Better Days will Come. Pam Weaver

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СКАЧАТЬ she had to wear frayed jumpers and eat half a potato for her dinner for the rest of her life. She still had her pride and her good name, for God’s sake.

      As well as the potato shortage, there was a paper shortage and the butcher had said there was little hope of poultry being on the menu for Christmas, unless, of course, she wanted to use the black market. Grace had never done that. She didn’t want to do it on principle and besides, they charged such high prices.

      Rita burst through the door in a state of high excitement and, hardly stopping to draw breath, she blurted out that she’d been to Hubbard’s.

      ‘Whatever for?’ Grace wanted to know.

      ‘I thought someone might be able to tell me something about Bonnie, Mum.’

      Grace stiffened. ‘And did they?’

      ‘Not exactly,’ said Rita. ‘When I got there, the girl in the office thought I had come for an interview.’

      Grace lowered herself onto a chair. ‘We always said you would leave school at Easter.’

      ‘I know, Mum, but hear me out, will you? This woman – she had tightly permed hair and a big tummy like you wouldn’t believe – she rattled off so many questions, I could hardly think straight. She looked such a sight, Mum.’ Rita waved her arms and strutted about, mimicking the woman and making her mother smile, in spite of herself.

      ‘What sort of questions?’

      ‘Was I punctual, did I have a clean bill of health, did I have clean habits, was I teachable and how would I treat a difficult customer. By the time I cottoned on to what was happening, Mum, I felt too embarrassed to say anything. So I ended up being marched up to the ladies’ fashion department.’

      By this time, Grace was laughing.

      ‘It’s so different now,’ Rita went on. ‘There’s no trace of the fire and it looks really classy.’

      The whole town had been stunned by the fire which ripped through Hubbard’s in the early hours of Wednesday 22nd August. The upper floors had been totally gutted and the damage below was extensive. The fire itself was put out in less than an hour but it took no less than twenty fire crews to do the job, some coming from as far away as Crawley. The family firm reopened the store in time for Christmas, just, and although they had paid their staff since the fire, it was rumoured that they were already short-staffed.

      ‘I was only there five minutes when I was introduced to Miss Bridewell, the manageress,’ Rita went on, her eyes dancing with excitement. ‘“Would you consider being a Saturday girl, Miss Rogers?”’ Rita mimicked her affected accent. ‘“The run up to Christmas can be hectic and you seem a very capable gel.”’

      Grace stopped laughing and put her hand to her mouth. Rita was a bright girl. She had passed the eleven-plus and made it to the grammar school and for that reason, Grace had wanted Rita do an extra year, but she would be sixteen in February. Was it time to let her go out to work?

      ‘But what about your weekends at the Railway Café?’

      Rita worked there every Saturday morning, clearing tables and helping with the washing up. The owners Salvatore and Liliana Semadini, Italians, had taken over in 1945. Before then it had always been a rather dingy place and not very clean but with Salvatore’s cheerfully optimistic outlook, it had completely changed. Liliana was a brilliant cook who could make a little go a very long way.

      ‘I’m sure they’ll understand,’ said Rita doggedly.

      Her mother wasn’t about to give up so easily. ‘And then there’s secretarial college? We had such plans …’

      ‘Mum, they were your plans, not mine. Oh please let me go. This is an opportunity too good to miss. I like being around people. You know me, I like talking. If I was in a typing pool, I wouldn’t be allowed to say a word to a soul all day.’

      ‘But being able to type opens up all sorts of possibilities,’ Grace insisted.

      ‘Miss Bridewell said if I suit, I can start as a full-time shop assistant in January. January 5th. It’s a Monday.’

      Grace couldn’t think straight. This was a disappointment because from the moment they were born, she had such plans for her girls. The war had changed everything. There were such good opportunities for women in the jobs market now. She knew Bonnie had wanted to be a nursery nurse, and Grace had been happy with that, but now that the girl had gone, would she get her training? She couldn’t do anything about Bonnie but she could do something about Rita. Grace knew that if Rita could get a secretarial post, she would never have the kind of worries about money that she had endured. Shop work was all well and good but it didn’t pay very well.

      Rita was pressing for an answer. ‘So what do you say, Mum?’

      There was no doubt that having Rita at work would be a godsend. Her money would make up the shortfall without Bonnie’s wage. Grace was already behind on the coal money and if they had another winter like last year and had to cut down any more, they’d both freeze to death long before the spring came.

      ‘Mum?’

      ‘I still want you to learn to type,’ Grace insisted.

      ‘I can go to night classes.’

      Grace made a big thing of giving in, but in truth she was relieved. She agreed to let Rita become a Saturday girl for the whole of December and to begin in the fashion department on January 5th.

      Bonnie was as content as she could be under the circumstances but she missed her home in Worthing and she missed her mother and Rita terribly. As she walked around the shops in Oxford Street on her afternoon off, she was missing her friend Dinah as well. How they would have loved trying on the dresses and taking tea in Lyons Corner House together.

      Up until now, the full extent of bomb damage in the capital had eluded her. There had been several bombing incidents in Worthing but nothing on the scale she saw in London. Large areas were screened off but the obvious gap in the buildings told her straight away where a house or a shop was missing. Although it was strictly forbidden, the bombsites were swarming with boys playing war games and cowboys and Indians. In some areas, whole streets had been reduced to rubble. Shortages of building materials meant that rebuilding the nation’s capital was a slow business.

      Shortages of other commodities were acute as well. Women still found it necessary to queue for hours outside a butcher’s or a grocer’s and Bonnie was surprised to see that large areas of public parks were still given over to allotments. There were few cars on the streets either. Petrol rationing kept their numbers down to a bare minimum.

      Bonnie was lonely and friendless but the money in her post office account was mounting up. She was careful not to spend a shilling more than she had to. Once her waistline started to expand it wouldn’t be long before she’d have to dip into her savings in order to live. Soon she’d have to find a place where she could go to have the baby and then there was the thorny problem of what she would do after that. Where would she live? More importantly how could she take care of the baby and support them both?

      When these things weren’t swirling around in her head, Bonnie struggled with a terrible ache in her heart. Why, oh why hadn’t her romance with George worked out? What had she done wrong? She couldn’t … wouldn’t believe he was a rotter. Hadn’t he told her time and again how much she meant to СКАЧАТЬ