The September Girls (3 page)

By the time he was sixteen, he had become a junior clerk, but there was no chance of becoming a fully-fledged accountant without qualifications that he sadly lacked. Apart from which, even with qualifications, if the firm took him on as a trainee, he would have to pay a lump sum that would be returned to him in the form of wages. It was out of the question. His mother was getting frail and even more demanding. His salary was barely enough for them to live on.

Upstairs, Eleanor screamed again and he wondered where the tea was that he’d asked for. He heard footsteps coming down the stairs and a male voice called, ‘Mr Allardyce?’

It was Dr Langdon. Marcus went into the hall. The doctor beamed at him. ‘You’ll be pleased to know that you are now the father of a healthy baby girl. Your wife is as well as can be expected. She’s a delicate woman and having babies isn’t easy for her. She - and the baby - are waiting for you.’

Eleanor looked as if she’d just given birth to half a dozen babies, not just one. She lay on the bed, her face waxen, hair limp, eyes barely open, as if every single bit of energy had been drained out of her. When she saw her husband approach, she tried to lift her hand, but it fell back on to the coverlet as if it were boneless.

‘We have a little girl, Marcus,’ she whispered. ‘I’d like to call her Sybil. Do you like it?’

‘It’s a pretty name.’ He didn’t care what the child was called. Dutifully, he looked down at the cradle beside the bed and saw a small, pale creature fast asleep under the lace covers. He touched the soft chin with what he hoped was a fatherly gesture, then, for appearances’ sake, kissed Eleanor’s wet, shiny cheek, murmuring, ‘Congratulations, darling.’

‘Tell Anthony,’ she whispered. ‘Tell him that he has a little sister. He must have been frightened by the noise.’

Marcus nodded, although he had no intention of telling Anthony anything: the less he saw of his son, the better. He left the room as soon as decently possible - the doctor was muttering something about stitches - and returned to his study. On the wall behind his desk there was a large, framed photograph. He studied it thoughtfully. In the gap at the bottom, between the photo and the frame, in perfect copperplate, was written ‘
H.B. Wallace & Co. 1918
’. Marcus was in the centre of the front row where the senior and office staff were seated: the under-manager and his assistant, two foremen, the accountant, the bookkeeper, the McMahon sisters - both typists - and Marcus’s secretary, Robert Curran. The factory workers stood behind, fifty-two of them: the smaller men in the second row, tallest at the back.
His
employees. He rubbed his hands together.
His
.

Marcus was the owner and managing director of H.B. Wallace & Co., something that would never have happened had he not met Eleanor Wallace just after her fiancé had been killed in the first month of the war.

He was thirty, still working as a clerk, having realized to his dismay that, although he was perfectly capable of managing a company, he hadn’t the faintest idea how to start one. He lacked any sort of entrepreneurial skills, unlike his great-grandfather who had bought an old fishing boat and ended up with a successful shipping company.

By now, his mother was dead and he had taken in a lodger to provide extra income, much of which went on better clothes, better food and good wine - he was a poor man with a rich man’s tastes. He managed to save fifty pounds, although it took a long time, invested it in the stock market, convinced he would double it and make his fortune that way. Instead, within a few weeks, he lost more than half and was too scared to risk his money again.

Eleanor was on the verge of tears when they met. She was in the foyer of the Empire Theatre and grabbed his arm as he passed on his way to the gods where the seats cost only sixpence.

‘Would you mind giving a message to my friends in the third row of the stalls?’ she asked in a quivery voice. ‘Tell them I’ve lost my ticket and I’m going home.’

‘I’m sure the manager would believe you if you explained your ticket was lost,’ he said coldly. She was one of those timid, helpless women that he particularly disliked - and far too well dressed for the management to think she would attempt to get in without paying.

‘But I don’t want to see
The Mikado
,’ she wailed. ‘I didn’t want to in the first place, but my friends insisted. I’m too unhappy to sit through a show. I’d prefer to go home.’

He looked at her again. She was about eighteen, pretty in a pale, wishy-washy sort of way, wore a black silk-satin dress with a heavily embroidered chiffon yoke and hem under a dark-green panne-velvet cloak and carried a jewelled evening bag in her long gloved hands. His mother had bored Marcus silly describing the clothes she’d used to wear compared to those she had to wear now, and he recognized the woman’s outfit as having cost a considerable amount of money.

