A Perfect Christmas (31 page)

He turned the corner at the end of the rack of shelves, went over to the counter, put the boxes down on it and retraced his steps to stand just outside the maintenance room.

The man was familiar to Cait, they had obviously met before, but for the moment she couldn’t place him.

He put her out of her misery. ‘Harry Owens, Miss Thomas. We met . . . er . . . when . . . er . . .’

She remembered him. He was one of the four union representives who had given her an ultimatum last Friday. She could now smile at the fact that it had taken four burly men to band together to face a young woman less than half their age, regardless that it hadn’t been at all funny for her at the time. She could see Harry Owens himself was feeling uncomfortable at the way they had first met, worried that she might be harbouring ill feeling towards him. After all, she was still the boss and at liberty to find a way to make him pay, if she was so inclined.

Having thought carefully about what she was going to say, Cait responded to him in a pleasant manner. ‘Oh, I remember you now, Mr Owens. Nice to meet you again.’

He was mortally relieved that it seemed there’d be no repercussions for his involvement in Friday’s stance against her. He could barely believe, in fact, this was the same young woman that all the employees had been so willing to strike against. Miracles did happen, it seemed to Harry.

Cait assumed he was wondering just what she was doing, dealing personally with a mundane task when she had an assistant at her disposal. She thought she’d better offer him a plausible explanation, feeling she could be subjecting Glen to unnecessary suspicion from the type of fellow worker who took a dim view of employees and bosses appearing to be in cahoots. So she told Harry, ‘Miss Trucker is very busy and I didn’t want to burden her with something I could easily take care of myself.’

The look on his face told her he thought it very commendable of Cait to show such consideration towards her staff. He said, ‘Mr Trainer said before he went off to see to his first job this morning that he had a full day of it today, jobs to deal with all over the factory, he might not even come back to his room until knocking-off time. If the repairs are urgent, I could get word around you’re looking for him. Ask him to come up and see you in your office, Miss Thomas?’

Inwardly Cait was very cross with herself. If she did as Harry Owens was now suggesting then Jane Trucker would become suspicious as to why she and the maintenance man were deep in discussion in the office. She knew she would have to get Glen on his own so she could put her proposition to him, although she wasn’t quite sure yet how.

She told Harry, ‘Well, the work to be done is not at all urgent. It will wait until Mr Trainer hasn’t so much on. Between me and you, Mr Owens, I was using the excuse to get out of the office for a bit.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, most of us are guilty of doing that at some time or other.’ He then realised what he’d said and almost fell over himself to add, ‘Oh, not that I’m saying we’re all looking for excuses to skive. Not at all I’m not!’

She reassured him, ‘I’m sure you weren’t, Mr Owens.’

On her journey back to the office her mind was occupied by trying to work out the best way to speak to Glen without any of the three hundred people who worked here being aware of it. There was only one place really where she could talk to him with no risk attached, and that was at his home. Cait had arranged to go and view a small one-bedroomed flat which she had spotted advertised in last night’s paper, straight after work. She would go and visit Glen afterwards, she decided. She had discovered that the filing cabinet in her office had not been used purely to hold bottles of drink and glasses to entertain Reg Swinton’s guests when they paid him a visit, but was crammed with personnel and customer records. This meant she could ascertain Glen Trainer’s address without arousing any suspicion from Jane.

Back up on the second floor Cait called into the ladies’ toilets before she dropped the folder of applications off in her office to take home that night. She was in a cubicle when she heard the door open and at least two sets of footsteps then the taps being turned on.

Two woman began talking and Cait couldn’t help but overhear.

One of the women said to the other, ‘That damned ink off the Banda machine is almost bloody impossible to get off me hands.’ She must have given herself a look in the mirror then as she let out an anguished wail. ‘Oh, look, me cheek is covered in it!’

The other woman spoke then. ‘Well, if you can’t get it all off just cover it with extra panstick tonight when yer getting ready to go out. What time are we all meeting at Timmy White’s again? Seven-thirty or eight, I can’t remember?’

