Bye Bye Love (8 page)

Scarlett’s hand closed round the handle of a pint jug. Without thinking, she picked it up and jabbed it backwards over her head and into the Guv’nor’s face. There was a cracking noise.

Everything seemed to happen at once. The Guv’nor gave a roar and slackened his hold on her, Scarlett wriggled free only to find herself grasped by the arm and slapped across the face, making her ears ring. And then the room was full of people shouting. Jonathan was there, and his mother, and her father. The Guv’nor was shouting loudest of all. There was blood running down his face from a jagged cut on his forehead.

‘The little cat! She glassed me!’

‘He was touching me!’ Scarlett screamed.

Her father got to her and put his arms round her. ‘It’s all right, baby, it’s all right—’

‘That little tart, I knew she was trouble,’ the Missus was saying.

‘Don’t say that!’ Jonathan yelled, and rounded on his father. ‘How can you do that? How dare you?’

‘And you can shut your trap—’

The Missus took charge of the situation. ‘You go upstairs and I’ll see to that cut,’ she said to her husband. ‘You lot can all stop gawping and get back to work and you, Vic—you can collect your cards in the morning, and I want you out by midday, you and that little madam. Is that understood?’

‘No!’ Jonathan yelled. ‘No, you can’t do that.’

‘I can do whatever I like,’ his mother informed him grimly.

Beside her, Scarlett’s father was drawing himself up to his full height.

‘I’m not letting my daughter stay in this place a minute longer. We’re going right now.’

‘Y
OU
can’t do that!’ the Missus stated, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, her head thrust forward.

‘You can’t stop me,’ Victor told her.

For the first time since that dreadful day when her mother had died, Scarlett saw the old Dad back, the man who could make decisions rather than just be pushed along by events.

There was uproar again, with Jonathan begging them not to go, the Guv’nor telling them to sling their hook, the Missus telling them that if they did they weren’t getting any wages.

‘I’m not letting my daughter stay in this place a moment longer,’ Victor said. ‘You can stick your wages where the sun don’t shine. My little girl’s safety comes first. Come on, Scarlett, we’re leaving.’

With his arm still around her, he brushed past the Missus and headed for the stairs. Behind them Scarlett could hear Jonathan arguing with his mother, and soon after his footsteps on the stairs behind them.

‘Stop—Scarlett—Mr Smith—you mustn’t do this—’

‘Jonathan—’

Scarlett twisted out of her father’s hold and flung her arms round him as he caught up with them. They clung to each other.

‘Oh, Scarlett, I’m so sorry, so sorry—’

Still shaking with shock and anger, she sobbed on his shoulder. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

It had all happened so quickly, it was hard to take it in. All she knew was that she and Jonathan must part.

‘I don’t want you to go. We must be able to do something.’

They stumbled up the last steps and onto the landing. Her father was already unlocking his door.

‘Mr Smith, please—you don’t have to go right this minute—’ Jonathan tried to reason.

Victor opened the door and paused on the threshold.

‘I’m sorry, son. I’ve no argument with you, but we simply can’t stay, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘If you’d just let everyone cool down—’

‘They can cool down as much as they like. They can beg me to stay, but it won’t make any difference.’

‘Dad, please—’ Scarlett begged.

Her father looked at her, his eyes full of sorrow. ‘Scarlett, love, do you really want to stay where that man could do that to you again?’

Scarlett felt as if she were being ripped apart inside. Her body crawled with dread and loathing when she thought about what had happened, what might have happened if she had not gone on the offensive. She never wanted to see the Guv’nor or the Missus again, but neither did she want to part from Jonathan.

‘No—’ she whispered.

‘But you can’t just go—’ Jonathan cried.

Her father unlocked her door.

‘Get a bag, love. You know, stuff for tonight.’

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Scarlett picked up a few random objects and put them into a shopping bag. Her legs and arms didn’t feel as if they belonged to her. It was like swimming through mud. Before she knew what was happening, she was at the back door. She could hear Jonathan’s mother yelling at him to come back at once.

‘Go on, son,’ Victor said.

‘I’m coming with you, at least until you find somewhere,’ Jonathan insisted. ‘I can’t let you just disappear.’

It was cold outside in the September evening. Once out on the dark back street, Victor’s resolve seemed to crumble a little.

‘I suppose we’d better look for a guest house,’ he said, gazing vaguely down the street as if one would instantly appear before him.

‘There’s loads just round the corner,’ Jonathan said. ‘One of them’ll have a vacancy.’

It was easier said than done. The streets of small houses leading back from the sea front were full of places advertising rooms, but nearly all had
No Vacancies
signs up. The landladies of the first two they tried simply took one look at the bedraggled little group on the step and shut the door in their faces. The next only had a double room. The one after told them that they only took respectable couples.

