Stormy Days On Mulberry Lane Read online

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Ronoscki,’ the middle-aged gentleman said. ‘Good morning, Alice – how are you both?’

  ‘I’m very well, Mr Bonnet,’ Alice said and smiled at him. ‘I had my breakfast early in the kitchen with Peggy – I had pancakes and they were delicious so I shan’t be joining you this morning.’

  ‘Perhaps you would share my coffee?’ He beamed at her. ‘I do so enjoy your company in the mornings.’

  ‘Well, I could, if you wish…’

  ‘I’ll bring coffee for two,’ Peggy said with a look of approval. He was such a nice man and so kind to Alice. ‘I’m very well too, Mr Bonnet – shall I bring you the full English this morning as usual?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said and selected one of the trays. Each tray had a half a fresh grapefruit that morning with a little cherry on top, also a sugar shaker, Peggy’s home-made lime and orange marmalade in a little dish, two pats of butter, a small plate, a cup and saucer, knife, fork and two spoons plus a clean white napkin. The cooked breakfast and a pot of coffee would be brought in by Peggy, followed later by hot toast. ‘This looks delightful, as always.’

  Peggy nodded and went away to start cooking the breakfasts. She could already hear the other guests making their way down the stairs and so she would cook all the bacon and fried bread at the same time. Most of the gentlemen liked their eggs fried in different ways, and Mr Simpson liked his scrambled instead.

  She prepared the sausage, bacon and bread for frying first and then made Mr Bonnet’s coffee. While that was brewing, she cooked his egg and tomato and then carried the heavy tray into the dining room.

  All the guests were seated and two had eaten their grapefruit already.

  ‘Scrambled egg rather than fried, Mr Simpson?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, please, Peggy,’ he replied. Mr Simpson had been coming to the lanes since before the war and knew her from the pub so felt entitled to call her Peggy. ‘If it is no trouble.’

  ‘None at all,’ she said and looked at the two men sitting together. ‘Mr Jones and Mr Craven – do you both wish for the full English this morning?’

  ‘Yes, please, Mrs Ronoscki,’ they answered in chorus.

  ‘And lots of toast afterwards – I’m starving,’ Mr Jones added with a grin.

  ‘Would you like an extra slice of bacon, sir, or a sausage?’ Peggy asked.

  ‘Yes, an extra slice of bacon please – if you can spare it,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I can do that,’ Peggy said, smiling at Alice, who had made it possible by choosing pancakes instead. ‘What about you, Mr Craven? Mr Simpson?’

  ‘Not for me, thank you. I enjoy the grapefruit and the toast so much – I could eat more of that, but I’d best watch my waistline or your delicious cooking will make me fat.’ Mr Craven smiled at her.

  ‘I’d prefer an extra tomato,’ Mr Simpson replied. ‘I always find your breakfast quite substantial – but plenty of toast please. I particularly like this marmalade. I’ve never tasted any quite like it.’

  ‘Peggy makes it herself,’ Alice said and received a nod from him.

  Peggy went off to finish the cooked breakfasts and then make the toast. Her buns were ready, so she took them out of the oven to cool; the coffee cake needed another couple of minutes or so. She finished cooking the eggs, and tomatoes, added them to the perfectly presented bacon and fried bread, and carried them through to the dining room. There, she removed Mr Bonnet’s empty breakfast plate, taking it back to the kitchen and placing it in the sink to soak while she took out the cake and then set about making piles of fresh toast.

  Mr Bonnet was given the first rack with four slices cut in halves. Mr Simpson had a rack of six slices and Mr Jones and Mr Craven had a rack of six slices, again neatly cut in halves.

  Peggy paused at Mr Bonnet’s table. ‘Is there enough toast for you?’ she asked. ‘I can bring more if you wish?’

  He smiled at her. ‘No, thank you, Peggy. I’m going out to lunch with a friend today and if I eat more than this, I shan’t eat my meal – but that was delicious, every scrap of it.’

  ‘I’m so glad you enjoyed it – more coffee?’

