Mary's Child (38 page)

‘I suppose I am,’ Jack admitted. ‘But there hasn’t been much opportunity for that these last two years.’

‘I understand.’ George nodded his grey head but turned a cold stare on his grandson and asked, ‘This girl – Lilian?’

‘What about her?’

‘Don’t glower at me, Jack.’

‘You’re glowering at
me
! But Lilian? Well, I – like her.’ He avoided his grandfather’s gaze. ‘We have a lot of fun.’

George said, ‘You see a lot of her.’

Jack thought, That’s true. All there is to see. He said, ‘Yes.’

‘So are we to think that you are serious at last?’

Jack answered without hesitation, ‘No.’ Then he went on quickly, ‘I won’t be serious while this war lasts.’

George did not answer that. ‘It’s a pity all your old friends – Luke Arkenstall and the others – are away in the Army or the Navy.’ Or lost at sea or buried in Flanders, he thought.

Jack corrected him: ‘Luke’s in the Royal Flying Corps.’

‘So he is. His father isn’t well. He’s an old man, of course, and trying to keep his firm going. He’s very tired.’ George thought, And he’s not the only one.

Jack said, ‘I miss the old crowd. But I’m having a good time. Truly.’ He glanced at his watch and stood up. ‘Time for lunch.’ But he paused at the door to say, ‘Don’t worry about me.’

George smiled at him because he was afraid of what the boy was going back to in a week or so. ‘I won’t. Enjoy yourself.’ But when the tall young man had gone he thought, Our hope for the future. Dear God! Watch over him. For Jack was the last of the Ballantynes. George rubbed his eyes and hooked his glasses over his ears then bent to his work again.

Chrissie had instituted the idea of catering for functions outside of the hotel, supplying the food, drink and staff to house parties and the like. Dinsdale Arkley contracted to handle the Enderby party, but on the big day he was ill and Chrissie had to run it.

She swore under her breath but took on the job. The occasion was the birthday of Lilian Enderby and the guests were the wealthy youth of the town. Chrissie was in blouse and skirt, not wearing an apron but supervising the girls who were. Lilian and the girls who were her guests wore silks and satins. Nearly all the young men, Jack Ballantyne among them, were in uniform. Chrissie recognised some familiar faces from the back room of the Bells but most were strangers.

She worked hard, paying attention to details to ensure all went smoothly; no one waited for a drink, the hot food was hot and the cold collation was cold and all of it appetising. She still managed to glance around her from time to time and almost always saw Lilian at Jack’s side, her hands on him, laughing up at him and talking. They disappeared at one point and it was a half-hour or more before they returned, Lilian flushed, smiling still but contentedly silent now. Chrissie was sure that Lilian Enderby was not just one more girl in Jack Ballantyne’s life.

There was a jazz band and the party went on until one in the morning. Some time after midnight Chrissie looked up from the long buffet table and saw Jack Ballantyne’s dark head above the crowd on the dance floor. His eyes were on her, his face serious. For a moment they gazed at each other from opposite sides of the table then Chrissie turned away.

At one the cars rolled up to the front door of the Enderby house to take the singing, laughing guests home. And at the back Chrissie and her girls loaded up their van at the kitchen door with the crockery and utensils they had brought. Chrissie sat by the driver as the van swayed and bumped back to the hotel.

Jack went back to sea a few days later, and just a week after that Chrissie called at the Palace Hotel for a word with her friendly rival, Walter Ferguson. As she waited for him in his office with the door open, a couple paused outside. Chrissie was hidden behind the open door but a glass-fronted cabinet opposite gave her a view of the hall. She sat frozen as Lilian Enderby talked to a young army officer.

‘So you’re here for just a week? Then tell me what you want to do. I’ll do anything you want.’ As they moved on Lilian put her hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re so tall!’

As the summer passed Chrissie saw Lilian with a succession of other men. The young officers came and went.

That was the summer of the battle of the Somme when the dead were counted in their tens of thousands. One day towards the end of it, with a gale howling in off the sea, Chrissie’s mother sailed into the Railway Hotel as if borne on the wind and said, ‘Hello, lass! How are you getting on?’

