Lime Street Blues Read online

  She sat on a bench at the edge of the green and waited for the shops to open. The pub, the Oak Tree, which got its name from the huge tree on the green directly opposite, was busy and customers, all men, were sitting at the tables outside. The pub, the shops, and most of the houses that she’d passed had posters in the windows advertising the Midsummer Fête to be held on the village green a week on Saturday. It was being organised by the Women’s Institute of which Mrs Corbett was a founding member and chairman of the committee. For weeks now, groups of women had been meeting in the drawing room of The Limes to make final arrangements for the fête. There was a perfectly good Women’s Institute hall between the school and the Oak Tree that would have been far more convenient, but the chairman preferred the committee came to her house. Rose wasn’t the only person Mrs Corbett bossed around.

  The butchers threw open its doors, followed by the bakers. Soon, all five shops were open, but Rose didn’t move from the bench. She was watching two girls of about her own age, both vaguely familiar, walking along the path that encircled the green, arms linked companionably.

  ‘Oh, look,’ one remarked as they drew nearer. ‘The door’s open, which means I’m late. Mrs Harker will have my guts for garters.’ She abandoned her companion and began to run. ‘See you tonight at quarter to six by the station,’ she shouted. ‘I’m really looking forward to that Clark Gable picture.’

  ‘Me too.’ The other girl sauntered into Beryl’s Fashions and Rose recognised her as Heather, Beryl’s assistant. Beryl mustn’t mind her being late.

  Rose would have liked to work in a shop and quite fancied going to the pictures, but what she would have liked most of all was to have a friend, someone to link arms with. She rarely met anyone her own age except in the shops. If, say, she went into Beryl’s and bought the brassiere she obviously needed and Heather invited her to the pictures – a most unlikely event – she couldn’t possibly go. At quarter to six, she would be setting the table for dinner, which would be served at precisely six o’clock. It would be well past seven when her duties were finished. By then, she would be too weary to walk as far as the station. Anyway, the picture would be half over by the time she got there.

  She jumped to her feet, bought a whole half pound of dolly mixtures, and ate them on the way back to The Limes.

  Music was coming from the barn that Colonel Max’s father had turned into a games room for his sons – the colonel’s elder brother had been killed in the Great War. It had a billiard table, a dart board, and a badminton court. The music was jazz, which the colonel only played out of earshot of his mother, who couldn’t stand it. Rose loved any sort of music. She danced a few steps on the gravel path, but stopped immediately, embarrassed, when she saw Tom Flowers regarding her with amusement from the rose garden.

  ‘You look happy,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I am,’ she said, but only because it seemed churlish to say that she wasn’t.

  She went through the laundry room into the kitchen, which should have been empty as Mrs Denning went home as soon as lunch was over and didn’t return until half four to make dinner. Rose was surprised to find a cross Mrs Corbett waiting for her, demanding to know why she hadn’t answered the bell she’d been ringing for ages.

  ‘It was my time off, madam. I’ve been for a walk,’ Rose stammered.

  ‘Oh!’ Mrs Corbett looked slightly nonplussed. ‘Well, you’re late back. I’m having a bridge party this afternoon. I want you in uniform immediately. My guests will be arriving very soon.’

  In fact, Rose was five minutes early, but Mrs Corbett would only have got crosser if she’d pointed it out.

  A week later, the colonel’s leave ended and he left for France. Lots of people telephoned or called personally to wish him luck, which had never happened before.

  ‘Look after yourself, Max, old boy.’

  ‘Take care, Colonel. Keep your head down, if only for your mother’s sake.’

  War between Great Britain and Germany was imminent. Once it started, the colonel’s regiment would be on the front line. Mrs Corbett, who’d lost one son in the ‘war to end all wars’, retired to her room after Colonel Max had gone, and stayed there all morning, emerging as steely-eyed as ever at lunchtime and complaining bitterly that the lamb was tough.

