Bye Bye Love (4 page)

‘I’ll go and see what’s happening,’ Victor said, and disappeared into the back yard.

He came back with a young woman with a thin, over-made-up face and hair an unlikely shade of auburn.

‘This is Irma,’ he said.

Irma looked at Scarlett. ‘So you’re the kid, are you? You’re lucky. Missus don’t normally like kids living in, but we’re short of a cellar man and it’s high season, I suppose. Bring your stuff and don’t make a noise on the stairs. Missus and the Guv’nor don’t like being disturbed when they’re having their afternoon nap.’

Scarlett decided then and there that she didn’t like Irma and she wasn’t going to like her father’s employers. Glaring at Irma’s back, she picked up her bag of most treasured possessions and, together with Victor, followed her through the yard. It was a concrete area, dark and damp and smelly, totally different from the back garden at the Red Lion. The building towered over them, tall and forbidding. There was broken furniture in a heap on one side and a pile of kegs waiting to be returned on the other. A skinny cat slunk away at their approach.

‘The Missus says you’re to have the top back,’ Irma said, leading the way through the back door and along a dark passage that smelt of damp and stale beer and cats.

After a couple of turns and sets of steps and longer staircases, Scarlett was bewildered. How big was this place? How was she ever going to find her way around it? Irma stopped outside a door that looked just like the three others on the landing. She handed Victor a pair of keys tied together with a length of hairy string.

‘There y’are then. This is yours and that’s hers,’ nodding at the next door along. ‘Guv’nor wants you down at five to show you the ropes, all right?’

‘Right, yes, fine. Thanks very much, Irma,’ Victor said.

Irma clattered off down the lino-covered landing.

‘Well, then,’ Victor said. ‘Let’s see what’s what, shall we?’

He unlocked the door and stepped into the room. The faded cotton curtains were drawn and in the dim light they saw a single bed, a dark wardrobe, two dining chairs by a small rickety table and a chest of drawers with a cracked mirror above it. None of the furniture matched and the walls and lino and dirty rug were all in depressing shades of green, brown and beige.

‘Well—’ Victor said. ‘It’s got everything we need, I suppose.’

‘It’s horrible,’ Scarlett said.

She stepped over to the window and drew back the sagging curtains. They felt greasy. The view from the dirty window was of the back street they had come in from. She could see Jim there, still waiting by his van. She longed to rush back down and beg him to take her back to the Red Lion.

‘Want to see your room, pet?’

Scarlett sighed. ‘S’pose so.’

He unlocked the other door. This room was much smaller, hardly more than a boxroom, with just enough space for a single bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers all set in a line along one wall. There was no rug, no wallpaper and the curtains didn’t quite meet in the middle. Scarlett hated it.

‘Better get our stuff in. Mustn’t keep Jim waiting any longer out there.’

Scarlett’s whole body felt heavy and listless. How was she going to bear living in this horrible place? Reluctantly, she followed her father down the maze of stairs and corridors to the back door. They unloaded the boxes into the back yard, thanked Jim, and lugged everything upstairs. By the time they had got it all in, Scarlett did at least know the way.

As they unpacked, she began to feel just a bit better. The wireless was placed on the chest of drawers with her parents’ wedding photo and one of herself as a baby. Their crockery and cutlery and cooking things were piled on the table. Scarlett made the single bed up rather awkwardly with the sheets and blankets and eiderdown from her parents’ double one. Then she turned her attention to her own little room. Her small store of books, her old teddy, her musical box and the pink glass vase she had won at a fair were set out, her hair things and clothes were put away. A photo of her mother on a beach, laughing, went on a nail conveniently situated on the wall above the bed, while her pink and blue flowery eiderdown went on it. It should have made the room seem more like home, but somehow seeing the familiar things in this alien setting only seemed to emphasise just how different it all was.

Her father tapped on the door and put his head round. ‘All right, pet? Oh, it looks better already, doesn’t it? You’re a born homemaker, just like your mum.’

Scarlett said nothing. She was trying hard not to burst into tears or scream with rage, she wasn’t sure which.

‘We’ll get one of those electric kettle things in the morning, so we can brew up,’ Victor went on.

It was only then that Scarlett fully realised that something was missing from their new living arrangements. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ she asked.

Victor looked uncomfortable. ‘Well—er—there isn’t one. Not as such. But, like I said, we can get a kettle. And maybe one of those toasters. You know.’

‘But we can’t live on tea and toast!’ Scarlett burst out. ‘How can we live in a place where you can’t cook?’

‘Well—no—I’m sure there’s some way round it—’

‘And the bathroom—where’s the bathroom?’

Victor was on firmer ground here. ‘Oh, I found that. It’s down the first flight of stairs, second door on the left.’

‘So it’s not ours? We have to share it?’

