Dead to Me

  ‘Right, I’d better get you home,’ he said, lighting up a cigarette before starting the car. ‘Are you alright?’

  She wanted him to say he loved her again and kiss her. She didn’t want to have to grope around to find her knickers and put them on in front of him. She certainly didn’t want to be asked if she was alright, when surely he could sense she wasn’t?

  ‘Just take me home, Michael,’ she said and bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry.

  Despite getting excellent results in her school certificate, most of the companies Verity had applied to for a job as an office junior didn’t even grant her an interview, and those who did were not the least impressed by her only experience being a Saturday job in the canteen at Chiesmans. One company even suggested she should work in catering. After being turned down so many times, she felt she had to take the only job offered to her – as an assistant in a wholesale goods company.

  Cooks of St Pauls was a warehouse that supplied general shops with everything from knitting wool and haberdashery to clothing, shoes and outerwear. It was a rather grand old building, though very dusty and dark, right across the road from St Paul’s Cathedral. At her interview Verity was told that although her job would mainly be picking out orders, she would be moved to different departments now and then and also given a chance to try invoicing and other office work, so there was the prospect of learning other skills.

  The first shock when she started at Cooks was that she had been put in the Corset Department. All the other assistants were men, and she found it excruciatingly embarrassing when they spoke of brassieres, cup sizes or suspender belts, as she’d thought only women knew about such things. But most of the orders were for ready-made corsets – stout, tea-rose pink ones like Aunt Hazel wore – and as they were for elderly ladies, and not the least bit sexy, within a couple of days she was making jokes about them just as the male assistants did.

  Working turned out to be nowhere near as exciting as she’d imagined it would be. Each morning the Department Manager, Mr Cushing, handed her a bunch of orders sent in from shops. They were almost always handwritten orders and usually barely readable. They might read:

  2 Twilfit full cup girdles, size 36 bust. Tea rose.

  1 Ambrose cream sateen corset, size 40 bust.

  3 white cotton suspender belts, size 26 waist.

  Her job was to pick the items from the shelves, tie the bundle of goods securely with string, attaching the costing note, then drop it down the chute which led to the packing department in the basement. Down there they would be put together with other items from different departments, packed securely, and one invoice including all the different goods would be written up. Then the parcel would be sent to the customer.

  During the day there could be dozens of telephone orders too, and Mr Cushing was always praising her telephone manner. He said they had had girls before who could barely speak the King’s English, let alone manage to take down an order correctly and politely.

  All in all, 1936 had been a sad year, with King George dying in January, and then all the will-he-won’t-he stuff of King Edward wanting to marry Wallis Simpson, and people arguing about whether a king could marry a divorcee. Finally, at the end of the year, the King abdicated, which most people seemed to think was a good thing. At least it made more interesting news than the Nazi party dominating the German parliamentary elections, or speculation over Chiang Kai-shek’s intentions towards Japan.

  Verity had managed to spend a long weekend last New Year with Wilby and Ruby, then a week at Easter, and two weeks in August. They were the highlights of the year, even though Ruby was working at the Palace Hotel a great deal of the time.

  The New Year of 1937 had brought in a tangible air of hope as plans for George VI’s coronation were made for the 12th of May. People seemed genuinely supportive of the new king, his wife and their two little girls, Elizabeth and Margaret.

  Verity helped organize the Weardale Road street party for Coronation Day, and for that day at least the whole of England buzzed with excitement. Ruby came up from Torquay for the celebrations and stayed a whole five days, which they managed to fill with not only the street party but also a dance in Lewisham, a fair on Blackheath and a shopping trip to Oxford Street.

  But the coronation bunting had scarcely been taken down, and Ruby was barely settled back home with Wilby, before the newspapers brought back all the doom and gloom. There was the ever rising death toll in war-racked Spain, the explosion of the Hindenburg airship in New Jersey, and reports of Japanese troops taking Peking, Shanghai and Nanjing in the war with China. Then the Duke of Windsor, with his new American wife, made a controversial trip to Berlin and even met Hitler – something that created a great deal of criticism.

