The Way Ahead (26 page)

‘Oh, you’re welcome, dearie,’ said Mrs Hobday, ‘and I’ll remember you and yer kiddies if me old man is somewhere around when a bit more of this and that falls orf a goods waggon. Well, he ain’t paid for puttin’ them back, if you see what I mean. I told ’im when he left for ’is shift this morning, I wouldn’t mind a few bananas, I said, and he asked me if I’d like straight or bent ones. Don’t be bleedin’ daft, I said. Mind, I don’t want you to think I ain’t fond of him. Well, nice to ’ave had a chat with you. I ’eard there’s a few more holes round the Elephant and Castle from last night’s bombs, but keep smiling, eh?’

‘My children will do a lot of smiling when they see these oranges,’ said Cassie.

‘Bless ’em, they’re little angels, ducky,’ said Mrs Hobday.

‘Thanks,’ smiled Cassie, ‘come and have a cup of tea with me this afternoon.’

‘Well, that’s nice of yer,’ said Mrs Hobday, ‘I’ll do me hair up and put me best blouse on.’

MISS ALICE ADAMS, SPENDING
much of her time studying at home in preparation for her entry into Bristol University at the end of summer, had planned a full day of uninterrupted swotting. Keen to obtain an English Literature degree, she had borrowed a set of novels by John Galsworthy from the library. They embraced
The Forsyte Saga
.

Alice, nineteen, was fair-haired like her mum, Mrs Vi Adams, with a slender frame and looks that some people might have said were in need of relaxation. That is, she rarely looked other than earnest, serious or studious. She was certainly studious by nature, something she had in common with Leah’s sister, Rebecca, and she practised the kind of precise speech befitting a young lady whose ambition was to become a university tutor. While not actually deprecating her cockney roots, very much alive in her parents, Alice preferred to see herself as a reflection of her Uncle Boots, who may have been born of cockney parents, but had always been a natural cosmopolitan. Boots would have been disappointed in her attitude. Alice, in fact, was a bit
toffee
-nosed, something Vi and Tommy had not yet noticed since her return from Devon.

Vi only knew she didn’t want her daughter to turn into what was called a blue-stocking. She asked Tommy a question. Didn’t blue-stockings finish up being married to history books and suchlike? Not much comes out of that except little history books and suchlike, said Tommy. Vi said that wasn’t a sensible answer, and Tommy said that as he’d never been intimate with blue-stockings, it was the best answer he could think of. What I mean, said Vi, is that they mostly stay spinsters, don’t they?

‘Steady, Vi,’ said Tommy, ‘watch your language, or my dear old mum might get to hear. She’d totter about if she thought there was goin’ to be a spinster in the fam’ly. She’d tell us God didn’t order women to be spinsters, and to take Alice to see a doctor.’

‘Tommy, you can’t take a girl of nineteen to see a doctor about that sort of thing,’ said Vi, still a woman of soft eyes, gentle voice and kind ways. ‘And blessed if I’d want to try. We’d just have to put up with it if Alice left marriage alone.’

‘I don’t know I’d like it meself,’ said Tommy, still a handsome piece of male furniture at forty-four. Impressionable machinists at the factory sometimes had saucy dreams about him, and at Christmas gave him equally saucy presents like sexy male briefs run up by themselves. In vivid colours. ‘My Alice married to history books? I’d have to fight that.’

‘Tommy love, you mustn’t,’ said Vi. ‘It’s her own life, not ours. You and me, well, we did what we wanted to, didn’t we?’

‘Not till we got married,’ said Tommy.

‘I didn’t mean that, you saucy man,’ said Vi. ‘I mean, we got married at a time when we really couldn’t afford to and only me dad was in favour. I remember him saying we had a right to live our own lives, while Mum said I had a right to live it with someone that had better prospects than you. Still, Dad stood up for me, and together we got round Mum.’

‘I’m fond of your dad, Vi,’ said Tommy.

‘So am I,’ said Vi, ‘and me mum’s a lot more mellow than she was once.’

‘All the same—’

‘No, we’ve got to let Alice live her own life,’ said Vi.

‘Well, I’ll tell you this much,’ said Tommy, ‘I’m glad I’m still living mine with you.’

‘Bless you, Tommy,’ said Vi, ‘and we’ll see this rotten old war through, won’t we?’

‘You can say that twice over,’ said Tommy.

