For All Our Tomorrows (47 page)

Big Fat Josie set her hands on her substantial hips and frowned. ‘You could help me right here in the store and welcome. I sure am getting mighty tired of working this hard. But I did reckon as mebbe you’d be anxious to get on home to Cornwall.’

Bette shook her head. What did she have to go home to? The shame and disgrace of a failed marriage before ever it got started, and her mother saying ‘I told you so’? ‘No, I’m in no hurry to go back home and yes, I’d love to work for you, Josie. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.’

It seemed a small miracle to Bette that the woman could put her hands on the right size of screw or knitting needles in an instant, although she would sometimes hunt for a good half hour, muttering ‘I know I’ve got one here some place. Saw it jest the other day.’

The coffee bar, or diner as she called it, was situated at one end with a couple of tables and check cloths and the constantly appetising aroma of freshly made coffee. Big Fat Josie would grind the beans herself. Ladies with baskets, or old timers with an hour to kill, would sit awhile and pass the time of day. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry when they came by Big Fat Josie’s place.

Josie said, ‘was a time when I had the energy to do everything myself. Did all my own baking and folk’d come from miles around jest to taste my apple pie. But I’m dead beat by closing time these days. Time I retired and went to rock out my days on that old porch o’ mine, so you’s right. I need me some help.’

‘I’d love to help,’ Bette agreed. ‘I’ve never worked in a shop. I was a hairdresser with my mum in Fowey but I’m quick to learn.’

Josie’s big brown eyes opened wide. ‘You telling me you can do hair? Well ain’t that somethin’. Hey, could you do mine, child? Cut it all short and sassy?’

Bette gazed at the glossy, ebony mass tied back from the fat, honey brown face with a twist of string, and reaching half way down her back, and said, ‘Why would you want to? It’s beautiful as it is.’

Big Fat Josie chuckled. ‘You sure got a way with words, girl. I like that about you. You’ll do fine.’

‘But will everyone else accept me? I’m a stranger here.’

Big Fat Josie put back her head and laughed again, making her several chins bounce and shake and wobble with mirth. ‘If they’ll accept me, they sure will take a shine to you, child. I was left this place by my pappy. He was a Spanish sailor who came to Savannah on the boats, met and fell in love with my momma, and stayed. She died when I was just a young ‘un.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.’

‘I got by, but folk didn’t take too kindly to me at first; had a whole heap of problems when I was a gal. But my pappy, he done think I was the best thing on two legs, so I stuck on in here after he passed on, and here I still am, forty years later.

‘Why would they object to you, just because your father was Spanish?’

‘Bit more to it than that, child. My folks have lived in Savannah since way back. My great, great grandpappy on my momma’s side, now he was English, from Yorkshire. He married an Indian girl, one of the Yamacraws. Always were mighty friendly were the Indians in these parts. All thanks to James Edward Oglethorpe, leader of this here colony in the early days, ‘cause he treated them with proper respect. Always does pay to treat folk with respect. Don’t you reckon, gal?’

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Bette, thinking of Peggy.

Big Fat Josie marched Bette over to the counter, behind which hung a large framed portrait. ‘There she is, my great, great grandmaw, still minding the place. Pretty little thing, jest like you. So ya see, I’se got all kinds of blood running in my veins but it never did me no harm. This is who I am, right? My folks believed in doing what they’d a mind to, and hang the consequences. You gotta do the same, gal. You makes up your mind you gonna do somethin’, you dang well gotta do it. Don’t let nobody tell you different. That’s how this whole darned country got built.’

Bette could feel energy flowing back into her, just listening to this lovely woman talk. Already she adored Big Fat Josie and would have done anything for her. ‘I mean to make a good future for my son, and love him as your pappy did you. He’s all I’ve got now. I might have made some mistakes in the past but I’m learning, and I mean to take good care of him. I just need to earn some money.’

‘Sure you do. Well, I been thinking about that some while we’ve been jawing, and not all folks have hair like mine that don’t need nothin’. Plenty’d be glad of a make-over. There ain’t no hairdresser in this part of town. You could open up a salon right here in my store, and help me between clients, when you is quiet. How ‘bout that, gal?’

