CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Madam heard me discussing night school with the cook Louise who was telling me that the next term started after the Christmas Holidays.

Madam asked me “What is it you want to study at night school?”

“The English class Madam, but it’s on a Thursday evening, so I won’t be able to go. neither can I afford it.”

“Why can’t you afford it?

I explained to her that I gave Mam ten shillings of my money, and this only left me with five shillings for everything else, such as clothing and personal things.

“Well now, we will have to do something about this. If I increase your wages by five shillings you must promise me that you will not increase your mother’s allowance, but use it for your fees. “Yes” she said as she smiled at me “You may have Thursday off to go.”

I was at last going back to school, to make up for my lost opportunities. I could hardly believe my luck. I went down to enrol the following week, but I didn’t tell anyone, not even Jim. I saw him each weekend when we occasionally went to the cinema. We also took walks along the sea front to Seaton Carew. One Sunday afternoon as we were chatting about ourselves we discovered that we had been born just two hundred yards away from each other. He lived at the top of Coffee Pot Street where my two Great Aunts Dinah and Grace had lived. Jim moved to Trimdon Village in nineteen thirty-two when we were still very young. We must have seen each other many times without remembering it. I moved to Fishburn in nineteen thirty-nine when I was ten years old, but we both remember many of the same events, and places. He remembered especially the Saturday’s Penny Picture Shows with the sugar mice and chocolate logs. Also the Reading Rooms and the pathway over the pit heaps to Trimdon Grange. We found that we had much in common and were quite compatible. He told me how much he cared about me, not realising just how much until I was no longer there. He told me that he found it hard to wait for me until I was sixteen, and that he had not wanted to go out with any other girl. He passed his spare time messing about with his newly acquired motor-bike, this having made it easier to come to West Hartlepool to see me.

One evening we were standing arm in arm on the promenade looking out to sea when he told me that he loved me, and that I was the girl for him. I went back to my home in West Park that evening, my feet not touching the ground, I was floating on air. I too was in love.

Things were changing for me, I was beginning to live instead of enduring a mere existence. I felt that I was coming out of my dark tunnel, there was light at the end of it after all. And the brightest ray of light was my Jim.

 

 

Many thanks to John Robinson for forwarding this story,