Bye Bye Love (12 page)

‘Now, do you think you’ll be able to do that?’ Mrs Laver asked.

Scarlett couldn’t believe she was seriously asking this.

‘No, that’s far too difficult,’ she said, revelling dangerously in the sarcasm.

Mrs Laver glared at her. ‘You’re not at school now, my girl. No larking around and cheeking the teachers here. You don’t work, you don’t get paid. Got it?’

Scarlett nodded. She got it all right. She placed a piece on the holder, brought the six-pointed head down and lifted it up again. Six holes appeared.

‘That all right?’ she asked, showing it to the forewoman.

Mrs Laver looked closely at it, and seemed disappointed that she couldn’t find any fault.

‘It’ll do, I suppose. Now, get on with it. There’s five thousand of them things to be done by the end of the day. If you don’t get them done, you don’t get your bonus. Got it?’

She knew she ought to say, Yes, Mrs Laver, but just couldn’t get the words out.

‘Loud and clear,’ she answered.

Beside her, she thought she heard smothered giggles from the next girl.

Mrs Laver snorted. ‘I’ll be back to make sure you’re doing them properly,’ she warned.

Scarlett couldn’t think what could go wrong. She looked at the full container. Five thousand. OK. That shouldn’t be too much trouble. She reached for the nearest one and got going.

The girl next to her leaned over and shouted above the noise, ‘Wotcha! I’m Brenda.’

‘Scarlett.’

‘No kidding? Scarlett? Like Scarlett O’Hara?’

‘It was my Mum’s favourite film.’

Try as she might, Scarlett couldn’t quite keep the catch out of her voice. Brenda didn’t seem to notice.

‘Yeah, that Clark Gable. Bit of all right, eh? Don’t know what she saw in Lesley Howard, though. What a drip! You wouldn’t catch me mooning over him, not with Clark Gable around.’

‘Nor me,’ Scarlett agreed.

‘You like films?’

‘Love them.’

‘Me and all. Look—’ she glanced behind her dramatically, as if they might be overheard in all the racket going on ‘—you don’t want to cheek Mrs Laver. I know she’s a pain in the backside, but if she takes against you she can make your life hell here. To start with, you’ll never get any of the decent jobs. Like, you’re never going to make anything on that one. It’s only one piece, so the rate’s rubbish. You keep your nose clean and you’ll get to do some of the five-bit pieces. They pay really well. But if she don’t like you, she’ll come along and say what you’ve done is no good and your pay’ll get docked, see?’

Scarlett saw.

‘Thanks, Brenda. You’re a pal.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

Scarlett got on with her consignment, determined to get them done within time. Reach, place, push the lever, lift, throw. Reach, place, push the lever, lift, throw. After an hour, the pile in the left hand bin hardly seemed to have gone down at all. The parts in the right hand bin hardly made one layer. Determined not to be beaten by something so ridiculously simple, she kept going.

By the time the tea trolley came round, her shoulders were beginning to ache. Brenda glanced at what she had done.

‘You’re never going to get them done by the end of the day at that rate,’ she said. ‘You having a bun with it?’

‘What?’

‘With your tea.’

‘Oh—no, thanks. I’m not hungry,’ Scarlett lied. Her stomach growled at the thought of a big sticky bun, but she couldn’t afford any extras, not until she had got her wages and paid off the rent arrears plus what she had had to borrow from Mrs Sefton to get her through this first week.

Both girls stretched their arms and flexed their shoulders as they walked along the row to where the elderly tea lady had stopped with her trolley. The other women and girls were joking amongst themselves and with the tea lady. Brenda joined in. Nobody spoke to Scarlett. Mrs Laver marched by and chivvied them all back to their places. Brenda was still chatting to the girl on her other side. They went into gales of laughter over something. Scarlett felt very alone. This was worse than her first day at the new school. She sipped her thick tea and picked up an unpunched plastic piece. She might as well get on. At least then she would be earning some money.

Brenda stopped shrieking with her neighbour and came and leaned over her shoulder.

‘Look, mate, you got to get moving,’ she said through a mouthful of Bath bun. Scarlett could smell the delicious sugariness of it.

‘But I’m moving as fast as I can,’ Scarlett protested.

‘Nah—look—you got to be getting the next bit while you’re throwing the last one. Move both hands at once, like.’

Scarlett saw what she meant. It cut a quarter of the time off the entire process. She practised it slowly a couple of times, then speeded up.

