Time Goes By (2 page)

‘Gosh, thanks!’ said Kathy. ‘I’ll ask my Aunty Win as soon as I get home.’

H
ome for Katherine was a boarding house in the area of Blackpool known as North Shore, not too far from the sea, quite close to the north railway station, and about five minutes’ walk from the town centre.

The name of the house was Holmleigh. Her father and Aunty Win liked to describe it as a ‘private hotel’ rather than a boarding house. There was, in point of fact, very little difference between the two, excepting, perhaps, that the small hotels had names and the boarding houses didn’t. Aunty Win had told her that ‘Holmleigh’ was really just a posh way of spelling the word ‘homely’. That was what they hoped their hotel was, a home from home, and it also made quite a clever use of their surname.

Her father, Albert, and his sister, Winifred, ran the hotel between them. Kathy knew that it had been
started in the beginning by her grandparents, way back in the early years of the century, which seemed to her to be ages ago. Grandma and Grandad Leigh – Alice and William – who were now well into their seventies, had retired a few years ago, at the end of the war in 1945, and now lived in a little bungalow in Bispham. That was when Albert and Winifred had taken over the responsibility of the boarding house and had given it a name.

Kathy knew that her father was a very good cook – he called himself a chef – and he did most of the cooking when there were visitors staying there. Aunty Win looked after everything else: all the office work and bookkeeping and the organisation of the domestic help. They employed waitresses and chambermaids when it was their busiest time, usually from the middle of May to the end of the ‘Illuminations’ season – commonly known as the ‘Lights’ – at the end of October. For the rest of the year they took occasional visitors, usually to oblige their ‘regulars’, and during the slack period they took the opportunity to catch up with any decorating or odd jobs that needed to be done.

When Kathy arrived home on that Friday afternoon in mid March her father was up a ladder papering the walls of one of the guest bedrooms, whilst her aunt was busy at a trestle table in the centre of the room putting paste onto the next length of paper.

‘Hello, dear,’ said her aunt when the little girl’s head appeared round the door. ‘Have you had a nice day at school?’ That was what she always asked, and as usual Kathy replied that yes, she had. She had never minded going to school, but it had been especially nice since she had been in Miss Roberts’ class.

‘Goodness, is it that time already?’ said her father. ‘I think it’s time for a cup of tea, Winnie. You go and put the kettle on, eh? Hello, Kathy love. Go and help your Aunty Win, there’s a good girl.’

Her dad was always saying that, and Kathy actually quite enjoyed helping out in the boarding house. When she was a tiny girl, before she started school, she had loved going round with her Aunty Nellie – not a real aunt, just a friend of Aunty Win – who came in once a week to ‘do’ the bedrooms. There were fifteen bedrooms on three floors, including two attic bedrooms. Kathy used to accompany her aunt with her own little dustpan and brush, and a duster, to help with the dusting and polishing. Aunty Nellie sometimes let her put a tiny amount of polish onto the surface of a dressing table, and then rub hard to make it all shiny and gleaming.

She helped Aunty Win, too, in the kitchen when she was making pies or fruit tarts. She had her own pastry cutters and rolling pin and could already make jam tarts that they were able to eat. She did not help very much, though, when her
father was in charge of the kitchen; he was not quite as patient as her aunt. She realised, though, that at the moment she was only playing at helping. But Kathy also understood, with all the wisdom of her six – nearly seven – years, that this would eventually be her job of work. When the time came for her to leave school – a long time in the future – she knew that she would be expected to work in the family boarding house, or whatever they wanted to call it, just as Aunty Win and her father had taken over from her grandparents.

‘I’m coming, Aunty Win,’ she called. ‘I’m just taking my coat off, and I’ve got something to put away in my drawer. It’s a secret, you see.’

On the way home from school she had called in at the local newsagent’s shop and bought a small box of Milk Tray for Aunty Win for Mother’s Day. She had been saving up from her spending money each week until she had enough. She put the purple box and the card in her drawer underneath her knickers, vests and socks, then went down to the kitchen to join her aunt.

