Her Ladyship's Girl (30 page)

‘Moyle . . . Anwyn . . . am I right?’

‘Yes, Sir, it’s me.’

I could smell that scent of sage and cedarwood, and feel his breath on the side of my face – like before, in the library. It was intoxicating. I forgot why I’d called him over.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes . . . yes, I would.’

He took me to a tea-shop called Hepworth’s in the Gray’s Inn Road. Estelle was asleep in her pram. He noticed my limp.

‘What happened to you, Anwyn?’

‘An accident.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s all right. I’m used to it.’

We sat together in the tea-room and talked for a long time over a pot of Earl Grey and a plate of scones. I told him about my life since leaving Hampstead and how I was married now with three
children. He told me he was still living with his wife in the same house. I asked him about Miranda Bouchard and he said she’d remarried – the rich Earl. She gave up the house in
Chester Square and went to live in Wiltshire. She rarely visited London because the social season wasn’t what it used to be before the war and things were totally different now. He very
seldom saw her and I noticed the sadness in his eyes when he said that.

It was obvious there was still something between them – but it was something that could never be allowed to flower in the stiflingly closed society in which they moved and manoeuvred. He
was married and she was an aristocrat whose family needed money – and it didn’t matter if they were in love. Love had nothing to do with family or tradition and doing the honourable
thing – the decent and not the decadent thing. I almost asked him if they were lovers but I didn’t need to know.

It felt strange sitting there, talking like two ordinary people – no longer master and maid. The old order was changing and I was no longer a naive teenage girl but a twenty-nine-year-old
woman. We seemed to talk forever and I got the feeling he wanted to ask me something, but he never did.

‘It seemed urgent.’

‘What did?’

‘You calling to me, as if there was something that needed urgent attention.’

I suddenly remembered the bet and looked at the clock on the tea-room wall.

‘Oh, God, it’s too late.’

‘For what?’

I felt ashamed to tell him what I wanted him for – it seemed so inappropriate now. But he insisted on knowing and eventually I explained that I needed fifty pounds to rent a little shop to
start up a washing and ironing business and the only way to get the money was to risk my savings.

‘Rather foolhardy, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Why don’t I loan you the money?’

‘Oh no, Sir. No!’

‘Of course I must. I owe you.’

‘You owe me nothing.’

He said he did, as it was his fault I was let go from the scullery maid’s job all those years ago. I told him he did me a favour, but he wouldn’t take n o for an answer. We walked
back to the bank and he drew out fifty pounds and gave it to me. He said I could pay him back when my business started making a profit. I knew where to find him. I thanked him profusely. We said
goodbye and he held on to my hand for a long moment and smiled and then disappeared into the coalescing crowd on Gray’s Inn Road. And I just hoped Alan wasn’t stalking me on that day,
because he’d really have something to be jealous about this time.

Next day, I went to the letting agency and paid the deposit of fifty pounds and signed the lease for a year. I still had my savings and I used that money to paint the shop after I’d
cleaned it all up and washed down the walls and the window. It had a little kitchenette out back and the floor was in good condition, so all I needed was to install some clothes rails and an
ironing board. I also bought a second-hand top-loading washing machine on instalments and ran water pipes to and from the sink in the kitchenette. It was all makeshift and I had to take the washing
up to the flat and hang it on the line in the garden to dry, then take it back down to the shop to iron and hang on the clothes rails. I put a sign in the window.

Business was slow and, for a while, I thought it wouldn’t take off. I was competing on a small scale with the Chinese laundries in Central London, and St Pancras
wasn’t exactly an affluent area where people could afford the luxury of having their linen washed and dried and ironed by someone else. Alan wanted to know where the money came from to open
the shop, so I lied and told him I won it on a horse. He laughed, then he remembered me asking him all about the racing sheets and he was constantly trying to get me to pick winners for him after
that. I picked a few and I don’t know whether they won or not, but he seemed happy enough. I never did find out whether Mari Lwyd won that day – and I didn’t want to know
either.

A few weeks after I opened, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith pulled up outside and the driver brought in bags full of stuff to be washed, dried and ironed.

‘Who’s washing is this?’

‘From Viscount Huntingdon’s house.’

‘Really?’

He confirmed that my shop was recommended by a Mr William Harding, so they were giving it a try. I was still skivvying for the upper-class. But I welcomed the business.

‘When will it be ready for collection?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘That soon? Wonderful. The housekeeper will be pleased.’

The next day, a Bentley pulled up, with washing from the home of the Marquess of Aylesbury. The next day more came from another high-class house. I was struggling to cope with it all in the end.
I worked night and day, keeping the children with me in the shop when they weren’t in school or with Alan.

But it was my business.

What I did.

I
t wasn’t long before I could afford one of the latest Bendix Deluxe front-loading washing machines and an automatic dryer. I had them
plumbed in properly and didn’t have to have water pipes running all over the place. I installed some chairs and a couple of tables and tarted up the kitchen and sold tea and snacks to anyone
who wanted to wait, and the little shop soon became a local meeting place for gossiping and chinwagging and some days there would be queues waiting for their washing. Some didn’t bring
washing at all, just came in for a cup of tea and some company. But it was getting too much for me, so I had another two front-loaders and another dryer installed and employed a girl to help me
out.

I was too busy building up the washing and ironing business to worry much about Alan and, as I wasn’t going round other people’s houses any more, he was happy that I’d stopped
‘soliciting’. And anyway, as long as I kept picking winners for him, I could do whatever I wanted. The 1940s rolled into the 1950s and Estelle grew up enough to go to school with the
other two. I had six front-loaders now and four automatic dryers and I expanded the kitchen into a cafe. The latest trend in America was for Laundromats and Wash-A-Terias, as they called them,
where the machines were coin-operated and people came in and did their own washing and drying and all you had to do was come round and collect the cash. But they still hadn’t invented a
machine for doing the ironing, and I didn’t think they ever would.

