The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, page 3
The man who came to her rescue had followed her out of the pub, he told her so; she remembers that much. The pencil he returned is lying on her bedside cabinet. She tries to retrieve the rest of their conversation from her mind, but it is incomplete, and makes no more sense now than it did at the time. He said he knew what she was up to, which surely means he is part of the organisation. Perhaps he was carrying out his own observation of her and, if so, she can only conclude that she has disappointed him too. But he seemed keen to take her for lunch at the Metropole, excited to discuss something with her. That much she can remember. And she is duty-bound to go and find out.
She steps out of bed and onto the rag rug, which is all that decorates the worn floorboards. She needs to use the loo (not the lavatory, as Mother would have it) but until she is properly dressed, she does not want to risk seeing the other boarders. They often leave their doors open and call between rooms, rushing to share clothing or gossip.
Margaret keeps her own door closed to ensure she is never included in these conversations. It is partly for this reason that she washes with cold water every morning, filling a jug before bed and carrying it to her room. With only one indoor toilet and one bathroom serving the entire property, there is competition for a slot. The girls congregate on the landing while they wait their turn, the last in the queue rewarded by a sink that’s snarled with hairs of varying shades.
‘What I wouldn’t give to stay in bed today,’ she hears a voice say. ‘Cramps are terrible this month. I went proper faint yesterday. I was glad to have a quiet minute in the stockroom, but his nibs caught me leaning again the shelves and told me to look smart. They have no idea, do they?’
‘They wouldn’t care if they did.’
‘One of these days, I’m going to tell him where to stick his job.’
‘Make sure I’m there to see it!’
It is much more efficient and private for Margaret to wash in her own bedroom, a task she never lingers on. She keeps a heavy dressing gown around her, opening it just enough to reach in and wipe a flannel under her arms and between her legs. The act of dressing is similarly hurried. She is never quite able to shake the impression that she is being watched as she slips on another tea dress (identical to the one she wore yesterday in all but print). When she first arrived, she noted this particular style was considered fashionable among young women on their holidays and bought three in different colours to make sure she would blend in. Gloves are not necessary here and her hat is a plain one: navy straw with a white trim.
Shutting her bedroom door behind her, she makes her way down the stairs as quietly as possible, hoping to evade the notice of her landlady. Maude Crankshaw takes a keen interest in the comings and goings of her guests and is perpetually primed to catch them in an act of rule-breaking. A stout woman with strong arms, she wears an apron that creates the effect of one large breast across her front. She is always ruddy-cheeked. And always sweating.
Margaret is relieved to have the chance to tip out the dirty water from her jug in the drain outside before Maude appears in the back doorway. ‘You’re up bright and early. In late again last night. Were you out with a young man?’
‘No, Mrs Crankshaw. Just enjoying the evening air.’
Maude wears a momentary look of disappointment but refuses to be diverted from her course. ‘Well think on – if you do find yourself enjoying the evening air with a sweetheart, don’t you let him take you under the pier.’
Grown so accustomed to deciphering eavesdropped conversations, Margaret wonders for a moment if this is a euphemism for something unspeakable. ‘Take me how?’ she asks, immediately regretting that she might learn the answer.
‘Under the pier, where the sweethearts go … or the sand dunes at Lytham. That’s another spot. I’ll take that.’ Maude grabs the jug, changing the subject before Margaret can enquire how she came to be so well-informed about such things. ‘An egg is it this morning?’
‘Actually, I’m not that hun—’
‘Sit down,’ she says, directing her into the front room where a small square table is set out for breakfast. ‘Chucky egg’ll do you good.’ Maude steers her to one of four seats around a small square table, and leaves the room. The wireless is on low in the corner. The announcer is reading a headline, but Margaret can hardly make it out. Something about gas masks. She stands, intending to walk across and turn the dial, but Maude returns almost immediately with a small speckled egg rattling in the top of a two-legged egg cup, designed to resemble Humpty Dumpty. Margaret sits again before she is told to.
‘There you go, love.’
‘Thank you. Would you mind turning up the news a moment?’
Maude does as requested.
‘… roll-out to the general population will begin next—’
‘All right for you?’ Maude says, returning to stand over Margaret.
‘Thank you, yes. I was hoping to …’
‘… Check for local instructions about where and when you will be issued with—’
‘You don’t mind it cold.’ Maude says it as a statement rather than a question.
‘Cold?’
‘Your egg.’
‘I just want to listen to …’ But it’s too late. The announcer has moved on. Sometimes Margaret feels like standing in the street and screaming at people to pay attention. She is not sure whether they just can’t see the truth, or they do not want to. But she is not the type to scream. Instead, she lifts a teaspoon and calmly shatters the top of the shell. Inside she finds a white that’s greyish and a yolk that has the consistency of a rubber ball. She wonders how long it was boiling for. ‘Lovely, thank you.’ But Maude does not take this as a cue to leave, and continues to stand over her with a look of maternal enjoyment, rubbing her hands on the front of her apron. Margaret has no choice but to add a liberal sprinkling of salt to every spoonful, well aware that she is playing directly into her landlady’s hands. At the end of each week, she is handed a bill of ‘extras’ including the use of the cruet, and any bottles of fizzy drinks she may be tempted to take from the display set out along the top of the piano. On her first night here, she accepted an offer to try the dandelion and burdock only to discover, six days later, that an additional penny had been added to her rent.
