The Milliner's Secret (3 page)

A pair of motor charabancs were pulling out of a factory opposite, open backs crammed with women hanging on to their hats, men in flat caps and jaunty cravats. Another race-day convoy. Someone hoisted a banner bearing the legend ‘Better stick with Bennett’s Glue’.

Cora felt a wrenching jealousy. What must it be like to enjoy the moment, without having to store up excuses for daring to have a good time? She yelled above the growl of engines, ‘I hope you stick to your seats.’

‘We’re the ones stuck,’ Donal said glumly. ‘Least you had the chance to go. My gran doesn’t believe in holidays except on a saint’s day, and only if it’s an Irish saint called Patrick. Then she only gives us half a day and the halves get shorter every year. Same dirty streets, same dirty river. That’s my life.’

Cora squinted into a sky that was blue with promise behind the smoke. ‘When the sun shines on the righteous, it rains on us.’ She tugged his arm. ‘Let’s go anyway.’

But not in a torn rag of a dress. ‘I’ll have to borrow something off one of your sisters,’ she informed Donal. They were walking by way of Tooley Street to Barnham Street, where they both lived, though at different ends. Donal needed to return his barrow to the laundry and put on a jacket. ‘We’ll sneak in and out,’ she told him. ‘By the time anybody realises we’ve gone, we’ll be on the train to Epsom Downs.’

As they walked up the passageway to Flynn’s Laundry, Donal pointed out that they were both broke. You couldn’t go racing on less than ten shillings. As for borrowing a dress, Marion and Doreen were ‘fearful protective’ of their wardrobes. Sheila, he conceded, didn’t care for clothes and dressed like a policewoman even when she was off duty. ‘But you wouldn’t want any of her battle-axe outfits.’ He unlatched a gate, adding, ‘If Gran sees us, I shall ask to go. I’m no good at lying.’

‘Better make sure she doesn’t see us, then.’ Following Donal into a yard enclosed by low buildings, Cora ducked under a line laden with men’s combinations, thirty pairs or more. Must be a new ship in. Many of Flynn’s customers were seamen whose vessels came into Rotherhithe docks from Hong Kong, India and the South Seas. A contrary place, Bermondsey. A backwater on the doorstep of the world. Seeing movement in the window of one of the laundry houses, she told Donal to park his barrow quickly. Why did it have to squeak? Too late.

A woman in a green apron emerged from an outbuilding. Her sleeves were rolled, her white hair twisted up so tightly it stretched her eyes and the cords of her neck. Cora never saw Granny Flynn without thinking of a spring onion.

Granny glared at Donal. ‘One hour to deliver one load?’ Taking in Cora, she mumbled something unintelligible. Shortage of teeth and an indelible Galway accent made Granny hard to follow even in these parts where a third of the population was immigrant Irish.

Donal translated: ‘She’s asking if you’ve come to help out.’

‘Blast that,’ Cora said. ‘The heaviest thing I want to lift today is a race card.’

‘I could use an extra pair of hands at an iron.’ Granny eyed Cora’s torn sleeve, her grazed arms. ‘Even if they are both left hands.’

‘Sorry, Granny.’ Cora’s first job had been here, when she was fourteen. Out of school on the Friday, arms deep in suds on the Monday. The best thing she could say for Pettrew & Lofthouse, it had got her away from endless washday. She’d never disliked Granny Flynn, and the other women had been friendly, but lifting sopping blankets out of boilers in fuggy steam all day had thickened her lungs. Her hands had peeled from the caustic, and the skin between her fingers had become so raw, it had bled.

She’d asked once, back then, ‘Why should I be in agony so other buggers can have clean sheets?’

After clipping her ear for swearing, Granny had answered, ‘Because you’re working class, which means all work and no class.’

Cora had called at Pettrew’s the day after and asked to see the hiring manager. Beavering on the production line at a hat-maker’s wasn’t much of a step up socially, but at least her hands had healed.

She said now to Granny, ‘Any other time I’d be thrilled to wield a flat iron in your company.’
Be polite.
She might need more casual work the way things were going. ‘But I’m off to hobnob with the upper crust.’

Granny gave a cackle. ‘You won’t have seen yourself in the mirror, then?’

Cora muttered to Donal, ‘That green dress Sheila wore at the St Patrick’s Day party here, has she still got it?’

Donal shrugged uneasily but Cora led the way to the main house, saying, ‘It’ll be back in her cupboard before she’s finished her shift. She’ll never know.’

