Chapter Twelve

I was just on my way back to the office, dodging through the stalls of the midweek market, when I saw a familiar figure in her brown coat. Carol was struggling with a basket, a string bag full of vegetables, and a brown paper carrier bag as well. ‘Here, let me take one of those.’

‘Oh hello, Rosie. Thanks. I got a bit carried away, all these carrots and potatoes.’

I took the string bag from her. A little shower of soil fell to the ground. You don’t often see vegetables with soil on now, do you, unless you shop at the farmers’ market.

‘Libby not with you?’

‘No, she’s playing at a neighbour’s house so I thought I’d take the chance to dash into town. You been doing anything interesting?’

‘An exhibition at the town hall. Very boring.’

‘Can’t always be murders and shootings then. Bit too exciting that, if you ask me.’

‘Billy was brilliant, Carol, absolutely brilliant. So calm and brave. Littlejohn was so unpredictable, he could have done anything, but Billy really calmed him down. Weren’t you worried about him?’

‘No, because by the time I knew about it, it was over, wasn’t it? And he was all right. No point worrying over something that didn’t happen. Let’s just be thankful that little girl was safe and didn’t get hurt. Sad about the young lad though, but mind you, he sounded a bit of a rotter. Leading that girl on and walking out on her. Poor cow. I don’t know what I’d have done if Billy’d walked out on me. Still, it didn’t happen, so no point worrying about it. Look, I can manage from here, if you’ve got to get back to work.’

‘No, it’s all right. It’s a pretty quiet morning and they’re not expecting me back yet anyway.’

‘Fancy a cuppa?’

‘Why not?’

We walked companionably on, carrying the shopping between us, along the narrow street and down the hill into the low, dark, damp house. I glanced up at the garden.

‘Billy spent all yesterday evening fussing on with that old shed,’ said Carol, pushing open the door. ‘I think he’s wasting his time, it’s had it. Still, he might treat himself to a new one when we move.’

I tried to imagine Will getting excited over a shed. Tricky. Not quite as sexy as a wide-screen plasma TV.

In the kitchen – the mouldering smell of damp hit me as I walked in – Carol moved the kettle from the hearth and put it on the fire – on the actual coals. She gave them a quick poke and soon the coals were glowing and the kettle steaming.

‘Ugh! What’s that?’

A large bowl on the wooden draining board seemed to be full of swirling blood and raw flesh, with some very functional-looking tubes. Carol looked surprised. ‘Hearts, soaking for supper.’

‘Hearts? You’ll eat them?’

‘Yes, haven’t you ever had them? Got a bit of stuffing for them. Very tasty.’

She lifted the kettle off the coals, made the tea and put the pot down on the table. I sat down, with my back to the bowl with the hearts in. Despite the gloom, it was a cosy kitchen. There was a jug of daffodils on the windowsill, a brightly-coloured rug in front of the fire, and pretty patchwork cushions on the chairs.

On the arm of the chair next to the table, half hidden by a Sooty glove puppet, was a library book.

‘Oh, who’s reading Lucky Jim?’

‘Billy He’s really enjoying it. Says I’ll like it when he’s finished.’

‘It’s one of Will’s favourites.’

‘Tell me about this Will then,’ she said, pouring the tea.

‘Well, he’s very like Billy. Very like. Amazingly like.’

‘Are you going to get married?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure he’s ready for it yet. Not to settle down.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Same age as Billy.’

Carol laughed.

‘Well that’s old enough. Billy and me have been married for eleven years.’

‘Yes, but it’s sort of different.’

‘Is he good to you?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Does he make you laugh?’

‘Often.’

‘Is he kind, generous?’

‘Very.’

‘And is he, you know, do you like him, does he make you go tingly all over?’

‘Oh yes, definitely!’

‘Then what are you waiting for, girl, snap him up!’

‘But what if he doesn’t want to be snapped up?’ I put my cup back in its saucer and looked at Carol. I really wanted to know the answer.

‘Oh men do. There’s not many men that’s happy on their own. They pretend they want to be roaring lads off with their mates, but really, they just want a family to look after. They want someone they can trust beside them. You know what they say, “Behind every great man is a woman”. Well, they need us. Useless without us.’