Chrissie, standing behind the reception desk at the time, stared at her, for a moment dumbfounded. Martha Tate wore a fur coat that she opened now to shake off the rain, showing a silk dress. Both dress and coat ended just below her knees. Her legs were clad in sheer silk stockings with high-heeled court shoes on her feet. She was heavily made up. With the foyer between them she could have been taken for twenty-five but now, just a yard away, Martha Tate looked all of her forty-four years.

‘Blimey! Well, say something, if it’s only bugger off!’ said Martha.

Chrissie said, ‘Hello.’ What to say next? ‘Are you here with a show?’

‘A review. We’re doing a week at the Empire.’ Martha glanced around her. ‘We’re staying at the Palace, o’ course. It’s a bit posher but this place doesn’t look half bad.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well, are you going to offer me a cup o’ tea?’

Chrissie was aware of the receptionist, apparently engrossed in her work but doubtless intrigued by this conversation. Chrissie had done her time behind such a desk. And Arkley was limping through the foyer, staring. She said, ‘Of course.’ And told the girl, ‘Ask the kitchen to send tea for two to my office, please.’

‘Yes, Miss Carter.’

Chrissie led the way there, seated Martha in one of the two armchairs before the fire and took the other herself. Martha said, ‘I asked them at the Palace: “Where’s that girl Chrissie that used to work here?” They said, “She’s manageress at the Railway Hotel.” You could ha’ knocked me down with a feather.’ She looked around the office, sniffed and said, ‘You’ve done well for yourself, I’ll say that.’ Her eyes came to rest on the corner table, laden with glasses and bottles that Chrissie kept there for the entertainment of such as Walter Ferguson, Lance Morgan and the rare guest come to lodge a complaint. Martha cleared her throat and said, ‘To tell you the truth, when I asked for a cup o’ tea, that was just a manner o’ speaking. I’d rather have something a bit stronger, if you see what I mean.’

Chrissie asked, ‘Gin?’

‘That’ll do.’ And as Chrissie poured: ‘A drop more . . . and now a dash o’ ginger.’ There was just room for it. Martha clasped the glass in a beringed hand, toasted, ‘Cheerio!’ then drank and licked her lips. Chrissie watched her, and waited.

Martha eyed her, then looked away. ‘Tell you the truth, I came over because I can put you in the way of making a few quid.’

‘Oh?’

Martha nodded. ‘This show, the stage manager, he’s a feller called Phil – short for Phillip – Massingham. He was in the Army but got invalided out – got blown up or something.’ She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. ‘Anyway, he’s set up a company of his own to make pictures but he’s having trouble getting capital together. If you were to offer him some – get one or two of your business connections to chip in – you could grab a big share of his profits. He’s in no position to argue the toss because if he doesn’t get some money soon he’ll lose all he’s got. And he has a wife and bairn depending on him. He’ll have to take whatever deal you like to offer him.’

Chrissie paused before she spoke and then said only, ‘What if he doesn’t make any money with his pictures? My – connections – would lose theirs.’

Martha shook her head definitely. ‘Never! Those picture people are coining it. This is a sure thing, I tell you.’

Chrissie asked, ‘And what about your commission?’

Martha threw back her head and emptied her glass then ventured, ‘I’ll settle for fifty quid.’

A girl came from the kitchen then, carrying a tray with the tea. Chrissie poured two cups but Martha crossed to the table in the corner and refilled her glass. Chrissie sipped her tea and tried to keep the lid on her mounting anger – and anguish.

But her mother swallowed a mouthful of gin and pressed, ‘So what about it? I’ve got to have a bite to eat and then I have to do a matinée this afternoon. Tell you what: I’ll take twenty-five quid now and you can let me have the rest at the end of the week.’

Not one word of caring or loving, pleasure at meeting again. Chrissie put down the cup and saucer and said, ‘No.’

‘What d’you mean – no?’ Martha Tate stared at her.

‘I mean I won’t give you a penny. Not a brass farthing.’