‘So what have you been doing at school this afternoon?’ Winifred asked her niece. ‘You don’t do much work on Friday afternoon, do you?’

In Winifred’s opinion they didn’t do much work at all in the infant classrooms of today. It all seemed to be painting or playing in the house, or messing about with sand and water, from what Katherine
told her aunt. Not like it was in her day. She had been born in 1900 and when she started school at four years of age Queen Victoria had been dead for three years. Her photograph had hung in the school hall for many years, so Winifred’s parents had told her – they had both attended the same school – and then it had been replaced by one of Edward VII, her corpulent son. Winifred remembered his rather kindly face regarding them as they sang their morning hymns and recited their daily prayers.

She recalled, too, the rows of wooden desks where the children sat in formal rows – ‘Straight backs, boys and girls, no slouching’; the chalk and slates on which to write the letters of the alphabet; the map of the world on the classroom wall, with a goodly part of it coloured in red, showing the parts that belonged to the British Empire. She remembered a strict male teacher, too, with a long swishing cane; not that it was often used. The children of yesteryear knew they had to behave themselves; one look was usually enough.

Times had changed, she pondered, and not always for the best, although Kathy seemed to be getting on well since she went into that nice Miss Roberts’ class. There didn’t seem to be as much messing about, and she could now read very nicely from her book that told of the exploits of Janet and John.

‘No …’ replied Kathy, in answer to her aunt’s
query. ‘Miss Roberts usually lets us do a jigsaw or read a book on Friday afternoon, while she does her register for the week. She has a lot of adding up to do, she says. But today we were making cards for—’ She suddenly stopped and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh dear! It was meant to be a surprise. Pretend I didn’t say that, will you, Aunty Win?’

‘Of course, dear,’ smiled Winifred. ‘I didn’t actually catch what you said anyway.’

The child had given the game away already, though, talking about hiding something in her drawer. Mother’s Day, Winifred had thought to herself. That was one of the times when she felt most sorry for the little girl, not that Kathy ever seemed too worried about occasions such as those.

Winifred poured the tea into three mugs and added milk and sugar. ‘Now, Kathy,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could manage to carry this mug upstairs to your daddy? Be careful, mind, but I’ve not filled it too full. And there’s a custard cream biscuit for him. Pop it into your gymslip pocket, then you’ve got both hands free. Off you go now.’

Winifred loved the little girl more than she could say. She had tried to make it up to her for not having a mother, and she hoped and prayed that she had succeeded. She felt that she had, to a certain extent, although she realised it could never be quite the same. She had wondered if her brother might marry again, but he had been so distressed at losing his
beloved Barbara that he had never, since that time, taken any interest at all in the opposite sex. He was a taciturn sort of man who did not show his feelings. Winifred was sure that he loved his little daughter very much, but he found it difficult to tell her so or even to show her much affection. Any cuddles and hugs, or comfort when she was upset, came from her aunt or grandparents. It was only natural that she should sometimes ask questions about her mother – all her schoolfriends had mothers – and she was always told that her mother had died when she was only a baby, but she must never forget that her mummy had loved her very much.

Albert never spoke of his wife. He had settled into a comfortable little rut. He worked his socks off in the hotel. He was a first-rate cook – or chef, as he liked to call himself – and there was nothing he would not tackle when there were any jobs to be done in the off season. His only means of recreation was to go to the pub two or three evenings a week – he was a member of the darts team – and he was also an ardent supporter of Blackpool’s football team. He was there every Saturday during the winter months, in his orange and white scarf, taking his place on Spion Kop. But Winifred could not imagine him ever cheering and yelling encouragement – or even booing! – as many enthusiastic supporters did. She guessed he was as silent there as he was in other aspects of his life. Blackpool was a First
Division club and boasted of their most famous player, Stanley Matthews. Albert looked forward to the day when they might – when they would, he was sure – win the FA cup. He filled in his football coupon regularly. Winifred was not sure how much he allowed himself to bet, but he had never, as yet, had a substantial win, only the odd pound or two. They had to be quiet every Saturday evening after the six o’clock news when the football results were read out and Albert checked his coupon.