‘Why not let me take you home?’ he suggested gently. ‘You can tell me why you’re so unhappy.’

‘Thank you, but no. I shall telephone my father and he’ll send the car for me.’

She had a telephone, a car and a chauffeur! He couldn’t possibly let her go. ‘What about dinner?’ He smiled his broadest, most appealing smile - if the situation called for it, he could be the most charming of men and women seemed to find him attractive, which rather surprised him as he considered his features to be rather heavy: nose too big, lips too thick, bushy eyebrows too close together. His eyes were a dark, sombre grey, his hair brown and very thick, and he was rather proud of his lustrous moustache. ‘I don’t like to see a pretty lady so upset,’ he said.

She smiled back, unable to resist. ‘Oh, all right, but I shall be dreadfully dull company. But what about your own ticket for
The Mikado
?’

‘I’m here to buy one for another night,’ he lied. ‘Will you excuse me a minute while I go to the booking office?’ He wasn’t prepared to lose sixpence if it could be avoided and was pleased when he got his money back.

From that night on, Marcus showered Eleanor Wallace with flowers and inexpensive, although tasteful gifts. He took her to dinner, the theatre, the Philharmonic Hall, to Southport on Sundays for afternoon tea in an elegant arcade in which a pianist played discreetly in the background. He was using every available penny to make her happy and rid her of the memory of the fiancé who had been killed in the war, to the extent that he sometimes went hungry and had to walk to his office because he didn’t have the cost of the tram fare.

Eleanor was an investment and this time he was determined to succeed. An only child, her mother was dead and she would inherit her father’s prosperous asbestos company, not to mention all his worldly wealth, including an imposing property in Parliament Terrace and a dark-brown Wolsley saloon with cream leather seats. The fact that she got on his nerves so much she made his teeth ache didn’t terribly matter.

To his delight, Eleanor gradually fell for his charms and, six months after they’d met, they got married. The only thing that Marcus regretted was that his mother wasn’t alive to attend the extravagant wedding.

 

He got on well with his father-in-law. Herbert Wallace considered Marcus a man after his own heart, the state of the stock market always at his fingertips, a way with figures, a thorough knowledge of business practice. It was a pity, Marcus had lied, that his own small tools company had come such a cropper due to criminal activity on the part of the chief accountant, causing the bank to call in their loan. By using up his entire capital, he’d added, he’d only just managed to avoid becoming bankrupt.

‘I’m not going to let it get me down,’ he said stoutly. ‘I shall start again as soon as I’ve enough saved from my present job: I regard it as a temporary position.’

‘Good man!’ Herbert slapped him on the back. ‘That’s what I like to see: initiative. Look, why don’t you come in with me? After all, once I retire, the firm will be yours. Why not get the hang of things now?’

This was something Marcus had been praying for. He managed to look pleased yet, at the same time, doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as I’ll ever be about anything.’

He was genuinely upset when, in the winter of 1915, Herbert died unexpectedly in his sleep of a heart attack, missing by two weeks the birth of his first grandchild to which he’d been so much looking forward.

Marcus recalled the night his son had been born. He’d been as unmoved as he’d been tonight when his daughter had arrived. The only person he had ever loved was his mother and he wondered if he was capable of loving another human being. What he loved most were things: expensive things like the house and the car, tailored clothes, handmade furniture, exquisite ornaments . . .

It occurred to him that he still hadn’t had the tea he’d asked for at least thirty minutes ago. One thing the study didn’t have was a bell rope to summon the servants - he’d been meaning to have one fitted for years.

He went to the top of the stairs and was about to call for Nancy when it occurred to him that the reason for the delay was that she had been helping with the baby’s birth. He was about to walk away when, from the kitchen, he heard a woman laugh. It was a tinkling, joyous laugh and didn’t belong to Nancy, whose voice was at least an octave lower. Curious, he went downstairs to find the kitchen empty, but the door to Nancy’s sitting room partially open. He could hear women’s voices inside.

‘Two little girls, born within minutes of each other,’ Nancy was saying. ‘The September girls: Sybil and Cara, both lovely names.’