  War, when it came, made little difference to Rose’s life. It just became busier. Mrs Corbett joined the Women’s Voluntary Service and held coffee mornings and garden parties to raise funds. Rose was required to make gallons of coffee and tea, and carry it round to the guests. Mrs Denning had to bake mountains of sausage rolls and fairy cakes, yet was still expected to have the meals ready on time.

  ‘Does she think I’m a miracle worker or something?’ she asked Rose in an injured voice.

  It came as an unpleasant shock when, after Christmas, Mrs Denning announced she was leaving to work in a munitions factory in Kirkby at four times her present wage. A special bus came through Ailsham to pick the workers up. Mrs Corbett would just have to find another cook.

  ‘But I don’t like leaving you behind, love,’ Mrs Denning said. ‘There’ll be no one for you to talk to once I’m gone. Look, why don’t you leave, get another job? There’s loads of work going, what with all the men being called up. You could earn more money and mix with young people for a change.’

  ‘Yes, but where would I live?’ Rose wanted to know.

  ‘You’d have to find digs. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ She was too scared. She felt safe in The Limes, just as she’d done in the orphanage. There was a saying, something about sticking with the devil you know. Mrs Corbett was the devil, and Rose would stick with her, for the foreseeable future at least.

  Mrs Corbett had found it impossible to hire another cook. She wasn’t alone. Her friends were having the same problem. Not only cooks, but housemaids, nursemaids, parlourmaids, even charwomen, were abandoning their employers to take up war work. Mrs Conway’s maid had become a WREN. Some women regarded it as unpatriotic. How could they be expected to run their own households without servants?

  ‘Of course it’s not unpatriotic,’ Mrs Corbett said sternly. ‘We’ve all got to do our bit.’ But she hadn’t been near the kitchen except to give orders since her own cook had left. A stunned Rose had discovered she was expected to do the cooking in Mrs Denning’s place.

  ‘But I can’t,’ she gasped when the additional duties were explained to her. ‘Can’t cook, that is.’

  ‘Did you learn nothing from Mrs Denning in all the time you’ve been here?’ Mrs Corbett asked cuttingly.

  ‘No, madam.’ There’d been too many other things to do to watch the meals being made. She could fry things, boil things, but when it came to roasting meat, baking bread, making cakes, she was lost. The Aga had four ovens that each did different things, she had no idea what.

  She coped for a week. Mrs Corbett was invited out to dine several times, but when she ate at home, the complaints increased with every meal. The chops were burnt, the potatoes soggy, the jelly hadn’t properly set. She was a foolish girl for not realising it should have been made the day before.

  On Sunday, two old school friends arrived to stay, the Misses Dolly and Daisy Clayburn, who lived in Poplar and were convinced Hitler was about to bomb the place out of existence. On their first morning, Rose found the laundry basket in the bathroom overflowing with dirty clothes they’d brought with them. She took them downstairs and was putting them to soak in the sink in the laundry room, when Luke Denning arrived on his bike bringing a huge piece of meat. It was a horrible morning, very stormy, and the rain ran in rivulets from the brim of his sou’wester and the hem of his oilskin cape.

  ‘We’re lucky, living in the country while there’s a war on,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Town folk’d give their eye teeth for a leg of lamb that size.’

  ‘Lucky!’ Rose said weakly.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off.’ Luke got back on his bike. ‘Oh, by the way. You’ll have to collect your own m
eat as from next week. I’m leaving Friday. Ma’s got me a job in her factory. ’Bye, Rose.’

  ‘’Bye.’

  Rose carried the meat inside and put it on the draining board. It looked much too big to be part of the little woolly lambs she’d seen frolicking over the fields. What was she supposed to do with it? Should it go in the oven covered with greaseproof paper? If so, for how long? Did it have to be cut into bits and stewed – or was that steak, the cheap sort? Maybe it had to be boiled?

  She made the morning tea and took Mrs Corbett’s up first, then returned for the Misses Clayburns’. They were both sitting up in the double bed when she went into their room.

  ‘We heard the rattle of dishes and were expecting you,’ said one. ‘Oh, this is nice, isn’t it, Dolly? Just listen to that rain! Could we have marmalade with our bread and butter, dear?’