Winifred was looking forward to the start of the holiday season in a few weeks’ time. It would begin slowly, with visitors coming for the Easter weekend and the following week – they were already almost fully booked for that period – but then there would be a lull for several weeks until the Whitsuntide holiday. It was then that the season would start in earnest and would, hopefully, continue until almost the end of October.

Blackpool was beginning to make its name as the foremost resort in the north, maybe in the whole, of England. The town had gained more than it had lost during the Second World War. Many of its competitors on the south and east coasts had been forced to close down for the duration of the war because of the threat of invasion or bombing. Admittedly, the curtailing of the Illuminations in the September of 1939 had affected the income of the Blackpool boarding
house keepers and hoteliers. However, following on from that, many of these people were able to make up for their losses by accommodating RAF personnel who were training in the town. Over three-quarters of a million RAF recruits passed through the town during the war. There were also the child evacuees at the start of the conflict, but they did not all stay for very long; in fact, by 1940 the majority of them had returned home.

Later in the war there were American GIs stationed at the nearby bases at Weeton and Warton, and the Blackpool entertainment industry enjoyed a prosperity they had not seen since the end of the First World War.

The war had not deterred holidaymakers from visiting the resort, in spite of the wartime propaganda posters asking ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?’ Many families obviously thought it was still essential to take a holiday, and Blackpool was a relatively safe place in which to stay. The Whitsuntide holidays had been abandoned in 1940 by government decree, but the annual wakes holidays of the textile towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire recommenced in July and from then on Blackpool had never looked back.

The advent of rationing, rather than being a hindrance, had been quite a boon for the hotel keepers, and more especially for the boarding house landladies. They took charge of the visitors’ ration
books, and this led to the change from the old system of lodging houses to that of full board. Winifred remembered only too well the old days, when visitors brought their own food, which was cooked for them by the boarding house staff. The visitors paid only for their lodgings and for services rendered, such as cooking, laundry, cleaning of shoes, and – in some lodging houses – the ‘use of the cruet’.

The system of ‘full board’ which had begun during the war years was now the norm. It consisted of cooked breakfast, midday dinner, and a ‘high tea’. In some residences, as at Holmleigh, supper was also served in the visitors’ lounge from nine o’clock in the evening.

In the previous year, 1949, the return of the Illuminations had marked a turning point from post-war austerity. The years of darkness and depression were over, exemplified by the return of the ‘Lights’. Blackpool had become the envy of many of its rivals. It was well and truly back in business, catering for a full cross section of the public, from the working classes to those who considered themselves to be the ‘elite’.

The hotel had become – almost – Winifred’s whole life, the focus of her existence and her ambition. She was proud of what they had achieved since the end of the war. They were coming to be known as one of the best of the small private hotels in Blackpool, with the same visitors returning year
after year. She had never done any work outside of the boarding house. It had been taken for granted when she left school at the age of fourteen that she should work in the family business. That was in the year of 1914; the start of the Great War had coincided with the end of Winifred’s schooling.

It had been the height of the holiday season in Blackpool, but the initial disruption – when visitors trying to return home found that the trains had been commandeered for the fighting forces – proved to be of short duration. By mid August it was ‘business as usual’ in the resort. The holiday industry carried on and thrived throughout the First World War as, twenty years later, it was to do the same in the second conflict. It was an emotive issue, as to whether seaside holidays and leisure times, such as professional sport, should continue when the country was at war. The lists in the daily newspapers of deaths in action were becoming longer and more disturbing. But the ‘powers that be’ in Blackpool felt that it was good for morale that people should be encouraged to take holidays, as before. It was decided, however, that to continue with the Illuminations would be going too far, and so, despite their initial success, plans to make the Illuminations an annual event had to be cancelled, due to the outbreak of war.