‘Where I come from, a lot of men don’t get married. Women neither. They might just live together for a while, sort of semi-detached.’

‘Oho, try before you buy, is it?’

‘No, not like that. It’s sort of more short-term. You can give each other lots of space.’

‘Space?’ Carol glanced around the crowded kitchen. ‘Space?’

‘Well, not thinking too far ahead. Lots of women choose not to have children. They have jobs, same jobs as the men.’

‘Someone’s got to look after the kids though, haven’t they? That’s why I’m going to work at the school. Fits in nicely. Don’t want my lot to be latch-key kids.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Anyway, you don’t want to be left on the shelf. If this Will is anything like Billy, what are you waiting for?’

‘I don’t know any more. I really don’t know. When I see him again …’ I imagined Will in front of me. But it was hard, as he kept getting confused with Billy. I shook my head to clear the vision.

‘Anyway, I’m going out with Phil tonight. Just to the pictures. Nothing, you know … just as a friend really.’

‘Ooh, what would your Will say about that? Still, what the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve over. You have a good time while you can. But he’s a nice lad, Phil, so don’t you go leading him on and breaking his heart.’

‘That is the last thing I want to do. It’s just a night out. But I’d better get back to work. Thanks for the tea.’

‘Any time. Enjoy yourself tonight.’ She was already wrapping her apron around her, ready to tackle that heap of vegetables and the bleeding hearts.

Phil had been looking at me knowingly all day and every now and then, despite myself, I’d feel quite excited. Well, excited is probably too strong a word, but anticipatory perhaps. And then I’d look at Billy and know that he was the only man I ever wanted, and that it was pointless to go out with anyone else. But it was better than sitting at home at the Browns’, watching the tiny black-and-white TV screen. So, when Phil came along to my desk to collect all my ready copy, and grinned shyly saying, ‘I’m ready to go now,’ I went along to the tiny awkward cloakroom and had a wash and cleaned my teeth and did my best with the make-up.

Feeling a bit fresher, if not exactly glammed up for a night on the razz, I came back to the newsroom.

‘Oh ho, so that’s the way it is then, is it?’ said Charlie the Chief Photographer as we walked out together. Billy looked up from his typewriter and gave me a strange look. Our eyes met, and for a moment, I thought he was going to ask what I was doing and try to stop me. He frowned, then forced a quick smile. ‘Enjoy the film,’ he said.

‘We shall!’ yelled Phil back at him and we manoeuvred our way down the chaotic narrow stairs.

Downstairs, outside on the pavement, he hesitated for a moment, a bit unsure. Not as unsure as I was. I mean I’d never been on a 1950s date. Come to that, not even my parents had been on a 1950s date. And I had never talked to my grandparents about dating …

‘I thought we’d get something to eat at the Odeon,’ said Phil.

‘Oh, can you eat there?’

‘Yes, they’ve got a café upstairs. It’s about the only place you can get food at this time of night. The Copper Kettle’s closed. Silvino has the back place open, but that’s full of kids.’

‘Right. The Odeon it is.’

The Odeon was a wonderful old cinema. All red plush and gold curly bits. Two huge staircases curved up on either side of the foyer. In the middle was a tiny little booth of a box office where Phil bought our tickets. The best in the house – 3/9 each, which isn’t even twenty pence in modern money. We went up one of the staircases – it felt terribly grand – and found ourselves in a café. One wall had windows overlooking the street and the other had windows that looked out over the auditorium, so you could sit there and eat and watch the film if you liked.

I was longing to eat something spicy or garlicky. Everything I’d eaten lately seemed to have been so bland. Some garlic ciabatta or a Thai green curry would have gone down a treat.

The menu offered poached egg on toast, scrambled egg on toast, cheese on toast, beans on toast, sardines on toast, mushrooms on toast, tomato soup, or ham sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, egg sandwiches. Right. No low-carb diet here then.

‘What are you having?’ I asked Phil.

‘Poached egg on toast for me.’

‘I’ll have the same please.’

‘And a pot of tea for two,’ said Phil to the middle-aged waitress in dusty black dress and white pinny.

