The Accidental Time Traveller (32 page)

‘That’s good. I like Peggy. It’ll be nice having her near. Anyway … tada! I’ve finished the dress!’

The dress. The dress she was making to go to the mayor’s ball with Billy.

‘Oh great. Does it look good?’

‘Yes I’m pleased with it. In the end I had to take it up to my mum’s to finish it, I just couldn’t get the light in our house.’

The little dark house with no electricity and a smell of earth and damp.

‘Does Billy like it?’

‘He hasn’t seen it yet. I’ve decided he’s not going to see it until we go out. I’ve got it all worked out. My mum’s coming down to ours to babysit, but we’re going to go up there at teatime, so we can have baths and I can wash my hair and dry it properly, not like in our house with the tin tub in front of the fire. I’ll take Billy’s suit up there so he can come in from football and have a bath too and we can go out from my mum’s. See, all organised. I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘It should be a good evening.’

‘It’s a shame you can’t come, Rosie. They’ve got a proper dance orchestra and everything.’

‘Haven’t been invited. Don’t know the right people.’

‘And at the end apparently they have a great net of balloons that come down from the ceiling. It’s going to be lovely.’ Her eyes were shining. I thought of Caz. Caz would hate going to a mayor’s ball. Wild horses wouldn’t drag her there. But for Carol it was the height of sophistication, the social event of the year. I wanted her to enjoy it. I tried to forget that she was going with Billy and just hoped she would have a good time.

‘Oooh, it will be lovely when we’re up at The Meadows and can have our own bathroom. I shall have a bath every night, with lots of bubbles like a film star.’

I laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Carol.

‘My friend Caz – the one who’s so like you. She loves relaxing in the bath, and the funny thing is, she switches the lights off and just lights scented candles around the edge of the bath.’

‘What’s the point of that if she’s got electric light?’

‘It’s more romantic.’

Carol snorted. ‘She should try it in the tub in front of the fire with a draught howling under the back door and mice scurrying past. That would be romance for her. Anyway, this won’t get the baby bathed, time I wasn’t here.’

She picked up her shopping bag.

‘Maybe Phil could get you an invite to the ball and you could both come with me and Billy? That would be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, maybe,’ I said, but dismissed the thought instantly. In any case, I wanted to keep Phil at arm’s length, as a friend. I think he was beginning to get ideas.

‘Are you seeing Phil this weekend?’

‘No. Well, we haven’t arranged anything.’

He’d asked me out for Saturday night and I’d turned him down vaguely. I regretted it now. Without Peggy, the house was already feeling empty.

‘Blooming heck! It’s raining and I haven’t got a brolly!’

Standing in the doorway of the café, Carol tugged a scarf from her coat pocket and tied it over her hair. Then, with her head down, she dashed out into the crowds.

‘Tara Rosie. Maybe see you in the week!’

I pulled my coat around me and splashed through the puddles, headed for home.

There was no smell of cooking, not even the lingering smell of something drying up in the oven. Instead Mrs Brown was looking busy and harassed.

‘You can have bacon and eggs and a bit of mash for your supper. I’m making a start on Peggy’s room.’

‘Making a start on what?’

‘Well we’re going to be moving soon. That first phase is just about finished up at The Meadows. Frank heard from his mate Les that the decorators are starting on Monday and that’s the last thing to be done. They’ll be allocating them soon. I don’t suppose we’ll get first phase, but we’ll probably get second if they want us out of the way to start on their precious new road. And there’s a lot to be done.’

I realised she had been struggling with an old suitcase, on which the zip had broken as it was tied together with a dressing-gown cord.

‘All these are clothes ready for the jumble sale. I’ll leave it in the scullery and if anyone comes around – I think the Guides are due one day soon – just give them that will you, love. Now where’s Frank? He’s late this evening. Just as well as I’m not ready for him.’ And she struggled with the case through the kitchen and into the scullery.

With that, Mr Brown came in, stamping the rain off his shoes.

‘You’re late, Frank,’ said his wife.

