tried to tell herself it was for the good of the child. But something made her want to fight it.

  Diana’s heart gave a leap as she saw a tiny hand appear around the door of the dining room, and then two tiny faces she knew well. Mrs Hunter got up quickly to steer the children out into the hallway and Diana excused herself from the candlelit table and followed her.

  ‘No, dears, we’re having a very grown-up supper and you wouldn’t like it,’ Mrs Hunter said to placate Gracie and Lara as they hopped around in their nightgowns and bedsocks, asking to be allowed to stay up late to sit with Diana. ‘You’ve had your supper, and you’ve had your bath, and now it’s time for you to go up to bed and let Nanny Christie tell you your story.’

  ‘But Diana’s here and we want to tell her about what our kittens have done.’ Lara spoke for both of them. They might only be adopted sisters, but they considered themselves to be one unit now, a kind of twins.

  ‘We have guests to dinner and Diana and I must talk to them very seriously about the refugee charity. How would it look if two little girls in their nightgowns were loitering with intent?’

  Gracie looked with pleading eyes into the face of her adoptive mother. ‘Could Didi come and tell us our story before we go to bed? Then we won’t be in the way and we will be very good.’

  ‘Diana has had a long day working at the factory and I’m not sure I like you bothering her so often for bedtime stories. She deserves a rest in the evenings, you know.’

  ‘I don’t mind, Mrs Hunter.’ Diana was careful not to sound too enthusiastic, she was always careful not to sound too enthusiastic. She was maintaining the pretence that she was Gracie’s half-sister, and she knew her continued visits to the secret daughter she’d borne out of wedlock depended on the careful maintenance of that pretence. If the Hunter family found out her true identity, her chances of ever seeing Gracie again would be shattered. ‘I can settle them down before Mrs Sutter gives her lecture and it will give Nanny Christie time to listen to the news programme on the wireless; she likes doing that.’

  ‘Diana, dear, you’re a treasure. If you’re sure you don’t mind?’

  Diana’s dignified poise hovered artfully between indifference and generosity; there was nothing to indicate that she was either put out by the task, or eager to undertake it. For Diana, this was the secret of her place in the Hunter household; she was an apparently passive presence. ‘Not at all. I’ll be back down when Nanny Christie tells me the news is over.’

  Diana was careful to take the hands of both Lara and Gracie as she walked them up the stairs to bed. Although it would be natural to show an inclination towards her own sister, she didn’t want anyone to think too carefully about their connection, so little Lara, and the girl her own age who had been adopted to keep her company, doted on Gracie’s big sister ‘Didi’, and it broke Diana’s heart not to be able to dote openly on them.

  ‘Can you tell us the story of the giant who lived at Todmorden?’ Gracie was hopping up the stairs which slowed the journey down, but Diana didn’t mind, she was savouring every moment of holding her daughter’s hand.

  ‘I can’t tell you a long story tonight because I’ve got to go down to the Aldermans’ Wives dinner, but if you’re very good I’ll tell you the one about the Duke of York’s regiment.’

  Lara looked wide-eyed at Diana’s evening gown and said, ‘You look very beautiful, Didi.’

  ‘Of course she does.’ Lara could never quite get used to Diana’s striking looks, but Gracie took it for granted that Diana swept away all before her. ‘She’s always beautiful, that’s why it will be so easy for them to find her a good match.’

  Diana’s ears pricked up at this disclosure, which she hoped no one else in the house had heard as they reached the summit of the Hunters’ grand staircase before closing the door of the little girls’ bedroom behind them. ‘Who’s they?’ she asked. ‘Who’s going to find me a good match?’

  ‘Mummy, Daddy, and Aunt Celia,’ Lara said as she climbed up onto the bed and wriggled under the snowy white counterpane. ‘They talk about it when they’re having tea in the drawing room.’

  ‘Auntie Celia said that you have lovely manners for a factory girl, and she said they should put a pea under your mattress and see if you sleep.’ Diana was disconcerted to hear Gracie referring to this good lady as ‘auntie’ but she supposed it was only natural that Gracie would take to her new life so completely.

