Chapter 12
Without Tony to do battle with, Bobby made good progress that day.
By the time noon arrived, she had managed to type up the letters, sub the knitting pattern and recipe for the women’s page and finish her piece on blacksmiths.
She was regarding it with satisfaction when the door opened and George Parry appeared.
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ he said when he saw her. ‘Frightfully rude of me not to knock. I thought you would have gone home. I just came to check the typewriters hadn’t been left here. It looks as though we might have some snow tonight.’
‘That’s thoughtful of you,’ Bobby said. ‘Sorry to be lingering on your property after working hours. I was just finishing off an article.’
‘Stay as long as you like,’ the captain said in his usual gallant, soft-spoken way. ‘I’m glad this old shed of ours is some use.’
‘It’s good of you to let us use it, and store the typewriters in the house. I’d have done myself an injury carrying my Remington from home every day.’
‘It’s the least I can do, when all of you have been so kind to my girls. I’m only glad there’s some little thing I can offer in return.’ He blushed slightly. ‘Speaking of which… is your brother-in-law not here?’
‘No, I sent him out to get an interview. Why?’
‘Ah. Good. Then I don’t need to feel embarrassed about giving you these.
’ He took a packet from his coat, a little stiffly due to the shoulder wound he had received at Dunkirk.
‘Lilian informed me that they’d be appreciated by the womenfolk.
I’ll be highly insulted if you offer to pay for them so please don’t. ’
‘Oh! Stockings!’ Bobby had to restrain herself from diving over her desk to snatch the precious packet from his hand. ‘That’s really too kind of you, George.’
‘Like I said, I owe your family a lot.’ He smiled. ‘If I can’t pay you back with a few perks of the job, then what can I do?’
Bobby smiled too. ‘Well, they’ll be appreciated. It’s ever so long since I had a new pair. Thank you.’
She was grateful for the stockings, but there was also a feeling Bobby couldn’t quite put her finger on. Relief, she supposed. Relief that George had given them to her directly and not to Lilian, as he had with the knicker elastic.
She didn’t know why it should worry her.
It was Lilian who minded the girls after school, so naturally it was Lilian he had most contact with of the women in the family.
Bobby knew a friendship had sprung up between her sister and George Parry, but it wasn’t one she had felt she need be concerned about.
Lilian was younger than Mary, and in the absence of his wife, George felt less embarrassed consulting her about the girls’ problems than he would the older matron.
That was perfectly natural, and besides, George Parry was hardly someone who would form designs on a married woman.
Everyone who knew the man spoke of him as a paragon of honour and decency.
Nevertheless, the idea of George giving intimate gifts like stockings and knicker elastic to Lilian and Lilian alone – even with the intention that she passed them on – unsettled Bobby.
She still recalled the fur coat he had given her sister the previous summer, and how it had worried her that he would make her a present of such an expensive item.
At the very least, it could give rise to gossip that might cause tension for Lilian at home.
Rumours soon spread in a place like Silverdale.
‘I did wonder if I might find the girls here,’ George said, pulling Bobby from her thoughts. ‘Veronica’s in the house waiting to meet them.’
That was another thing. The captain was spoken for now, and there was no reason to worry that his friendship with Lilian might be anything other than strictly platonic.
He and Veronica Simpson had been walking out for nearly a month, with every sign that things were becoming serious.
The fact he had brought her home to meet his daughters seemed to confirm this.
‘Lilian was taking them shopping today,’ she told him. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll be much longer. Lil was planning to have them home before dinnertime.’
‘Oh yes, their shopping trip. It slipped my mind. In that case I’ll do my best to entertain the guest until they arrive. You’ll join us when they do, I hope?’
‘I’ll certainly stop in and say hello, if I won’t be intruding.’
‘Of course not. You and your sister are both welcome. We’re all family now.’
Bobby smiled. ‘I suppose we are. I never had a large family growing up, but I seem to have acquired one since I moved to the Dales.’
‘No, nor I,’ the captain said, smiling back. ‘Yet here we are.’
He said goodbye and left. Bobby started tidying away, pondering what the captain’s lady friend would be like. She had seen Miss Simpson on a few occasions but never been formally introduced. She wondered if the girls knew that their father’s glamorous new friend was waiting to meet them.
Before she could leave the hut, however, a deluge arrived: not only Lilian and the girls, but Reg and Mary too. The children piled in with Lil. It was a tight squeeze, and Reg and Mary were forced to wait outside at the bottom of the steps.
‘Well! What are you all doing here?’ Bobby asked. ‘I was about to lock up.’