‘Yes and for a very good reason.’

There was a silence.

‘Well aren’t you going to ask me what that reason is?’

‘Oh go on then,’ said Mrs Brown, not looking at him, but tipping potatoes into the sink and turning the tap on. ‘Why are you late?’

‘I’ve bought a car.’

There was a very satisfying clatter as the potato knife dropped into the stone sink too. ‘You’ve done what?’

‘I’ve bought a little car, a Morris Minor.’ Mr Brown looked very pleased with himself.

‘A car! Us?’

‘Why not? I’ve been thinking about it ever since it took us all day to get to that christening and all night to get back from it. If we had a little car, we could have done it in an hour.’

‘Can we afford it?’

‘I had a bit of money put by for our Peg’s wedding and well, in the end it didn’t cost as much as I thought, so let’s spend it on something we can enjoy.’

‘What do you know about cars? Do you know how to drive one?’

‘Course I do. Learnt in the army, didn’t I?’

She bombarded him with questions over kind, colour, cost.

‘And have you got it here now?’ Mrs Brown darted out to the front, to see if it was in the street.

‘No, no. It will take a few days to get the paperwork arranged and everything done.’

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Brown, finally absorbing the idea. ‘Fancy that. A new house, a new baby, and a new car, all at the same time. We
are
going up in the world, aren’t we?’

‘If you want to put it like that,’ said Mr Brown, looking pleased with himself. ‘Right then, where’s my supper?’

Mrs Brown scuttled back into the scullery and started speedily peeling potatoes.

As we sat down to bacon and egg, with the egg yolk mopped up by the mash to fill any gaps, Mrs Brown was still dreaming of the difference a car would make.

‘We’ll be able to go to the seaside. And for drives out in the country. Oh, Frank, we could go on a holiday, a touring holiday. You see it in the papers, don’t you, in the wedding reports. “The couple will spend their honeymoon on a touring holiday of the West Country.” We could do that -a touring holiday along the open road.’

She cleared our plates and brought out some fruit cake for pudding. ‘Cornwall, now I’ve always wanted to go to Cornwall, they say it’s very quaint. Can we go to Cornwall, Frank?’

‘Why not?’ Mr Brown was beaming like an indulgent uncle.

Janice came in later to finish the fruit cake and her English homework (‘Describe Shakespeare’s use of the imagery of blood in
Macbeth’
), and was very impressed to hear about the new car.

‘After all, Mr Brown,’ she said solemnly, ‘we are the New Elizabethans, and we have to explore our world.’

Mr Brown laughed, ‘Well pet, I think I explored more than enough of it in the desert with Monty, but yes, we’ll explore a bit more now.’

It had rained all day and all night. From the moment Carol and I had come out of Silvino’s on Saturday afternoon, and all through Sunday, it hadn’t stopped. It had blown George and Peggy in through the door on Sunday evening, their cheeks glowing, their eyes dancing with excitement. Was it the weather or the honeymoon? I wondered.

‘Can’t stop long, Mum,’ said Peggy, ‘George’s mum will be waiting for us. But I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon, when you’re back from work and tell you all about it. But we’ve had a lovely time. We’ve seen Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, and we saw the Houses of Parliament – it’s just like on the sauce bottle!’

Over a quick cup of tea and a slice of the sponge cake Mrs Brown had baked that morning, Peggy handed over a little plate with a picture of Buckingham Palace. ‘Present back, Mum.’

Mrs Brown smiled and put it on the dresser, slap bang in the middle of the shelf. ‘I’ll put it there so people can’t miss it,’ she said proudly, ‘and I can say my daughter and son-in-law brought it back from their honeymoon in London.’

I could see again how the story of the wedding was still being re-written.

After a quick hug for Peggy from her parents, she and George had dodged back into the rain. George with one hand carrying their small case and the other protectively holding Peggy’s arm.

‘I don’t know, it doesn’t seem right her not being here,’ said Mrs Brown, peering out of the sitting-room window trying to watch them going down the street.