‘Seven-fifteen. We’re going to the flicks, remember, to see
The Ten Commandments
. Oh, that Yul Brynner certainly tickles my fancy.’

‘How can you fancy him? He’s bald.’

‘Don’t care. I only have to hear his voice and I get shivers up me spine. What I’d give to find him wrapped up under the tree for me on Christmas Day! Oh, talking of Christmas, we mustn’t forget to get the tickets for the Palais on Christmas Eve else we won’t get in. We’d better decide on that tonight when we meet up with the other gels, who’s going to collect the money off us all and go and get them, though I suppose it’ll be down to me as usual.’

The other woman was obviously not listening but thinking of the night itself. ‘I can’t decide what to wear . . . me red or me blue dress. I get more offers of dances in me red dress, but when I wear me blue I usually land meself a fella. Never the man of me dreams but better than n’ote.’

In the cubicle Cait was sitting with her elbows on her knees, chin resting in her hands, the conversation she was overhearing making her wonder what Christmas and New Year’s Eve would be like for her this year. Christmas Eve was only days away now and as matters stood it seemed a very remote possibility that she would be planning what to wear for a evening of fun as she’d no one to go out with, male or female. Neither had she anyone at home to celebrate the day with either. Not that previous Christmases could ever have been described as fun. Since there were only the three of them, and her parents weren’t the greatest communicators at the best of times, Christmas Day had seemed like Sunday to Cait except for the fact that they swapped gifts. Last year she’d received five pounds to buy herself something with. She now realised it was because her mother did not think it was worth trailing round the shops to find something Cait would be thrilled to receive. She herself always looked for a special something for them both, but from their non-committal reactions on opening the gifts she was never sure whether they were pleased or not. She wasn’t hopeful that her mother had thought to leave anything for her this year.

Cait knew she didn’t have to spend the forthcoming festive evenings alone. She could go out right now and charm those two girls into inviting her along with them. She now knew, though, that it wasn’t the way to make lasting friends. Those she made in future should be made in the proper way: by waiting to be invited to join their group because she was liked, and not as she had done before by buying friendship for the short time it lasted until the other person could no longer endure Cait’s self-absorption. This year she would have to spend the festive season content in her own company, but hopefully next year would be a different matter so long as she continued to keep working hard on herself, which she definitely meant to do.

She waited patiently until the two girls had gone before leaving the toilets herself, not wanting them to know that she had been listening in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A
t approaching seven-thirty that evening, Jan was showing Glen an uncompromising side to her nature he had not witnessed before.

‘A bit more to the left. No, not that much. To the right a bit. A bit more. No, that’s too much. A bit to the left . . .’

Having patiently endured what he felt was Jan’s misguided need for perfection for the last half an hour, he finally snapped at her in frustration, ‘What does it matter if it’s not perfectly straight?’

‘It matters to me,’ was her terse reply.

‘But this chair I’m standing on isn’t in the best of condition. I can feel it shaking beneath my weight. If I don’t get down off it soon I fear it will collapse and I’ll end up breaking my neck, not to mention having nothing to sit on.’

‘Well, the sooner you get it right, the sooner you can get down, can’t you? Now a bit to the left . . . a fraction more . . . another fraction more. Yes, that’s it! Push the drawing pin in quick before you move it again.’

Having satisfied Jan at long last, Glen clambered down off the rickety chair before she changed her mind and took it back into the kitchen.

Jan meanwhile walked over to the other side of the room and stood looking at it admiringly. ‘Looks very festive, don’t you think?’ she called to Glen, even though she knew that he disapproved of her spending just the couple of shillings she had out of the money she had taken from her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s poor fund, on the red and yellow rolls of crepe paper which she had twisted together to form ceiling decorations. Money was still tight for them as although they had been paid for the first time last Friday by Rose’s, their pay had been short as they’d only worked two days of the previous week and Rose’s paid a week in hand. It had just been enough between them to cover the rent and not much more. The pitiful-looking two-foot Christmas tree placed in front of the window, kept upright by mud packed around it in a rusting tin bucket that had been discovered under the sink when they’d moved in and draped in the remains of the crepe paper, was already beginning to shed what needles it had left on its spindly branches.