  ‘No thank you – unless Alice would like some?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘No, thank you, Peggy. I’ll bring some plates through for you in a moment.’

  Peggy shook her head. ‘Sit and talk to Mr Bonnet for a bit longer. You can help me later…’

  Returning to the kitchen with the used breakfast plates, Peggy reflected that no one had left anything, even though she’d given the hungry ones extra fried bread, tomatoes or eggs. She knew that the toast racks would be cleared and in ten minutes she would ask if anyone needed more toast, tea or coffee.

  The used dishes were washed and left to drain. She dried her hands and returned to the dining room. Everyone but Mr Bonnet and Alice had gone. Peggy smiled at them and cleared the tables. Mr Bonnet was a salesman and had already told her that he would be staying with her whenever he was in the area. At the moment, he was working in London, but sometimes he was sent up north to Manchester and would be away for up to six weeks at a time, occasionally longer.

  Peggy cleared the other two tables and returned to the kitchen. She’d washed the dishes when Alice brought in the things from Mr Bonnet’s table. She brought them to the sink and then wiped the dishes and plates Peggy had washed earlier, arranging them carefully on the large oak dresser.

  ‘Mr Bonnet is very pleasant, isn’t he?’ Peggy said.

  ‘Oh, yes, lovely – just the sort of gentleman I like,’ Alice replied with a smile of contentment. ‘I shall miss him when he goes off on his travels.’

  ‘Has he said when he intends to leave?’

  ‘Yes – next Monday. He is going on a tour of Manchester and various big cities up north,’ Alice said. ‘He sells industrial fittings and fixtures and lots of boring stuff for his firm. It pays a decent wage and he has managed to save a bit.’ She smiled. ‘He’s a bit like I would have wanted my son to be.’ Alice looked wistful because her children had died in infancy.

  ‘He seems fond of you, Alice.’

  ‘He is kind and generous—’ Alice hesitated. ‘His daughter wants him to buy a little cottage near her in Newmarket, but he doesn’t fancy that much—’ she smiled a little oddly ‘—he told me he thinks I’m lucky to live here all the time.’ She hesitated, then, ‘Would you take him on as a permanent lodger if he asked?’

  ‘Yes, of course I would,’ Peggy said. ‘But you mustn’t get your hopes up, Alice – he might not want that…’

  ‘Oh, I think he would,’ Alice said confidently. ‘He told me this morning that he was considering asking you to keep his room while he’s away – he knows he will have to pay the full amount because you need to fill your rooms.’

  ‘Well, we’re not always full,’ Peggy said. ‘We’ve got bookings for next month for every room – but I didn’t know when he would be leaving on one of his trips so I kept that room free.’

  ‘Oh, he will be pleased,’ Alice replied, looking delighted. ‘He was afraid you might have let it as he’d told you he might be away next month.’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t sure—’ Peggy fetched her register from the dresser drawer, ‘—no, I haven’t taken a booking for Mr Bonnet’s room at all, it is completely free.’

  ‘Then I shall tell him he can have it on a permanent basis, shall I?’

  ‘Well, I suppose – yes, of course he can have it,’ Peggy said. ‘I’ll ask Able and we’ll come to some arrangement about the weeks he isn’t here – so that he pays a little less when he isn’t eating here.’

  Alice nodded and smiled. Clearly, she was pleased that her friend would continue to be a guest. Peggy knew Able would accept whatever she decided upon, though they did need their guests to be paying guests. Peggy’s involvement in the cake shop with Sheila and Maureen earned a little, but they were not yet earning anywhere near as much from the boarding house as they had from the café. Able said it didn’t matter. He had ideas for oth
er businesses, he’d told her, though as yet he was keeping them close to his chest. She knew of course that he had the house in Mulberry Lane that he let out, which brought in a small income – but what else could he be planning?

  2

  Maureen Hart looked across the breakfast table at her husband Gordon, two small sons and her stepdaughter Shirley. They had all eaten every scrap of their breakfasts, though the small boys had much smaller portions than the adults, of course. Bacon, scrambled egg, mushrooms, tomatoes and fried bread was their Sunday treat now that these foodstuffs were more readily available, and they all enjoyed it together, relishing the fact that no one had to leave for work or school.