‘That’s brilliant!’ she said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

Brenda shrugged. ‘It was Doris what showed me. Her over there—’ She indicated a small middle-aged woman in a pink headscarf. ‘She’s the top earner. She sometimes takes home four pounds fifteen a week.’ Her voice was awed.

‘Wow,’ Scarlett said.

Four pounds fifteen would go a long way. As she attacked the heap of plastic pieces again, she started to plan what she would do with so much money. But after a while her brain seemed to stop working. It was as if the machine had taken over her mind. The same small phrase went round and round her head in time with the simple task she had to perform. All proper thought stopped.

A large hand dipped into her right-hand bin and picked up a piece.

‘You’re pressing too hard.’ Mrs Laver was looming over her.

Scarlett glared up at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re pressing the foot pedal too hard. The holes are too big. See?’ She thrust the piece under Scarlett’s nose.

‘No, I don’t see,’ she said. And she couldn’t. The holes were already in the piece. She was just clearing the thin bit of plastic that remained over them. How could she be making them bigger?

‘Don’t make trouble, girl. Do it lighter or I’ll have to reject the whole lot. Get it?’

Scarlett dearly wanted to tell her where to put the whole lot, but the thought of four pounds fifteen got in the way. She needed that money.

‘Right,’ she agreed.

‘I hope you have. You’re only on trial, you know.’

‘Right.’

‘Right what?’

‘Right, Mrs Laver.’

Scarlett waited till the woman had gone off to annoy someone else, then tried different levels of pressure on the pedal. She looked at the resulting pieces. They all looked the same to her. She went back to doing it the way she had been. They still looked the same.

‘Interfering old cow,’ she muttered.

Now she had wasted all that time when she could have been whizzing through the consignment. She went into overdrive, trying to catch up. She was so intent on getting the work done that she did not notice machines shutting down round her until Brenda spoke to her.

‘Blimey, you’re a bit keen, aren’t you?’

‘What?’

Scarlett looked up. All around her, women and girls were standing up and stretching and gathering up their bags.

‘Don’t you want your dinner?’

Scarlett looked at her watch. Twelve o’clock.

‘You bet.’

‘Come on, then. If you don’t hurry, we’ll have to queue for ages.’

Scarlett followed her to the toilets, where they had to queue first to get into cubicles, then to wash their hands. Then they hurried right through the long building to a double door at the end, passing groups of women chatting to each other as they all headed in the same direction. The double door led into another large space filled with long tables and the smell of cooking. Brenda was right, they did have to queue for ages.

‘Smells like school dinners,’ Scarlett said.

‘Tastes better, though,’ Brenda told her. ‘Canteen here’s really good. That’s why I stick it out. It’s nicer working at a smaller place, but you don’t get the food, and my mum’s so tired by the end of the day you’re lucky to get tea, let alone dinner.’

Scarlett didn’t want to get onto the subject of mothers.

‘You worked in lots of places, then?’ she asked.

‘Three since I left school. Rawlings first. Blimey, that was awful. You think Mrs Laver’s a tartar, you should of met the old bat they had there. Then I went to TS Novelties. That was good, but the money was rubbish…’

Brenda could talk for England. Before they reached the head of the queue, Scarlett had learnt about all her jobs and all the people who worked there, her mother and her six younger brothers and sisters and all the places she had lived. A lot of them sounded even worse than Scarlett’s flat. At least they didn’t have rats, and there was a bathroom, even though they did have to share it with all the other tenants.

They reached the counter and chose from steak and kidney pie or toad-in-the-hole. Scarlett went for the pie. It smelt delicious. Not quite as good as her mother’s, of course, but the best thing she’d had on her plate for ages. She added carrots, cabbage and mash and took a Bakewell tart and custard for pudding. All that slaving over the hole-making machine seemed well worth while. She paid out of the money she had borrowed from Mrs Sefton, picked up some cutlery and followed Brenda to a couple of spare seats at one of the long tables.

‘We got one of them prefabs now. It’s heaven. Of course, it ain’t big enough, not for all us lot, but who cares? We got our own kitchen and bathroom and everything. My mum can’t get over it.’

‘What about your dad?’ Scarlett asked through a mouthful of pie. No mention had been made of him.

Brenda shrugged. ‘Oh, him. He run off ages ago with this war widow. She’s welcome to him. Good riddance, that’s what I say. We’re better off without him.’

Scarlett stared at her, shocked. ‘How can you say a thing like that about your dad?’

Brenda immediately took umbrage. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘You shouldn’t talk about him that way.’