Having replaced the chair, Glen made his way over to join her. Regardless of his feeling that they should hang on to all the money they could, he had to admit that the bit of colour the trimmings and the tree provided did help bring a touch of cheer to the otherwise dull room. But he had more important things on his mind than Christmas decorations. He had something to tell Jan and she hadn’t given him chance so far, having commandeered him as soon as their evening meal had been cleared away, to help her with the decorations.

He said now: ‘That hand-delivered letter that was waiting for me when we got home . . . I opened it while you were cooking dinner.’

Jan looked at him keenly. She suspected this had something to do with the job he had gone after during his dinner hour yesterday, a storeman’s place at Byford’s clothing factory. She had been itching for him to open it and tell her the outcome. Typically Glen wanted to wait until they were seated by the fire before they discussed anything of note.

‘Did you get the job or not?’ she demanded.

He smiled. ‘I did. Their present man is retiring in the middle of January. They want me to start the week before so he can show me the ropes. Thankfully in the interview I wasn’t asked whether I had a criminal record. I presume they thought this would have been checked recently if I was already employed by a reputable company, and they accepted my excuse that I was only considering leaving Rose’s so soon because their job was better.’

‘Well, this means you can stop worrying about Nerys suddenly returning and discovering you in the building. It doesn’t matter if she sacks you now as you’ve another job to go to. Oh, this calls for a celebration! Pity we’ve no spare money for beer. We’ll have to make do with a cuppa. I’m certainly ready for one after putting up those decorations.’

He started to remind her that in fact it was he who had done that while she had stood issuing instructions, but before he could there was a knock on the door. They both looked at each other, wondering who could be calling on them at this time in the evening. They hadn’t made any new friends yet who would pay them a social call.

Then Jan thought she knew who their caller was. ‘It’ll be the landlord come to check if we’ve settled in all right. We haven’t seen him since we took on the flat, have we?’ As she headed for the door, she added, tongue in cheek, ‘Maybe he’s going to offer to give the place a freshen up? Replace the lumpy sofa and armchairs with something even a bit more comfortable.’

Glen thought he’d tidy away the debris from the decorations while she saw their landlord in. Jan opened the door, prepared to greet their landlord, but instead gawped in surprise to see Cait.

She meanwhile was hoping this visit would be more productive than her last had been. Whether the flat had been just perfect for her or not at all suitable, she had no idea. She had arranged to meet the landlord at six outside the house. By seven, when she was unable to feel her feet and hands for cold, he still hadn’t turned up and Cait concluded that he’d already let it before she arrived and hadn’t had the courtesy to stay around and tell her. She was disappointed at losing the prospect of her own place but also glad not to have got it because if the landlord didn’t give a thought to leaving someone out in the bitter cold waiting fruitlessly for him, then how would he treat his tenants? This did bring home to Cait, though, the fact that she needed to be free during the day in order to apply for accommodation as soon as she saw it advertised. She needed to seek a new job for herself, too, and attend interviews. The sooner a temporary manager was found, the better as far as she was concerned.

When she arrived at Mr Trainer’s door she was relieved to see a light shining and hear voices inside, as by now she was desperate to warm up. She smiled at the woman who answered the door to her and was just about to announce herself when a thought struck her. Cait knew she’d met this woman before, had some sort of dealings with her, but for the moment couldn’t place her. She said to Jan, ‘I really am so sorry to bother you but I need to speak to Mr Trainer about an urgent matter.’

Jan was having no trouble at all remembering her previous encounter with this young woman. It certainly hadn’t been a pleasant one. She wondered just what was so urgent as to bring the likes of Caitlyn Thomas out on a bitter night like this, and what the young madam would make of their humble surroundings.