‘Oh, bother it,’ said Alice at the sound of the front door knocker being smartly hammered. She was studying in the parlour, books and writing pad, inkwell and blotting paper, covering the table. During the preceding week she had read her way through all volumes of the
Forsyte Saga
, and the author’s subtle darts at the morals and attitudes of the hidebound dynasty had not been lost on her. At the same time, she had come to like many of the characters, and to feel empathy with their outlook.

Her mum being out, visiting her ageing parents,
Alice
had to answer the door herself. She did so fretfully.

A gangly young man in a boiler suit stood on the doorstep. Bareheaded, with black hair and the visage of a gypsy, he was as dark as any villainous squire of Victorian melodrama. This aspect, however, was offset by the twinkle in his eye. He carried a toolbox in one hand, and held a smoker’s pipe in the other. Alice thought him about twenty-five and eligible for the Army.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Och, guid morning to ye, young missus,’ he said.

A Scot?

‘I’m a miss,’ said Alice.

‘You’re no’ Mrs Adams?’

‘Miss Adams,’ said Alice. ‘What is your business?’

‘Weel now, ye’ve a suspected gas leak in your airing cupboard, which a Mr Adams of this address reported by phone to the board this morning at the time of eight-ten.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ said Alice. ‘My father phoned just before he left for his office.’ She could more correctly have said factory.

‘Shall I step in, Miss Adams?’

‘Yes – no, wait,’ said Alice, thinking of petty crooks who were taking advantage of circumstances brought about by the war. Houses temporarily vacated because of nearby unexploded bombs, damaged houses under repair by Government-sponsored gangs, and houses empty because housewives were doing war work, all offered opportunities to shifty-minded men with no scruples
whatever
. ‘I think I should see your credentials,’ she said.

‘My credentials?’ The gangly young Scot laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Alice, stiffening.

‘Weel now, Miss Adams, this being a devil of a war for ladies, wi’ no give or take, and lassies dancing their cares away at the Lyceum Ballroom, a man’s credentials these days dinna strictly amount to what’s on a piece of paper.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice, and she didn’t. She was intellectual but unworldly. ‘Are you trying to confuse me?’

‘Miss Adams, I’m Fergus MacAllister—’

‘Who?’

‘Dinna lay the blame on me, Miss Adams, it’s my grandfather’s name. I’m here from the South-Eastern Gas Board to try to trace your suspected gas leak, and if ye’ll let me in I’ll go about the work as quiet as a moose.’

‘Moose?’

‘Aye.’

Oh, mouse. His Scottish accent wasn’t broad, but it was there. She quite liked the Scottish accent, it gave character of a pleasant kind to English, providing it wasn’t too broad. She gave him another look. He smiled and his teeth gleamed. Alice had a flashing mental picture of a villainous Rob Roy laying an ambush.

She put that aside as absurd and said, ‘Well, I suppose it’ll be all right if I let you in.’

‘If the gas isn’t turned off, I’d no’ recommend closing the door on me,’ he said.

‘My father turned it off before he left,’ said
Alice
, and stood aside. Fergus MacAllister stepped in and surveyed the handsome hall, half-panelled in oak.

‘Mansions and marble halls,’ he said reflectively. There was no envy about him, however. ‘Will you lead the way, Miss Adams?’

Alice took him upstairs to the first floor landing. She showed him the airing cupboard, which Vi had emptied of laundry in anticipation of the call. He set down his box of tools and examined pipes.

‘Don’t forget the gas is turned off,’ she said.

‘I’m no’ forgetting,’ said Fergus. ‘I’ll go down and restore the flow.’

Down he went and out of the house to the gas main situated to one side of the drive. When he was back at the airing cupboard, Alice came out of her bedroom.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said.

‘Aye.’

But she lingered, watching him for some minutes before she returned to her bedroom, from where she could listen. There were warnings all over about keeping one’s house safe from the wartime crooks. Gasman Fergus MacAllister might be genuine, but he might not, and if he was going to be as quiet as a mouse he could be out of the house with his box full of stolen items without her hearing a thing. Unless she stayed as close as possible. She left her bedroom door open. She listened. She heard him whistling, she heard him tapping. Then she heard nothing. Out she went on quick feet. He was there, however, head inside the airing cupboard, a wet finger running over a pipe joint. Hearing her, he
lifted
his head out and turned. His pipe was in his mouth. He took it out.

‘Ye’re wanting me aboot something, Miss Adams?’ he asked, and Alice thought his half-smile quite evil.

‘Are you smoking that pipe close to a gas leak?’ she asked.

