Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [123]
‘You probably need a bit of a tonic,’ she’d told her.
Bella hadn’t said anything. The only tonic she needed was getting those refugees out of her house and getting Alan to behave towards her as a husband should, and that Trixie put in her place.
She was on her way to see Alan now. He hadn’t left her any housekeeping this week – again – and when she’d told her mother, she’d said that it was disgraceful and that her father would have something to say to Alan’s father if things went on like this.
The refugees had gone out this morning and when they’d come back Jan had been in uniform. The first time she had seen him he had been wearing a tweed jacket, a pair of cavalry twill trousers with a tattersall checked shirt, and a V-necked pullover all in soft shades of brown; the kind of clothes she was used to seeing men in, but somehow Jan’s had looked different, softer and older, and in some indefinable way they had seemed to fit him better than her father and Alan’s new clothes ever seemed to fit them.
Jan was one of those Polish Air Force pilots who, when Poland had been forced to surrender, had managed to fly his plane to Britain, along with many other Polish pilots, his mother had told Bella proudly. Those men were now forming a squadron under the auspices of the RAF.
In that case, the sooner he got posted the better, Bella had told her sharply and the further away the better, because she certainly wasn’t going to put up with having him thinking he could sleep in her spare room whenever he felt like it.
Mr James, her father-in-law’s fussy elderly clerk, opened the office door to her and told her that both Alan and his father were out. The offices were decorated in the same drab brown as Alan’s parents’ house; the furniture was equally old-fashioned, and the atmosphere equally formal. An oil painting of Alan’s father hung on one wall. Beneath it, in a locked cabinet, were several silver-gilt trophies won by both Alan and his father. The whole place had an air of self-satisfied prosperity and smugness.
‘Miss Trixie is in, if you want to leave a message with her,’ he informed Bella.
Oh, yes, she’d certainly leave a message with her, Bella decided angrily. A message that told her that she shouldn’t go around kissing other women’s husbands.
Trixie was busy typing when Bella pushed open the office door, her fingers fairly flying over the keys, short practical fingers with short unpolished nails. Not manicured like her own.
The fact that Alan could actually want to kiss someone so plain and dull when he was married to her, further enflamed Bella’s temper.
Trixie had seen her now and had stopped typing.
‘Alan isn’t here, I’m afraid,’ she told Bella quietly.
‘No, I dare say he’s trying to do the decent thing and stay away from you, after the way you’ve been throwing yourself at him.’
Trixie’s face turned bright red.
‘I suppose you thought he wouldn’t tell me about you making up to him and kissing him,’ Bella continued. ‘Well, of course he did, seeing as I’m his wife and he’s my husband. And let me warn you that if you don’t leave my husband alone I’m going to make sure that people know just what kind of woman you are. Poor Alan, he said he didn’t know which way to turn when you started chasing him. He’s been that worried that I’d be upset about it, but it’s like I told him, no one would ever think that he’d look at someone like you when he’s married to me. So you just stay away from him in future, otherwise it won’t just be me who knows what you’ve been up to.’
Trixie was crying now. ‘I love Alan and—’
‘Well, he certainly doesn’t love you,’ Bella cut her off ruthlessly, ‘because the other night when he was in bed with me doing what married people can do, he told me that he loved me.’
Trixie had gone a really funny colour now, and her stupid face was convulsing into an even plainer expression than usual. It was clear that what she had told her had shocked her, Bella recognised triumphantly.
‘Just you remember,’ Bella told her as she opened the door ready to