Jonathan’s parents were pretty awful, but he was never disloyal to them. Her own father… She turned her thoughts away from her own father’s failings.

‘I can talk about him any way I want,’ Brenda blustered. ‘And it’s none of your business anyhow. Blimey! I look after you and show you what to do and all you do is criticise.’

Part of Scarlett knew she should back down and apologise. She was the new girl round here. She needed friends.

‘Family’s important,’ she insisted. ‘Maybe it’s different when you’ve got lots of family. I don’t know. I haven’t got lots of brothers and sisters like you. There’s only me and my dad. We have to look after each other.’

To her humiliation, she found tears standing in her eyes.

‘You still ain’t—’ Brenda began, then caught sight of Scarlett’s expression. ‘What happened to your mum?’ she asked.

‘She died of a heart attack. On Coronation Day.’

The tears were threatening to spill over. She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand.

Brenda dropped her knife and fork and put her arms round her. ‘You poor thing! That’s dreadful. I dunno what I’d do without my mum. And you’re only a kid, ain’t you? This your first job?’

Scarlett nodded.

‘Well, look, if anyone gets at you, you tell me, right? There’s some right cows round here. I’ll be your big sister.’

‘Thank you.’

The afternoon seemed to go on for ever, with only another short tea interval to break the monotony. But Scarlett managed to finish her consignment and start on the next. At five she clocked out with the rest and took the long walk home. She was tired, the job had been boring in the extreme and she had to do it all over again tomorrow, and next week, and all the weeks after. But she was earning money and she had found a friend. It wasn’t all bad.

1955

‘G
OODBYE
! Good luck!
Á bientôt
!’

Jonathan leaned out of the window of the Dunkirk train, waving and calling. On the platform, his gang of Parisian friends waved back. Hortense jumped up and down and blew kisses, her small face anxious for a last promise.

‘
Au’voir
, Jonathan! Write to me!’

Jonathan avoided her eyes. He liked Hortense. She was fun and pretty and he liked being with her as part of the group, but she was far too clingy. Most of all, she wasn’t Scarlett.

The train was pulling away. Hortense sent a last kiss, Jonathan gave a last wave. The end of the platform passed by. He was really off. He sat down, slightly embarrassed, amongst fellow passengers who were already immersed in books and newspapers.

He took a deep breath. So this was it. Goodbye Paris, goodbye Ortolan, hello national service. One important part of his life has finished, the next was about to begin. And in between there was two weeks of home, his parents, his Southend friends—and Scarlett. He patted his jacket, where he kept a photo of her in his inside pocket, but didn’t need to take it out and look at it. Her face was imprinted in his mind and his heart. Scarlett laughing as they ran through the rain, Scarlett crying as they parted, Scarlett poised on a breakwater, about to dive into the water, Scarlett toiling over the dirty glasses. A store of memories that had helped him through his lonely days and stayed with him as he’d fashioned a place for himself at the restaurant and made friends in Paris. Nothing Hortense or any other girl could do would ever erase Scarlett from his heart.

The Paris suburbs were trundling by. The city that he had grown to love was going about its daily business, but he was no longer part of it. He was going to miss it, but there were new adventures to come. He knew something of what to expect. Older brothers of his English friends had made much of the horrors of basic training, of bullying drill sergeants, of forced night marches, but had also enthused about the comradeship and the new skills learnt. ‘It’ll make a man of you,’ was what everyone said. Well, at least he was used to being away from home and getting on with strangers, which put him ahead of most boys of his age.

Monsieur Bonnard had advised him to make the most of his skills.

‘I do not know how the English army works,’ he’d said. ‘All these military types are quite mad, and the bureaucracy treats you as a number. But in the army of France, a young man who had trained at the Ortolan d’Or would always be assigned to the kitchen of the highest officers’ mess. The English, of course, they know nothing of good food. They may send you to be a tank-driver.’

Jonathan felt that he would much rather be a tank-driver than serve up mince and lumpy mash in a canteen. But who knew where the army in its wisdom would send him? In the mean time, there was a brief respite at home to look forward to.

When he finally got back to Southend he found that life at the Trafalgar was going on much as usual. The main bar had been painted since Christmas and his parents had yet another new cellar man to complain about, but otherwise nothing much had changed. The sea front was just opening up and getting ready for the new season as he strolled along it the next day. It felt odd to be back. Even though Mrs Mancini and Aunty Marge had both welcomed him with open arms and told him how big and handsome he’d become, still he didn’t feel quite part of the place. He wondered if he belonged anywhere now. He wasn’t a real Parisian, but neither did he feel quite like a real Southend boy any more.

