Faith - Lesley Pearse [14]
She was also scared that this new man, whoever he was, might want to move in with them.
His name, Laura discovered three or four weeks later, was Vincent Parish. He was a sixty-year-old widower and he had an office in the block June cleaned in. He was, according to her mother, everything Bill Wilmslow wasn’t: successful, well-bred and a gentleman.
On 3 January 1959, two days before her fourteenth birthday, Laura met Vincent for the first time. He invited them all to Lyons Corner House in the Strand, and bought them knickerbocker glories. Laura was rather impressed by his posh voice, his hand-tailored suit and gold watch, but less by his wide girth, lack of hair, and the coldness in his pale blue eyes.
‘I am so glad to meet you all at last,’ he said with a tight-lipped smile. ‘Your mother and I have made so many plans for you all.’
Laura sensed immediately that all he really wanted was her pretty young mother, but as he couldn’t have her without her children, he was pretending that he was happy to have them too.
She watched as he fawned over Ivy and Meggie, who did look sweet in blue velvet dresses bought specially for the occasion. He winced at Freddy smearing the ice cream all around his face, and went bright red when he started screaming to get out of the high chair he’d been put in. Laura didn’t hold that against Vincent for she was embarrassed herself that Freddy was showing them up, but she really didn’t like the way he kept smirking at her across the table.
She had a new dress too, and she was thrilled with it, for it was red wool, with a full circular skirt and a low scooped neckline trimmed with satin ribbon. Beneath it she had a net can-can petticoat, and her first pair of high heels. Her mother had even let her have her hair cut at the hairdresser’s, and put it in curlers for her. But the way Vincent was looking at her made her all too aware of her breasts which had appeared out of nowhere in the past three months.
‘Seeing Laura is like having a glimpse of how you must have looked as a young girl,’ he said to June. ‘I’m sure she’ll grow into a beautiful woman too.’
Her mother glowed at the compliment, but to Laura it sounded as if he was implying her daughter was an ugly duckling. It was on the tip of her tongue to make some retort about how she could copy her mother by bleaching her hair, but she bit that back because she didn’t want to spoil the day for June.
‘I want you all to come and live with me,’ Vincent said a little later, beaming at them all. ‘I have a very nice house in Barnes, right on the river. Meggie can go to the school there, and Ivy and Freddy will follow when they are old enough. But you, Laura, your mother and I think you should stay at your present school. It’s not that far on the tube.’
‘It’s a beautiful house,’ her mother interrupted, her face alight with excitement. ‘You just wait till you see it! It’s got two bathrooms, can you believe that! Ivy and Meggie will have a room together, and there’s a little one for Freddy and another one just for you, Laura. Vincent is going to get you a real desk too so you can do your homework in peace.’
‘What’s Dad going to say about this?’ Laura asked. Part of her was delighted that they’d be leaving Thornfield Road: the thought of a real bathroom and a room of her own was like a glimpse of heaven. If her mother had just talked about this to her first, before today, maybe she could have been really happy about it. But as it was, Laura felt her feelings and opinions meant nothing at all.
‘I couldn’t care less what he says,’ her mother snapped. ‘He didn’t think of me and you kids when he went off holding up that post office. The chances were he was planning to run off from us with that box of money.’
‘Your mother has had a very difficult time,’ Vincent chimed in reprovingly. ‘And you are old enough to understand that, Laura.’
Laura leapt up from her seat. ‘Understand it! I’ve supported her through it! If it wasn’t for me these three would have gone hungry and had no clothes to wear.