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The figure looks up and glares. Dougie Fairbrother is knee high to a grasshopper and walks like he’s fighting a gale. When he comes within hailing distance he yells, ‘What time is it, Jack?’
‘Just comin’ up to twenty past.’
‘What?’ Receiving no immediate reply, he adds, ‘Twenty past what?’
‘Seven.’
‘That means I’ve been on this friggin’ beach for the best part of two bloody hours,’ Dougie says as he makes his way slowly up the concrete steps that separate the beach from the prom. Jack shakes his head. He has known Dougie Fairbrother all his life. Jack was the first person Dougie went to when his wife walked out and it was Jack who got him sorted out with a solicitor. Dougie has developed a fair thirst since his divorce back in the spring. It’s eight in the morning and he’s still drunk from the night before. When Dougie finally reaches the top of the steps he stops to catch his breath. Dougie has worked in the weaving shed since he was fourteen, that’s the best part of twenty years filling his lungs with lint and dust.
While he is puffing and blowing Jack remarks, ‘Aye, well, they say there’s no rest for the wicked. What happened to lying in bed, Dougie? I thought your lad had booked a double room.’
‘He did. But it’s otherwise occupied at the moment. The little bastard has got a lass from over yonder in with him.’
Jack follows the direction of Dougie’s thumb and sees a strip joint on the corner opposite with all the hatches battened down. ‘Who’s he got in there?’ he asks, hard pushed to hide his incredulity.
‘One of the strippers. I didn’t stop long enough to get her name and there were no bloody point asking Doug. Pound to a penny he wouldn’t know.’
‘So where did you sleep?’
‘I kipped down in the Residents’ Lounge. I was OK till the cleaners turned up at six and threw me out. I’ve been hanging around here on the off chance one of the lads turned up. I’m chilled to the bloody bone and gasping for a drink. They won’t open the hotel doors before nine at the earliest.’
Jack puts his hand in his pocket and gives Dougie half a crown. ‘That’ll be enough to get you a pot of tea and some breakfast.’
Dougie brightens immediately and says, ‘Thanks, Jack. E-e, but you should have come with us last night. We had a grand time. It was a good do.’
‘Looks like it,’ replies Jack.
Dougie blinks his bloodshot eyes and rubs a calloused hand over his sickly face. ‘We started off at Yates’s but, God help us, we ended up at the King o’ Clubs.’
‘I’m surprised you went back there. I thought you’d been thrown out last time,’ Jack says as they cross the tramlines.
‘We were. It was Tapper’s fault. We sat through this load o’ guff about how we were going to see amazing things. Some tart wi’ her own version of ping-pong, half a dozen Egyptian dancers, that sort of thing. We’d gone in to see Sheba, the star of the show. She was billed as “six foot of exotic woman, naked as God intended, from the distant reaches of deepest Africa”. Tapper jumped up halfway through the spiel and yelled, “Well, bloody bring her out! I’ve summat here from Blackburn waiting for her!” It took three of us, mind, but we managed to get Tapper to sit down again and button his flies. Nowt would have come of it if some lard-arse next to us hadn’t said summat smart. Tapper only got to throw three or four punches before we were out on our ears. Never a dull moment wi’ Tapper.’
That much is true. Eddie Tapworth is the best tackler in the cotton shed. A giant of a man, he is built for the heavy job of lifting beams. He can keep his looms running all day. He’s not one of those tacklers who hang around making the weavers wait while they sort out a trapped or broken shuttle, or grumbling at Jack to chase up a shortage of spindles from the spinning rooms. Tapper sets to and does it himself. He could replace the used shuttles and put a fresh cop in faster than you could draw breath. He is one of the few tacklers who can reckon how much the shaft speed will increase when the leather drive belts from the looms shrink in the heat. If all the tacklers were as capable as Tapper, the foreman’s job would be a damn sight easier. When he’s sober, Jack has a good deal of time for Eddie Tapworth. But drunk it’s another matter. A few pints and Tapper would fight his own shadow if it followed him.
‘We’re off to the Winter Gardens tomorrow night,’ Dougie continues. ‘You’d like. It’s Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. Why don’t you come?’
Jack rubs the angle of his jaw and shakes his head. ‘No, I’m not that bothered, Dougie.’