I ate my poached egg, drank my tea and thought wistfully of our local curry house …

‘So how did you get to be a reporter then?’ asked Phil.

I told him about my A levels and the degree and the post-grad course.

‘You did a degree? Just to be a reporter? And then spent another year learning all about it?’ Phil was so astonished he had difficulty not spraying egg everywhere.

‘Well yes. It’s the usual way now.’

‘But you must have been twenty-two when you got your first job.’

‘Yes. Twenty-two and a half when I started on the Swaledale Courant’.

‘Blimey, I’d been working seven years by then. Eight if you count all the stuff I did when I was still at school.’

‘What, you were writing for The News when you were fifteen?’

‘Fourteen actually. Did sports reports, not that there was much sport on during the war. And I wrote pieces about the concerts and the fund-raising efforts until in the end old Mr Henfield was asking me to do things official like. There weren’t many people around. He was glad of anything really. So I just did what I could. Taught myself to type and learnt shorthand at evening classes.’

‘Have you been on The News ever since?’

‘Apart from national service, yes. I keep thinking I might go to Fleet Street, but I’m not sure. What I’d really like to do is go to Australia. All that sunshine would be wonderful.’

And he hadn’t even seen Neighbours.

Our eggs and toast finished, I realised Phil was waiting for me to be ‘mother’ and pour the tea.

‘You could make your name in Fleet Street,’ I said, passing him his tea.

‘Well, there was a chap in the army. He’s on the Express now. He says there’s a job there for me if I want it.’

‘Go for it!’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘Of course I do. A job in Fleet Street! No question. You’re young, single. You’re a good journalist. Have you anything to keep you here? Family?’

‘Well, there’s my parents, but I’ve got two sisters who live locally. They’re both married with kids so Mum and Dad wouldn’t be short of people to keep an eye on them.’

‘Do you want to be on The News for ever?’

‘No. I mean I like it well enough, but there are other places, aren’t there? Other things to do? When I was in the army I met all sorts of different blokes, and here, well, here I just meet the people I’ve always known. Or who know the people I’ve always known. That’s why it was so great when you came here. You’re so different, from the other side of the world with different ideas, a different way of doing things. I really like that.’

Oh dear, he was beginning to look at me. Meaningfully. I wasn’t sure I could cope.

‘You’d love it in London,’ I said quickly. ‘All those new people, all those stories. And a real chance to make your name. You could be famous, get to cover all the big stories. And you could do it. You’re as good as any of the national people.’

‘Well, I could have a go. I know I’d be as good as my mate on the Express and he’s doing all right for himself.’

‘Well there you are then. Go for it. It could be great.’

‘It would, wouldn’t it?’ he grinned. ‘Well maybe I shall.’ He paid the bill – refusing my offer to go halves – and we went in to see the film.

It was Blackboard Jungle, and had music with Bill Haley.

‘Best be careful,’ said Phil, ‘when they showed this in some places the teddy boys started ripping the seats.’

‘Oh, a riot. Be a good story though wouldn’t it?’

He laughed as he led the way to the seats.

I was looking forward to seeing Blackboard Jungle. I remembered watching it at about two in the morning when I’d come in from a not very good party. That would have been tricky to explain to Phil … But when the film started it wasn’t Blackboard Jungle at all, but some feeble cowboy film. I was about to tell Phil we were in the wrong studio when I realised that this was the supporting film, the B movie.

There was an interval and we had an ice cream and then settled down for the main feature. When the titles rolled and the Bill Haley music blasted out, a group of kids near the front yelled and whistled and tried to bop a bit, but everyone else told them to ‘hush!’ and the usherette came down the aisles with a big torch and said loudly, ‘Any nonsense from you lot and you’re OUT,’ and they all settled down quietly again.

‘No riots here then,’ whispered Phil. ‘Think we’ve missed our page one lead tomorrow.’

‘Unless it’s “Usherette curbs teenage gang violence with her torch”’, I whispered back. I could just see Phil’s grin in the dark.

‘Good thing our schools aren’t like that, eh?’ he said later.