‘Cara means “friend” in old Irish,’ the other woman said. She chuckled. ‘Ah, if I don’t feel like a completely different woman now that’s over! I could run around the block with a sack o’ taters on me head.’

‘You’d better not try,’ Nancy advised.

Marcus crept over to the door and peered around. Nancy stood with her back to him and the other woman had eyes only for the baby in her arms. He caught his breath. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone quite so beautiful before. She was sitting on the floor, her back against the couch, and looked quite radiant: blue eyes like stars in her thin face, a great mane of red-gold hair tumbling untidily on to her shoulders. She wore a nightdress of sorts, undone down the front, exposing her full, white breasts. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he felt a longing to touch them, squeeze the white flesh and kiss the rosy, swollen nipples, bury his head on their softness.

The baby was awake, the little girl: Cara. She waved her arms and made little birdlike noises. A tiny foot emerged from the shawl in which she was wrapped, kicking vigorously.

‘Colm will be surprised when he gets here,’ the woman said. She had a strong Irish accent. ‘He was expecting us to have another wee boy.’

‘Is our daddy lost now?’ asked a small voice, and it was only then that Marcus noticed the boy sitting at the table munching a sandwich. He looked about the same age as Anthony and was a handsome little fellow.

‘He’ll be along in a minute, darlin’. Didn’t he go running off in search of a peeler? What do you think of your new sister, Fergus?’

Fergus seemed more interested in the sandwich than the baby. ‘She’s fine, Mammy,’ he said without looking up.

‘It’s time I made us a cup of tea,’ Nancy said.

Marcus hurriedly stepped backwards. When Nancy emerged, he was standing in the middle of the room contriving to look extremely angry. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Did I hear the sound of a baby in there?’

‘Yes.’ The woman’s voice was blunt and she looked at him defiantly. There was no love lost between them. ‘The mother’s name’s Brenna Caffrey. I found her outside on the steps, so I brought her indoors. The baby came almost straight away. I knew Eleanor wouldn’t mind,’ she added slyly.

This was undoubtedly true. Nancy had too much influence over his wife. Marcus had long wanted to get rid of her, but she’d been with the family since before Eleanor was born - was virtually a member of it - and it was one of the few things over which Eleanor had put her foot down.

‘How long will she be here?’

Nancy shrugged. ‘Dunno. Her husband’s gone in search of help. He should be back any minute.’

‘Well, I want them out of here by morning.’

‘All right.’ She’d never addressed him as ‘sir’, as did the other servants.

‘I think I requested tea earlier,’ he said coldly.

‘Sorry, I forgot. I’ll make it now. Where would you like me to bring it?’

‘To my study.’

‘I won’t be long.’

Marcus went slowly back upstairs and sat at his desk with a sigh. He thought about his wife, lying like a corpse within the silk sheets, unable even to lift her hand. She probably hadn’t yet looked at the baby, let alone touched it, while a glowing Brenna Caffrey actually laughed as she nursed her little daughter. Perhaps he would find it possible to fall in love with a woman if she had a bit more life in her than Eleanor. Someone like the woman downstairs: Brenna Caffrey.

There was a loud banging on the basement door and Brenna said, ‘That’ll be Colm.’

Nancy went to let him in and a few seconds later he came rushing into the room like a madman, followed by Tyrone who looked as if he’d had a bath with his clothes on, and a tall, haughty nun wearing a black cloak that she removed to reveal a white starched bonnet with wings like a butterfly and capacious robes.

‘The peeler sent me to a convent, St Hilda’s,’ Colm gasped. ‘This is Sister Aloysius: she’s a midwife. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!’ He collapsed against the wall and burst into tears. ‘If the snapper hasn’t come already while I was gone!’

‘It’s a wee girl, Colm,’ Brenna said proudly. ‘I’ve called her Cara, like we said we would if we had a girl, although you never believed we would.’

Sister Aloysius knelt beside Brenna and plucked the baby none too gently from her arms. ‘Aren’t you a clever thing, coming all by yourself,’ she cooed, as if Cara’s mother had had nothing to do with it. She laid the crucifix attached to a chain around her waist against the baby’s forehead and said a little prayer in Latin. ‘Is everything there?’ she asked Brenna in a completely different tone of voice, quite steely.