At half past four he got out his old bike and cycled through the town towards a new industrial estate. He hated to think of Scarlett having to work at soulless factory jobs. In the year or more since she had had to leave school, she and her friend had slaved at three different places, each one more boring than the last. Now they were working for a firm making cheap jewellery. As he powered along the familiar streets, the odd sense of not being part of real life lifted. This was what he had been waiting for. All the rest was just filling in time. Excitement flooded through him, edged with doubt. It was five months since he had last seen Scarlett, and then only during his brief Christmas break. Had she changed in that time? Would she still like him?

He found the right road, and then the right building. Ten to five. He was in good time. He waited by the main gate, his whole body aching in anticipation of holding her again. The first few workers came out, hurrying by in order to be at the head of the queue for the bus. Then a few more emerged, and then a flood of people, mostly women and girls, laughing and chattering. He scanned the faces. He thought he saw her and his heart leapt, only to crash with disappointment. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t even like her, just someone with similar dark hair. Some of the girls called out to him.

‘Hello, handsome!’

‘Going my way?’

Jonathan smiled vaguely but didn’t reply.

And then there she was, pushing through the crowd, her face shining with delight.

‘Jonathan, Jonathan!’

‘Scarlett!’

He raced forward to meet her, catching her in his arms as she flung herself at him, holding her tight, rocking her from side to side.

‘Oh, Scarlett, it’s so good to see you!’

Oblivious to the whistles and catcalls, they kissed long and passionately.

‘You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of doing that,’ he told her.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘’Cause I have as well.’

Jonathan knew he was home at last. He was complete because he was with her.

Arms round each other’s waists, they walked along the road together, a small island of pure happiness amongst the stream of factory workers anxious to get home. There was so much to catch up on, neither of them could talk fast enough. There was all the news they had told each other in letters to go over, and all the small things that hadn’t been written, and every so often they had to stop and gaze at each other and kiss and say, ‘I can’t believe you’re really here at last.’

Jonathan couldn’t stop looking at her in wonder. She was still the same Scarlett, but she wasn’t the young girl in white ankle socks and a ponytail who he had first met nearly two years ago. She was a lovely young woman, and she was walking next to him. He was the proudest man on earth.

They arrived at last outside the house where Scarlett’s flat was, the flat that was supposed to have been just for the meantime, until they got something better. Scarlett looked uncomfortable.

‘Look…er…I’ll just pop in first. You wait here,’ she said.

Jonathan knew why. She couldn’t be sure whether her father would be there or not. It was a quarter to six and he should have left for work, but if he hadn’t it would be because he was either asleep or drunk or both and she was embarrassed about him.

‘OK,’ he agreed.

At least Victor was working again—for now. It was one of a string of temporary jobs he’d had recently. None of them seemed to last more than a couple of weeks. Jonathan looked about him as he waited, and came to the same conclusion that he always did, that Scarlett should not be living in a street like this. It was really rough and neglected-looking. She deserved much better. One day, after he had done his national service, after he had established his career…

Five minutes later, Victor came out of the front door. Jonathan was shocked to see how much he had changed since Christmas. He looked really haggard and unhealthy, and he had lost a lot more hair, but it was the way he held himself that was most telling. He was round-shouldered and shuffling, as if he was apologising for simply being there. When he saw Jonathan, he tried to straighten himself up and smile.

‘Ah…er…Jonathan. Yes. Nice to see you. Scarlett’s been looking forward to you coming home.’

Peppermint-flavoured breath wafted over Jonathan. He held out his hand.

‘I’ve been looking forward to it too, Mr Smith.’

‘Good. Yes.’ Victor’s grasp was brief and weak. ‘National service next, is it? That’ll make a man of you.’

‘Yes, so they all say.’

Victor’s eyes had already slid away from his.

‘Well, got to go. Mustn’t be late.’ He was just turning away when he suddenly appeared to change his mind and swung back to look Jonathan in the face again. ‘Look, you treat her right, d’you hear? She’s a good girl. Like her mother. Her mother was a wonderful woman.’

Jonathan could hardly believe his ears. He was being warned off by this disaster of a man.

‘How about treating Scarlett right yourself?’ he flared. ‘How about giving her a proper home instead of this dump, and letting her go to school instead of having to slave in that factory just to pay the rent and keep you in booze and fags?’