  ‘Mummy says you’re very capable with her committees and she doesn’t want to lose you just yet, but Daddy says it’s time they found you a match so you can have children of your own.’

  This worried Diana. Was it an indication that Mr Hunter felt she spent too much time with Gracie? She had never expected to be able to stay so close to her daughter after she had allowed the court to take her for adoption, but every visit just fed her need for another one, and she tried to find subtle ways of coming back more and more often.

  Gracie settled into bed and then held out her hand for Diana to hold. ‘If you have babies will you still love me, Didi?’

  All Diana’s careful restraint broke down at her daughter’s words and she clutched the child to her, and whispered into her hair, ‘Oh, Gracie. You’re all I have in the world.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I don’t want any of you going over to Stebbins’ farm these next few weeks – and if any of your friends go round there I want you to stay away from them too.’ Mr Calder addressed his brood of children as he entered the family kitchen from the farmyard, but it was their cat Marmalade, Dodger the sheepdog, and the tame goose Brenda who all looked up at him when he entered, giving the impression that the dumb animals were taking note and intended to avoid Stebbins.

  ‘I should be so lucky!’ Reenie hurried round the kitchen gathering up a packed supper while trying to disentangle herself from her factory overalls at the same time. ‘How much free time do you think I’ve got? I’m not back from shift five minutes before I’m off out again on the horse to meet Peter. I’m hardly likely to make a detour to Stebbins.’

  ‘It’s still worth saying,’ Mr Calder called up the stairs after her as she went in search of her going out frock. ‘You can’t be too careful!’

  ‘It’s only scarlet fever, Dad,’ John said as he kept his eyes focused on the funny pages he was reading, ‘it’s not the Black Death. They’re all fit and healthy, they’ll be reet.’

  ‘That’s not the point. It started with septic sore throat and that’s very contagious. Just think what would happen if Reenie caught it and took it to work with her? She could take out half the town.’

  ‘Only if you spit in their eye. I’m not stupid, Dad.’ John was uncharacteristically stroppy. A fact possibly connected to the boys at Stebbins being his chief source of cast-off reading matter, and the farmer himself being the best source of paid casual labour when John had a free Saturday. Avoiding Stebbins would mean a direct hit to his pocket money and his leisure time. It was all very well for the rest of them to avoid Stebbins, but what was he supposed to do for pocket money in the meantime? Whistle for it?

  Kathleen, who it surprised precisely no one to discover had read about scarlet fever in depth already, corrected her elder brother. ‘Actually, you can catch it from door handles. Scientists have found the germs under microscopes and they get onto the hands of people who’ve coughed into a handkerchief, and then they touch a door handle, and then you touch a door handle, and then you go into the milking shed and before you know it, it’s in the milk.’

  ‘I always wash my hands before I do the milking, and all our milk gets pasteurised so it can’t get in the milk and that just shows how much you know, Kathleen.’

  ‘Yes, but the Stebbins don’t pasteurise their milk, do they? They don’t believe in it, and that’s what Dad’s worried about. If they’ve got scarlet fever then they’re alread
y going to give it to everyone and he doesn’t want us helping them.’

  Mrs Calder gave her son a pointed look. ‘Don’t forget, I’m not as strong as I was before I had three kids. Do you know how many teeth I lost while I was expecting you? You took it out of me, my lad, and even if I would survive it, I don’t fancy having it, so don’t bring it here.’ Mrs Calder plonked the half-empty teapot with a slosh onto the ancient family dinner table, pockmarked with hard use, and littered with the detritus of a good tea. ‘Just stay at home as much as you can manage for the next couple of weeks and it will all blow over. Don’t bring it here, and don’t drink any of the milk at school for a bit.’

  Kathleen looked around in disgust. ‘Does Stebbins supply the milk for my school?’ This was new information to her and she couldn’t have been more surprised.

  ‘And Stoney Royd!’ Mr Calder snorted with derision.