‘Come on! You’ve not lost your taste for jazz! I’ve known a time when I couldn’t get you to play a waltz straight without jazzing it up. We lost work for the band because of it. You were Blackburn’s answer to Jack Teagarden.’
Jack’s expression is transformed by the memory. Laughter rumbles from deep in his chest while his grey eyes all but disappear above the curve of his cheekbones. He and Dougie got up to all sorts in the band before the war. He played trombone to Dougie’s trumpet. Jack had started off as bandleader – top hat, silk scarf, the lot. But it hadn’t taken long to sort out that it was the players who were getting all the girls. The bloke with the trombone in particular. Eddie Cummings couldn’t shift for skirt. When Jack promoted Eddie to bandleader and borrowed his trombone, things started looking up. Jack’s broad shoulders and ability to charm make him popular even now with the women. He may be in his late thirties but he takes care of himself. His blond hair is cut by the best barber in town and combed back into a series of shiny Brylcreemed tramlines.
‘No, I’ll give it a miss, Dougie. Kenny Ball’s a bit tame for me. I like the proper stuff – I saw Count Basie at the Tower a couple of years back. Cost an arm and a leg to get in, but it was worth every penny. Kenny Ball is just an amateur in comparison. I listened to a fair bit of jazz in Crete during the war.’
‘We were damn lucky to get Vera Lynn where I was stationed. Wasn’t it Crete where you met that bloke… the one that…?’
‘Yes. Nibs turned up one day with a gramophone and half a dozen jazz records. He’d brought them over from Greece. Got them from a black GI who was being posted back home. Only the Yanks would think to take a gramophone to war. I couldn’t get enough of it. The first time I heard Meade Lux Lewis playing “Honky Tonk Train Blues” I cracked out laughing.’
‘Aye, well, Kenny Ball’s the best Blackpool can come up with. You sure you won’t come?’
‘No, I’ll give it a miss. I promised to see Tom Bell tomorrow night.’
‘What? The Union bloke? Now isn’t that a surprise!’
‘Oh, it’s nothing serious. He just wants a chat.’
‘Chat my arse. He’ll have summat up his sleeve. I bet he’s got wind of Fosters’ offer.’
‘You haven’t said anything, have you, Dougie? Nobody is supposed to know. I haven’t even told Ruth. I’m still thinking about it.’
‘Why haven’t you told Ruth? I’d have thought you’d have wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Bloody hell, Jack, they’ve offered you the top job. Manager of Prospect Mill. What’s there to think about? It’ll more than double your pay packet overnight. Get her told.’
‘She’s been distracted with Beth. And anyway I haven’t said I’ll take the job.’
‘Then you want your bumps feeling, Jack. You should have bitten their hand off the minute it was offered. They should have made you up to manager years ago. You know more about cotton than all the Foster brothers put together.’
‘It’ll mean sitting behind a desk all day.’
‘You won’t catch Ruth complaining about that. I remember when we were kids on Bird Street. She had some fancy ideas even then. We used to tease the life out of her, but she’d never change her tune. She was going to get married, live in a beautiful house and have two children – a boy and a girl.’
‘That’s Ruth. Always knows exactly what she wants. But I still think I’d rather be busy in the weaving shed than sitting by myself in an office pushing papers around. I’ll get round to telling her. I’ve got other things on my mind at the moment.’
‘Anything you want to talk about?’
Jack shakes his head. ‘No, no. It’s something and nothing. Not worth bothering with.’
‘Well, think on. There’ll be merry hell to pay if she finds out you’ve been keeping secrets.’
Jack looks at his feet and moves his hand unconsciously up to the inside pocket of his jacket where he has hidden the letter. There are enough secrets in there to keep him busy for a fair bit and then some.
‘Anyway, how is she?’
Jack looks confused; his mind has been elsewhere. ‘Who?’
‘Your Ruth.’
Jack shakes his head. ‘She’s jiggered after all the upset with Beth. She didn’t want to come away for fear that Beth wouldn’t be up to it. We ended up having a barney about it. Ruth needs a holiday more than any of us. Still, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. The first thing she did when we got to the hotel was to set to and clean the washbasin.’
‘But Beth’s goin’ to be OK?’
‘Oh aye. Give her time, she’ll pull round. She’s a right little fighter.’