‘Young Scott turned up with a report for me on that drama festival,’ Reg called. ‘Thought I’d see how things were getting along, seeing as Mary’s banned work talk over Sunday dinner.’
Bobby frowned. ‘Tony came to you with the report?’
‘Aye. Told him to leave it on your desk Monday morning for subbing.’
‘He might have left it on my desk this afternoon,’ Bobby muttered. She had hoped they’d taken a step forward that morning when Tony had asked her for instructions, but it seemed he still hadn’t accepted that it was her and not Reg who was responsible for approving his copy.
‘Not much room for us in there,’ Reg observed. He turned to Mary. ‘Come on, our lass. We’ll take a turn around the garden while the bairns tell Bobby their news, eh?’
‘Aye, I wouldn’t mind seeing how those chicks I gave Jess are getting along.’ Mary took her husband’s arm and they sauntered off.
‘Your father’s expecting you at the house, girls,’ Bobby said to Jess and Florrie. ‘He was just here looking for you.’
‘Florrie wanted to show you something before they went in,’ Lilian said. ‘I told her she’d have to wipe it off before her dad saw her.’
‘What is it, Florrie?’ Bobby asked.
‘Can’t you see?’ Florrie pouted like a star of the silver screen, and Bobby noticed that the child’s lips were significantly pinker than usual.
‘Oh! You got some lipstick?’
Florrie nodded eagerly. ‘Aunty Lil bought it me. Dad told her she could, only I’m not supposed to wear it outside.’
Bobby raised an eyebrow at her sister. ‘Aunty Lil, is it?’
Lilian shook her head to suggest they ought to discuss the newly conferred title when they were alone.
‘Do I look grown-up?’ Florrie asked Bobby.
‘Yes, very glamorous indeed,’ Bobby said with a smile. ‘Be sure to save it for special occasions though. Lipstick’s hard to get hold of these days.’
‘When will I be old enough to wear lipstick, Aunty Lil?’ Jessie asked.
‘Not for a few years yet, I’m afraid, Jess,’ Lil said. ‘But if we do a play, perhaps a little stage make-up.’
Jessie clapped her hands. ‘Ooh, yes, let’s do a play!
We can practise when you look after us. A pantomime like the one Bobby was in.
I’ll be Cinderella, Florrie can be Prince Charming, you’ll be Wicked Stepmother and Annie can be…
’ Jessie paused, thinking back to the plays she had seen over Christmas. ‘Um, Baby Jesus.’
‘That sounds an interesting pantomime,’ Bobby said with a laugh. ‘Now, Florrie, you had better wipe off your lipstick and run up to the house. Your dad’s got someone there who’s come especially to see you both.’
Florrie scowled. ‘It’s not her, is it?’
‘That depends on who her is.’
‘That lady he goes out with. Veronica.’ Florrie said the name in an affected, singsong voice, as if this was the way she imagined Veronica would talk. ‘We don’t want to meet her. She’s always taking Dad away from us. And she’s trying to get him to forget our ma, I know it.’
‘Now, Flor, that isn’t fair,’ Lilian said gently, resting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Miss Simpson isn’t trying to take your mother’s place. She’s just someone whose company makes your dad happy. You want him to be happy, don’t you?’
‘Me and Jess make Dad happy,’ Florrie muttered. ‘He don’t need no one else.’
‘But you won’t always be at home with him. One day you’ll be grown-up, and leave to have families of your own,’ Lilian pointed out. ‘Wouldn’t you like to meet Miss Simpson? I bet she knows lots about make-up and things. She’s ever so pretty, like a film star.’
‘If Dad wants to get married again, he should marry you or Bobby,’ Jessie said, a black look on her face too. ‘We’d like it much better if you lived with us than her.’
Bobby laughed. ‘I think our husbands might have some objections.’
‘Well, all right,’ Jess conceded grudgingly. ‘But it don’t have to be her though.’
‘Why not meet her before you make up your mind?’ Lilian suggested.
‘I’m sure if your dad likes her, she must be a rather special person.
It would grieve him if you went into a pet after he’s brought his new friend especially to meet you.
And since you’re both so grown-up now, it would be the mature thing to do. ’
‘Wellllll, I suppose,’ Florrie said, her dislike of this perceived usurper of her father’s affections doing battle with her desire to prove she deserved her new grown-up status. ‘We’ll be nice to her if she’s nice to us. But I wish she hadn’t come.’
‘You’ll like her once you get to know her.’ Lilian handed the child a handkerchief. ‘Here. Wipe off your lipstick and go on in. It isn’t polite to keep her waiting.’
Reluctantly, Florrie wiped her lips clean and the two girls ran off to the house.