17. A Policeman at the Door

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 17

With both Betty and Roger at school Jane needed gainful employment and she found an ad in the Brumpton Advertiser that almost appealed to her.

It had nothing to do with her past life, when she had worked in an office, typing. But that had been before George had come along with his cigarettes and death. It was now well above a decade later than that and she doubted she could remember what she had known and was also aware that things may have moved on. These days secretaries seemed to be pretty young things, pert and bright, and she was aware that in comparison she was dowdy and middle aged. Her skills lay in bringing up her children, the housework that involved, and cooking their meals.

And as luck would have it she stumbled on an ad for an assistant in a school kitchen. And it wasn’t the school where Betty and Roger went, but one a bike ride away. She still had her bicycle, of course.

If was the 1950s and one didn’t throw anything as precious as a bicycle away, even if it was a pre-war model and had traces of rust on the wheels.

The Headmaster, Mr Jasper Cornwallis, interviewed her and there was something about her smile that interested him because he offered her the job straight away and other candidates were sent to their homes uninterviewed. Apparently he wanted her in a kitchen he probably never went anywhere near.

An apron was provided and she discovered in almost no time at all that some of the chores involved in preparing hundreds of school meals every day were far from easy. And then, once the children had eaten there was the vast disappointment of all that waste. Not everything put on the children’s plates would ever, in a thousand years, look appetising. And sometimes she wondered how on earth the vegetables had passed scrutiny before they were bought. She had some most unpleasant carrots to prepare and make look acceptable with a minimum of waste.

The head cook herself, Hilda Jones, rarely, it seemed, had anything to do with the mundane side of cooking the many meals produced in her kitchen every day, like dealing with weary old carrots, though she did wonders with an electric mixing machine and bags of flour. She was a mournful and frail looking older woman who it was hard to like and who seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time in a tiny office, apparently with paperwork that wouldn’t wait.

Buy she greeted Jane warmly enough. In addition to Mrs Jones and Jane, there was another woman, possibly nudging retirement, a mournful soul who kept herself to herself and rarely said anything to anyone. The kitchen wasn’t a joyous place to work.

At the end of the first day Jane went to the bicycle shed ready to pedal the mile of so back home, and leaning on a corrugated wall near her bike was Mr Cornwallis, smoking a cigarette and looking as furtive as any educated grown man could look.

“Mrs Simpson,” he said with an apologetic smile, “you find me like a naughty boy lurking in the bike sheds having a crafty cigarette…”

“Naughty boy, Mr Cornwallis?” she asked.

“Would you like one? To join me on a nicotine path to the land of our dreams?” he asked.

What in the name of goodness does he mean by that? she asked herself.

“Er, no sir, I don’t smoke. It was smoking that killed my husband,” she told him.

“Really? I’m sorry, but it’s my belief that smoking never hurt anyone,” he replied, and coughed. “And there’s no need to call me sir when I’m in the bike sheds. It sort of takes away the naughty boy in me,” he added.

“Sorry, Mr Cornwallis,” she said, careful to sound subservient, not that she felt it as he blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in her direction and she had to take a step back in order to avoid the worst of it.

“Jasper. You can call me Jasper, Mrs Simpson, which makes you one of the privileged few allowed that intimacy,” he said before taking another interminable drag of his cigarette. Then, “what would you like me to call you? I can’t spend the rest of term calling you Mrs Simpson, now, can I. It’s cosy being on first name terms, don’t you think?”

Cosy? He’s the headmaster, so why does he want to be cosy with me? she asked herself warily.

“Yes s… er, Jasper,” she replied.

“And you won’t share a cigarette with me? For the future?” he said with what she interpreted as a sleazy smile.

“My late husband was told by the doctor when he was on his death bed that he’d be fit and healthy if he hadn’t smoked,” she said, “and I swore then that I’d never…”

“Oh dear,” he said, “well, tide and time wait for no man! I must be off to the burden of my office! I hope to see you around, Mrs Simpson. I was delighted to be able to offer you a post in the kitchen, and work isn’t so easy to find these days, is it?”

Was that some kind of warning?

And he sauntered off, taking an irritating cough with him. Jane decided, there and then, that he was a man best avoided. She found his attitude unpleasant, deciding after that one brief interlude in the bicycle shed that he was the sort of man who would be quite capable of using his position of power as a place from which he could intimidate those under him. She almost felt intimidated herself.

It didn’t take her long to cycle home after that first day. The work had been monotonous, especially the carrots that needed careful attention. They were not of the highest quality by any means and she would have discarded them onto the compost heap she had established in her back garden had they been in her kitchen. Either that, or she wouldn’t have bought them at all, which was most likely. Her widow’s pension didn’t run to buying waste.

She had a visitor that evening. It was the vicar Jonah Pyke, and he said outright hat he had come to warn her.

“I hear you’ve got a new job,” he said, “at the school on the Swanspottle road? In the kitchen? The headmaster is one of my parishioners, and I feel I ought to warn you. He’s got a bit of a reputation. He likes to bed attractive ladies without so much as a by-your-leave, and if they won’t play along with him they find themselves in trouble with the law. So be careful.”

“I’ve already decided I don’t like him, but what’s that about trouble with the law? I don’t want anything like that,” she said, alarmed.

“He is quite imaginative. He might suggest you’ve taken a slice of pie home with you, and you might discover it in your bag when you get home. You wouldn’t have put it there yourself, but how can you prove it? He’s got that cook Mrs Jones in his pocket, so if he goes nowhere near her kitchen she might just get up to mischief on his behalf. Just be warned, Jane, I don’t want to see you hurt.”