‘Er—well—yes—’

It was all getting worse and worse. Scarlett felt as if she were trapped in a bad dream from which there was no waking.

Victor shifted uneasily. ‘Look—er—it’s nearly five. I got to go. Mustn’t be late for my first shift. Will you be all right here by yourself, pet?’

‘Oh, fine, just fine,’ Scarlett said with heavy sarcasm.

Her father reached out and patted her shoulder. ‘There’s my good girl.’

When he was gone, Scarlett went and sat on her bed. The place smelt all wrong. There were mysterious bangings of doors and muffled shouts coming from below. The tiny room seemed to close round her like a prison cell. It was all strange—strange and horrible. She reached for
Gone with the Wind
, but even that couldn’t distract her from the aching loneliness. She clapped the book shut, threw it on the bed and went out, clattering down the gloomy staircases towards the brightness and life outside.

In the downstairs passage she stopped short. Coming in at the back door was a tall fair-haired boy. He was wearing salt-stained khaki shorts, a faded red shirt open at the neck and a pair of old plimsolls. His skin was tanned golden-brown by the sun and he had a rolled-up towel under his arm.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be the new cellar man’s daughter.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Jonathan. I live here.’

Scarlett took his hand. It was warm and strong. ‘I’m Scarlett. How do you do?’

His smile broadened into one of delight. ‘Scarlett? Really? Like Scarlett O’Hara?’

Scarlett found herself smiling back. ‘That’s right. My mother named me after her.’

‘Well, I do declare!’ Jonathan said in a drawling southern states accent. ‘Welcome to the Trafalgar, Miz Scarlett.’

Suddenly, life didn’t seem quite so dreadful.

J
ONATHAN’S
first thought was that he made a very poor Rhett Butler. His first instinct was to keep her talking.

‘Where are you off to?’ he asked, without thinking. It sounded lame the moment it came out of his mouth.

‘Oh—just out,’ Scarlett said.

Scarlett—such a wonderful name. And it suited her. There was something wild and vivid about her. When his parents had said something about the new cellar man bringing his daughter with him, he’d not really thought about it. If he had any notion of what she might be like, it was a pasty-faced kid, someone who got in the way. Not a girl like this, with a challenging stare and a mobile mouth and the beginning of a woman’s figure showing through her thin cotton dress.

‘I’ll come with you, if you like. Show you round a bit,’ he offered.

‘I have been to Southend before, you know,’ Scarlett said.

Jonathan felt horribly rejected. He hid it with a nonchalant shrug. ‘OK. If you’d rather be on your own—’

To his delight, she looked slightly flustered.

‘No…I mean…I just thought you might have something else you wanted to do,’ she said.

‘Tell you what I do want to do, and that’s eat,’ Jonathan admitted. ‘I’ve been out all day in the Ray, and I’m starving.’

‘The Ray?’

Of course, stupid of him, she wasn’t local, she wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

‘It’s a channel of water out in the estuary beyond the mud-flats,’ he explained. ‘You sail out on the falling tide, then you can spend all day out there sailing and swimming and having races and that, and playing cricket on the Ray Sands. It’s brilliant. Do you sail?’

Scarlett shook her head. Her ponytail of dark, almost black hair shivered in glossy waves.

‘We lived in the country.’

‘Can you swim?’

‘Oh, yes. I learnt at school. I got my hundred yards certificate.’

‘Then you’ll have to come out with us one day. If you want to, that is.’

He found he was holding his breath. How wonderful if she said yes.

‘Thanks—yes.’

He felt like punching the air. Fancy taking her out for a whole day on the water! His mind raced, turning over how to bribe his friend to let him have the boat to himself, what time they would have to start, all the things he wanted to show her. But for now he had to keep her attention.

‘Are you hungry?’

She appeared to consider.

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

She sounded almost surprised. He ran over the logistics in his head. It was just about the worst time to start cooking now. He came up with an interim plan.

‘Let’s go and get some chips, then. Irma or Marlene might want the kitchen at the moment, but we can go in when the pub opens and everyone’s busy.’

‘Marlene?’ Scarlett said.

‘Yes, she’s the other live-in barmaid. Haven’t you met her yet?’

‘No. Won’t your mum be expecting you?’ she asked.

Jonathan had to stop himself from giving a derisive laugh. His mother, expecting him? That would be the day.

‘Oh, she doesn’t know I’m in yet,’ he said, which was true. ‘You never know quite when you’re going to be back when you’ve been out in the boat. So do you fancy some chips?’

Scarlett nodded.

‘Yes, please. I’ll just go and get some money.’

Suddenly it seemed very important that she didn’t leave.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got some,’ Jonathan assured her, jingling some change in his pocket.

‘But I—’

‘Look, I’ll get them this time and you can next, all right?’