‘I’d better be off then,’ Margaret says, pushing her chair out from under the table.
‘Always working aren’t you, love? All times of day and night. What is it you do again?’
Always the same question, which Margaret always answers with the same vague reply. ‘Secretarial work.’
Maude thinks this to be a rather posh occupation and, not wanting to betray her ignorance about exactly what it entails, never presses for more detail. Instead, she finishes their conversation as she does every morning: with a wink. ‘Well, I hope you’re doing your secretarial for some bachelors.’ As far as Margaret can tell, Maude does not have a husband of her own to speak of. Perhaps Mr Crankshaw has left this earthly life, or left his wife for worldly temptations. Perhaps there never was a Mr Crankshaw in the first place.
5
Margaret does not want to linger in the passageway that leads from the back door to the street, but she has to step carefully to protect her dress from the damp brickwork. It is so narrow that the sun never ventures below the rooftops. Water has dripped from loose guttering and bruised the red bricks. Seagulls have left their mark too: grey and white streaks like old scars on raw skin. She turns right onto Cocker Street, directly into the sharp wind that cuts channels between the houses. It rushes past, taking her breath with it. The sea breeze is a fickle thing, never seeming to blow in the same direction. On one road it can be strong enough to knock you off your feet, but turn a corner and the air falls still again. She could walk through the town, past the railway station and the Winter Gardens, but she chooses a route along the seafront instead.
There seem to be as many animals as people: horses tethered to carriages, dogs tethered to owners by a lead or length of string. There’s a man smoking on a bench with a monkey on his shoulder. Margaret has watched his act before. He stands and plays the accordion while the animal rocks backwards and forwards in a kind of dance. Every few songs he stops and passes a hat around and, if those listening are slow to show their appreciation, he sends the monkey out into the crowd. The little beast is adept at parting people from the spare change in their pockets. Jumping from shoulder to shoulder, climbing up trouser legs, it proudly holds up every shilling stolen, baring its teeth in an expression which onlookers mistake for a smile. ‘What a cheeky little beggar,’ they laugh. No one argues when the monkey returns to the front with its little hands full and drops their money into the hat.
She draws level with the North Pier and the start of the Golden Mile, a nickname she has learnt is not entirely accurate. It runs, in fact, more than a mile and a half along the front, to the town’s South Pier. But every house along it is, undoubtedly, a gold mine: front gardens, ground floors and basements rented out to sideshow acts and refreshment sellers. Come lunchtime the air will be filled with the smell of black peas and vinegar bubbling in copper vats. Margaret watches as men with rolled sleeves lift boxes onto trestle tables and unfold large umbrellas to protect their merchandise from the rain that is forecast to arrive by the afternoon.
On the beach, attendants are putting out the deckchairs, arranging them in battalions, each frame placed an equal distance from the next; the lined canvas pointing towards the sea. Margaret enjoys the sight of them at this time of day, before holidaymakers disturb the uniformity and drag them into smaller huddles or turn them to face the sun. The rock seller is setting out his stall. He’s another she has written about in her reports. A fortnight ago she stood on this spot for two hours, noting down exactly what his customers bought and in what quantities; whether they took off the wrapping and started to enjoy their treats straight away or saved them for later. Her findings were, initially, curious. She thought that she had identified a pattern. Every person who approached the stall was greeted in the same way, ‘Ah tha wants some toffees!’ leading her to wonder what it was that made the working classes favour that style of confectionery. But after a few minutes she realised toffees was a generic term denoting sweets of all kinds. And once again she felt as though she had learnt a secret.
Leaving the prom, she turns into Lytham Road, which doglegs from the seafront, carrying buses into the parts of town that most holidaymakers never see. Glad of the shop awnings that shelter her from the breeze, she carries on until the three- and four-storey hotels give way to more modest houses. Left into Bloomfield Road and past the football ground which, though she has never attended a game herself, provides a good source of material for surveillance on match days. Then into Shetland Road, where semi-detached Victorian villas are arranged in pairs like shoes or gloves, each couple married by a porch that runs across the front, and divided from its neighbours by a low red brick wall topped with curved tiles. As the street stretches further on, the gaps between buildings become fewer, and the rows of terraces longer.
It is in one of the three-bedroomed houses that headquarters has been established: the offices where reports are written and records kept. She lifts the latch on the wrought-iron gate and walks up the path to the front door, ringing the bell beside it. Just as she expects, she has to ring a second time and then a third to summon her supervisor, James Timoney, to answer it.
