Chrissie's Children (8 page)

‘Have you got the letter from Tourville?’ Chrissie smiled up at Phillip Massingham as they stood by the open door of the train.

He tapped his breast pocket. ‘In here. I wouldn’t forget that.’ It was just a month since Chrissie had brought him back to the hotel. Now he wore a tailormade suit, one of two
bought for him by Chrissie, along with a complete outfit of other clothes, including the overcoat laid on his seat in the carriage. There was flesh on his bones, colour in his cheeks and he stood
straight. He said, ‘I won’t forget what you’ve done for me.’

‘Now don’t start that again.’ Chrissie knew he was nervous. ‘And don’t worry. They’re expecting you at the studios and you have a good reputation in the
business in this country.’

He nodded, acknowledging that. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever work in films again, let alone as a director.’

The guard’s whistle shrilled. Chrissie shoved Phillip towards the train and he climbed up into the carriage. She closed the door behind him, and as he leaned out of the window she told
him, ‘You can do it.’

The train pulled away and he answered firmly, ‘Yes, I can.’

Later that day Sophie poked her bobbed, blonde head around the door of her mother’s office in the Railway Hotel, smiled and asked, ‘Got a minute, Mummy?’

Chrissie looked up from the menus for the following week that Jock Kincaid had submitted for her approval. ‘A minute? Fine. But what else?’ The challenge was stern but Sophie knew it
was good humoured. She entered and Tom followed her.

Chrissie’s brows lifted. ‘What are you doing here?’ Tom was a rare visitor to the hotel. He worked in Newcastle during the week and on Saturday mornings – and there was
no reason for him to go to the hotel this Saturday afternoon during his precious free time. He wore a tweed sports coat and grey flannel trousers, a newly fashionable, collar-attached shirt and a
tie.

‘I came in with Sophie.’ He grinned at Chrissie. ‘Or she came in with me. It turned out she didn’t have any money for the tram.’

‘Ah.’ That summed up Chrissie’s appreciation of the situation.

Sophie went on to confirm it, hitching herself up to sit on the desk by her mother, long legs swinging. ‘I spent an awful lot of money at Christmas, on presents and – and things, and
that left a sort of vacuum that’s sucked up my allowance since then—’

Chrissie cut in cynically, ‘And your father is away for the weekend.’

Sophie skated around that: ‘Well, there’s been so much to do, and everything seems to cost more these days than it used to, and I’m growing.’ She paused to take a
breath.

Chrissie recognised words taken out of her mouth that her daughter had heard and cannily noted for use later: costs, and growing? That much was true: Sophie was turned fifteen now and becoming a
woman before her mother’s eyes – physically. However, there was more to growing up than that, and Sophie still had a long way to go. Chrissie pointed out, ‘You don’t buy
your clothes out of your allowance.’

‘No,’ Sophie conceded, ‘but I think I eat and drink more when I’m out now.’ She laid a hand on her mother’s and suggested, ‘If you could lend me half a
crown, just till I get my next allowance . . .’

Chrissie lifted the hand away. ‘I happen to know that allowance of yours is mortgaged for the next month.’ Sophie had asked for half-a-crown – two shillings and sixpence
– so . . . Chrissie picked up her handbag from beside the desk and took out her purse. ‘Two shillings.’ She laid the florin on the desk. ‘No more. And don’t come back
tomorrow, or batten on to your father as soon as he gets back.’

‘No, Mummy, I won’t. Thank you.’ Sophie scooped up the coin, slid off the desk and danced across the room.

Tom smiled as he watched her gyrate out of the door and Chrissie asked him, ‘Are you managing to make ends meet?’ although she knew the answer.

‘I’ve got money to spare after I’ve paid for my digs and I’m even saving some,’ Tom assured her with pride.

Chrissie prompted, ‘And still enjoying it?’ knowing that answer, too.

It came pat and sincere: ‘Marvellous!’ Tom’s enthusiasm shone out of his face. ‘To see the ship growing a little bit every day,
and
knowing what you’ve put
in yourself, even if it’s only a small drawing you’ve done in the drawing office, it’s, it’s . . .’ He stopped then, lost for words.

Chrissie supplied one, teasing: ‘Marvellous!’ Tom laughed and Chrissie told him, ‘Now off you go and let me get my work done.’ She was still smiling when the door closed
behind him.