  Rose raced downstairs for the marmalade. She was hurrying down a second time, the marmalade delivered, when Mrs Corbett called.

  ‘Was that Luke with the lamb I heard earlier?’ she asked. When Rose confirmed that was the case, she said, ‘I’d like it roasted for lunch, the potatoes too, served with cauliflower and peas. And don’t forget the gravy. For afters, we’ll have suet pudding and custard. And kindly stop running everywhere, Rose. There’s no need for it. It sounded as if a cart horse was galloping up and down the stairs.’

  There was a tight, panicky feeling in her chest as Rose ran through the rain to the coalhouse with the scuttles, filled them, and brought them back one at a time. She was already way behind this morning. The fires had refused to light, the strong wind had whistled down the chimneys and blown the paper out before the flames had caught. She’d had to reset them twice. She wound the clocks, cut the rind off the bacon, and prayed she wouldn’t break the yolks when she fried the eggs, something Mrs Corbett found extremely irritating. Then she remembered she’d used the last of the bread to take upstairs, there was none left for toast and the baker hadn’t yet arrived with a fresh supply – even Mrs Corbett accepted she couldn’t expect her to make home-baked bread.

  Her hands were shaking when she set the dining room table. It was quarter to nine, almost time for breakfast. The food had to be served on covered platters on a side table so people could help themselves. She returned to the kitchen and put the strips of bacon in a frying pan on the simmering plate of the Aga, then fried the eggs on the hot plate. All the time, the leg of lamb stared at her balefully from the draining board.

  At nine o’clock promptly, Mrs Corbett and her friends came down for breakfast. The bell rang almost immediately, as Rose knew it would. The yolks had broken on five of the six eggs and she was in for a scolding.

  ‘You seem to have forgotten something, Rose,’ Mrs Corbett said cuttingly when she went in. ‘Although you have provided us with butter, jam and marmalade, there’s no toast to put it on. And why is your hair all wet, girl? You look very untidy.’

  ‘It must’ve got wet when I fetched the coal, madam.’

  ‘Did you not think to wear a scarf ? You’re obviously having trouble waking up this morning.’

  ‘I’m afraid the bread still hasn’t been delivered.’ It wasn’t her fault, but she felt as if it was and the panicky feeling spread to her entire body. Her legs were threatening to give way.

  Mrs Corbett rolled her eyes. ‘Please hurry. We’ll just have to do without toast, though it isn’t very satisfactory. My previous cook wasn’t exactly cordon bleu,’ she remarked as Rose went out the door, ‘but she was vastly superior to this one.’

  Rose didn’t have time to eat. She hastily cleaned the drawing room, while waiting for the bell to ring when the eggs with the broken yolks were discovered and she’d be subjected to another dressing down. But Mrs Corbett must have decided she’d had enough that morning and the bell didn’t ring again.

  She was in the laundry, stirring the washing with the dolly, when the bread arrived, delivered by the baker himself in his van. ‘Won’t be doing this much longer,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to get it from the shop. Petrol’s being rationed soon. I say, you look moidered. I reckon they’re working you too hard. ’Bye, love.’

  She hardly heard a word he’d said. She transferred the washing to the sink and rinsed it, then fed each garment twice through the mangle. It was no use hanging the things outside today, so she let down the rack. When everything had been spread as neatly as possible to minimise the ironing, she pulled it back up, something she always found difficult, but it had only gone halfway when she found she could pull it no further. All the strength had gone from her arms. She tried frantically to cling to the rope, but could feel it slipping through her hands, burning the flesh, and the next minute the rack, full of clean clothes, was on the floor.

  Rose fainted.

  When she came to, she was on the bed in her room and Tom Flowers was bending over her.

  ‘Just found you lying on the floor, so I carried you up here,’ he said gruffly, his brown eyes puckered with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her body felt as light as air and her head was swimming. She remembered the washing and tried to sit up, but Tom pushed her down again.