Victor shrank away from him, fear and loathing in his eyes.

‘All very well for you,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody Blane. He started all this—your father. It’s all his fault.’

Guilt jolted through Jonathan. It had been his father’s fault that the Smiths had had to leave the Trafalgar. But that wasn’t the whole story.

‘It’s not his fault that you drink too much,’ he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scarlett hurrying out of the front door. The words died in his mouth. She had never admitted to him that her father was a drunk, though they both knew it. It was the only forbidden territory between them.

‘You leave him alone!’ she cried.

To his amazement, Jonathan realised that she was speaking to him.

‘Look, I—’ he began.

But Scarlett wasn’t listening to him. She was taking her father by the arm and gently turning him away from the house.

‘Go on, Dad, don’t mind him. It’s time you left. You’ll be late if you’re not careful.’

She watched him as he shambled off down the road. Then she rounded on Jonathan.

‘How dare you talk to my dad like that? How dare you?’

‘Because it’s true.’

He was in too deep now to back out and, besides, he felt passionately about this.

‘He should be looking after you, not the other way round. It’s not fair. It’s like you’re the mum. You shouldn’t have to be checking up on him and making sure he’s all right and paying for things for him. He should be doing that for you. That’s what fathers are for.’

Scarlett flushed with fury. Hands on hips, she faced him down.

‘Oh, and your father’s perfect, is he?’

She had him on his weak spot now. It still made him feel sick to think of what had happened that last night the Smiths had worked at the Trafalgar.

‘No,’ he admitted, ‘of course not. But at least he works hard and keeps a decent roof over our heads. I don’t have to keep him.’

‘Well, it’s easy for him—’ Scarlett started.

But Jonathan was on the defensive now, and it drove him on.

‘No, it isn’t. He started with nothing. He was an East End boy who started work when he was fourteen and he’s worked his way up to running the Trafalgar. That wasn’t easy at all. That was blooming hard work for years and years, and he still works all hours.’

‘Well, bully for him,’ Scarlett shouted. ‘Three cheers. Just don’t get at my dad, see? He’s all I’ve got, and if you don’t like him, you’d better just clear off!’

‘Oh, fine. If that’s what you want, then I will. I was just thinking of you, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough!’ Jonathan retorted.

He grabbed his bike and cycled off down the road as fast as he could, his head pounding and his chest heaving with rage. He charged round the corner, narrowly missing a van, and raced on without noticing where he was going. He was halfway home before he even started to cool off. He slowed down a bit as doubts began to surface. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone off at the deep end like that. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. It was true that Victor was a rotten father. He still believed that. But telling him so to his face, and telling Scarlett what he thought, perhaps wasn’t very bright of him. But then Scarlett shouldn’t have said those things about his father…

Jonathan finally came to a halt at the top of the cliffs. What had he gone and done? He groaned out loud and hit his head against the handlebars.

‘Idiot! Idiot!’

He’d been looking forward to this great reunion with Scarlett for so long. How had it all gone so wrong? Just half an hour ago he’d been the happiest person alive. He couldn’t believe how he’d plunged from being on top of the world to down in the depths in such a short time. One thing was clear—something had to be done, at once. He couldn’t bear for her to be angry with him like this. He glanced at his watch. His mother was expecting him back at seven. She and his father were leaving the pub to the staff to run for the evening and his aunts and uncles and cousins from London were coming down specially. They were to have a big family meal together to welcome him home. But making it up with Scarlett was more important than being on time for his parents. He cycled back to Scarlett’s road.

A short time later he was holding the Smiths’ doorbell down with his thumb. He waited. Nobody came to the door. He tried it again. Still no reply. Was the bell working properly? Nothing else in this house seemed to. He stepped back and looked up at the small window in the gable that let light into the Smiths’ flat.

‘Scarlett!’ he yelled. ‘Scarlett! Come down and let me in!’

He thought he saw a face at the window, but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. He waited again, but still the front door remained shut. He pressed one of the other bells at random. A middle-aged woman with bright orange lipstick and her hair up in curlers answered the door. She looked him up and down with suspicious eyes.

‘Yes?’

Jonathan put on his best smile. ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but could you let me come in? I’m trying to visit the Smiths on the top floor, but I don’t think their bell’s working.’

‘Well, I don’t know. We can’t let any old Tom, Dick or Harry in here, y’know.’

Jonathan could feel desperation pounding inside him. If she didn’t move he was going to have to just push her out of the way.