‘Flaming cheek,’ Victor growled. ‘What do they think we are?’

They finally found two rooms in a corner property that smelt strongly of damp and disinfectant.

‘Not you,’ the landlady said to Jonathan as he tried to come in too. ‘I’m not having any funny business here.’

They were all of them too weary to argue any more.

‘Come back in the morning,’ Jonathan called, before the door was shut. ‘I love you.’

The landlady snorted and showed them to two chilly rooms on different floors.

‘’Night, Scarlett, love,’ her father said, giving her a brief hug. ‘It’ll all look better in the morning, you’ll see.’

‘Right,’ Scarlett said, but in her heart she couldn’t believe it.

She sat down on the lumpy bed, feeling utterly alone. How had all this happened? How had she come to be practically begging people to give them a bed for the night? How could her mum die and leave them to this? For a long time she just sat, trying to make sense of it all. It was only when she needed to go to the bathroom that she realised she had not brought any washing things with her. Neither had she brought a nightdress. Her shopping bag contained her teddy, her hairbrush, a cardigan, the photo of her mother and
Gone with the Wind
.

She dragged her tired body downstairs to the bathroom, used the toilet, washed her hands under the cold tap and rinsed her mouth out with water. Back in the room again, she felt the menacing quiet closing in on her, emphasized by distant sounds of revelry from the sea front. She took off her shoes and socks and dress and reluctantly got between the sheets of the bed. The events of the evening were still replaying endlessly in her head, making sleep impossible. She propped her mother’s picture up against the foot of the bed and hugged the worn old teddy to her, but somehow it failed to comfort the way it had used to when she was little. She picked up the book, the precious gift from her mother, and opened it at the marker. Yankee soldiers were invading Tara. The story wove its spell. Soon her sorrows were submerged in her namesake’s travails. She read and read until her eyes closed and
Gone with
the Wind
slid unheeded onto her lap.

In the morning they ate the greasy breakfast provided by their landlady, packed up their things again and walked out onto the street. It was ten o’clock on a wet Sunday. Nothing was open. They had nowhere to go.

‘Jonathan said to go back to the Trafalgar,’ Scarlett said.

‘I’m not setting foot in that place,’ her father told her.

‘But our things! We can’t leave them behind!’

Besides, she was desperate to see Jonathan again.

After some wrangling, Scarlett simply took charge and set off for the sea front. Her father waited at the corner while Scarlett went to the back of the pub. At the yard gate, she hesitated. The building that had always seemed grim now looked positively threatening. But the need to be with Jonathan drove her on. She walked across the gloomy yard. The back door flew open. It was him.

‘Scarlett! I knew you’d come!’

They raced to hug each other. It was so good to feel his strong arms around her, his slim body close to hers.

‘Are you all right?’ Jonathan asked, scanning her face.

‘I am now.’

‘I was so worried about you last night. Listen, I’ve thought about it and it could be worse. We can spend the day together as usual, can’t we, while your dad looks for a new job? Is there anything you want from your room? I can go and get it for you, and then when your dad finds somewhere, we can get a taxi and take all your stuff round. As long as he gets something round here, it’ll be all right, we’ll still be able to see each other. He is going to stay in Southend, isn’t he? He’s not going to move away?’

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t said.’

‘He mustn’t. There are loads of pubs round here. He’s sure to get a job in one of them, even if it is the end of the season.’

Scarlett’s spirits began to rise again. It was all right. She still had Jonathan and her father would get another job and she would never have to see Jonathan’s horrible parents again.

‘Of course he will,’ she agreed.

She sent Jonathan up to fetch her mac, then the two of them went hand in hand to meet Victor.

It was a strange day. Jonathan did his best to take her mind off things, taking her round to the Mancinis for delicious coffee, Italian biscuits and Mrs Mancini’s welcoming warmth, then on to the Gliderdrome to go roller skating. Part of her enjoyed it, storing it all up inside her memory for when Jonathan went away. But always nagging at her was anxiety about her father—was he all right? Had he found a job? And above all was the lost feeling of not having a home, as if she was somehow detached from real life. Where was she going to be that night? She had no idea. So she laughed louder, skated faster, tried to lose herself in the moment.

They met up with her father in a café at the end of the afternoon. Scarlett knew the moment he came through the door that his search had not been successful. The slump of his shoulders said it all. He sat down at the table with them, lit a cigarette and ordered a tea.

‘Nothing,’ he sighed in answer to Scarlett’s questioning look. ‘I’ve been right the way along the sea front. Nothing at all.’

