Down an English Lane (36 page)

‘But why, Christine, why did you lie to me?’ Bruce asked repeatedly that evening when he had returned from taking her mother to Lincoln station. ‘It wasn’t just a white lie, either. It was downright wicked to tell me that your parents were dead.’

‘One thing led to another, Bruce, and when I’d said it I couldn’t go back. I didn’t want you to think badly of me. I wanted you to think I was from a nice respectable background. I knew your father was somebody important and well thought of…’

‘Yes, you knew my father was the squire and so you decided to latch on to me? I can see it all now.’

‘No, no… It wasn’t like that at all. I loved you, Bruce. I still love you; you know I do…’

‘And so you deceived me time and time again? That’s a strange kind of love, Christine. Telling me you were only twenty when you were twenty-two, and then pretending you were pregnant… Oh yes, I came to my senses about that little ruse a while ago, and I have a pretty good idea as well about why you are not getting pregnant now. But this lie about
your parents is the worst of all. How could you imagine I would think badly of you because of what your parents had done? You are not responsible for their actions. I understand that you had a good upbringing with your grandmother? I’m sure she didn’t encourage you to cheat and lie.’

‘I wanted something better,’ she answered sullenly. ‘You have no idea what it was like, living in a hovel like I did, with an outside lav and a zinc bath in the kitchen, and wearing clothes bought from a jumble sale. And I was determined not to go the way my parents had gone to get a bit of extra money; stealing and living off immoral earnings.’

‘What you have done is just as bad, Christine; in fact, in my view it is worse. At least your mother has her own code of honesty. She told me something of her life, and that of your father. Not everything, I don’t suppose, but I can read between the lines. And I can understand, I suppose, why you broke away from them. But you should have told me, right at the start, at least some of the truth. I feel now that I will never trust you again.’

‘Bruce, please don’t say that…’

But for the next two days he scarcely spoke to her.

‘Your father’s funeral is tomorrow,’ he said the next day. ‘You will be going, I take it? I think you should.’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I almost promised that I would.’

‘Then try and keep your word, for once in your life.’

‘Would you…would you care to go with me, Bruce?’ she asked tentatively.

‘No.’ His reply was curt. ‘You will have to do this on your own.’

He did at least run her to the station on Friday morning; the funeral was to take place in the afternoon. She hoped that by the time she came back on Saturday she might be able to work round to a reconciliation with him.

But when she returned home, after spending Friday night in a small hotel near the centre of Bradford, she found that Bruce was not there. He had left a note…

‘Dear Christine, I think it might be as well if we parted company for a while. As I have told you, I feel that I can no longer trust you. I wonder, in fact, if I ever really knew you at all. I will be staying in staff quarters at the camp. For the time being, you may remain in the house. Bruce.’

She screwed up the letter, holding it in a tight ball in her hand. She felt tears of anger and frustration, and of sadness, too, come into her eyes. She had lost him; she supposed she had known all along that Bruce was a man of high principles. Whatever was she going to do now?

Chapter Nineteen

M
aisie took off her tweed coat, unzipped her fleecy-lined boots, then slipped her feet into her court shoes. She was rather fed-up by now with the snow, which had lingered well into February; but it seemed, at last, that a thaw might be setting in. She had slushed her way through icy puddles on the walk from the tram stop and it looked now as though it was beginning to rain. One good downpour might clear it away properly, until the next time. You could never be sure of the weather in Yorkshire or of how long the winter might last.

It had felt odd at first to be back in Leeds, the town of her birth. She had been in two minds at first whether or not to accept Henry Galloway’s offer of the managership of the office in the Headrow. But her common sense had told her it was too good an opportunity to miss. She was still a few months away from her twentieth birthday,
and here she was, the youngest manageress by far in the string of offices that were springing up in the cities of Yorkshire and Lancashire. In addition to York and Leeds, the first two to be opened, there were now branches of Galaxy Travel in Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool.

She had been determined not to live anywhere near Armley as the place held too many unhappy memories for her. She had been fortunate, however, to find a small two-roomed flat, with a kitchenette and shared bathroom, at Woodhouse, near to the moor and not far from the university buildings. She had been living there ever since she had moved to the Leeds branch the previous year, in the summer of 1949.

‘You mean to say you will be living on your own?’ her mother had asked, in some trepidation. ‘I’m not sure that that’s a good idea, Maisie love.’ Her mother had been happy enough – once she had got over the fact that her daughter was leaving home to work in a travel agency in York – about her lodging with Jean Bolton, Jean Mullins as she was now, and her husband in their guest house. Lily remembered Jean – Miss Bolton – as a teacher at Middlebeck School, so she was sure that Maisie could come to no harm there.