Donal closed the kitchen door behind them. ‘She’ll know. Sheila always knows who ate the last biscuit or who gave the gas money to a bookies’ runner. And, Cora, she’d say you ought to go back to work, like your dad ordered.’

‘Donal, if you ever want to do more than push a barrow down dirty streets, you need to stop taking orders. There’s a world out there and you’ve got a brain. You were the best at maths in school by a mile. You’re good-looking, too, when you’re not cocking your head and staring at your boots.’

‘Let’s see to that eye of yours.’ Donal ushered her down into a scullery. At weekends, the Flynn household was as noisy as a zoo, but today the younger children were at school and everyone else was working. Donal’s mother had died twelve years ago, in the same year Cora’s mother had left home. Molly Flynn, it was said, had dropped dead from exhaustion, ten babies plus her wash-house work. Whereas Cora’s mother, Florence Masson, had chucked her bloomers over a ship’s mast. Which was a fancy way of saying she’d scarpered with a sailor.

Inaccurate, as it happened. Florence had left England with a man called Timothy Cartland. An actor, not a mariner. They’d gone to New York to make their fortune on Broadway.

‘I’ve just realised,’ Cora said, as Donal dipped a napkin into cold pump water and added a slosh of witch-hazel. ‘It’s twelve years to the day since my mum left. We went to the races, she stalked off after a row and we never saw her again.’

‘Put this to your eye and I’ll see if the range is hot. You could use a cup of tea.’

The pad stung, and she shouted after Donal, ‘I reckon Mum had the right idea. Off to the Derby and vamoose. I’ll do the same one day, jump aboard a ship and go.’ She realised too late that Granny Flynn was standing halfway down the scullery steps.

‘Go to sea, is it, Cora? I’ve heard you like the company of sailors.’

Donal’s face appeared behind the old woman’s shoulder. ‘Gran, don’t. That’s how rumours start.’

‘It’s how other things start, too, and I’ll say what I like in my own house.’ Granny came all the way down and pulled the pad from Cora’s eye, sucking a breath through her gums. ‘Swelling like a bantam’s egg. Give it an hour, you’ll be seeing the world soft-boiled. Am I to take it you’re off to the races?’ When Cora confirmed it, she sniffed. ‘Where does the money come from?’

Cora put a hand under her skirt. She fiddled with her stocking top before bringing her hand out triumphantly and waving notes at Donal, who was blushing and staring at the floor. ‘Five quid, still warm. Count them, Donal.’

He did. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘I stuck my hand in my dad’s pocket.’

Granny looked scandalised. ‘Stealing from your own father?’

‘He was using me as a punch-bag at the time.’

Donal burst out, ‘Had he seen, he’d have kicked the head right off you. And me.’

Cora grinned. ‘He didn’t, though, did he? We can have the day of our lives on a fiver. Give in, Donal.’

Granny folded her arms, the physical embodiment of the word ‘no’. ‘You’ll hand it all back, Cora Masson. What’s yours is legally your father’s and you owe him your duty.’

Cora regarded the old woman thoughtfully. Granny liked to take a moral stand, but her sermons were generally strongest on Mondays, the day after she’d made her confession at church to Father O’Brien. This far into the week, the religious starch had usually been steamed out of her. ‘Wrong on both counts. I’m over twenty-one. And if we’re talking about conscience, yours should tell you to give Donal the rest of the day off.’ She shoved a wispy curl behind her ear. She could go alone, but where was the fun in that? ‘Derby Day is St Patrick’s other holiday. There’ll be more Irishmen on the Downs than you’d find in the Emerald Isle.’

Granny planted her fists. ‘I need Donal here. We’re flat out.’

‘You’re always flat out. And he needs a few rays of sunshine – look at his cheeks. What’s one afternoon?’ Cora sensed Granny was weakening. ‘We might back a winner, bring home a fortune. Then you could retire to the primrose pastures of Penge or Catford and never have to look a pair of grubby combinations in the eye again.’

Granny leaned forward. ‘Think you’ll escape these streets, girl?’

‘Why not? My mum did.’

‘So they say, but you’re like all the rest of us, stuck like a hob-nail in a crack of the pavement.’ She peered at Cora’s ruined stockings, then at her shoes, with the little bit of heel that had stopped Cora outrunning her father. ‘I’ll say this for Florence Masson, she was always bandbox neat. Dainty, kept her figure. The consequence of being a retired actress, I suppose.’ Granny pronounced ‘actress’ as if it were an indecent, foreign word.