‘And how’s your Helen?’
Jack smiles. ‘Still pushing to leave school this summer. It’s the usual do – she’s sixteen going on twenty-five.’
‘They’re all the same. Our Doug is only a year older and he thinks he knows it all. Never satisfied. “He wants jam on it” as my old dad used to say. Talking of which, just take a look at this.’ Dougie reaches into his pocket and pulls out a square of fabric and hands it to Jack.
‘Where did you get this?’ Jack asks, turning the square over and back.
‘One of the lads from Whittaker’s. Says this is what they’re turning out nowadays.’
‘Are you sure Whittaker’s are weaving this?’
‘It’s right what I tell you. Look at the state of it. Lowest possible thread count and sized to glory.’
Jack runs his thumbnail across the surface of the dry, brittle fabric and a small cloud of white powder rises. ‘It must be hell to weave. There’s no movement in it, no give.’
‘There’s more elastic in a tart’s knickers.’
‘I can’t believe Whittaker’s are using such poor-quality cotton staple that they’ve had to glue it together. They never used to use anything less than Egyptian or Sea Island cotton.’
‘Times have changed, Jack. You know that as well as I do. There’s no pride left in the business.’
Dougie and Jack reach the pavement where they part, Dougie for breakfast at the nearest café, and Jack for a Daily Herald and twenty Senior Service.
On the way back from the newsagent’s Jack finds a bench on the prom, sits down and reaches for his cigarettes. The pack of untipped cigarettes is embossed in the centre with a picture of a brawny sailor. Jack runs his thumb over the familiar relief as he pushes open the pack and lights his first cigarette of the day. Smoking is barely tolerated at home. Jack may smoke in the backyard or, if it is raining, in the scullery. Tab ends to be disposed of directly into the ash bin. There isn’t an ashtray in the house and Ruth refuses to buy one. Numberless though her household duties may be, emptying ashtrays is not one of them. Alcohol is subject to similar restrictions. The single bottle of sherry is brought out every Christmas and returned untouched to the darkest recesses of the sideboard every New Year. Ruth is running a house, not a public bar. She is teetotal, has been since the Temperance Society marched down Bird Street with their banners flying.
Jack sighs and opens the paper, but he’s too distracted by memories of his friend to read. Nibs was barely five foot six, thin as a rake. He seemed to be in a permanent sweat. His skin shone like it was newly oiled and he couldn’t speak without using his hands to illustrate his point. He looked like a windmill in a gale when he got upset. He had run a pet shop in London before the war. A typical Cockney – loads of patter and plenty of old buck when things weren’t going his way. But he loved animals. It didn’t matter where they were, there’d be some mangy mongrel or moth-eaten cat at his heels. In Heraklion Nibs had put his hand halfway down an Alsatian’s throat to pull out a sliver of bone that was blocking the dog’s wind-pipe. The dog had promptly vomited and then nipped Nibs on the ankle as he was walking away. He’d always taken in strays and the fact that he was in the middle of a war didn’t make any difference. He argued that there wasn’t much to choose between dogs and men. ‘Sometimes, even with the best will in the world, you can’t save them and there’s no point in even trying. It’s kinder to have done and put them out of their bloody misery.’ The memory is a bitter one, considering how things turned out. Jack shakes himself and rubs his hand across his forehead as if to wipe away the memory. He lights another cigarette and stares out across the empty sands, a look of hopelessness on his face.
It is Gunner, the hotel dog, who finally rouses him. The dog wanders up out of nowhere and lodges his chin firmly on Jack’s knee. Gunner is a Lakeland terrier, his coat a scrunch of grey and brown wire wool. One eye is dimmed with a cataract but the other is bright and what’s left of his docked tail is permanently erect. Man and dog sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. The breeze freshens, shifting grains of sand across the pink flagstones and rippling the bunting tied to the promenade railings. Jack has spent Wakes Week at the Belvedere Hotel every year since the war and, as a result, is regarded as family by Gunner. Blackpool at the height of the holiday season might disturb and overexcite any ordinary dog, but Gunner is an old hand. It has been a long trip for Gunner from ‘unofficial South Lancs Regimental mascot’ to Mine Host at the Belvedere Hotel. The dog is subject to the unwelcome attention of passing children and his sleep is disturbed nightly by hotel guests in various states of inebriation gaining rowdy entry to the hotel lobby. Jack tickles the dog’s left ear before taking a last drag and flicking his cigarette over the promenade railings. Standing up, he proceeds to fold the newspaper into three and, putting it under his arm, heads back to the hotel. Gunner meanwhile continues his route march along the prom in search of last night’s chip papers.
