Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [36]
‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’ Grace was crying in earnest now. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done it but Susan had gone to so much trouble, even though I’d told her that I couldn’t do it and that it was wrong, even though she said that everyone borrows clothes from the salon on the quiet, even the manageress. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s been a good friend to me, but I knew the minute I put it on that I shouldn’t have done.’
Jean listened to Grace’s hiccuped muddled words and felt as though a weight had been rolled off her heart. Her daughter hadn’t gone and done what she shouldn’t with some lad. But then hard on the heels of her initial relief came the shock of realising just what Grace had done.
‘You went to the dance wearing a dress from the salon that you’d no right to be wearing?’
Miserably, Grace nodded her head. She could hear the scandalised disbelief in her mother’s voice.
‘Grace, that’s stealing.’
‘It didn’t seem wrong the way Susan talked about it. She said that everyone did it.’
Jean was angry now, her anger fired as much by relief that she didn’t have to worry about Grace getting herself into the kind of trouble no mother wanted her daughter to be in, as by her dismay at what she had done.
‘Never mind what someone else said. If this Susan told you to lie down in the road in front of a bus would you do it? Me and your dad have brought you up to know what’s right from what’s wrong.’
‘I know that, Mum. But … well, Susan was that determined I was going to wear it. She said that no one would know and that she would put the dress back for me on Monday morning but it got torn when Bella stood on it and now … I’ll have to tell the manageress what’s happened and ask her if I can buy it with me staff discount.’
Jean was horrified at what Grace had done. It ran counter to everything she and Sam had taught their children, and she knew that Sam would be even more disappointed in Grace than she was herself.
‘Well, I can’t help you out paying for it, Grace, and I wouldn’t do neither. What you’ve done is very wrong.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘How much will it cost?’
‘Seven guineas,’ Grace told her in a small voice.
‘Seven guineas!’ Jean went over to the table and sat down on one of the chairs.
‘I thought I’d ask if I could have two shillings taken out of me wages every week until I’ve paid for it.’
‘But you won’t be having any wages. Not with you doing your nurse’s training.’
Grace’s eyes welled with fresh tears. ‘I can’t do that now, Mum, not with this frock to be paid for. It serves me right, I know that, and I’ve only myself to blame.’
Jean looked at her daughter’s downbent head. She knew how much doing her nurse’s training meant to her and her heart ached for her. But Grace was quite right, the dress – and her ‘crime’ both had to be paid for. Even so …
‘Oh, love.’
Her mother’s soft words and warm hug brought fresh tears to Grace’s eyes.
‘I wish I could help you but—’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to do that, Mum, even if you had the money.’ Grace stepped back from Jean and lifted her head determinedly. ‘I’ve made me bed and now I’ve got to lie in it. There’s no one to blame for this but meself.’
Jean said nothing. Privately she could think of at least two people who probably shared as much of the blame as Grace although they would get away with it scot-free. One was this Susan she worked with, and the other was her own sister for making Grace feel she wasn’t good enough to meet Bella’s posh friends wearing her own clothes.
‘Even if I could pay for the dress, Mum, I’d probably still not be able to go ahead with me nursing. The hospital will want a reference from Lewis’s. I can keep on with me St John Ambulance work, though. Alan’s cousin was ever such a nice chap. Came with me all the way from Wallasey, even though I’d said there wasn’t any need,’ Grace told her, putting on a deliberately cheerful voice.
Jean frowned. ‘I thought your cousin Charlie was going to bring you home.’
She had been in