  ‘What are you planning for today, love?’ Maureen asked the girl she thought of as her daughter. ‘It looks like being lovely…’

  ‘I’m meeting Claire and we’re going to catch the bus to town, spend some time in the park and perhaps go window shopping.’ She smiled at her mother. ‘Neither of us can afford the West End prices, but we like to look at the new fashions, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, of course you do,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ll give you a bit extra if there’s something you actually want, Shirley.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t pay the price they ask in Selfridges or Peter Robinson,’ Shirley said laughing. ‘We’re planning on getting ideas and then we’ll buy new patterns from Butterwick’s and make ourselves a new dress each – Claire wants a dress with a little bolero jacket and maybe a sweetheart neckline. We’ve seen the paper patterns, but we want ideas about what is new in the shops.’

  Maureen nodded. Her daughter seemed so grown-up these days, though only seventeen. Recently, Shirley had spent more time with her friend Claire and they used Claire’s mother’s sewing machine to make clothes for themselves. Claire was leaving school that summer to take a course in typing and shorthand. She’d already been offered a job in the office of a large department store and her mother was paying for her to take the course to improve her skills. Shirley, of course, was going on to college – after her summer holiday at the coast with Richard Kent, the son of their next-door neighbour and her special friend. It was to be a working holiday during the months of July and August, after which she would return home for a week or two to get ready for medical school. Her long-held dream of being a doctor was coming closer at last.

  It was natural that she should want some new and fashionable clothes and Maureen went to her purse in the dresser drawer and drew out five pounds. ‘Here, take this,’ she said. ‘I know you’ll need things for your holiday and you can’t make them all – besides, you want one really pretty dress bought from a shop. I’ll give you some more when you go away, but take this now and spend it.’

  Shirley looked at the money hesitantly. Five pounds was rather a lot of money for her mother to give her all at once and she shook her head, clearly reluctant to accept it. ‘You work hard for that money, Mum,’ she said. ‘It’s too much—’

  ‘Shirley, you help me so much,’ Maureen said and smiled at her. ‘I couldn’t work with Sheila and Peggy, either cooking or in the cake shop if you just went off all the time and left me to do all the housework, and you’re so good with the boys. You deserve this and more – and there will be extra when you go on holiday, from me as well as your dad.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ Shirley threw her arms about her and hugged her. ‘I’m so lucky. Claire has to work in her uncle’s grocery shop stacking tins and boxing up orders on Saturdays to earn her five shillings a week pocket money. You spoil me, but thank you so much.’

  ‘If I do, you’re worth it,’ Maureen told her with look of love. ‘You can tell me what the new styles are when you get back. I might make a new summer dress for myself.’

  ‘You will buy yourself three new dresses for our holiday next month,’ Gordon told Maureen, looking up from his newspaper. ‘I’ll pay for them and I’ll be giving Shirley ten pounds for whatever she needs when she goes on her working holiday.’

  ‘Dad!’ Shirley looked shocked. ‘I shall be earning money for those two months. Richard said the student nurses and doctors all try to get seasonal work during the summer break from medical school. It helps to keep them going in term time—’

  ‘And that is what you will do with your wages,’ her father said. ‘Don’t think it is all for spending, Shirley. You will need money once you start your proper training. I shall make you a small weekly allowance, of course, but anything you earn will make life easier for you while you learn to be a doctor. It will be a couple of years at least before you’re on the wards and starting to earn anything.’

  Shirley nodded. She’d told her mother that Claire was going on a five-week course and at the end of that time she would earn one pound and ten shillings a week, rising to two pounds and fifteen shillings in six-monthly intervals. There would be years of study before Shirley earned anything like that much, but of course she could be paid far more than her friend if she made the grade and actually became a doctor, as she hoped.