I thought of the story I’d done on The Meadows before the new headmistress had arrived there. Disaster. Kids on strike, drugs in school, stabbing in the playground. Mayhem. ‘Oh yeah, good thing,’ I whispered back.

When the lights went up, Phil grabbed my hand. ‘Come on!’ he urged and we scuttled out. Odd, I thought, then I heard a creaky rendition of the National Anthem and those people who weren’t leaving, like us, were in their places, standing to attention. Sliding out just ahead of us were Leo/Lenny and Peggy. They must have been sitting a few rows behind us.

‘Well, that’s something I thought I’d never see,’ said Phil. ‘Still, nowt so queer as folk, as they say.’ He looked at me in a sort of knowing way.

I smiled quickly, to show I understood, but after my very awkward conversation with Billy, I said nothing. It was dark now, and the town was quiet. There were just a few people coming from the cinema and leaving pubs, shouting their goodnights. The evening was over, people were clearly heading for home. I wished I was going home, proper home, wandering along the pavement with my arms wrapped around Will, after something as ordinary as a film. Home together. We could have a nightcap, curl up on the sofa together, go to bed …

I missed him so much I almost gasped with the pain of it. Instead, here I was with Phil, who was a perfectly nice, decent sort of bloke. But he wasn’t Will.

I looked at my watch.

‘What time do the pubs shut?’ I asked Phil.

‘Ten o’clock,’ he said.

Too late even for a drink. Probably just as well.

After we left the town centre, we seemed to have the night and the streets to ourselves. Two buses pulled away from the Market Place, but there were only a handful of cars around. It was very peaceful. The noise of our footsteps echoed along the silent houses, until we got to the Browns’.

So what happens now? I wondered. ‘I’m not sure if I can ask you in,’ I said. ‘It’s not my house and …’

‘It’s all right, don’t worry,’ said Phil. He too looked hesitant.

‘Well it’s been a nice evening,’ he said.

‘Yes it has,’ I said, and meant it. ‘Thank you very much. And you should definitely have a crack at the Express. Really.’

‘Yes I think I might, but don’t mention it to the others, will you?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘No well, thank you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘See you tomorrow then.’

‘Yes, see you tomorrow.’

He shifted his mac, which he had been carrying, from arm to arm and back again, then said again, ‘Right. Well, see you tomorrow then.’

‘Yes.’

‘Goodnight Rosie.’

‘Goodnight Phil.’

He turned and strode off up the road, leaving me with the key in the lock, wondering about not even getting a goodnight kiss …

Phil was a friendly face around the office, however. Someone to share a joke with, nip out for a coffee with. He was a lovely straightforward sort of chap and easy to talk to. Gordon had been a lech. Henfield still was. Alan more or less ignored me, and after that first disastrous evening, I avoided the sub editors as much as possible. Phil was the nearest to normal I had.

I was into the 1950s way of working now, adapted to a very different rhythm to the one I was used to. For a start, the phones didn’t ring as often. People were more likely to turn up at the office, so I was constantly running up and down the stairs to see them. Or we would be out and about a lot more. Many of the people we interviewed didn’t have a telephone, or wouldn’t be comfortable interviewed that way. It was all face to face.

I didn’t keep stopping to check texts on my phone – still dead and useless. And, above all, there was no internet, no emails, no constant bombardment of information and press releases and news flashes. It was surprisingly restful. You could get on with doing something in your own time without constantly checking your in-box. Getting information was tricky, but up on the top floor, the librarians waded through files and cuttings and found out most of what we wanted.

It just wasn’t instant. No one expected things to be instant. And after a while, neither did I. All our twenty-first-century toys were designed to save us time and energy, so why were the 1950s so much less stressful? Weird. I would love to have talked about it to someone, if not Will, then Phil, but I wouldn’t have known where to begin.

‘You know I’ll be going back home soon,’ I said to him one day as we’d sneaked out for a coffee. ‘And you’ll be off to Fleet Street.’

He looked crestfallen for barely a second as his thoughts of a future with me fought with a future in Fleet Street. To my relief, Fleet Street won hands down. ‘I’ve gathered some cuttings together, to show what I can do,’ he said. ‘I’m going to send them to my mate so he can show them to his editor.’

‘Good move,’ I said.

