Sharra-bang! London - January 1928
Louisa dashed away angry tears lest they
smudge her makeup. Escaping the Royal Albert Hall, she couldn’t move fast
enough. Lizzy, tottering on gaudy high heels, was struggling to keep up with
her.
“Louisa! Slow down” she hissed.
Louisa stopped, her anger moving down to
her toes, which tapped a staccato rhythm on the cobbles as she waited for
Lizzy.
“Did you hear her?” she exploded. “Don’t
you dare, she said, don’t you dare. Ugly woman in her ugly guides uniform. How dare she
not let me share some sweets with my daughter.”
“You know, I’ve been giving those people
money since Nellie was a baby, and she’s babies of her own now. Always had a
coin box in the house. I won’t give ‘em a farthing more, Louisa. See if I
won’t.”
Louisa shivered as she smoothed her hair
and adjusted her clothes. She must calm down, she told herself, and try to work
out how she could get Maisie back.
---
The day had started well enough. It was
just over an hour by train from Burnt Oak to Kensington. The rain had finally
stopped and the flood waters had returned to the Thames. The sun was trying to
peek out from behind the clouds. Still, it was bitterly cold.
She pulled her stylish but too thin jacket
around her as they hurried up the steps of the Royal Albert Hall. The
terracotta lions stared down at her. Louisa had dressed in her Sunday best, but
she still felt out of place as she approached the Royal Albert Hall. She hadn’t
been near the Hall since the War, and she couldn’t help but look up at the
great domed roof to see if the gigantic blackout cloth was still there. But of
course it wasn’t; other parts of London were still boarded up and
uninhabitable, but the Royal Albert had been quickly restored.
Louisa thought it an excellent plan to
attend the Dr Barnardo Young Helpers League birthday fete and concert. Last
week, as she and her latest husband had waited and waited to see that snooty
Governor Picton-Turberville, she’d noticed a pamphlet advertising the concert.
“Look at this, Joe. We should go to this and
show em how much we support Dr Barnardo.”
“You go if you want. Take Lizzy. I don’t
want to see a bunch of girls’ knitting.”
If she appeared at the fete, she could show
how interested she was in all Dr Barnardo’s “great work”. She could show them
how much she was interested in Maisie’s well-being. She might be able to
persuade Maisie to come home. She had been trying to get Maisie home for over a
month. Her letters had received unsatisfactory answers and delaying tactics.
“I need her to come home, Joe.”
“Pfft, you haven’t seen her in four years.
Why now?”
“Well, she’s ad training. She’ll help
around the house. You don’t know what it’s like to be out in the new estate on
me own. There’s not even any shops nearby.”
The meeting had not gone well. She and Joe
Martin had been their charming best, but she thought it quite certain the
Governor could see straight through them. Her new husband did not look as if
the restoration of his step-daughter was quite as important to him as it was to
Louisa. If Maisie went to Australia,
which she was dying to do, she’d never see her again, Louisa was sure.
---
“I think so. Waste of time if she’s not. She’ll
be one of those girl guides in brown. She wouldn’t stop going on about the
guides last week. That…and Australia.”
Louisa and Lizzy looked at all the stalls.
They dropped a farthing into the box at the crochet table when the plump
charitable-looking woman smiled at them expectantly. They sat through the
musical recitals. All the while Louisa craned her head around, looking for her
daughter.
“There she is!” A group of guides had just
been requested to stand and make their way to the exit by their leader.
Maisie’s neat dark bob stood out next to the blonde girls around her. Louisa
pushed her way up the aisle to catch up with the guides, filing neatly towards
the door.
“Yoo-hoo! Maisie!” Caught in the middle of
laughing at something her friend said, Maisie’s face froze, as she spotted her
mother barrelling up the aisle scattering disapproving patrons as she went.
“Hello, dear. How lovely to see you again so soon. I didn’t know you’d be here.
Well, I hoped you would…but I didn’t know for sure. Here – look! I brought some sweets, just in case I should
see you. And here’s Aunty Lizzy. You’ll be seeing a lot of Aunty Lizzy, when
you come home. What fun we’ll have in the summer.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Thank you.” Maisie politely put out her hand for the bag
of sweets, wondering what in the world her mother was doing here.
The guide leader stepped in decidedly to
put a stop to Louisa’s onslaught. “Don’t you dare take those, Marguerite. Don’t
you dare!”
“Wait just a minute,” exclaimed Lizzy, “This
ere’s the girl’s mother. She’s just showing she loves her.”
“Ha!
Bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Louisa looked as if she’d been slapped. Her
cheeks burned even brighter under the rouge. The guide leader bustled her
charges out the door.
Louisa caught up with the group at the
roadside where the children were climbing in to the charabanc* waiting to
return them to Barkingside. The guide leader spied Louisa about to approach
Maisie again.
“You just turn around, Marguerite, and look
the other way” the guide leader instructed. Maisie hung her head, her fringe
hiding the tears on her face, as they drove away from the Albert Hall, and
Louisa.
 |
| *A charabanc (pronounced “sharra-bang” by Louisa) |
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