May 1934
The girls in Irene’s year at school were working hard for their public exams, but they were restless, too. For some, the wide world beckoned; there was talk of typing courses and the difficulties of finding work. A dozen or so, Irene among them, hoped to stay on into the sixth form, but everything depended on good exam results and parental permission. Jobs were thin on the ground whether they left at sixteen or eighteen and many families didn’t see the point of further schooling. Irene did, though. She loved study for its own sake, but she also saw it as a way out of Farthingsea. She didn’t know what she wanted to do yet or where to go, but the urge to do something challenging possessed her. If Clayton was being encouraged to set his sights high then she saw it as her right, too.
One cloudy Saturday afternoon, she took a break from her studies to meet a girl from her class at the local cinema. They were showing 42nd Street; she’d seen it once already and loved it. If Hollywood were to be believed, New York was a wonderful place, full of life and new things to try. About as far from Farthingsea as you could get in all respects.
She and Joan bought their tickets at the pay desk and entered the cosy gloom of the auditorium. The thick carpet and red velvet curtains, the cheerful music, the very smell of the place, a mixture of sugar, cheap scent and upholstery, were all delightful. Here Irene could forget everything for an hour or two. They found seats halfway back, then, seeing an usherette setting up her tray, Irene asked Joan if she’d like some ice cream.
She was returning with it to her seat when she happened to glance up the aisle. Two people had come in, and her heart leaped with shock as she recognized them. The tall, dark-haired young man was Tom. And the fair, elegant girl he showed into the back row was Margaret Trugg.
Irene ducked back into her seat immediately, praying that they hadn’t seen her, her cheeks hot with dismay. All through the bright noise of the newsreel she barely noticed the footage of racing yachts with billowing sails or the ranks of parading soldiers.
When the lights went up again and the usherette reappeared Irene dared not glance across at her in case she saw Tom and Margaret or, worse, they saw her. The cinema grew dim once more and the main show started, but though Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers were as enchanting as ever Irene could not lose herself this time in the story and the music. After a while she gave up. She nudged Joan.
‘I have to go,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’
‘Oh, bad luck. D’you want me to come?’
‘No, I’ll go straight home.’ She slipped her jacket on, stepped over several pairs of feet to reach the aisle, then tiptoed up to the exit. As she passed the back row she could not help but let her gaze dart along to where two pairs of eyes stared rapt at the screen and two pale clasped hands, one Tom’s and one Margaret’s, gleamed in the darkness. Irene stifled a whimper and fled.
She half-walked, half-ran home, hugging herself for comfort, fighting the threatening sobs. The back door stuck. Irene pushed it angrily and it burst open. Inside the kitchen, her mother looked up from tipping a sheet of piping hot scones onto a wire tray. The homely scene and the delicious scent of hot butter was so comforting it overwhelmed her.
‘You’re back early,’ her mother said, then seeing Irene’s distressed face abandoned her task. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, as ever fearing some disaster.
‘Nothing,’ Irene muttered, then gave a loud sob.
In a rare gesture her mother drew her into her arms and held her, stroking her hair in wordless comfort. They stood there wrapped together, swaying, until Irene felt calmer.
‘I need a handkerchief.’ Irene raised her head and sniffed. Her mother released her and picked a clean one from the ironing basket. While her daughter dabbed her eyes and blew her nose, Mrs Burns split two hot scones and spread them with butter and jam.
‘Here, sit and eat these and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’
Irene did as she was told and took a mouthful of buttery sweetness.
‘All right now?’ her mother asked.
‘Mmm.’
‘What happened? Did someone hurt you?’
Irene shook her head and her mother threw her a shrewd glance.
‘You’re pale. Is it your time of the month?’
Irene shrugged, embarrassed. It wasn’t.
‘Well, you look peaky to me. A dose of tonic will do no harm.’ She reached for a large brown glass bottle from a shelf.
Irene swallowed a spoonful of the evil-tasting liquid and screwed up her face. She’d not felt able to tell her mother her secrets and, thank heavens, hadn’t been asked to. She sipped the tea and enjoyed the rare tenderness of the moment, but every now and then that evening the thought of those pale clasped hands in the gloom of the cinema caused tears to threaten.
*
‘I say, I saw them too,’ red-haired Joan hissed in her ear, full of what she knew when Irene sat next to her on the bus on Monday morning. ‘Don’t you mind dreadfully?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Irene said, swallowing her fury. She pulled a book out of her satchel and pretended to read as Tom passed on his way up the aisle.
School was now to be dreaded. Each day she made sure she sat next to Joan on the bus, so as not to risk Tom’s rejection, though Tom and Margaret did not make a point of sitting together. This didn’t prevent her feeling humiliated. Perhaps all her classmates had noticed that the focus of Tom’s attention had switched from her to Margaret and were laughing behind their hands or, like Joan, pitying her.
Every break she avoided Margaret, yet couldn’t stop throwing her covert glances. Margaret stood coolly on the edge of a gossiping group, perfectly at ease. Irene was more fascinated than ever by her physical presence, the natural grace of her figure – she’d never had a gawky stage – the fashionable wave of her short fair hair. Her folded arms and the arcs of her raised eyebrows gave her a sense of separateness, as though she’d drawn a chalk circle around herself that no one dared cross. Tom, presumably, Irene thought with bitterness, found this fascinating, too.
Did Margaret’s parents mind? Perhaps they didn’t know their daughter was walking out with Tom. Perhaps Margaret didn’t care what they thought. The only times Irene had ever seen Margaret ruffled was when she got an answer wrong in class or was awarded a poor mark, and both of these were rare occurrences. Margaret was an A-grade student and Irene had heard her say that she intended to train as a teacher.
She knew in her heart of hearts that in avoiding Tom she was hurting herself as much as him, for she badly relied on his friendship. She’d thought she was as special to him as he was to her, but now it appeared that she was wrong. Why men and women weren’t able to go on being friends was something she’d often wondered. Her parents were friends with other couples, but her mother would never refer to the man as her friend, nor would her father ever see another woman alone. It simply wasn’t done. It wasn’t, she told herself, that she wished to sit at the back of a cinema and hold Tom’s hand, it was that she didn’t wish any other woman to do so. He didn’t seem to have close male friends. If he did, would she regard them as the same kind of threat? No, she admitted. And since she kept comparing herself to Margaret and finding Margaret superior in terms of looks and sophistication, she had to face facts. She was jealous.
Irene was still puzzling this one Saturday afternoon a fortnight later as she sat alone on a bench in the brick shelter on the seafront, eating sherbet lemons and trying to concentrate on a book. A shadow fell across the page and she glanced up to see Tom. He smiled and came to sit by her.
‘I thought I might find you here.’
‘And you did,’ she said coolly.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘Nothing. Why?’ She flicked away a ladybird that had settled on her book.
‘We’ve hardly spoken, and you’re always sitting with that freckled girl on the bus.’
‘She saves me a seat. It would be rude not to take it.’
He sighed. ‘I saw you both at the cinema. Where did you go?’
‘I wasn’t feeling well.’ She turned a page and pretended to read on.
Tom sighed. ‘Look, if it helps, I still feel the same way about you. Don’t let’s scrap.’
‘Who’s scrapping? Not me.’
Tom stood up and hooked his coat over his shoulder. ‘There’s not much point in this conversation,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you around, shall I?’
She fixed her eyes on him finally. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said.
‘I won’t. Do you mind?’ He stole a sherbet lemon. ‘Bye.’
‘Hey!’ She watched his retreating figure with a sense of numbness, cursing her stupid stubbornness.