Martha misunderstood and pressed her, ‘You must have
something
saved up. With a job like this and living in you should have a few quid behind you. Are you telling me you haven’t?’

‘No.’ Because it was true. Chrissie had saved nearly all of her pay from the Bells and the Palace Hotel since she handed her savings to Ronnie Milburn four years ago. Then there had been her salary as manager of the Railway Hotel from August 1914 and her twenty per cent share of its profits for the past eighteen months. She said, ‘I’m telling you I won’t give it to you.’

Martha wheedled, ‘Ah, now, Chrissie! To tell you the truth, I need the money. This job I’ve got, we’ll be another six months going from one theatre to another between here and bloody Plymouth before we get back to London. There’s a feller there, I was seeing a lot of him and a week back he wrote to me, said he would set me up in a little nightclub of me own. But he needs me to put up fifty quid for my share. Them clubs are making a mint now! All you need is a cellar, a pianist and a few girls! You give me the money and I can chuck this job in and get down to London on the next train.’

Chrissie shook her head. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

Martha played her trump: ‘I’m your mother! You wouldn’t let your own mother go short of a few bob when she needed it, would you?’

Chrissie stood up. ‘I told you and I’ll not change my mind. Was there anything else?’

Martha shoved up out of the chair and flounced to the door. She paused there to shout, ‘Damn you and your money! It’ll do you no good! I hope you rot with it, you ungrateful bitch!’ She realised she still held the glass, drew back her arm and hurled it into the fireplace where it shattered into fragments.

She turned to go, then remembered, faced Chrissie again and grinned evilly. ‘I saw Andrew Wayman, your father, in London the other day. He’s a major in the Australian Army – come back from Gallipoli. I told him about you and left him with his mouth open. He was waiting to get on a train to France.’ She saw the shock on Chrissie’s face and laughed. Then she turned with a flirt of skirt and fur coat and the door slammed behind her.

After a time Chrissie lifted her face from her hands and went back to her work. But her thoughts strayed. Mostly she was tormented by pictures of her mother – and trying to picture Andrew Wayman, the father she had never known – but there was also the young soldier with a wife and child who would soon lose all he had.

There was heavy fighting still in Flanders. Major Andrew Wayman, recently promoted, sat on his bunk in his dugout. He wrote in a notebook by the light of an oil lamp, using a packing-case as a table. When he laid down his pen he read through what he had written and decided it would do.

He recalled meeting Martha Tate in the street not long ago, laughing in his face and telling him, ‘We had a bairn! A little lass! You’re a father!’

He had asked, ‘Where is she?’

And Martha replied, ‘She went to some people called Carter. I couldn’t do with her. They gave her a good home.’ He thought, Like a dog. Martha finished, ‘That’s the name she goes by, Chrissie Carter, but she’s yours.’

He thought that when his leave came around, he would look for the child – or young woman as she would be now. Meanwhile – he glanced at the paper again – this would do, just in case.

He called to the two young lieutenants who shared the dugout, ‘Hey! It’s time you jokers were up and moving!’

They grumbled, peering at their watches. ‘Aw, for Pete’s sake, Andy! Give us another ten minutes.’ And, ‘It’s still pitch dark out there!’ But they threw off the blankets, dirty with mud and the dust that fell from the roof when shells burst overhead.

Andrew said, ‘C’mon and witness my signature on this.’

The tall young men, stooping under the low roof, watched him sign then scrawled their own names and ranks. They did not ask questions because a lot of men made their wills thus before going into action.

Five minutes later the three of them were out in the trench with their men, crouching below the firing-step in a long line of fixed bayonets glinting in the darkness. All of them shivered in the pre-dawn cold, despite the thick, treacly rum they had been given. Conversation was impossible now because of the thunder of the guns laying down a barrage on the enemy lines. Andrew Wayman and the two lieutenants held their wrists close to their faces, peering at their watches. Then with the coming of first light the shelling ceased. Andrew put the whistle between his teeth and blew a shrill blast then climbed out of the trench. With his pistol in his hand, his men at his back and a prayer on his lips he started to walk across no-man’s land.