  Every day without fail there was some reference in the newspapers to Germany, Hitler or the prospect of war, and on top of that they published sad and dreary articles about unemployment and poverty, which was still particularly bad in the north of England. Verity wondered if there was anything going on anywhere in the world that people could be cheerful about.

  She and her aunt had made improvements to the house during the last year. Verity had moved into her mother’s room at the back of the house after her death, and with Aunt Hazel’s help she’d made it more attractive by making new curtains and a patchwork quilt. Her aunt had also paid a man to come in and decorate the hall and stairs; the paper was cream, with a green swirly pattern, and cream woodwork too. And through Verity selling a few more of her mother’s treasures they’d managed to buy a new green carpet.

  The next plan was to get the parlour done. But her aunt kept stalling, because she couldn’t decide whether to get rid of some of her parents’ old furniture or not. Verity thought she should, she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to hang on to the Victorian chaise longue. It was horribly uncomfortable and the horse-hair stuffing came through the imitation leather and pricked your legs. It also took up so much room. But she supposed her aunt was entitled to be sentimental about something she’d seen her entire life.

  There were only a few of Mother’s trinkets left to sell now, but they had done well to eke them out over such a long period. Aunt Hazel was anticipating a pay rise at work soon, as business had increased during the autumn and up to Christmas, which everyone seemed to take as a sign the Depression was ending.

  Although by now Verity had got to know almost all the staff at Cooks, and liked many of them, she had made only one really close friend. Sheila worked in hosiery. They had met outside the Personnel Manager’s office on their first day at Cooks, and they’d been friends ever since. It was difficult to spend much time together outside work, as Sheila lived right out in Dagenham, but they always had lunch together. In the summer they ate sandwiches on the steps of St Paul’s, and in the winter they either had soup in a cafe on Cheapside or went into the staff canteen.

  Sheila had five younger brothers and sisters, and she had to give nearly all her wages to her mother to help out. When they first started at Cooks, they only earned fifteen shillings and six pence a week, and Verity had to give her aunt eight shillings of that, so after buying a season ticket to get to work she didn’t have much left either.

  Since joining Cooks, Verity had been moved around the company learning new skills in all the different departments – invoicing in accounts, working the switchboard, packing – and every three or four months she and some of the other younger girls would be summoned up to the boardroom to help collate pages for the company catalogue. That was an enjoyable job, as they could talk and listen to the wireless while they worked.

  As the year drew to a close, Verity considered her future. Sometimes she thought she should use all her new skills and get a better job. But it was easy, undemanding work at Cooks, the other staff were fun, and she got regular pay rises. It might be a lot tougher in another company.

  As for her father, he still hadn’t been caught. The last time a policeman came to the house to check that Archie hadn’t contacted Verit
y, he said the senior officers doubted they would ever find him now. He said they had some information that he’d gone to South Africa, but that had not been confirmed.

  But with all the talk of war, and so many men bracing themselves for a call-up, Verity didn’t imagine the police cared much about Archie Wood.

  She certainly didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1938

  ‘Happy New Year, dear!’ Aunt Hazel raised a glass of sherry to Verity as church bells rang out. A hubbub of shouting and loud banging of tin trays broke out in the street. ‘It’s too cold for me to join that lot out there – and anyway, we’ve both got work in the morning. So I’ll say goodnight.’

  ‘Happy New Year to you too, and sleep tight,’ Verity replied and sipped her sherry. She didn’t like it much, but she thought it was a drink she must learn to master.

  She listened despondently as Hazel went into the kitchen and struck a match to light her little lantern to take out to the lavatory. There was the predictable gust of cold air as she opened the back door, then the click of the lock when she closed it behind her.

  Verity had listened to the same ritual and sounds every night since she got back from her first holiday in Torquay over two years ago. Sometimes she wanted to scream out to her aunt to bang the door, turn on a torch, smash a bowl, wash up a cup, or take a biscuit out of the biscuit tin. Anything to make it different. Tonight Aunt Hazel had drunk some sherry before going out there, but not enough for her to start singing or making cheese on toast.