‘She wasn’t retired, not in her mind. She was always saying, “when I return to the stage”. But you’re right. The day she left, she looked like a bunch of spring daffodils, for all the sky was raining its eyes out.’

Granny’s reply got stuck behind her remaining good tooth. Stumping up the scullery steps, she jerked a thumb at Donal. ‘Have your day out and I suppose you’d better take him. He’ll be company for you on the walk home when you’ve lost every penny.’

As the eldest of the Flynn girls and a steady wage-earner, Sheila had her own bedroom. She was no beauty – people hinted that she’d joined the police force because the only way she could get a man was to arrest one. So it was with little expectation of finding anything worth wearing that Cora tried the wardrobe.

Locked, but the key was easily found on top of the wardrobe. ‘Lack of imagination, WPC Flynn.’

Then again, Sheila wouldn’t be expecting anyone as tall as herself to be searching. Prepared to find serge skirts and limp cardigans, Cora gasped at the rainbow hoard. There were lace stoles, real silk evening dresses, some embroidered with metal thread. A gown of magenta velvet took up a quarter of the space.

The labels were from leading London department stores: Harrods, Debenham & Freebody, Liberty. The emerald-green dress, pushed to one end of the rail, was very much the poor cousin.

When she slipped it over her head, Cora was instantly enveloped in exotic perfume. Well, well. If she’d been asked to guess Sheila’s favourite scent, she’d have said lily-of-the-valley or carbolic soap, not hot-house flowers and spice.

The green dress had ruched sleeves wide at the shoulder, drawing attention to a belted waist and slim hips. Cora twirled in front of a dressing-table mirror. Not bad, bit dull. What about one of those bright artificial silks? But Donal was pacing the landing outside, terrified his sister might come home unexpectedly. So Cora helped herself to rayon stockings and a pair of cream crocheted gloves. Meeting her reflection, she searched for the guilt that should have been there. It wasn’t. Sheila Flynn had enough dresses to clothe a chorus line. On a constable’s wages? Cora thought of her own wardrobe: a couple of work outfits, a winter suit and the dress she’d just taken off. Could saintly Sheila be taking back-handers? Or maybe she stole from shops. ‘Cora, get a move on!’ Donal hissed through a crack in the door.

Hat. She’d lost hers, a cheap straw with artificial cherries, running away from her dad. She worked surrounded by hats, hat-makers and hat-trimmers, yet had never had a decent one of her own. Fact was, she couldn’t afford Pettrew’s prices and they wouldn’t let you buy the rejects. Those got taken off to be pulped.

Another reason not to feel guilty
, Cora told herself as she fetched a pink and grey hatbox off the top of the wardrobe. Ten to one it was Sheila Flynn who’d ratted on her. Sheila often called at Jac Masson’s workshop after nightshifts at Dunton Road Police Station. They’d share a pot of tea in Jac’s shed at the railway end of Shand Street, and Jac would pass on titbits of news. Who was stealing scrap iron around the place? Who’d just acquired a motor-van or a pair of shiny boots he couldn’t rightly afford? As a foreigner, Jac didn’t subscribe to the Londoner’s code that said you’d rather cut out your own tongue than nark to the police. People hinted that Jac and Sheila were sweet on each other, but that couldn’t be right . . . Jac must be thirty years older. No, it was a business deal. Tea and information.

Sheila doubtless dished out tales about Cora. How else had Jac known about the race-day ballot, and about her ironing money? Feeling quite justified in her theft, Cora lifted the lid off the hatbox and made a noise of disgust. The mound of black feathers inside looked more like a dead crow than a hat. Lifting it out, she found it had a label stitched into its sisal lining. La Passerinette, Paris.

Her eyes widened. Paris was where she went in her dreams. Her favourite films of all time were set there and sometimes, when life scraped like a rusty wheel, she’d imagine herself as Jeanette MacDonald being fitted for new clothes by Maurice Chevalier and singing ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ in harmony with him. Cora put on the hat in front of the mirror, tilting it forward until it obscured her injured eye. It had a fishnet veil that dropped down to her top lip. Suddenly, the hat made sense. Not a dead crow, but a fantasy of iridescent feathers. It wasn’t Cora Masson staring back at her, but a stranger whose face was composed of striking planes. She sucked in her cheeks and murmured huskily, ‘She boards a train, blind to other passengers who gasp at her beauty and shake their heads, recognising the sultry—’