  Kathleen shook her head in disappointment. ‘This sort of thing wouldn’t be allowed to go on if I were on the council.’ One of the many difficulties with being thirteen was that Kathleen had grown up enough to develop the capacity to feel grand emotions, but had few opportunities to experience them. She had an appetite for life and for learning and for work, but she was held back in her ambition to take on the world by the very inconvenient fact that she wouldn’t legally be an adult with a key to her own front door for another eight years. The offer of a position as a Saturday girl in Hebblewhite’s Newsagent and Confectioner might one day seem like a triviality in the story of her life, but at this time it was everything. She decided to announce the news to her family. ‘I’ve got the job of Saturday Girl at Hebblewhite’s in town.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ Mrs Calder had only just sat down to her tea, after feeding all the family first, and as always, was quite put out when her offspring unburdened themselves at the very moment she was about to get a bite to eat. ‘You can’t get a job, you’ve got school.’

  ‘Not on Saturdays. Besides, this is perfect for what you want. I can’t go to Stebbins’ farm if I’m at work in a shop, can I? When war comes and they shut the schools, I’ll work there full-time. It’s a useful start in business.’

  ‘Since when! Who said you could take a job without our permission?’

  John said, ‘You can’t work at Hebblewhite’s, it’s a deathtrap. It’ll fall down around your ears because it’s about a thousand years old and looks twice that.’

  ‘It’s eight hundred and forty years old and very solidly built. It’s also three shillings a week, which is beautiful money. I thought you’d be pleased; I’ve only got a year left at Elementary School and I’ve got to get a move on if I want to get something lined up for when I finish. I’ll probably have to leave even earlier if there’s a war and the schools are closed down.’

  ‘You’re optimistic. They didn’t close the schools in the last war.’

  ‘I’m hedging my bets. And Hebblewhite’s opens a lot of doors.’

  ‘What doors?’ John had a low opinion of his younger sister’s employment enterprise, which might have had more than a little to do with jealousy that he hadn’t got there first. ‘It’s a run-down old church no bigger than a telephone kiosk which someone has thought fit to stuff silly with liquorice pipes and a till; it’s only a matter of time before the weight of the Sunday papers causes the whole thing to slip into the river for good!’

  ‘The shop is actually an excellent size on the inside.’ Kathleen’s judicious use of the word ‘excellent’ fooled no one. ‘And it’s Mackintosh’s only misshapes shop in town. They have a very special relationship with Mackintosh’s and it’s a good way of getting to know Mackintosh’s Sales Department.’

  ‘What’s your sister told you about going to work at her factory?’ It was a warning more than a question.

  ‘But I won’t be working for the factory; I’ll be working for a shop which sells things for the factory. I won’t be breaking my promise to Reenie.’

  ‘You’re just like your sister; always looking for another way around. You can’t go into Mackintosh’s by the back door if you’ve promised her you won’t go into Mackintosh’s at all.’

  ‘Who’s going into Mackintosh’s?’ Reenie asked as she ran down the stairs and hurried on her riding coat and boots.

  Kathleen looked appealingly to her father, always a soft touch. ‘Dad, will you tell her she can’t stop me going to Mackintosh’s?’

  ‘I don’t care where any of you go, just stay away from Stebbins!’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘What is all this paper doing in my house?’ Mrs Norcliffe did not hold with literacy and the sight of Albert Baum’s letters, soaked with Amami shampoo and hung up to dry on a variety of makeshift indoor washing lines made her very annoyed.

  ‘They’re for my job, Mother!’ Mary’s shouts were sharp with panic. She was used to having to bellow at her mother to be heard through the woman’s good ear, but these shouts had an unaccustomed urgency. To Mary, the letters were her most precious possessions in all the world, but they were also her most secret. She was loath to let her mother or sister see even that they existed, let alone their contents, but she was also desperate to save any few words she could. The soapy water had caused patches of ink to run, but there were still snatches of sentences here and there which might be saved if they were dried in time.

  I miss you even more than I could have believed possible …

  The bundles of letters had been tied tight and those letters closest to the middle were legible in several places. So long as her mother didn’t interfere, she might be able to hang on to some of his words.