‘She’s a married woman, now. Her place is with her husband,’ said Mr Brown.

Mrs Brown fussed around clearing away the cups and plates and taking them out to the kitchen. I could have offered to help but thought that really she would prefer to be on her own.

All night it rained. The wind whipped along the streets and blew the blossom off the trees. The blossom bobbed on the ripples whipped up on the puddles. As I sat eating my breakfast porridge, glad of its stodgy comfort, the rain slashed angrily against the kitchen window, making the old frame rattle and turning the outside world into a cold wet blur.

‘More like blooming winter than nearly summer. I hope Peggy wraps up well when she comes around,’ said Mrs Brown, tugging on a pair of rubber boots and tying a scarf firmly around her head. ‘No point in taking a brolly today. It’ll be blown inside out before I’m across the doorstep.’

‘When you get your new car you’ll be able to have a lift to work, or drive yourself,’ I said.

Mrs Brown stopped, her hands in midair where she’d been tugging at her scarf. ‘Ooh, I couldn’t do that. We couldn’t use the car for that. Though Frank might. No, I’ll be back to Shanks’s blooming pony. Anyway, I’m off now. Make sure the door’s shut really tight when you go out, won’t you? Otherwise we’ll come back and find the wind’s whipped it right off.’

I finished my breakfast, washed the dishes and did my make-up in the kitchen mirror – powder, lipstick and a quick spit on the mascara. Then, wrapped up nearly as securely as Mrs Brown, I tugged open the front door and launched myself into the storm.

Ouch! The rain slapped me in the face, blew my skirts up and tugged through my hair. It was a battle to get over the doorstep, never mind down the street. How I missed my car, my nice, warm, safe,
dry
little car … I would have caught a bus, but there was no direct route between the house and
The News.
I would have caught a cab if I could have found such a thing. Come to that, if I’d spotted the milkman and his horse I’d have hitched a lift on that. As it was, I had to walk, hands in pockets, head bent against the wind and the rain that was stinging my face.

By the time I got to work I was soaked. My feet squelched in my sensible shoes, I had mud splashes all up the back of my legs and the rain had even started to come through the shoulders of my sensible mac.

‘Lovely weather for ducks,’ said the receptionist cheerfully as I squelched into
The News,
water dripping off the end of my scarf.

The office smelt of wet clothes and wet shoes, horribly reminiscent of wet dog. It mingled with the smell of musty newspapers and all the cigarette smoke. It made me long to get out again, but one look at the smeary, rain-spattered windows, the panes rattling in their frames, made me equally desperate to stay inside, smell of wet dog or not.

Despite the damp and the smell, I went up the stairs with that small sense of excitement, that fluttering in your insides that comes from fancying someone you work with. Only this was much more than simply fancying. I squelched up the stairs with a spring in my soggy step.

‘Bit damp are you there, kid?’ asked Billy as I dripped past him, my face bright red with the rain and the wind. I grinned – if he’d called me ‘kid’ back at home in our own real time, I would probably have hated it, but here it was great, a sign of comradeliness, affection almost … I shook my head so the drops flew off and spattered all over the newsdesk diary, and then ran quickly as he shook his fist in mock horror.

‘Just for that,’ he said sternly, ‘I think I will send you on a nice little door-stepping exercise …’

My face must have fallen because he laughed.

‘No, you’re OK, I wouldn’t send a dog out today, though,’ with a grin over his shoulder, ‘I’m going to send Alan. No, Marje is off today, so could you do the women’s page please, Rosie? Oh yes, and we need Kiddies’ Corner too.’

I groaned. But at least it kept me out of the rain, which got no better as the morning went on. At lunch time I was still bashing away at my typewriter when Alan came back in. Rain was dripping off the rim of his hat and he looked soaked to the skin.

‘The river’s very high,’ he said, peeling off his sodden raincoat and draping it over the back of a chair. ‘Sergeant Foster was down there, looking worried. Apparently the Civil Defence are on standby. They’re filling sandbags. It looks as though they’ll be needed. It’s getting serious out there.’