‘Looks as if it’s going to be another hot one, Ruth,’ Jack says when he sees his wife in the lobby. His glance strays to Beth, who is already wriggling with the itchiness of her vest, liberty bodice and wool jumper. ‘Hasn’t she got a summer dress to wear?’
‘Not today,’ Ruth replies firmly. ‘It could turn cold again; the wind’s got a nip to it.’
‘Give over. I’ve been out there. It’s not cold, it’s fresh. It’ll do her good to get some sunshine.’
Beth runs up to her father and wraps her arms round his legs.
‘E-yo-yo, Sputnik!’
Jack bends down to pick Beth up. He puts his arm carefully round the back of her legs and lifts her gently. Beth might be fragile but the spell in hospital hasn’t curbed any of her curiosity. She spots the letter in his inside jacket pocket in a flash. ‘What’s this?’ she asks, her fingers closing round the corner of the letter.
‘Never mind that. Are you ready for your breakfast? Plenty of porridge, that’s what you need. It’ll make your hair curl,’ Jack says as he strokes back a fine brown strand that has escaped from her ribbon. ‘I’ll just nip upstairs and change my jacket – it’s too hot for tweed,’ he continues, turning to Ruth.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she replies. ‘I’ve left my scarf on the dressing table.’
‘No, you’re all right. I can pick it up at the same time.’
Once in the room, Jack reaches inside his jacket. The beige satin lining whispers conspiratorially against the thick envelope as he slides it out. He has had the letter for the best part of a week now and keeping it hidden is proving stressful. If he were at home there’d be no problem. Jack could have hidden it in his worksheets and textile patterns. As long as they’re neatly stacked Ruth never bothers with them; she’s no interest in loom specifications and the like. But here in Blackpool there’s nowhere safe to keep the letter. Not in the suitcase. Dear God, not in there. She’s in that case half a dozen times a day, pulling out fresh clothes for the girls and rearranging everything. She has a system. Everything in its place and a place for everything. At night she goes through all Jack’s clothes looking for loose buttons and dirty handkerchiefs. She empties the contents of his pockets on to a brass tray on the dressing table and puts his wallet on top. Finally she brushes down his jacket and, resisting the lure of the hotel wardrobe, hangs it up behind the door. As a result of her efficiency Jack has been driven to distraction – forever moving the letter from jacket to trousers as the situation demands. He had been keeping it in his shirt pocket until he noticed her eyeing him suspiciously at breakfast yesterday. Discretion being the better part of valour, he had retired to the toilet and moved it to his jacket pocket where he’d reckoned it was safe enough for a while. Now he takes the letter, folds it in half, pushes it in the back pocket of his trousers and does up the button. Manoeuvre completed, Jack takes off his jacket, collects Ruth’s scarf from the dressing table and locks the door behind him.
3 (#ued60d790-b058-5ec7-adc2-cec3306369d9)
GANNETS
These are large seabirds with white feathers and black tips to their wings. They feed by plunging into the sea and catching fish with their long pointed bills. This habit of diving upon their food has led to their hungry reputation! Score 20 points for some greedy gannets.
Connie is run off her feet this morning. She has already seated an extra four families in the packed dining room when the Clegg family, six in total, turn up. ‘There’s a whole bloody tribe of them,’ she complains to Andy, the chef, ‘and I’ve only got a table for two left.’