My mother died in 1952. She was only fifty-one, but the hard life she lived finally took its toll on her and she gave up the ghost and followed my father to the Summerlands. I went back up to
Llangynwyd for the funeral and I brought the children with me – Charlotte was ten and Daniel was nine and Estelle was five. I was thirty-four. We travelled by car, because Alan had taught me
to drive and I bought myself a second-hand Vauxhall Velox saloon. The wake was over by the time we arrived and I didn’t want the children to have to walk behind the coffin in the old way. So
I drove to the cemetery, behind the mourners, and told them to stay in the car while the gravediggers threw the clay in on top of her.

We went back to the house afterwards and I stayed overnight with my brother and sisters and Walter’s family and my children and the house was full of little voices and
laughter like it used to be when we were young. I’m sure my mother would have liked that. Gwyneth was a qualified nurse now and living in Cardiff and Bronwyn was a teacher and the only one
left living in the house, now that mother was gone. They were all talking about leaving Wales for the big new world out there, now that our parents were dead. The house was owned by the government
after nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947 and was now classed as a council house and would have to be handed back if Bronwyn left. We drank some beer that night and sang some songs and
remembered our childhood, and the ghosts of those ragged children stood outside on the dark street and looked in through the warm windows.

The next day I left the kids in Bronwyn’s care and drove out to Monica Reynolds’s house. I pulled up in the gravelled driveway that I’d trudged along when I was fifteen with
the green hat in my hand – nearly twenty years ago. I climbed the six redbrick steps to the front door, which was painted navy-blue now and not green, like the first time I saw it. I knocked
and waited, half expecting Monica to come sashaying out, smoking a cigarette in a long black holder and sipping a Martini, wearing a backless Madeleine Vionnet dress and smiling with those big
white teeth of hers. ‘What’s up, honey?’ I could hear the words, drifting down the years. But the door was opened by a dour-looking woman about my age with straight black hair and
wearing a rather plain land-girl dress.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I was looking for Monica.’

‘Monica?’

‘Mrs Reynolds.’

She didn’t seem to know who I was talking about.

‘She’s American, married to Arthur Reynolds, coal exporter?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.’

‘Sorry to trouble you.’

I started to walk back to the car.

‘You could ask at the estate agents in Maesteg. We bought this house from Mr Williams. Maybe they could . . .’

‘Thank you.’

What was the point? She wasn’t here and I had to get back to London. And, anyway, she’d be sixty now, if she was still alive. I asked my sisters and brother about Monica Reynolds,
but they didn’t know anything about her – except that she came to our house one snowy night when my foot was in a bad way and she sat on my bed. But they never saw her again after that,
or knew where she went – back to America probably.

Probably.

Next morning we said our goodbyes and I drove back to London with the children.

I was really interested in these new coin-operated washing shops. One of them had opened up at Queensway in Bayswater and I went along to take a look. It was called a launderette. It had six
coin-operated washing machines and four coin-operated dryers. There was one person manning the place, to provide advice on how to use the machines and change for the customers. They didn’t
offer an ironing service, just washing and drying, and this was where I had an advantage – the personal touch, which was lacking in this place. I talked to the woman who was manning the
Queensway launderette, but she didn’t know much about the business side of things. She was just employed by the absent owners. So I set about investigating. There were two ways it could be
done. I could lease the machines on a franchise for a five-year period, with a six-month deposit payable in advance – there would also be the expense of refurbishing the shop, installing
flues and air vents and new power sockets and an extractor to remove excess water. The owners would be responsible for the maintenance of the machines and I’d get a percentage of the profits
for running the place. The other option was to fit out my own launderette, which I preferred to do – but I’d need new premises and the machines were way out of my price range. With
renting or a franchise, I’d be going back to working for someone else and I’d had enough of that in my life. If I was going to be a skivvy, I’d be my own skivvy and not someone
else’s.

But there wasn’t any way I could get enough money for new premises and the machines and refurbishment I needed. Alan would be no help; he was still losing all his money, even with the
winners I picked out for him. But I knew I’d have to act fast. The launderette business was about to boom and I wanted to get in on the ground floor and not be left behind.

Then Alan was killed in a road accident.

It was January 1953 and he was driving in the Covent Garden area of the city. A double-decker bus driver lost control of his vehicle and rammed into Alan’s car, driving him towards the
pavement and pinning him against a telegraph pole. He died instantly.

Alan’s mother and sister organised a requiem mass for him at Clerkenwell’s Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul and he was buried at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground. The funeral was
well-attended and there were several shady-looking characters present, who backed away from me and gave me the evil eye. The children came with me and we threw flowers into the grave. Despite his
shortcomings in the husband and father department, we were genuinely sorry to see him go, especially in the way he did. He was only fifty.

About a month later, I received a letter from a firm of solicitors in Stephyns Chambers, Chancery Lane, asking me if I could come in for a meeting. I thought it must be something to do with
money Alan owed, but how could I be held responsible for that? I went along while the children were at school and was shown into an office where a tall, beak-faced man was sitting behind a large
mahogany desk. He stood up and shook my hand.

‘Mrs Lane, how good of you to come in. Please, take a seat.’

I sat down, worried about whatever it was he wanted to see me about.

‘We are acting solicitors for Mr Lane.’

‘My husband?’

‘Mr Joshua Lane, your late husband’s father.’

He shuffled some papers on his desk and adjusted his spectacles.