‘Weel now, Miss Adams, leaking gas and a burning pipe don’t make guid companions, so I’m just sucking it. And there’s a leak, that’s certain.’

‘Well, please find it,’ said Alice, and went back into her bedroom. She was sure she should keep an eye on him. Yes, at his age and his health and strength, why wasn’t he in uniform? Was he a deserter, or was a gas maintenance man in a reserved occupation? She heard him whistling again, a murmurous whistle, and she heard him say something.

Then silence.

Alice fidgeted. Her studying could wait, she had the whole of the summer, and she gave vent to her suspicions by appearing on the landing again. Fergus MacAllister was down on his knees, head deep inside the airing cupboard. His tool box was open, and there was very little room in it for stolen items.

‘Have you found it?’ she asked.

‘I’ve a wee smell up my nose,’ he said, his voice emerging muffledly.

‘Yes, both my parents were certain there was a leak,’ said Alice. ‘How long will it take you to fix it?’

‘There’s a wee hairline fracture in this T-joint.’

‘Can’t you fit a new one?’

Out came his dark head. It bumped against the
bottom
of the padded hot water boiler on the way. He rubbed at his thick black hair, and made an untidy mop of it.

‘Aye, I’ll have to, but it’s an old pipe system, y’ken, and I dinna have the right kind of replacement joint in my toolbox,’ he said, looking up at her. Alice, neat in a plain, simple dress that was in tune with her studiousness, returned his look with one of suspicion.

‘I consider that inconvenient,’ she said.

‘I’m mortified, Miss Adams,’ he said, but Alice didn’t think he was.

‘Your people must know how old our system is,’ she said, ‘and they should have made sure you brought the right kind of spares.’

‘It’s the war, y’ken,’ said Fergus. ‘Shortage of staff, shortage of spares for systems going back to before the ’14–18 war, and priority call-outs to incidents. But cheer up, Miss Adams—’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Alice.

‘Aye, there’s a silver lining,’ said Fergus. ‘First, I’ll apply a sealing agent to the joint, which will stop the leak for at least thirty days.’

‘That’s a month,’ said Alice.

‘Then when I get back to the depot sometime today, I’ll ransack the stores for a T-joint that’ll fit. I’ll call here again tomorrow. You can use the gas in the meantime.’

‘I don’t think the Gas Board would consider that procedure in our best interests,’ said Alice, ‘and perhaps not even correct. Gas is dangerous.’

‘I’ll no’ argue wi’ that, Miss Adams,’ said Fergus, ‘it’s powerful stuff when it’s on the loose, like
an
escaped convict’s pickaxe.’ Rummaging through his toolbox, he asked, ‘By the way, are you a school-teacher, Miss Adams, or a lay preacher?’

‘No, I am not,’ said Alice, ‘and I don’t know why you should ask such a question.’

‘It’s no’ a great matter,’ he said, and his head disappeared into the cupboard again. He applied the sealing agent to the affected T-joint. ‘Just that ye’ve a fine delivery, Miss Adams.’ His voice travelled hollowly around the cupboard.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Alice.

‘You speak your words fine and clear,’ said Fergus. ‘There, that’s the wee job done for the time being.’ His head re-emerged, he wiped his hands on a duster from his toolbox, put it back, closed the box and came to his feet. Whether it was dust from the cupboard or not, his dark features looked darker and his teeth whiter as he smiled. Alice suddenly felt herself dangerously alone in the house. ‘Will I leave the gas on, or turn it off, Miss Adams?’

‘I wish you’d been able to replace the joint instead of having to come back tomorrow,’ said Alice.

‘It’s nae bother,’ said Fergus.

‘I would prefer you to turn the gas off at the main.’

‘Och, aye, I’ll do that, then,’ he said. ‘Guid day to you, Miss Adams.’

‘Good morning,’ she said, and followed him downstairs to make sure he left the house. He opened the front door and turned to her.

‘Has it been a grieving war for you?’ he asked.

‘Do you mean it’s been joyful for some?’ she countered.

‘I’m just thinking ye’re a serious young lassie,’ he said, and left.

Really, what an obnoxious man, thought Alice. She watched as he uncovered the gas main and turned it off, replaced the cover and went on his way down the drive. He walked like a gangling cowboy, she thought.

She phoned the Gas Board, gave her name and address, and asked if one of their maintenance men was a Scot called Fergus MacAllister.

‘Pardon?’ said the woman clerk.

‘Fergus MacAllister, is he one of your maintenance men?’ asked Alice.