  Verity got up from her chair once her aunt had gone upstairs, picked up the torch by the back door, which her aunt always ignored, and darted to the lavatory. It was pitch dark, very cold and the wind was getting up. She could hear next door’s tin bath banging on its nail by their door. She had politely mentioned to the neighbours that it made a terrible racket in high winds and wondered if they could put something around it to stop the clanging, but nothing had been done and she would hear it all night once again.

  Aunt Hazel had put a hot-water bottle in her bed earlier, and as Verity got into bed she cuddled it gratefully. She burrowed into the pillow and closed her eyes, going into her favourite fantasy in which she and Ruby ran a cafe in Babbacombe. In this fantasy they were both older, beautifully dressed and terribly sophisticated. They lived together above the cafe in a lovely flat with a luxurious bathroom, and it was always warm and sun-filled.

  Being in Babbacombe with Ruby were the truly happy times of the year for Verity. She lived for the two weeks in summer, and usually tried to get there at Easter and for a long weekend at Whitsun, but it was never enough. If it wasn’t for the weekly telephone call to Ruby, and the letters they exchanged, Verity couldn’t imagine how she’d cope with living with her aunt.

  It was just so terribly dull. Conversations were only ever about what they’d have for tea, who said what at Chiesmans, and speculation about the neighbours. Hazel didn’t read books and had never been anywhere – she didn’t even like going to the pictures, something Verity adored.

  Ruby kept telling her she should make a friend locally, find someone to wander around the shops with, or go to a dance with. But how did you make a friend? You could hardly stop someone in the street and demand they became your friend. From what she knew about the girls at work, their closest friends were from schooldays. But the girls at Verity’s school had all been so mean after her mother’s suicide. As for Susan, she used to turn her head away if Verity went anywhere near her – it was like she had a nasty, infectious disease.

  Even two and a half years on, Verity still felt bruised by her mother’s death. She didn’t miss her, didn’t wish she was still alive, but it was an unfinished tragedy. She knew that local people still referred to her as ‘the girl whose mother gassed herself’. She had said to Ruby once that it was a good job they hadn’t really caught on about her father, or they’d be calling her ‘the swindler/suicide girl’.

  Yet Ruby seemed to have cast off her humble beginnings, like a snake sheds its skin. She spoke well, she was bright and articulate, and had become astoundingly pretty. With curly auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, a china doll complexion and the figure of a showgirl, she turned heads wherever she went. She loved working at the Palace Hotel, and it seemed she was very well thought of there. She sometimes stood in as a receptionist, when needed, and Verity knew the minute one of the current receptionists left, Ruby would be applying for that position.

  Verity reminded herself to telephone Ruby in the morning, on the way to work, to wish her and Wilby a Happy New Year. Along with working at the Palace Hotel, Ruby was learning shorthand and typing at night school. She had said in a letter that once she got her diploma she was going to do a catering course next.

  Verity left the house fifteen minutes early the next morning so she could telephone Ruby from Hither Green Station. The wind was really raw and she turned up the collar of her coat and tied her scarf tighter around her neck. The coat had been her mother’s and it was a very good camel-hair one, bought in Gorringes. It was lucky that Aunt Hazel had had the foresight to keep so many of her mother’s things, because Verity had long since grown out of all her own clothes and there just wasn’t any money left each week for what her aunt called ‘fripperies’. She was five foot five now, wore size 4 shoes, and to her delight had a presentable 34, 24, 34 figure. Her breasts had been a long time coming – in fact she’d thought she would be flat-chested for ever – but judging by the number of wolf whistles she got, she must be reasonably attractive.

  Not that she liked male attention. She associated all men with what her father had done to her, and apart from a couple of kisses under the mistletoe at the office Christmas party she hadn’t got close enough to anyone to discover if she was wrong to think this. Sheila had a boyfriend called Jack and went on and on about how he made her feel, which Verity found very tedious. Ruby tended to be much the same too, in her letters there was always someone who put her on cloud nine.