Bette was bewildered, taken aback by Josie’s generosity and belief in her. ‘That sounds wonderful, but do you think I could do it?’

‘Sure you could do it. Bright, pretty thing like you.’

‘But I don’t have any money to set it all up.’

‘Don’t need none. Jake’ll fix you up a sink in the back store room. You can give it a good clean out and we’ll have you in business faster’n you can swat a horse fly.’

Chapter Forty-Six

Largely due to Big Fat Josie’s power in the community, within twenty-four hours, not one, but two sinks, had been duly installed, which Jake just happened to have lying about in his lock-up. And by the end of the week, assisted and generally bossed and bullied by Josie puffing and blowing alongside her, Bette had cleared out all the rubbish and shifted such items as were to be kept into one of the other store rooms.

She’d swept and mopped the floor, found a couple of chairs for the clients to sit on, and some old tablecloths to drape around their necks to protect their clothes while the cutting and shampooing was done. They looked more like a barber’s cloth than a gown generally found in a ladies hair salon, but would serve the purpose well enough. Big Fat Josie was certainly well pleased with their efforts.

‘There you is, child, you’s in business.’

Whereupon Josie stuck a large notice on the window. ‘
Ladies Hair Salon Now Open. Cut and Shampoo for less than a Dollar.
’

‘It won’t work,’ Bette said, suddenly overcome with nervousness at the prospect of becoming a businesswoman. She’d been carried along by her benefactor’s plan on a wave of relief and excitement, now she asked herself what the hell she was doing, setting up a hairdressing salon in this fine town with a woman who was part English, part Spanish and part native American? Had she gone completely out of her mind?

And then the door opened and her first customer appeared. A young girl of eighteen or nineteen, a shy smile on her pretty face. ‘Is this the hairdressers? Could you make me blonde, like Betty Grable?’

‘Of course I can, er . . . certainly, madam.’

‘Hey, are you from Canada?’

Here we go again, thought Bette, reaching for her comb.

Chad found the letter Sara had written to Bette stuffed at the back of a drawer in the old kitchen dresser. He’d been looking for a writing pad and pen, meaning to write to her himself, believing her to be back in Fowey. He was missing her so badly that he still nursed a hope he could persuade her to return.

He couldn’t remember a winter that had lasted as long as this one. When he’d been a boy, he hadn’t minded the cold blasts of wind that roared over the mountains, the weeks of snow, the lack of entertainment, things to do or people to talk to. But he must have changed because this one had driven him near demented with loneliness. He needed Bette, he wanted her. She was his wife and he loved her. He could understand now how lonely she must have felt, being in this strange place, this foreign land, and with a family who weren’t exactly welcoming. Maybe, he should go back to Fowey and live with her there, if that’s what she’d prefer.

Yet how could she have gone home, if Sara was writing to her here?
 

The letter was postmarked only a few weeks ago, yet according to his mother, Bette had walked out and gone back to England back in the fall, just a week after the baby was born.

Something was wrong.

‘Mom, what did Bette say exactly, when she left?’

Peggy looked up from her darning and stared blankly at her son. ‘You’ve asked me that a million and one times, boy and I’ve answered best I can on every occasion. She didn’t say nothin’. She just up and left.’

‘But she must have said
something
. She wouldn’t just walk out of a door with a new baby and all her worldly possessions without a word. Besides, she needed a lift to the station. What did she say to Harry?’

‘Have you ever found Harry talkative, ‘cause I ain’t.’

‘Mom! Tell me the truth.’ His tone had an edge to it now, and Peggy, sensing that he was losing patience, judged it wise to add a little more.

‘Don’t you go sounding off at me, boy. I’ve only ever tried to do my level best to make you happy. She said as how she didn’t like it here. Too quiet for a city gal, she says. How it had all been a big mistake her coming here to marry you. Complained about missing her mom and wanting to show her the baby.’