  Maureen saw the smile on her daughter’s face and felt happy for her. To be given fifteen pounds spending money by her parents was a surprise and hugely exciting and meant she would be able to buy at least one good dress and the material for several others, as well as having a little store to take with her. Maureen was already making her a pretty yellow cardigan and a jumper to take with her to college in the autumn, but it was always nice to have money of your own to spend – something that had been a rare occurrence in Maureen’s own life when she was Shirley’s age. After Maureen’s mother had died, her father had treated Maureen more as a paid servant than his daughter for years, giving her a meagre wage for running and working all hours in their corner shop, and dominating her life. That was never going to happen to Shirley! Gordon thought the world of her and so did Maureen.

  She smiled as she started to clear away the breakfast dishes, waving away Shirley’s offer of help. ‘You get off and meet Claire,’ she told her. ‘I’m going to do this and a bit of ironing. We’ll have a cold lunch and then your father and I are taking the boys to the Church sports day this afternoon.’

  Rose Barton cleared the breakfast table and dumped the dirty dishes in the sink. Jenny was laughing with her father and her little brother Jackie as he played games with them in the back garden. Thank goodness it was a lovely day and they were out from under her feet for a while. She wasn’t sure she could cope with her daughter screaming in her ear this morning.

  She was feeling tired and drained, sometimes a little dizzy, and that worried her, because she hadn’t felt like that with either of her other pregnancies and it made her worry that something was wrong. Tom was looking forward to another child in the house and he would be devastated if anything happened to the baby – or indeed, to her.

  No, that was morbid! Rose blocked the thought and looked out at the small patch of lawn at the back of the house. Tom had taken this particular house in Mulberry Lane because it had a garden and not just a back yard. He played games on the lawn with the children on Sundays, when he was home from work in his busy building yard and grew fresh vegetables in the garden too. Many of the men in the lane had their allotments and gathered far more produce than they needed. Her husband grew just what he needed for his family, though he gave any surplus to his elderly neighbours. Tom was well-liked in the district and for good reason. His trade was as a builder or odd-job man, though these days his projects were more ambitious; he employed a good worker who was both a bricklayer and a carpenter and, being Tom, he’d soon taught himself to do both. He was becoming much sought after and not just in the lanes about his home.

  The thing about her husband, Rose reflected as she paused to watch him catch his son in his arms and swing him high was that he was always reliable. He did what he promised and he did it well – and for elderly friends and neighbours, these days he often refused payment for small jobs.

  She smiled as she remembered his many kindnesses to Alice. She thought the world of Tom and often wandered into Rose’s kitchen of
a morning to tell her about when he was growing up, leaving Rose in no doubt that her husband had had a hard childhood. He’d been treated harshly by his mother and lost his younger brother, who’d had a nose for trouble, and got himself blown up during the war – something Tom’s mother had blamed on him, despite Tom having done all he could to keep his brother from the bomb sites. Rose knew he was fond of his father, though they didn’t see him often enough.

  After the war, Tom’s father, Jack Barton, had stayed on in the Army, married again, and was now living on the South Coast in a small seaside village. He had scraped together enough to open a little grocery shop, which he ran with his wife, and he phoned his son regularly once a week on a Sunday evening. Jack Barton had invited them all to go and stay this summer, but Rose hadn’t really felt like facing the journey, though it would be nice to have a little holiday at the sea with Tom’s father. Jack’s second wife was a friendly woman and would make them welcome. Perhaps she would think about it when the school holidays started.

  Jenny went to school now. She’d started by joining a preparatory group for a few mornings a week, but then she’d been taken on at the local infants’ school and it gave Rose a little more time to get on with her work, because Jackie was far less trouble than her daughter. He would settle quietly with Alice if she was helping in Sheila’s cake shop in the afternoon and often just played with his toys while she worked in the house. Jenny was always following her about when she was home, demanding attention, but Jackie was far easier to please.

  However, these past few days, Rose had not felt inclined to do much apart from the necessary jobs about the house. She hadn’t felt like this with her other babies and it did bother her, though her doctor said she was fine and it was natural not to want to do as much in her condition. She sighed, smothering her silly fears and put the kettle on. In a few minutes, she would call Tom in for a cup of tea. They were having a salad lunch that day so that they could take the children to the London Zoo in the afternoon.