Tom found Sophie waiting out in the foyer, talking to a girl in an apron, her hair bound up in a kerchief. Sophie was taller, and the other girl was thin faced, slighter. Sophie turned as Tom
came up. ‘There you are.’ Then to the girl, ‘Have you met my brother? Tom, this is Sarah Tennant, one of Mr Kincaid’s staff.’

Tom said, polite, ‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’ Sarah had met Sophie many times because she was often in the hotel visiting her mother, and usually called into the kitchen for a cup of tea or glass of milk. She would talk
to Jock Kincaid and the other kitchen staff and they would laugh – and shake their heads over her when she had gone. ‘She’s a little madam, that one.’

Now Sophie, knowing Sarah’s shyness, teased, ‘He’s handsome, isn’t he?’ and grinned to see the colour flood into Sarah’s face.

Tom did not notice her blushing. His casual glance had registered a quiet girl, two or three years younger than himself, and he thought of her as a schoolgirl. He did not blush and told his
sister, ‘You do talk rubbish. Look, I have to go now, must get the paint I want.’ He lifted a hand in a parting salute and made for the door.

Sophie watched him go, then turned back to Sarah. She saw the blush still there and stopped grinning. She squeezed Sarah’s arm and apologised. ‘I’m sorry. Just a
joke.’

‘That’s all right.’ Sarah pretended she had not been embarrassed and asked, ‘Does he paint a lot?’

‘No! Not him. Matt—’ she lifted a hand high above her head – ‘my other brother, the tall skinny one, he is the artist in the family. Tom only wants the paint for
his plane. He makes models of aircraft and paints them like real ones.’

Sarah said, ‘Oh, I see,’ though she was not sure that she did. Then she excused herself. ‘Mr Kincaid sent me out to the dining-room with a message and he’ll be wondering
where I’ve got to.’ She made her way back to the kitchen, but flushed again when she thought that Tom Ballantyne
was
handsome.

‘We’re going to the pictures!’ Helen Diaz protested. She and Sophie had arranged to see Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in
Roberta.

Sophie soothed her, ‘Yes, we will. I just want to have a quick look in here,’ and she tugged Helen into Eade’s, the music shop.

The ‘quick look’ dragged on for ten minutes as Sophie listened to records and perused sheet music, until Helen presented her ultimatum: ‘I’m going now.’

Sophie caught her eye, saw Helen meant what she said and agreed, ‘All right.’ She bought a record and music then pulled a face at the coppers she received in change.

Helen asked with foreboding, ‘What’s the matter?’ and then answered her own question with an accusation. ‘You’ve spent the money you wanted for the
pictures!’

Sophie led the way out of the shop and turned towards the cinema on the corner. Helen asked, ‘Are you going to ask your mother again?’

Sophie shook her head. ‘She told me not to try.’

‘Well, what are you going to do?’

‘Just leave it to me.’ Sophie stopped outside the Regal cinema, ostensibly studying the stills mounted on a sandwich board in the foyer, but her gaze roved. She saw the two youths,
yard workers out on a Saturday to spend their pay, as they sauntered into the foyer. Both wore double-breasted blue suits, collars and ties. She caught the eye of one of them, held it a moment then
shyly looked away, but she was aware that they had stopped and had their heads together in muttered plotting.

Helen, unaware, pressed her, ‘What are you going to do?’

Sophie replied, ‘I’m doing it,’ as the youths swaggered over.

One of them said, ‘Aye, aye.’

Helen refused to look at him but Sophie did and repeated, ‘Aye, aye.’

Encouraged, he asked, ‘Going in?’

Sophie sighed, shook her head and smiled at him, rueful. ‘No money.’

The second youth shoved forward to put in, ‘Come in wi’ us – our treat.’

‘Oh, we couldn’t,’ Sophie protested, but weakly.

‘Go on!’ they both urged.

She hesitated, glanced at the red-faced Helen, and then as if seeing some signal there, said, ‘Well, all right.’

Helen was helpless, overtaken by an unfamiliar situation. She had looked to Sophie for a lead and now did not know what to do, so she went along. After the tickets were bought and before they
plunged into the darkness, Sophie warned their consorts, ‘No funny business in here, mind.’

‘No,’ they agreed, quickly but insincerely.

Sophie watched the film, enjoyed it and kept the young man’s caresses within bounds. Once, intent on the screen, she told him, ‘Keep still. I want to see this bit.’ She was
watching the stance and gestures of the singer. Once she brushed his hand from her leg and hissed, ‘I said no funny business in here!’ He accepted that.