‘Oh—’ Scarlett said.

She looked out of the window. It was raining again. They had no roof over their heads. She had to go to school in the morning.

‘I really don’t want to go back to that awful place again,’ she said.

‘No—’ Victor agreed. ‘It was pretty grim.’

‘It won’t be difficult tonight. It’s Sunday,’ Jonathan pointed out. ‘And if we start looking now, you could find somewhere much nicer.’

‘Yes, right.’

‘I need to get more things from my…from the Trafalgar,’ Scarlett said.

‘That’s no problem. Just tell me and I’ll fetch them,’ Jonathan offered.

‘They’re…it’s…like…personal stuff,’ Scarlett said, blushing.

She couldn’t get him to go through her underwear. And then there were her washing things, and her school satchel, and her uniform.

‘We’ll wait till opening time, then we’ll sneak in,’ Jonathan decided. ‘Why don’t we go and find you a decent guest house now?’

Victor rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Just wait a bit, will you? Give a bloke a chance to catch his breath.’

He felt in his jacket pocket, produced his quarter bottle of Scotch and tipped a generous slug into his teacup.

‘And don’t you look at me like that, love,’ he warned Scarlett. ‘I need it. I’ve had a bloomin’ awful day.’

It was much easier to find a bed for the night, and they managed to get what they needed from their old rooms at the Trafalgar. Mrs Mancini agreed to look after their bags for them the next morning while Scarlett went to school and Victor went job-hunting. It felt like a very long day for Scarlett. She couldn’t concentrate on anything and got told off several times, but at last the purgatory was over and she was free to hurry out and join Jonathan. Once again they went to meet Victor at the café, and this time he was there before them. As he saw them, he pulled his face into a semblance of a smile.

‘Oh, dear,’ Scarlett muttered. She gave him a kiss and sat down beside him at the table. ‘Hello, Dad, how did it go?’

‘Well, I got a job,’ he said.

‘Marvellous! I knew you would. Where is it?’

‘Place called the Brickmaker’s Arms. Back of town.’

‘I know,’ Jonathan said.

‘Is it a nice place? What are the landlord and landlady like?’

Her father shrugged.

‘Oh—all right. You know. Not like the Lion, of course, but then nothing will be.’

‘No.’

They were both silent, in mourning for their lost life.

‘The thing is—’ Victor began. He paused, looking down at his hands as they rested on the table, the usual cigarette burning between his fingers. ‘The thing is, it’s not live-in. I been all over town, asked everyone. The only ones with live-in could only let me have one room. There was nowhere for you, love. So I had to take this one. It pays a bit more, so we’ll get ourselves a little flat.’

‘But that’ll be lovely! We won’t have to share with anyone. We’ll have our own front door. Our own kitchen and bathroom,’ Scarlett enthused. No more horrible notices on the bathroom walls. No more Marlene leaving her stockings to dry over the bath. No more Irma breathing down your neck to hurry up with the cooking and not make a mess.

‘Won’t that be wonderful, Jonathan?’

‘Top hole,’ Jonathan agreed. ‘When do you start, Mr Smith?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

Scarlett’s first euphoria faded a little. ‘We’ll still have to stay in a guest house till we find a flat, I suppose. Can we afford it, Dad?’

Victor gave her a weary smile. ‘We’re going to have to, ain’t we, love?’

They went back to the place they had been to the night before and negotiated another couple of nights. Then they smuggled some more of their possessions out of the Trafalgar. Jonathan looked acutely uncomfortable as he helped them carry out the bags.

‘Look…er…you’re going to have to get the rest of your things out pretty quick, I’m afraid. Mum and Dad are going to want your rooms.’

‘I’ll look for a flat tomorrow,’ Victor said. ‘You tell them that, son. They’ll have their rooms back.’

It was only when Jonathan had left them and Victor was flopped on the bed as Scarlett hung some of his clothes up, that he told her some more about his efforts at job-hunting.

‘I soon saw it was no use asking along the sea front. They’d put the word out.’

‘Who? Jonathan’s parents?’

‘Who else? Got on the telephone, didn’t they? Rung up all the other sea front pubs and warned them off me.’

Scarlett stared at him, shocked. It made her feel quite breathless, as if someone were standing on her chest. ‘That’s just so mean!’

‘That’s the sort of people they are. Once they got their knife into you, they never take it out. I got to say, love, I know you’re very fond of young Jonathan, and he seems like a decent boy, but just watch it, eh? Blood will out.’

‘Jonathan’s not the littlest bit like them. He doesn’t look like them and he doesn’t act like them,’ Scarlett stated with absolute certainty.