She hesitated a moment, then agreed. He couldn’t believe how smoothly it was going. In the past when he’d tried to talk to girls, they’d either go all giggly and silly or look at him as if he were some lower form of life. But Scarlett talked to him like…well, not quite like a friend, because there was more to it than that. He didn’t know what, couldn’t put a name to it, but it was there all the same.

Walking with her along the sea front, Jonathan felt ten feet tall. They could all see him with this pretty girl, all the people he knew. He glowed as the funfair attendants called out to him, the girl behind the ice cream stand waved, the elderly Italian lady winding pink candyfloss round a stick blew him a kiss. When they got to the chip shop, he was greeted like a long lost son by the big motherly woman behind the till whom he always called Aunty Marge, although she wasn’t any sort of relation.

‘Ah, here’s our Jonno! Talk about return of the wanderer. You been avoiding us or something? Look at you, you’re fading away. You need a good feed-up, you do. Douggie!’ she called to the equally large man sweating over one of the fryers. ‘Nice big bag of chips for our Jonno. And stick a pickled egg in while you’re about it.’

Jonathan grinned. ‘Thanks, Aunty Marge. And my friend Scarlett here’d like some chips as well.’

Scarlett stood up well to being scrutinised.

‘Scarlett, eh? And where’ve you sprung from?’

‘My dad’s just started work at the Trafalgar.’

‘Oh, so you’re going to be living down here, are you? Going to be one of us. What do you think of it so far?’

Scarlett shrugged. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

Jonathan winced inwardly. Aunty Marge was not going to take kindly to such a lukewarm reaction.

‘All right? All right? You’ve come to live in London’s playground and that’s all you can say for it? Shame on you! You’ve not been trying hard enough, Jonno. Go and show her all the sights. Give her a ride on the speedway.’

‘I’m going to, Aunty Marge,’ he assured her.

‘Right.’ Aunty Marge gave Scarlett one more up-and-down look. ‘Pretty girl. Needs more flesh on her bones, though. Better stick an egg in hers as well, Douggie.’

To the annoyance of the queue of hungry customers, Jonathan and Scarlett’s bags were handed over ahead of everyone else’s. They shook on lots of salt and vinegar, Jonathan paid and they both promised to come back soon.

Outside seemed pleasantly cool after the steaming heat and overwhelming smell of boiling fat in the chip shop. He watched as Scarlett tried a chip. It was so fresh out of the fryer that she could hardly hold it. Crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside, Aunty Marge’s chips practically melted in the mouth.

‘Cor, lovely!’ Scarlett mumbled, breathing air in to stop her mouth from burning.

‘Best chips on the Golden Mile,’ Jonathan claimed. ‘Come on.’

He led the way across the wide road, past seafood stalls and ice cream kiosks to lean on the rails overlooking the beach. He loved this view, loved it in the winter when it was empty and windswept, and in a different way now in the summer, when it was crowded with day-trippers. Families were packed together on the pebbly sand, the mothers and fathers sitting in deckchairs with their knitting and their newspapers, the children digging sandcastles, paddling and filling pails of water. At the water’s edge, a big open sailing boat was waiting for passengers to come aboard for a ride out on the sea. Beyond that, cockle boats bobbed at their moorings and, as a backdrop to it all, marching out into the sea was the pier.

‘So where do you come from?’ Jonathan asked in between chips.

‘A village the other side of Rochford.’

‘And what brought you here?’

‘My dad needed a job.’

‘It’s just the two of you, is it?’

‘Yes.’

It was obvious that she was uncomfortable, that she didn’t want to talk about it. He recalled what his mother had said about the new cellar man. ‘Bit of a loser, if you ask me. But what can you do? It’s high season and we need someone.’ He tried a different tack.

‘It was nice, your village?’

‘Oh, yes—’ Scarlett started to tell him about it, a faraway look on her face. It all sounded pretty ordinary to him. She went on to describe the pub where she had lived, the Red Lion.

‘It was such a nice little place.’ She sighed, licking her finger and dabbing up the last pieces of crispy potato round the bottom of the bag. ‘It had lovely old beams, and lots of horse brasses, and benches against the wall outside. My mum and me kept it all spick and span. And in the summer I always kept a nice jug of wild flowers on the bar. Just to make it look homely, like. And at Christmas we really went to town, holly and ivy and paper chains and everything. It looked really lovely. And people used to cycle out from Rochford, and even from Southend just to have a pint with us. My dad kept the best pint for miles around. Everybody said so.’

‘Sounds wonderful,’ Jonathan said politely. ‘A proper village pub. Very different from the Trafalgar.’

He gazed out to sea, to where huge cargo ships were making their way up the Thames to the London Docks, deliberately avoiding looking at Scarlett as he asked the obvious question.

‘So why did you move here?’

‘Oh…well…you know…like you said, it’s different. A new start.’