‘It’s an excellent idea, Mum,’ Maisie had assured her. She had already procured the flat on a previous visit to Leeds and only told her mother about it when the deal was signed and settled. ‘I’m a big girl
now, you know, in charge of an office – what do you think about that then? – and it’s time I had my own place. It’s only small, but in a year or two I might be able to afford somewhere bigger.’

‘Don’t try to run before you can walk, Maisie,’ her mother had said. ‘But I must admit that I’m proud of you. I had my doubts when you said you wanted to leave school – well, you know I was dead against it – but I realise now it was probably for the best. I know you’re happy and you’re doing what you want to do. You must be careful, though, living on your own…’

Looking after herself had not, at first, been as easy as Maisie had blithely imagined, after living in digs with everything provided for her, for two years. Doing her own cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing, had been a rude awakening, although, thankfully, the flat had the luxury of central heating. From an antiquated coke boiler, to be sure, but at least it functioned and was taken care of by the man who owned the property. Her flat was at the very top of the Victorian house, up several flights of steep stairs, but once she had got used to living on her own she had come to enjoy it.

Thank goodness the office was centrally heated, too, she thought, wriggling her cold toes and warming her hands on the radiator. The warmth was just coming through, as she had switched it on when she arrived. She was always the first to arrive, to unlock and to make sure all was ready for the
early clients. She had two assistants working with her; Barry, a trainee who was sixteen and had not long left school, and a mature woman, Olwen, who worked part-time, usually in the afternoons. Maisie had felt embarrassed at first, being in charge of someone who was so much older, but Olwen did not mind at all. She was only working for the extra money, she told Maisie, and had no intention of making a career of it. She showed keen interest, though, in her work, as did most people who were employed in travel agencies. It was fascinating work, dealing with far-away places and helping people to plan their journeys and their holidays. Next year, 1951, Henry Galloway planned to introduce European coach tours for the very first time, and he hoped, eventually, to branch out into their own tours incorporating air travel.

He had proved to be a great inspiration to Maisie, ever since she had set foot in his shop on that chilly December day in 1946. She had learned about all aspects of the business, mainly as a booking clerk at first. Then, during the winter months, Trixie Galloway had taken her on the ‘recces’ that she did to holiday resorts all over Britain; preliminary visits to hotels that had been recommended to them, to see whether they came up to the standard expected by Galaxy Travel and by their clients. Good food, plentiful and well-cooked; comfortable bedrooms with running water; an adequate number of bathrooms and WCs for the
use of guests; and a comfortable lounge area where the guests could relax, if they so wished, of an evening. Bournemouth, Torquay, Eastbourne, Brighton, Llandudno…places which had only been a spot on a map to her before, or a coloured picture in a brochure, she had visited all these and more during her time with Galaxy.

They ran conducted tours of the city, too, for visitors who were spending a few days, maybe, in York, and wished to learn more of its history. Maisie had been entranced by the place ever since the school visit, which had been the start of it all. It was a great joy to her to be actually living there; to explore the little cobbled streets and alleyways and discover hidden squares that she had never found before. She never tired of visiting the Minster, and the Castle Museum and Railway Museum, all with their atmosphere of a long bygone age.

When she had been working at Galaxy for over a year she persuaded Henry Galloway to allow her to act as guide on one of the city tours. They ran both coach tours and walking tours, usually employing qualified guides. Maisie, however, having been on a couple of the tours, was convinced that she would be able to do just as well. With Trixie’s prompting, he agreed to give her a try. The guides, on the whole, were elderly, and Maisie had her youth and a winning personality on her side. He insisted, though, that Trixie should accompany her at first; after all, she was only eighteen. But Trixie soon
realised that she was very competent and sure of herself. Besides, she looked several years older than she really was, well able to deal with clients’ questions or with any ‘awkward customers’. There were very few of those, though, all the tourists seeming happy to lap up the information handed out to them.

The city coach tour was easy. The driver knew his way around and Maisie, standing at the front with her microphone, pointed out the various places of interest. ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, we can see Micklegate Bar, and this is where, in olden times, they used to hang the heads of traitors… The bars are really fortified gateways into the city, as you can see, but in York the gates are called bars, and so we have Fishergate Bar, Monk Bar, Bootham Bar… And the streets, contrarily, are known as gates, and so we have Stonegate, Ousegate, Coppergate…

‘And now we are crossing the River Foss. This was dammed by William the Conqueror – I mean to say that he built a dam, not that he condemned it…’ and she would wait for the polite laughter, ‘…to protect his castle, provide power for his corn mills, and to create a fishpond for his personal use…

‘And over that wall, if you look quickly to your left now, you can see the gravestone of Dick Turpin…and here, on Petergate, is the house in which Guy Fawkes, York’s most infamous citizen, was born…’

Such titbits of information, the more ghoulish the better, she found pleased the customers and as time went by she grew more confident and revised her spiel accordingly.