  You console me when I think I am beyond all consoling …

  ‘What job? You’ve got your factory job. I don’t want you throwing up a good job in the factory for some paper job!’

  Can I tell you that I love you? Is it too soon, too much?

  ‘It is the factory job, Mother. I’m learning sweet making by correspondence!’ Mary flitted about the parlour, desperately straightening the sodden leaves of blue and cradling the sheets which had come apart along their folds as the water dissolved them like rice paper.

  I feel sorry for the people I pass in the streets each day, knowing that not one of them has ever seen your face.

  ‘What are you doing dripping wet hair on my chair?’ Mrs Norcliffe asked Bess accusingly; she was sitting where and how she had been told to sit while rivulets of soapy water ran down the back of her nightdress.

  ‘I’m sitting on my hands.’ Bess may have lacked common sense, but she made up for it in amenability. When her sister had told her to stay still and sit on her hands she had taken her at her word. She was not entirely certain what she had done wrong, but she knew that when Mary started getting busy she had to do as she was told. Now she was tilting her head on one side and reading a section of one of the letters which was hanging up close to her. ‘Mary’s manager is in love with her, but we’re not supposed to know.’

  ‘He is not!’ Mary was at her wits’ end. ‘Don’t you dare read them! I told you to sit on your hands!’

  ‘I can read them and sit on my hands.’ Bess had managed to sneak a look at several of the letters which Mary had hidden previously, but the sheet beside her was a particularly good one and she tried to resist her mother’s attempts to drag her away so that she could read more of it. ‘Don’t move me, I’ve got to a bit where he’s missing her eyes. He says, “There are few sights which could console me today, but the sight of your eyes is one.”’

  ‘You’ve got soap in your ’air.’ Mrs Norcliffe was a blunt woman, and she dealt with one problem at a time. First she would take Bess to the pump at the end of the street and douse her with icy cold water to stop her hair going sticky, then she would come back and dry the seat of her chair with a towel – Mrs Norcliffe slept in that chair every night under an old army coat and she wasn’t going to let it stay wet – and then she was going to take down all the nasty bits of soggy paper bunting hanging about the house and put them on the
fire. The girls were wittering about something, and she hadn’t the least interest in what it was. Mary had a steady job at the factory which would do her, and there was no sense wasting time with writing things or reading things; that sort of nonsense always led to trouble. Mrs Norcliffe led the smaller of her two daughters away by a skinny arm, but grumbled to Mary as she heaved herself out of the front door, ‘Take all this mess down. I want it ready for fire-lighting spills when I get back. The place is damp enough as it is without you two doing God knows what.’

  Mary would usually have attempted to argue with her mother – she was, after all, twenty years old and an equal wage earner with her surviving parent, perfectly capable of standing her ground. The problem was that her mother won all arguments by default, through being too deaf to hear the other side, and too stubborn to stop what she was doing and attempt a dialogue. Mary’s heart raced as she realised that in a matter of minutes her mother would start tearing down Albert’s sodden letters and there was no way to save them. If she took them down herself and hurried them away to safety somewhere, they would turn to pulp and all his words would be lost; her only chance to save these few snatches of their correspondence was to dry them, and the only way to do that was to keep her mother out.

  Mary was not an impetuous or a disobedient girl – she feared displeasing the figures of authority in her life more than anything – which was why it was a testament to the strength of her feelings for Albert Baum that she grabbed the key to the deadlock on their front door and, turning it roughly in her fist, locked her mother out in the cold.

  Mary sat with her back to the door clutching the sodden sheaf of her most precious letter, its words barely legible:

  I did not think I could love again, I did not think I could feel hope again, but you have brought me both love and hope, Maria, and the promise of so much happiness. The days here are long, and the nights are longer, but the thought that my Maria sleeps under the same heavens is a balm to my aching heart. I think of you hour after hour, day after day, week after week, but time is cruel because it does not allow my feelings to gently fade, but only stokes their flames higher.