The Palace of Strange Girls Read online

  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 gray 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 undershirt, liberty bodice and wool sweater. “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 onto 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 valor, 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. Maneuver completed, Jack takes off his jacket, collects Ruth’s scarf from the dressing table and locks the door behind him.

  3

  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 hot plates 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 hairpins. 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 sa
id 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 disheveled, 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 drafty.

  “We’ve not stayed here before,” Fred volunteers. “We usually stay at Mrs. Thornber’s boardinghouse 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.”

  Beth taps her mother’s hand. “Can I have a drink, Mummy? I’m thirsty. Can I have orange juice like the other people?” Beth pokes a pale finger at the Cleggs.

  Ruth shakes her head. There is nothing to drink other than a pot of tea. It is Ruth’s first job, when she reaches the table every morning, to hand the jug of orange juice back to the waitress. Ruth does not hold with tinned juice, be it orange, grapefruit, or apple. Whole fresh fruit is to be preferred at all times. Water is not an acceptable alternative. Elizabeth is so clumsy she’d spill it.

  “You’ll have to wait until you get back to the room. I can’t be having you making a mess,” Ruth replies.

  The Cleggs appear to have no such qualms; their jug of juice disappears within minutes of their arrival and is refilled. This is promptly followed by demands for tea, toast and marmalade to keep the family going while they wait for the main course. The Full English arrives with another pot of tea and extra toast. Fred Clegg sighs and says to his sons, “Wire in, lads.” As if they needed telling.

  Fred and Jack go on to chat about the weather forecast and Florrie turns to Ruth. “What a pretty daughter you have,” she says, casting her eye over Helen. “And how old is your little bo
y?”

  Ruth feigns deafness and Florrie has to raise her voice in order to be heard over the noise of the twins nudging and pushing each other, and stealing food from each other’s plates.

  Ruth gives her a frosty look. “Are you referring to my daughters?”

  “Oh, it’s a little girl! I’m such a fool. I should have known. It was the brown shorts that threw me. What’s your name, pet?”

  Beth is not allowed to speak to strangers. She looks to her mother for permission. Ruth inclines her head—a nod imperceptible to outsiders—and Beth replies, “Beth.”

  “Elizabeth,” her mother interrupts. “I don’t hold with all this shortening of names. It’s lazy.”

  “Well, long or short, it’s a pretty name. And how old are you?”

  “Seven. And my sister is sixteen.”

  “Well,” says Florrie, turning to Ruth, “aren’t they grand? You must be very proud of them. There’s the same gap between my lads as there is between your girls. Rob”—she points to a sallow-skinned boy who is wearing an Indian headdress with three feathers—“is nine.”

  The boy pulls a packet of Barrett’s Sweet Cigarettes from the pocket of his gray shorts and, extracting a cigarette, he taps the end on the front of the packet and lodges it in the side of his mouth. When he is assured that he has Beth’s shocked attention he inhales deeply, glares at his mother and says, “I’m called Red Hawk.”

  Florrie ignores him and continues, “There’s the twins, of course. And my eldest, Alan. He’s eighteen. Training as a clerk,” Florrie remarks with some pride.