Walking tours could be a little more difficult as some people – usually the middle-aged women – tended to loiter behind, looking in shop windows. Maisie led them through the old streets of York; the Shambles, originally known as Fleshammels, the street of the butchers; Swinegate, once called Swynegaill, dating from the thirteenth century when pigs were kept there; Stonegate, Petergate, Deangate… ending at the Minster with a tour of the ‘largest medieval Gothic church in England’. She held a small Union Jack flag aloft as she led the way through the streets, and then around the hallowed aisles and transepts of the church, which her little crowd was meant to follow. She was relieved that she had never yet lost anyone.

Her work was flexible and that was what made it the more interesting. And so she was delighted when, soon after her nineteenth birthday, Henry asked her if she would act as courier on a five-day coach tour to London. The regular courier had fallen ill and Henry knew that she would be a very capable replacement. Part-time staff would be only too pleased to take over her office work in her absence. There was never any shortage of these as Galaxy had earned a reputation for fairness and reasonable wages.

It was great, she had enthused to Henry after her return, and she had enjoyed every minute of it. She had stayed with the clients at a small hotel in South Kensington, and as the driver knew the city like the back of his hand, it had all been plain-sailing. Please could she go again, she begged, if a stand-in was required? She did two more tours that year, one more to London and another to Edinburgh. This was foreign territory to her, but she swotted up the facts before she went. And the capital city of Scotland proved to be another fascinating old city.

Galaxy was unusual in that they provided couriers as well as drivers on some – though by no means all – of their tours, especially those which were advertised as ‘cultural tours’. It was Henry’s view that drivers had enough to do to keep their eyes on the road without, at the same time, trying to give a running commentary. This was common practice with many firms, but Henry had been determined never to cut corners at the expense of the customers’ safety.

He reminded Maisie, however, that she had been employed first and foremost as a booking clerk, at which job she was proving most efficient. No more tours came her way for the rest of the year, apart from the York excursions which she did once a week. And then, six months ago, had come her transfer to Leeds…

She knew that she had to buckle down and concentrate on her position as manageress. She
could not leave her post to go swanning off to the other end of the country. Maybe one day…she often mused. They had recently started booking air tickets for independent travellers, to Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens, even New York…although they did not, as yet, organise air tours on behalf of Galaxy Travel. Maisie made up her mind that one day she, too, would visit such places. In the meantime she would do the very best job she could in the place where Fate had placed her.

Middlebeck seemed not only miles but light years away at times; although when she went home, every six weeks or so, she soon picked up the threads again with her friends and family. Audrey was in her second year at a college not far from Leeds and would leave there in the summer of this year. She hoped to obtain a teaching appointment somewhere in the north of Yorkshire. Audrey was still very much a home bird and Maisie wondered if she had ever really settled down to college life; she certainly did not say very much about it. Audrey was still not inclined to give much away about her private life and thoughts. Maisie met her now and again in the city centre, to look at the shops or to enjoy a snack together, and their friendship was still as firm as ever.

Doris was married to Ivan Delinsky, the Polish farmer. Maisie and Audrey had been bridesmaids in the summer of 1948, when Doris was a young bride of eighteen. The couple now had a nine-month-old
baby boy and lived in their own little cottage, near to the Nixons’ farm, where Ivan still worked. The farm was now a family concern, owned and worked by Ada, Joe and his wife, Irene, who also lived there; and Doris and Ivan.

Ted, also, was married to Celia, and they were expecting their first child in the summer… Maisie held no hard feelings towards the pair. She knew that Celia was far more suitable as a wife for Ted than she would ever have been. They, too, had their own little place, and Ted worked the remainder of the land which still belonged to Archie Tremaine. There was talk of Ted buying it eventually, as Archie was set on following a political career.

He had thrown in his weight – and considerable funding – with the local Labour party, and had been selected as the candidate for the forthcoming election; which would take place very soon, towards the end of the present month, on the twenty-third of February. The last time Maisie had visited Middlebeck there had been posters a-plenty in evidence. ‘Vote for Archie Tremaine, your local Labour candidate’, decorated in the party colours of red and yellow. The title ‘squire’ was not used at all. Archie was now, ‘One of us; a man of the people’. It did not mean much to Maisie as she would not be able to vote until the next but one election, by which time she would have reached the age of majority, twenty-one. She had not really sorted out her own political persuasion, but she
hoped that Archie, for his own sake, would be successful.