  Luckily, last August, when Verity went to stay for a holiday, Ruby had just broken up with Charlie, and claimed to be broken-hearted. It didn’t stop her eyeing up other boys, but at least she wasn’t rushing off to meet someone all the time – or, even worse, trying to make Verity date one of his friends.

  Back in November her letters had been full of a man called Michael who was twenty-two, and had a car. She thought he was ‘the one’. But she hadn’t mentioned him in her Christmas letter, so maybe that had fizzled out too.

  There was the usual river of bowler-hatted men flowing into Hither Green Station. They mostly worked in the City so caught a train to Cannon Street like Verity. The train was always standing room only by the time it got to Hither Green. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been jabbed with a furled umbrella. But that was marginally better than being face to face with a smoker puffing away, regardless of his close proximity to others.

  The telephone box was empty for once, and it was good to get out of the cold wind for a few minutes. She dialled the number, fed in some coins and pressed the button once she heard Ruby’s voice.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ she said. ‘I’m just on my way to work, but I had to catch you before I got on the train. Tell Wilby I rang, won’t you?’

  ‘Thank heavens you’ve phoned,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ve got a serious problem and I didn’t dare put it in a letter in case your aunt reads it.’

  ‘She wouldn’t read my letters,’ Verity said. ‘But whatever is it?’

  There was a slight pause, and Verity imagined Ruby looking round to check Wilby wasn’t within earshot. ‘I’ll have to be quick, Wilby’s out in the garden doing something. If I change the subject, it’ll be cos she’s come back in. Anyway, can you ring back this evening after seven thirty, as she’ll be out at a meeting and we can talk properly?’

  ‘Okay,’ Verity agreed. ‘You make it sound so cloak and dagger.’

  ‘She’ll hate me if she finds out. I’m pregnant, Verity. I want you to go to my mother in Kenti
sh Town and get her to arrange an abortion.’

  Verity reeled in shock. ‘You can’t do that!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you loved Michael?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t love me, and he’s scarpered,’ Ruby said bitterly. ‘And I can do it. I’m going to do it. I don’t want a baby –’

  She broke off, and when she spoke again her voice was quite different, the hard edge had gone and she sounded like she was smiling. ‘And a Happy New Year to you too, Verity, let’s hope it’s the best one ever. Oh, Wilby has just come in, I’m sure she’d love to speak to you, but you’ve got the train to catch. Speak again soon.’

  Verity stood there with the receiver in her hand for a few stunned seconds. But someone rapped on the glass, wanting to use the phone, so she put it down and left the warmth of the box.

  She couldn’t really believe what she’d heard. It had never occurred to her that Ruby might be going that far with her boyfriends. But Ruby was far too worldly to think she was pregnant if she wasn’t.

  Verity wished she could get on a train to Torquay right now and go and see her friend, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t got the fare – and she’d got to go to work anyway. Besides, Wilby would be alarmed if she turned up unexpectedly.

  It was going to be a very long day at work, her mind constantly on Ruby. What had her friend meant by saying she wanted Verity to go and see her mother to arrange an abortion? Surely having an abortion was dangerous? What kind of mother would arrange it for her daughter?

  ‘You seem very preoccupied,’ Aunt Hazel said as she fried some sausages for tea. ‘You’ve been staring at the wall as if you think something is going to come through it.’

  They were in the kitchen and Hazel had lit the fire. Most evenings when it was cold they stayed in the kitchen and listened to the wireless by the fire until bedtime. They only used the parlour in summer and on Sundays.

  Verity mentally shook herself. She had been thinking about Ruby and what on earth she could say to her. She didn’t know anyone else who had become pregnant when they weren’t married, but she’d heard people being nasty about girls who had. She didn’t believe Wilby would be nasty; upset and disappointed perhaps, but not nasty. However, she doubted Ruby would believe that.