  ‘Stay there,’ he commanded. ‘You need to rest. You’ve been looking fair worn out lately. Mrs Corbett’s a good woman, but she’s expecting too much. There was a time when someone came in to do the laundry and all the maid had to do was clean. Now Mrs Denning’s gone and you’re doing the cooking an’ all. I’ll have a word with the mistress later.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Rose implored. ‘She might give me the sack.’

  ‘Never in a million years, young lady,’ he assured her with a smile. ‘She’d never find a more willing worker than you.’

  Rose burst into tears. ‘But I don’t know what to do with the lamb,’ she sobbed. ‘And how do you make suet pudding?’

  ‘You’ll learn eventually. All women should know how to cook.’ He patted her hand. ‘I’ll get someone to fetch tea.’

  The Clayburn sisters brought the tea, full of sympathy and apologies. ‘We’re sorry about the washing,’ Dolly said, ‘but we were so busy packing and shutting down the house, that we hadn’t done the laundry for days. Evelyn, Mrs Corbett, said to put it in the basket and you’d do it.’

  ‘And I’m sorry I asked for marmalade this morning,’ Daisy put in. ‘When you brought it, you looked rushed off your feet. It’s just that it made such a lovely change, being waited on in bed. We don’t have a maid at home. As from tomorrow, me and Dolly will do the cooking in return for our keep.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rose whispered.

  ‘Evelyn’s quite a kind person, but she’s a bit of a bully – she was at school. Remember, Daise?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ Daisy said in a heartfelt voice. ‘A terrible bully.’

  Later in the day, Mrs Corbett put her head around the door. ‘You should have said you were over-worked,’ she said sourly. ‘It was foolish to just try and keep on until you dropped. From now on, I’ll send the washing to the laundry and the Clayburns will take over the cooking. I’ve just had a phone call from Harker’s. They won’t be delivering groceries any more, so you can start doing the shopping. There’s a bike in the garage. I’ll ask Tom to do it up and get a basket for the front.’

  At first, she was rather wobbly on the bike, but soon got the hang of it. It was lovely cycling along the country lanes early in the morning, whatever the weather, a shopping list in her pocket, always hoping Mrs Corbett had forgotten something, which happened occasionally, and she’d be asked to go again.

  Dolly and Daisy Clayburn were without side and had no qualms about being friendly with a servant. Rose was almost glad she’d fainted. Since then, everything had changed out of all proportion for the better. In May, when she turned sixteen, the sisters made her first birthday cake, a chocolate sponge with her name on in white icing. It tasted wonderful.

  Nowadays, there were only the two of them when Tom Flowers came in for lunch. She couldn’t remember be
ing carried upstairs, but knowing that she had lain in his arms made her think of Tom as someone she could always rely on if ever she was in trouble again. He was the first person to show her any tenderness and she felt grateful.

  Sometimes he came bearing a letter from Colonel Max, who was still in France and always asked after her. She’d give Tom a message to send back. For a long while, the colonel had had little to do except drink wine in the local cafés until the awful day came when Hitler invaded and he was caught up in the vicious fighting. Mrs Corbett was bad-tempered with everyone until, in June, the colonel arrived home to convalesce, having been rescued with a bullet in his shoulder in the great evacuation of Dunkirk.

  ‘Ah, this is what kept me going during the worst of the fighting, the thought of an angel bringing my tea,’ the colonel sighed blissfully when Rose entered his room on his first morning back. ‘I’ve missed you, Rose.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, Colonel. We all have.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re the only one that matters, my dear.’ He sighed again. ‘If only I were younger or you were older! God can be very cruel, Rose.’

  ‘He can indeed, Colonel.’ She had no idea what he was talking about.

  A few weeks later, Mrs Corbett threw a party to celebrate her son’s safe return. Tom Flowers was invited. He was the only man present not wearing a dinner jacket, just a dark suit and tie, and a dazzling white shirt. Rose, whose job it was to take the drinks around the crowded room, thought he looked incredibly handsome, if a trifle uncomfortable, in such exalted company. She stopped in front of him. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  ‘No, ta. I only drink beer.’

  ‘There’s some in the kitchen. Shall I fetch it?’