There was a nudge from Annie. “Are we gan to read, Miss Crawford?”
“Sorry, Annie. Of course we are.” Marion hurriedly got out The Princess and the Pea.
It now struck her as an unfortunate choice. But Annie didn’t seem to compare her circumstances with those of the more fortunate. She just loved the pictures of the beautiful carved four-poster with its piles of patterned mattresses.
“. . . she was a real princess!”
As the spindly child spelled out the simple words, Marion felt a hard ache in her heart. This was what she wanted to do—help children like this rise up and escape their circumstances. Not the scions of the rich, who could look after themselves. Until the revolution, of course. She smiled, thinking of Valentine and his fiery philosophy.
She agreed that a revolution was needed. Just not the big, violent sort he espoused, pitting a nation against itself. Her revolution would make more money available so schools could have the books currently in desperately short supply. She had spent evening after evening repairing old ones, gluing pages back in, trying to make them readable. But there was nothing she could do about the leaking roofs, clapped-out boilers and pathetic lack of pens and pencils, or even blackboards. During her training, she had several times drawn maps on the brick walls of playgrounds to explain geography to a crowd of shivering children. The funding of education was a national disgrace. But housing was even more of one. The slums should be destroyed; it was appalling, in 1932, that children like Annie lived in conditions that would have shocked Dickens. What chance did they have, apart from her?
Miss Golspie, Marion decided, was wrong. Her future was not with the wealthy and powerful, but here, with the poorest of the poor.
CHAPTER THREE
She stayed longer than she had intended. Golden evening light was spreading stickily over the Old Town as she made her way home. It was the city’s ancient heart and where its dark glamour seemed most intense.
“Marion Crawford?”
A red-cheeked young woman, smartly dressed, her smooth dark hair twisted into a bun, was staring at her curiously. “Marion Crawford? Is it really you?”
“Ethel.” Marion had finally placed the homely face from the back row of a long-ago schoolroom. She and Ethel McKinley were the same age. But not, it seemed, the same anything else. There was a wedding ring, and a sleeping baby dribbled on Ethel’s smart coat.
Ethel was looking at Marion’s hair. Or at where it had been until recently. “Have you had it all cut off?”
Marion flushed. As she pulled off the white cloche to reveal the short brown side-parted crop, Ethel’s dark eyes rounded.
“It’s the fashion,” Marion said defensively. “It’s an Eton crop.”
“Eaten?” Ethel’s smile was satirical. “Eaten by what?”
This shaft of wit made Marion impatient. Who was Ethel to poke fun? What had she done with her life except get married? And have babies? Anyone could do that.
“Eton,” she elucidated. “It’s a school. An expensive boys’ school, near London. I see you’re a mother,” she added, to change the subject.
Ethel was, like herself, only just twenty-two. Too young to be married with children, especially when there was so much else one could do. Women these days had careers; did Ethel not know?
“This is Elizabeth,” Ethel said grandly. She shifted the enormous child in her arms.
“Lovely,” Marion said politely.
“After the little princess,” Ethel prompted.
“Oh . . . yes.”
Princess Elizabeth, along with her baby sister, Margaret Rose, was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York. Along with the rest of the nation, Marion had seen pictures of them in the newspapers: white-socked, blue-eyed, golden-haired, frilly-dressed. She didn’t follow royalty, however. She felt an interest in them was for the older generation, not her own. She felt Ethel was rather pitiable.
Annoyingly, Ethel seemed to have the same view of her. “Not got married, then?” She was staring at Marion’s naked ring finger.
I want a career, not a man and a ring! Marion wanted to shout. Instead she said, patiently, “I’m studying. At Moray House in Edinburgh. It’s a teacher training college.”
“Going to be a teacher, then?” Ethel deduced brilliantly.
“That’s right.”
“At an expensive one, like that you just mentioned?”
“Eton?” Marion suppressed a snort. “Not exactly. I’m intending to work in the slums, as it happens.”
“The slums!” As expected, Ethel looked staggered. She made her excuses, and hurried off.
Grinning to herself, Marion walked on. She passed the end of a street in which a group of young men had gathered. They were shouting and laughing and were, she realized, kicking something on the ground. Or someone. Was that not a person in the middle of all the black-trousered legs and shining boots? They were kicking with all their might. They would kill him.
She didn’t stop to think. She raced down the alley, whose floor was thick with scattered newspapers. She could see, between the thrusting legs, a young man curled in the fetal position. He looked dead already.
The nearest thug whirled round and saw her. His oiled hair was smoothed to his scalp and center-parted above a cruel, handsome face. His eyes were sharp, with a dead, metal glint. “It’s not the police,” he said, scornfully. “It’s just a woman.”
Any urge to stand her feminist ground faded as Marion now found herself closed in by black-clothed men with sinister expressions. Tall though she was, they seemed taller.
“Look what we’ve got here,” one said, mockingly.
As she tried to back away, something shot out and grabbed her. A hand in a black leather glove. It gleamed malevolently against the innocent pink of her dress sleeve.
“What’s the hurry, love?”
“Fancy a drink?”
“Come on!”
Terror pounded in her temples. “Let go of me!” She tried to shake off the leather gauntlet, which now moved to her breast.
“Want to go home to your boyfriend?” The man was fleshy and brutish. She could smell his meaty breath. His nose, with its spots and pores, was almost pressing against hers. His hand twisted her breast, and pain shot through her. “I’ll be your boyfriend. Give us a kiss!”
Marion was revolted, but also terrified. She glanced round. She was right down the entry, in its darkest part. No one passing would see. They could push her down, do what they wanted. With a colossal effort of will, she summoned a steady voice. “Let go of me!”