Meanwhile Helen sat two seats away, stiff with shyness and nerves, and held the hot hands of the other young man between her own.

As they came out into the foyer Sophie’s young man said, ‘What about a drink, then?’

Helen opened her mouth to utter a shocked refusal but Sophie got in first and said quickly, ‘Good idea, but we’ll just be a minute.’ She took Helen off and left the two youths
waiting.

In the passage leading to the ladies’ Helen objected, ‘We can’t go into a pub!’

‘We’re not.’ Sophie led on past the ladies’ and round a corner to the emergency exit. She pushed down the bar and the door opened into the street. A little crowd of a
half-dozen youngsters, without the entrance money and waiting for a friend to open the door from inside, immediately rushed in. Sophie and Helen shouldered through them and hurried away.

Sophie said happily, ‘Great picture, wasn’t it?’ When her friend did not answer, she glanced at her and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

Helen did not look at her. ‘Those chaps.’

‘What about them?’

‘I didn’t like them. I didn’t
know
them! I didn’t like—’ She stopped.

Sophie said, ‘Well, you’ve just got to keep them in order.’

Helen said, ‘And it wasn’t fair. On them, I mean, letting them pay for us and think that . . .’ She stopped again.

Sophie shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask them to take us in – they offered. And I didn’t promise anything. Isn’t that true?’

Helen had to admit that it was, although she was still unhappy when they parted to board their respective trams. Sophie was more puzzled than concerned by her friend’s attitude but she
soon shrugged that off. She was humming the songs from the film before she got off the tram. Then she sang them, panting, as she ran home.

On the other side of the river Sarah Tennant ran all the way to the house of Dr Dickinson and hammered on his door. When he opened it she gasped out, ‘Please, Doctor,
it’s me mam!’

April 1936

‘They want me to play in a match for the county schoolboys.’ Matt, home from school, grimaced and dropped the letter on the breakfast table. ‘Blow
that!’

Jack, his breakfast finished, looked up from
The Times
and scowled, irritated. ‘It’s usually considered to be an honour.’

Chrissie concentrated on pouring tea then passed the cup and saucer to Sophie, but was wary.

Matt had already turned down an invitation to play for the local club. Now he grumbled, ‘I don’t
have
to play. Sometimes I don’t
want
to play. I want to please
myself, not turn out whenever somebody else wants me to.’

Chrissie saw the anger on Jack’s face and put in quickly, ‘All right, Matt, that’s enough.’

Sophie, ready for school in gym slip – another three days before the end of term for her – muttered, ‘I think Matt’s right. Why should he—’

Chrissie rapped, ‘And that’s enough from you.’

Sophie had not finished but she caught her mother’s eye and was silent. Jack shook his head in exasperation, then picked up his coffee cup and returned to reading. Chrissie relaxed.

Jack set down his empty cup and folded the paper. He said quietly, ‘Hitler is in the news again. I don’t like the way things are going.’ He had voiced that worry before outside
his home and no one had echoed it. He knew he was in a minority.

Chrissie knew it, too, and that most people read Hitler’s speeches and shrugged. She said, ‘I don’t like it, either.’

Jack went on, ‘We ought to have acted when he marched his soldiers into the Rhineland a month ago. The French should have thrown him out and we should have supported them.’

Matt’s voice rose in incredulity. ‘You mean a war? But you were nearly killed in the last one! There are men in this town who lost arms or legs, and hundreds of war widows! There
must be better ways of settling differences!’

Jack said flatly, ‘If they’ll let you.’

Matt waved that away with a flap of his hand. ‘Anyway, Hitler and Mussolini are a comic turn – prancing about and saluting like Caesar!’

Jack persisted, brows coming together in a black line, ‘We have to take them seriously.’

Matt shook his head. ‘Well, I’m not. And I won’t fight. I don’t want to kill anybody and I don’t want bits of me blown off.’

Sophie cheered. ‘Hurray! Good for you, Matt!’

Jack shoved back his chair and snapped at Matt, ‘I’ll talk to you this evening.’ He stalked out of the room and along the hall, heading for the stairs, the tower room and the
papers he had worked on the previous night.

Chrissie flared at Sophie, ‘Keep your mouth shut!’ She saw her rage reflected in the shock on her daughter’s face. As Sophie put a hand to her mouth, Chrissie turned on Matt:
‘And
you
! That was a disgraceful outburst! I’ll thank you to apologise to your father!’ Matt shoved up out of his chair and started out of the room, and Chrissie demanded,
‘Where are you going?’