She tried to make out it was a good thing, but it didn’t quite sound convincing.

‘Right,’ Jonathan said. He knew just what was going on. He gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Parents, eh? What can you do with them? They say it’s all for the best and they’ve got your best interests at heart and all that sort of rot, but when it comes down to it, they never listen to you.’

Scarlett hesitated, then said, ‘Too true.’

In front of them, the beach was beginning to clear. Mums were packing up picnic baskets and cleaning sand off tired children’s feet, dads were folding away the deckchairs and searching for lost buckets and balls. Jonathan glanced at his wrist, realised he wasn’t wearing a watch and stretched across to take Scarlett’s arm, turned it slightly and looked at the time. The living warmth of her arm beneath his hand sent a hot thrill through him.

‘Thanks,’ he said, as casually as he could. ‘I left mine at home. No good wearing one on the boat, it might get ruined in the water. It’s gone half past six; shall we go back and get something proper to eat? The chips made a nice
amuse bouche
but I’m dying for a proper meal.’

He could have kicked himself. It sounded so pretentious.

‘
Amuse bouche?
’ Scarlett questioned, her forehead creasing in thought. ‘Mouth amusement?’

Jonathan laughed with relief. She hadn’t thought he was trying to get one over on her.

‘Well done. That’s more than most people know. It’s a French restaurant term. It means a little twiddly tasty bit before the real starter, or in between courses. Something to keep the appetite interested before the next main event.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Scarlett said airily.

Jonathan screwed up his chip paper and lobbed it into the nearest litter bin.

‘Come on, the kitchen’ll be all ours now.’

As they made their way back through the raucous crowds and close-packed heat of the Golden Mile, he tried to decide just where to take her. What was she going to think if they stayed in the staff kitchen? It was going to look really unfriendly, as if he thought she wasn’t good enough to be invited upstairs. But his mother was so adamant about not letting staff into their private quarters. Not that Scarlett was staff, of course, but that was stretching the point a bit. He tried to assess the odds against his mother coming in and finding them there. It was high season, and it was Friday evening, the second busiest night of the week. She should be run off her feet in the bar all night. But if she was to pop up for something…no, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

By the time they arrived at the dark rear of the Trafalgar, Jonathan had made his mind up. He led the way to the staff kitchen, which looked out over the yard.

‘I’ll just run upstairs and get some stuff,’ he said. ‘You won’t have had time to do any shopping, will you, what with moving and all that?’

‘No, well, there wouldn’t be much point, would there? We’ve got nowhere to cook,’ Scarlett said.

Jonathan was mystified. ‘But this is the staff kitchen. Didn’t you know that? You and Irma and Marlene share this.’

‘Oh…’

He could practically see light dawning on her expressive face.

‘My dad must’ve forgotten to tell me,’ she said.

‘Yeah, right,’ he agreed. ‘Look, make yourself at home. I won’t be a mo. Perhaps you could put the kettle on for me?’

‘OK.’

Mercifully, she didn’t seem put out to be left there. He raced upstairs, unlocked the heavy door marked ‘Private’and went into the kitchen. If only he had known he would be cooking for a girl! As it was, he would have to improvise with what was around. He opened the cream-coloured door of the American refrigerator and took out bacon, eggs and cream, then rummaged in the cupboards for pasta, onions, garlic, olive oil and ground coffee. He piled the whole lot into a basket together with the chopping board, his French chef’s knife and the percolator. A glorious mix of excitement and nerves churned inside him. Supposing she didn’t like his cooking? Supposing she laughed at him? But she couldn’t—she mustn’t—because that would mean the end of their friendship before it had hardly started.

He galloped downstairs again to find the kettle starting to whistle while Scarlett leaned against the chipped enamel sink staring out at the back yard. There was a horribly bleak expression on her face that cut right through him.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, dumping the basket on the table.

Had his mother been in and had a go at her? His heart sank at the thought.

‘Oh…nothing…’ She straightened up, forcing a smile.

‘Only you looked…well…’

‘I’m all right. Really. What on earth have you got there?’ She moved over to look at the contents of his basket.

‘Just a few things to make a meal. Would you like to be my commis chef?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have that boiling water in a big saucepan with salt in, please, and butter and some olive oil in a frying pan.’

‘Olive oil?’ Scarlett questioned. ‘Olive oil’s for putting into your ear when you’ve got earache.’

Jonathan stopped himself from laughing. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know, any more than most people in this country did.

‘Mine isn’t,’ he said, handing her the bottle. ‘Mine’s for cooking, and making salad dressings.’

Scarlett made a face and looked at the French writing on it. Cautiously, she poured a small pool of oil into a pan. Jonathan got on with skinning and chopping a couple of onions. Scarlett stared at him as he sliced them expertly with a rocking motion, just as he had been taught.