haven’t told you, but I went out with him last Sunday afternoon. He stopped for tea and for supper and my mother invited him to our house tonight for my birthday…But I don’t expect he’ll come.’
They paused while a man loading sacks of potatoes onto a lorry blocked their way. He apologised for holding them up, and they walked on.
Clara said, ‘I suspect he hasn’t been to see you just to make you think about him all the more. Absence making the heart grow fonder, and all that. I wouldn’t think much of him if he accepted your mother’s invitation, then didn’t have the grace to show up.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’s just that, Clara…’
‘What then? There’s something else?’
‘Well, I thought he’d given that Nellie Dewsbury up. At least that’s what he led me to think.’
‘And he hadn’t?’
‘No. So I told him I wouldn’t see him again until he had. I told him only to come tonight if he’d finished with her.’
‘Well, good for you, Henzey. He sounds a bit of a cad after all.’
‘I suppose I’ve put him off. I suppose he thought I was a bossy little madam. Did I do the right thing, d’you think, Clara?’
‘You did exactly right. You’ve let him know you weren’t going to be manipulated, or swept off your feet.’
‘Oh, but I’m swept off my feet, all right, Clara. I’m swept off my feet good and proper.’
‘And that’s what makes it hard for you, eh? Did your mother like him?’
‘She must’ve. She invited him tonight…’
‘Well, if he doesn’t come you’ll have lost nothing, Henzey,’ Clara said resignedly. ‘You’ll have escaped a lot of heartbreak. That’s the best way to look at it.’
But that was not the way Henzey wished to look at it. In the intensity of her infatuation she had her heart set on Billy Witts. Come the evening, Henzey contemplated him as she undressed herself, ready to put on her new frock, just in case he did turn up after all. If he did come, it would be to claim her, and she knew he would be far more demanding than Jack Harper had been. Jack was never any trouble to keep at bay. Only occasionally would she allow him to kiss her. But she was much more of a woman now. Her natural awareness of things sensual and erotic was infinitely more acute, and her emotions were intensifying, accelerated by her enduring hopes and dreams of being Billy’s girl. As she recalled how he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, her heart beat faster and her body seemed to glow.
It occurred to her that she might not want to keep Billy at bay at all. Her new adult emotions were less ambiguous, more profound. She was contemplating more and more what it would be like to go all the way with a man. Of course such things were for marriage and not before, and she understood that, but still she couldn’t help wondering. She closed the door to the bedroom and sat naked on her bed. With her eyes closed she gently squeezed her breasts, imagining Billy to be doing it, and an unfamiliar warmth of desire lit her up. She stood up, and for the first time seriously scrutinised her own slender body in the tall mirror standing in the corner. He breasts were firm and supple, and she saw how her nipples had awoken in response to her own sensuality, each standing proud like a small, pink raspberry on a smooth, cream blancmange. She stroked the skin of her stomach. It was silky smooth. Her face was fine-featured and strikingly beautiful, though she considered her nose too long and her eyebrows too thick. She twisted sideways and turned her head to inspect her body in profile. Her waist was tight, her neck elegant, her stomach gently rounded. Her legs were long, well-shaped and unblemished, and her buttocks protruded neatly. Without even trying she possessed the sort of figure every modern, young woman was striving for.
By this time Henzey was earning eleven shillings a week and could afford to buy a nice dress and decent shoes occasionally. That day she had been shopping and bought a pair of silk French knickers, and a blue, waistless dress the same colour as her eyes, in crepe de Chine, loosely fitted at the hips. It was barely knee length, and her flesh-coloured silk stockings enhanced the shape of her legs. Her lustrous, dark hair framed her face, and she rounded off the whole effect with a long string of glass beads and a dab of her mother’s Chanel No. 5 behind each ear. When she emerged into the scullery even Herbert commented on how lovely she looked.
On tenterhooks, she helped her mother with final preparations while Alice and Maxine changed into their Sunday best. The closer the hands on the clock moved towards half past seven, the more she trembled inside, praying silently that he would arrive, but resigned to the certainty that he would not. When her mother spoke she failed to hear, her thoughts only with Billy. Lizzie smiled to herself at her daughter’s preoccupation, and understood; she had been there herself.
But prompt at half past seven she heard a motor car pull up outside the house. Her heart pounded with anticipation as she ran into the front room where the table was laid out for a meal. She peered through the lace curtains. It was him. It was Billy. She breathed a sigh of profound relief and smiled, rushing to the back door to greet him, keeping her fingers crossed that everything had gone the way she wanted.
‘Here, I’ve bought you some flowers,’ he said, producing a bouquet of roses from behind his back when she opened the door to him. He smiled at her expression and placed a kiss on her cheek, which made her blush since her mother witnessed it. But everything was all right. He had come to claim her after all.
‘Oh, Billy. Red roses. Oh, they’re beautiful. You shouldn’t have, but thank you ever so much. Aren’t they beautiful, Mom?’
‘You’d better put them in some water right away,’ Lizzie replied.
The evening went well, and Henzey was pleased to see that her mother seemed less tense than she had been for some time, more able to enjoy herself. Jesse, too, was bubbling with even more humour than normal. It was good to see them so happy.
Afterwards, in Billy’s arms, as they stood in the entry as he was about to leave, Henzey said, ‘It would mean a lot to me if my mother and Jesse got married. I’ve dreamed about it for ages now.’
‘They seem well suited.’
‘Oh, they are.’
‘That Jesse seems a genuine sort of chap. Is he anything like your dad was?’
‘In some ways. Except my dad used to get upset with people. He was so deep sometimes – very serious. Other times he was just the opposite – soft as a bottle of pop. Jesse never gets frustrated or upset like my dad used to. Good as gold he is with us, ‘specially considering he isn’t our dad. He thinks the world of our Herbert.’
‘It seems to me he thinks the world of all of you, Henzey. I think your mom’s lucky to find somebody like him.’
‘I think he’s lucky to get my mom.’
He gave her a hug. ‘That as well. She’s a lovely looking woman for her age, your mom. I can see who you get your good looks from.’
Henzey shrugged. ‘Everybody says I’m like my father. I loved him, Billy. He was a lovely man. I did some drawings of him when he was alive. I can show you them one of these days.’ She forced back a tear. This was not the time to weep after so pleasant an evening. ‘So what about Nellie?’ She had been dying to ask. ‘You finally