Chad listened to all of this with an increasing sense of disbelief. ‘She isn’t no city girl, and she doesn’t really get on with her mother. Never met the woman myself but she and Bette always seemed to be at daggers drawn. Are you sure that’s what she said? She didn’t mention her sister, Sara?’

Peggy turned away, looking slightly flustered and confused. ‘Heck, she might’ve done. How would I know what family the girl has, or where she comes from. Anyways, there all back together now, and good riddance.’

He was flapping the letter in her face now. ‘How can they be? Her
sister
wouldn’t have written this darned letter if she was back home with her in England, would she? What’s happened to her? Where is my
wife
?’

‘Don’t make no difference to me where she is. She’s not the right wife for you, that I do know, and that child ain’t a Jackson.’

‘How do you know that? How can you be so certain? What colour was his hair, his eyes?’

‘Middling brown, I s’pose.’

‘Like mine.’

‘He didn’t have the Jackson chin, that’s what fixed it for me. We all has this square jaw, as you know well enough. Minute I set eyes on that infant, I didn’t see no square jaw.’

Chad couldn’t believe what he was hearing and stared at his mother almost open-mouthed. ‘You decided he couldn’t possibly be my son because of the shape of his
chin
! Didn’t it cross your mind that he might have inherited his mother’s, which is small and pointed.’ Like an elfins, he thought, or a Cornish pisky. God, he missed that chin. He missed her.

His mother was putting away her darning, even though she hadn’t finished it, fussing about, doing nothing in particular and managing to avoid eye contact, as she tended to do when shown to be in the wrong. ‘You jest be thankful you’re well shot of her and that’s all I have to say on the subject. Wouldn’t do no good at all for you to be tied to that little strumpet for the rest of your cotton-picking life. She’s no better’n a whore.’

‘Don’t call her that.’ He grasped Peggy by the arm and jerked her round to face him. ‘You made her go! You told her that she wasn’t wanted here, or some such tale. Didn’t you?’

Her silence, and the suffuse of colour in his mother’s face answered his question more eloquently than words ever could.

‘No wonder she went off so suddenly with a new-born baby in her arms. Bette didn’t go of her own free will at all. You sent her away. Damnation Mother, why the hell don’t you keep your blasted nose out of my business.’

As Chad slammed out of the house, Peggy yelled after him, shaking a fist in fury. ‘All the darned British have ever done for you, is to rob you of a good arm and the ability to work the land. And taught you to swear!’

Chad didn’t pause to answer. He stormed across the yard to the barn where Harry was storing turnips, grabbed him by the collar, spun him nimbly round with his one good hand and then smashed his fist plumb centre into his brother-in-law’s face, sending him sprawling backwards into the muck and straw.

‘Next time you fancy poking that dirty nose of yours into my affairs, I’ll bust it for you, okay? Think yourself damned lucky I don’t break it right this minute. Where is she, damn you? Where did you take her? Was it to the station? Which train did she catch?’

Harry was struggling to sit up, holding his nose and whimpering, quite certain that it already must be broken, judging by the pain. He mumbled something which Chad didn’t quite catch and got kicked in the ankle for his trouble, making him scream with fresh anguish.

‘No, I didn’t!’ He was spluttering through spittle, snot and blood, pouring through his fingers. ‘I took her to the cabin, like I was told. She won’t starve. Take her provisions regular, jest like Mom tells me to, though she didn’t take in the last lot. Still there out on the porch.’

This little confession very nearly earned him another kick as Chad became incandescent with rage at the thought of his family conspiring to keep his wife away from him. He grasped Harry by the collar and shook him, like the rat he was. ‘I’d like to snap your damned thick neck in two.’ Then he seemed to collect himself and flung Harry aside in a gesture of contempt. ‘If I find you’ve hurt her . . . Man, you’d best high-tail it out of here quicker than a buzz fly, before I come looking for you with a loaded shotgun.’

Harry was shaking now, cowering in a quivering mass of fear on the dirt floor. ‘Never laid a finger on her, though she’s a tasty looking gal. Too soon after the birth for any fooling around, and she had the baby with her.’