‘Ah! Come in,’ he says, as though surprised to see her. He shouldn’t be: she comes almost every day. And he is usually here to let her in. In fact, she cannot fathom how or when he carries out his own observations, because she rarely sees him venture outside. She guesses he is in his early thirties; an unusually thin man, his slight frame is accentuated by a close-fitting knitted waistcoat which causes his shirt sleeves to billow about his arms. His wide-legged trousers swing around his ankles like flags on poles, his dark hair swept to the side by a generous dose of oil which has left a smear on his wire-framed glasses.
‘How are you, Margaret?’ His familiarity never fails to make her uncomfortable. She had been the one to suggest politely, in the first week of her posting, that he call her by her first name. But she wasn’t expecting him to actually do it. The other observers all insist on calling her ‘Miss Finch’, lingering over her name with mock reverence to emphasise the fact she is a woman. To them, the ‘Miss’ denotes the fact that she fails to hit the mark. But James Timoney never seems to notice her sex at all, apparently unaware that in their team of six, she is the only female. To him, she is solely a researcher.
He ushers her into the front room, the room that in neighbouring houses is set out as a parlour with armchairs and a sideboard. But here the walls are lined with glass cases, charts and diagrams. ‘Anything for me?’ He walks to a shelf near the window and studies a glass bowl, half-filled with water, in which a goldfish is swimming in circles. As far as she knows, one of the other observers won it at the fair, and brought it back to HQ intending to flush it down the loo. Yet here it is. James Timoney has given it a home, and a name: George Formby, after the film star who plays the ukulele and sings songs about voyeurism. She suspects it has fin rot.
‘Not today, I’m afraid,’ she says, refusing to call him James but reluctant to address him as Mr Timoney for fear of seeming old-fashioned. He is hoping for another treasure to add to his collection. The shelves of every case are crammed with novelties: a china ornament of Blackpool tower among sweets in gaudy wrappers, trick novelties and picture postcards. There’s a toy dog hanging from the mantlepiece by a length of elastic, a bottle of Bass with a stick of pink rock sitting atop it. Taking a seat at his desk, James brings a jeweller’s loupe to his eye and, squinting to hold it in place, begins inspecting the sails of a toy boat. Does he know about the white-haired man from last night? She wonders if there’s a way of introducing him into conversation without giving herself away. ‘I’ve been working on a report about public houses. Some illegal gambling.’
‘Very good,’ he says. But he does not seem particularly interested. ‘Mention it to Reardon, he’s following up a lead on that.’
‘Right.’
Reardon is one of the others on the team. There are four of them who meet in the room next to this office after hours, and she has noticed James never chooses to join them. He is their supervisor, so perhaps that’s the reason. There is an unspoken understanding that Margaret would not be welcome: they would feel they have to watch their manners in her company. But she has no inclination to sit and talk with her colleagues anyway. She is happy to work alone. And James seems satisfied with her progress so far. Though it is Tom Harrisson who will decide whether she stays on after the summer season. James speaks of him with great reverence; from what she can gather, they studied at the same college, though at different times. Harrisson is an anthropologist, who studied exotic peoples of the world and decided to turn his attention to Britain.
Margaret had arrived in Blackpool for an interview, knowing only that researchers were required and, greeted by the chaos of James’s office, she had wondered whether the project was a serious undertaking at all. James had told her that she would be working for a social research project called Mass Observation, which had been ‘established to record every aspect of life among the lower orders: from talking to sleeping, fighting to drinking, dreams to hysteria’. She could tell it was a speech he had rehearsed beforehand. There were already teams of researchers in London. Harrisson himself had worked undercover in a mill in Bolton but he wanted to see how workers behaved on holiday, to understand how they spent their money and their leisure time. He was convinced that they would be caught doing things they would never dream of doing at home.
‘Not all of it is suitable work for a woman,’ James had told her, ‘but you can play your part. Do things that are difficult for the chaps to do. Family activities.’ She had feared that he would ask her about her own family. Under the scrutiny of a man with his observational skills, perhaps she would give away a clue – a word or a pronunciation – that she was not who she seemed. That she had never really belonged at university with the other girls. But he made no mention of her life before Cambridge, too busy reminiscing about his own days studying: The Eagle public house, the meadows at Grantchester, the buns at Fitzbillies. She greeted each memory with what she hoped resembled a smile of recognition. She knew of all those places of course, had heard the others making arrangements to meet there, but had never been invited herself.
‘So,’ James had said, looking down at his notes, ‘Miss Finch. Are you going to join us?’ In that moment she decided she would. She nodded as he told her it was vital to understand the psyche of working men and women in order to know how to help them. She agreed when he explained how real change could be brought to lives of hardship and despair. Though she has still not got to the bottom of exactly when and how all the information will be used, or to what practical purpose the knowledge will be applied.
She looks at him now, so engrossed in the study of his toy boat that he seems to have forgotten she is standing there. ‘I’ve made some observations in the lido too.’