Connie hasn’t worked as a silver service waitress before, but the manager of the Belvedere knows a crowd pleaser when he sees one. Connie turned up on his doorstep a couple of weeks earlier and was offered the job on the spot. The Belvedere is very classy, a dream come true for Connie. Her last job was at Stan’s Café, where she worked every weekend. She served behind the counter mostly, but she had to cook as well on Sundays if Stan wasn’t feeling up to it. It was Stan who taught her how to carry seven plates at once. She’d got the knack eventually, but not before she’d turned up at school on a fair few Monday mornings with a giant plaster on the inside of her left wrist. Connie is a cracker, in more ways than one. She’d caused such a sensation at the café that the place was packed with lads every weekend waiting for her to lean over the counter or drop a fork. Connie is just that sort of girl. Her scarlet overall looked decent enough on the hanger when Stan gave it to her, but when she put it on there was something about her curves that resisted confinement. And what with the hotplates and ovens going full blast behind her, it was only natural that she should loosen the collar. Connie sees no problem in the degree of male attention she excites despite, or perhaps because of, the ladders in her stockings and the buttons missing from her bodice. Stan offered her full-time work when she left school, but Connie had bigger fish to fry. She’d heard that you could pick up seasonal work in Blackpool. What could be better than spending the whole summer in Blackpool and being paid for it to boot? Stan was sad to see her go. Still, Stan’s loss is the Belvedere’s gain.
The hotel supplies its waitresses with a black uniform and a white frilly apron with a delicate pin-tucked front fixed at nipple level with tiny gold safety pins. Black stilettos and seamed stockings complete the outfit, along with a wisp of lace that passes for a hat, which is secured to the back of the head with white kirby grips. Connie is friendly and easygoing by nature, and has already proved a big hit with the head chef, Andy. It is Andy who yells at the deputy manager to put up another table and find an extra couple of chairs sharpish, and Andy who advises Connie to put the Cleggs in the alcove. If Connie hesitates it’s because her new friend Helen’s family usually sit there. But Andy is adamant. He has her best interests at heart.
When she arrives in the palatial dining room Mrs Singleton is at first confused and then annoyed to see that the large table in its own private alcove (where the family has sat every day since their arrival last Saturday) is no longer available. Far from it. A family of six is occupying their table, leaving the Singletons no other option but to cram themselves round a tiny table inched in between the alcove and walkway. This new location not only affords them unwelcome glimpses into the kitchen with its blasts of steam and bad language, but, worse still, forces them into close proximity with the very people who stole their table in the first place. Jack sizes up the situation and, accepting that there is no alternative, indicates that they should all sit at the new table.
Ruth remains standing, staring furiously at the interlopers. The family appear not to have noticed but the moment Ruth finally relents and sits, the wife, a large florid woman with broad capable hands, pipes up, ‘Have we got your table? It was the waitress what put us here. She said it were the only way what with there being so many of us and needing two high chairs for the twins. Do you want us to move?’ All this said with the confidence of a woman who, once settled, even the H bomb wouldn’t shift.
Ruth turns her head away and it is left to Jack to reply. ‘No, no. It doesn’t matter. We’ll sit here instead. There’s room for everyone,’ he says, raising his voice to cover the rustle of the letter in his trouser pocket when he sits down. ‘It’s Full English Breakfast wherever you sit!’
‘You’re right there,’ replies the husband. He turns halfway round in his chair and offers Jack his hand. ‘Fred Clegg,’ he says and tilts his head in the direction of the florid woman. ‘And that’s the wife, Florrie.’
Jack nods at Florrie and shakes hands with Fred.
‘We got here last night. We’re still finding our feet,’ continues Fred.
‘Well, it looks as if you’ve brought the sunshine with you,’ Jack says as he turns his attention to the breakfast menu.
‘From over Blackburn way, are you?’ Fred asks.
‘Aye.’
‘I thought I’d seen you around. I never forget a face. Where do you…?’
But Jack, aware that the next question will be about work, interrupts: ‘You’re from the town then, are you?’
‘Aye.’
During this exchange Ruth has had a good look at the Clegg family. The husband looks dishevelled, from the worn elbows of his brown cardigan to his nylon shirt that strains across a lovingly maintained beer belly. Ruth wouldn’t dream of buying a nylon shirt. There’s no need for nylon unless you’re too lazy to iron. And as for all this craze for drip-dry – anybody with any sense knows that a good cotton twill will resist wrinkling and barely needs ironing. But Mrs Clegg doesn’t look as if she’d care. She’s wearing a faded blue dress with white polka dots. The dress is deliberately shapeless yet its generous gathers struggle to disguise her overwhelming bulk. The material stretches over unwanted curves and catches between rolls of excess. Only the eldest boy is decently dressed, the twins and the younger lad are in little better than rags. All her worst fears confirmed, Ruth turns and looks out of the window. High winds laden with salt spray have eaten away at the exterior paintwork. Ruth suspects it would only take a single swipe from a scrubbing brush to remove the lot but you’d risk removing the window at the same time. There isn’t an ounce of decent putty left on the frame. No wonder it’s draughty.