Phil was straightforward enough. As for Billy … it was tricky being alone with him. I found it hard remembering how to behave, hard to behave naturally. Sometimes I could feel him watching me, but when I looked he was always intent on his story on the typewriter. Until one day I must have been quicker and caught his glance. And what a glance.

We gazed at each other across the newsroom. It was no ordinary look. I could feel myself blushing. With that Phil came in with a bag of currant buns.

‘Feeding time at the zoo,’ he announced, offering the bag around, ‘courtesy of Councillor Armstrong, baker of this parish. Hopeless councillor but, luckily, a very good baker.’

He bowled a bun to Billy who batted it away with a ruler. Instinctively I reached up and caught it, to cheers from them both.

‘Owzat!’ shouted Phil. Billy smiled. An ordinary friendly sort of smile, which was both a relief and a disappointment to me.

A sort of camaraderie developed. But the real breakthrough came a few days later.

Billy was in with Smarmy Henfield. Alan was at a council meeting, and Phil was on the phone. The office was quiet and peaceful. I was typing away at some odds and ends of stories, when a messenger came up from reception to say there were two ladies downstairs who wanted to talk to a reporter. Off I went.

‘Theatricals,’ said the young messenger knowingly. Certainly the girls had stage presence. They were about eighteen years old, very smartly dressed and very heavily made up, with vivid red-painted nails. In the dusty reception area of The News they looked positively exotic.

‘Are you a reporter?’ one of them asked me, eyeing me up and down and not looking terribly impressed. ‘A proper reporter?’

I assured them I was.

‘Well we’ve got a story to tell and we want it told. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’

‘No he shouldn’t,’ said the other.

‘We’re decent girls.’

‘Never heard of such a thing.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said gently, ‘if you were to start at the beginning …’

Their names, they told me, with perfectly straight faces, were Marcella and Loulou. They were actresses with a touring company that was appearing at the Civic. I’d seen the notices and the reviews. It wasn’t going well. It was a sort of French farce, I think.

‘We play the maids,’ said Loulou, or it may have been Marcella. ‘We wear very short skirts that show off our assets.’

I bet, I thought.

‘But we have a lot of lines to say. We’re actresses.’

‘We can sing too.’

‘And dance.’

‘We used to be Dinky Diamond Dancers, but that was when we were young. Now we are developing our careers.’

‘Good for you. So what’s the problem?’

‘Mr Hennessey.’

‘He runs the company.’

‘It’s not going well. Hardly anyone in the audience even though he’s given tickets away.’

‘Hardly a snigger when he drops his trousers.’

‘Even though he’s wearing huge spotty underpants.’

‘So he said,’ and here their brassy confidence faltered a little. ‘He told us.’

‘That it would be better if, instead of him taking his clothes off, we did it.’

‘If you did it?’ I looked up sharply from my notebook. ‘He wants you to take your clothes off on stage?’

‘Yes. He says we’ll be behind a screen – sort of hiding –when one of the wives comes in.’

‘Then the juvenile lead rushes in and “accidentally” knocks the screen over. And there we are.’

‘With nothing on.’

‘As nature intended.’

‘My mum will kill me.’

‘My dad’ll disown me.’

‘But he said it will get the audiences in. All the men will come.’

‘Good clean family fun, he says.’

‘But we don’t want to do it.’

‘We’re not going to.’

‘We’ve got principles.’

‘So we’re going home. Leaving the company.’

‘Right,’ I said, trying to sort this out. ‘Your boss wants you to be naked on stage and you don’t want to be, so you’re walking out. That seems sensible. So what’s the problem?’

‘He hasn’t paid us.’

‘Not for four weeks.’

‘Says there’s no money and there won’t be unless we take our clothes off.’

‘No punters, no pay, he says.’

‘And certainly not what’s owed us.’

‘We’re actresses, not strippers.’

‘Why should we?’

Exactly. The phrases ‘constructive dismissal’ and ‘sexual harassment’ floated around in my head, but I didn’t even think about it. Not where we were.

Instead, I got Charlie down to take a picture of the girls who, serious actresses that they were, pulled their skirts up above the knee and puckered up provocatively. I went around to see their actor manager, who was a slimy little beast. It was hard to imagine him as a jovial cove in huge spotty underpants. He was also a calculating old rogue and knew the value of publicity. He said if the girls would come back until the end of the run – another two weeks – even with their clothes on, he’d pay them all he owed them and they would be free to go.

‘And what about some compensation?’

He looked at me angrily.

‘What do you mean compensation?’

‘I mean you’ve upset those girls, bullied them into walking out of their jobs. Not to mention the fact you haven’t paid them for a month.’

‘Upset? Those two? Hard as nails, the little trollops. They’re lucky to have a job at all. Have you seen the way they move on stage? Like baby bloody elephants. No one’s queuing up to give those two jobs, believe me. And don’t tell me that they wouldn’t show all they’ve got if they had the chance. They’d have gone to Fanshaw’s Follies and worn nothing more than a few feathers and a smile if they could. But they haven’t got the ankles.’

I thought ankles were probably the most irrelevant qualification, but no matter.

You could see the actor/manager was dreadfully torn between paying up and the chance to turn bad publicity into excellent publicity. His business brain finally won. Eventually, we agreed that the girls would get all the wages due to them today, and that if they stayed to the end of the run, they’d get an extra fiver each.

‘How can I pay them if the punters don’t come in?’

‘But you can, because they will. And you know that. But you’d better not bully any more young girls.’

The deal was done– maybe I’d missed my vocation as a trade union leader or UN negotiator – and I was quite pleased with myself. The girls were waiting for me in Silvino’s, and they took about five seconds to agree to the deal, so I went back to the office, and shared the story with the others. We were all laughing about it as I typed it up.

‘Good result. Good story,’ said Billy. ‘But you realise that they’d probably have been quite happy to strip off if the price had been right?’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’ I actually wasn’t so sure. ‘But if they’re going to do it, let them do it on their own terms, not bullied by some weaselly little beast.’

The men, of course, were suddenly all volunteering to be theatre reviewers.

‘Boys, boys, what sorry lives you lead,’ I said. I was just typing the last sentence when Billy came over.

‘Phil and I are going over to The Fleece,’ he said. ‘Fancy joining us?’ His eyes were still smiling from our laughter. Phil came and stood alongside him, smiling too.

‘Yes come on, Rosie. I think we’ve all deserved a drink today.’

This, believe it or not, was the first time I had been invited to the pub with the lads. A couple of them went over most days, sometimes after work too, but they had never asked me. I don’t know if they ever asked Marje. She always seemed to be scuttling off with her string bag to do her shopping. And I’d missed it. Not the pub necessarily, but the companionship I suppose, being part of a team.

So yes, I jumped at the chance to go to the pub. I ripped my story out of the typewriter, folded it ready to go to the subs, and grabbed my bag.

‘Afternoon, Jack,’ said Phil as we walked into the small bar. ‘Two pints of the usual, and … what would you like Rosie?’

‘Cider please.’

‘And a half of cider.’

Who said I wanted a half? But I wasn’t going to argue. See, I already knew my place.

‘So who’s this then?’ asked the landlord as he pulled the pints.

‘This is Miss Rosie Harford, a visiting journalist from America.’

‘I’m not …’ and I gave up again.

Phil got some crisps and we all sat in the corner and laughed again at the story of Marcella and Loulou. We had a game of darts and shared the last two curling cheese sandwiches, from under a plastic dome on the counter. Billy bought another and then, when the glasses were empty again, I got up. ‘My turn,’ I said, getting my purse out.

The landlord looked surprised, and Billy and Phil both objected.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I insist. Where I come from, if we work we pay our turn.’

‘Can we accept that?’ said Billy, turning to Phil in mock seriousness.

‘Do you know,’ said Phil, equally serious, equally mocking, ‘I think we can.’ And they took their pints.

‘Cheers,’ said Phil companionably.

Billy raised his glass and said, ‘Your very good health, Miss Harford.’ And his eyes smiled into mine. I leant back, sipping my cider, and a ray of dusty sunshine fell across my face. I relaxed. I almost felt I belonged.

Until I went home alone and Billy went home to his wife.