‘We’ve not stayed here before,’ Fred volunteers. ‘We usually stay at Mrs Thornber’s boarding house down at South Shore. Nearer for the Pleasure Beach. Three meals a day and less than half the price of this place. But what with one thing and another, we’d left it too late for Mrs Thornber’s. So we thought we’d have a couple of days here instead. Makes a change.’
‘Oh, you’ll like it here. It’s good plain food at the Belvedere and there’s a bar every night,’ replies Jack, who is momentarily distracted by the quality of the damask tablecloth. He turns the material over and back a few times remarking the precision of the surface pattern in reverse, speculating as to the thread count. He runs his nail across the grain of the fabric to assess how much of the stiffness of the cloth is due to the weave and how much to the application of starch. Jack learned long ago that once you start looking at weaves it’s difficult to break the habit.
Fred sits back in his chair and looks around the dining room. The walls are covered in flock wallpaper: deep burgundy acanthus leaves against a pale plum background. The room itself is bisected by a series of white pillars that support a ceiling heavy with ornate plasterwork and oversized ceiling roses. It’s what holidaymakers come to the Belvedere for – a bit of luxury. The hotel is fully booked and the room hums with the sound of mill workers and their families tucking into a three-course breakfast and making the best of an English summer.
Florrie Clegg beams at Ruth and says, ‘It looks a nice place, this.’
Ruth looks unconvinced. She has noticed a slow but irreversible decline in standards over the years. Still, any hotel that can entertain that couple in room sixty-nine – the salesman and his ‘wife’ – is already well on its way to perdition without any further help from the Cleggs. And as for the ‘good plain food’ – that’s a matter of opinion.
Shortly after they were married Ruth made Eggs Florentine. Jack stared at the eggs and spinach lavishly topped with a classic cheese sauce (made properly, mind you, with a flour and butter roux) and said, ‘What sort of concoction is this? You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, Ruth. What’s wrong with broth on a Tuesday?’
Ruth may have crossed Eggs Florentine off the menu but she is still determined to use some of the fancy recipes she and her best friend Cora collected at night school. Cora always said that the French names alone were enough to make her mouth water (Poulet Bonne Femme, Moules Marinières, Boeuf Bourguignon). They’d both had a good laugh about the pronunciation. Cora had a talent for making French sound suggestive. She’d thought up a whole list of things that ‘Moules Marinières’ might possibly mean – including sailors’ balls – until Ruth had blushed and covered her mouth with her hand. Despite her attachment to French cuisine Ruth is quite happy to leave out the garlic and downright glad to substitute water for wine. She has learned that it is no good putting Jack’s tea in front of him and saying ‘This is Quiche Lorraine’ – he is a sight less suspicious if she says, ‘I thought we’d have egg and bacon pie today.’ Or ‘I’ve picked up some fresh mussels from the market. I thought they’d make a change, boiled with a bit of onion.’ He will set to and eat the lot until the bowl rattles with the scrape of empty shells and his fingers glisten with butter and flakes of fresh parsley. Ruth is running culinary circles around Jack. And as long as she only does it once or twice a week, Jack is prepared to let her.
Further conversation is abandoned as the two families order breakfast. Connie scribbles the orders down in her pad and disappears through the swing doors into the kitchen. Ruth has a set of rules garnered for the most part from Good Housekeeping and the writings of Elizabeth Craig. Rules are Ruth’s sheet anchor in the troubled seas of marriage and child rearing. Over the years she has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of how to behave – table manners and etiquette being foremost in her present considerations. A glance down the table confirms that her daughters are behaving as she would expect in a public place. Their voices are suitably moderated, their spoons half filled from the far edge of the cereal bowls, their elbows well in and their movements slow. Ruth watches Connie clearing the cereal plates from the Cleggs’ table minutes after having served them.
‘Just look at that family. Have you seen how they eat?’ Ruth whispers to Jack. ‘They’re like a bunch of gannets. I’m surprised they bother with knives and forks. I’ve never seen anyone eat that fast.’
