Anyone Who Had a Heart Read Online Free Page B

friends. They went to church together and drank tea with the priest on those days when he met with the more senior members of his congregation.
    Marcie said she was glad. In her heart of hearts she never wanted to make Mrs Spontini a funeral dress ever again. The old trout had criticised the whole project from beginning to end so it came as something as a surprise to hear that she’d intimated to her grandmother that she was pleased with the end result.
    Like her grandmother, Mrs Spontini was a widow who had married an Englishman back in the 1920s. Originally from Italy, she had crooked legs and black eyes either side of a hooked nose. As was the habit of Mediterranean widows, she only wore black but had different black dresses for different occasions.
    The very next day Marcie took her application form into the hospital sewing department that maintained and made the various items needed on the wards. The interview was for ten o’clock. She also took a sample of her sewing: a very pretty blouse she’d made for herself, the front of which was covered in pin-tucks.
    She didn’t bother with her fake wedding ring. She had heard it was still difficult for married women to get jobs. Single girls always got priority.
    Miss Gardner, the workroom supervisor, had black kiss curls and a bouffant hairstyle. She wore a tight skirt and a black polo-neck jumper and big gypsy-style earrings jangled from her lobes.
    She read the application form in quick bursts, glancing up intermittently. It made Marcie think she was trying to catch her doing something she shouldn’t.
    Marcie felt as though a wire-wool brush was scouring her insides. She put her nerves down to the fact that this wasn’t just for herself, this job was for Joanna too and their future together. She badly needed the money.
    At last Miss Gardner put down the form and picked up the blouse, examining the pin-tucks one by one.
    ‘Not bad,’ she said at last. ‘Well, Miss Brooks, it seems you have a number of things in your favour. Number one, you can sew. That fact is very evident.’ Her fingers lightly touched the blouse. ‘Number two you’re very young and not married. That means we’ll have a few years’ work out of you before you get yourself hitched to a man and proceed to produce a family. It is both the hospital’s and this section’s policy that we employ single women with no family ties. Once you get married we expect you to leave. That is why I am still a Miss not a Mrs,’ she said with a short, sharp smile.
    Marcie deduced there was bitterness behind that smile and imagined that at some point in her career, Miss Gardner had been forced to choose between her work and a man. She thanked her lucky stars that she’d chosen to go along as Miss Brooks and not to admit that she had a child. She sensed that being an unmarried mother would be regarded as a far worse crime than marrying.
    ‘You don’t mind working only three days?’
    ‘I look after my grandmother on the other two days. She’s getting on a bit,’ Marcie lied.
    She crossed her fingers beneath the desk as she said it. Her grandmother had advised her that it was the best thing to say. ‘And what’s more, I
am
old,’ she had added, with one of her rare wry smiles.
    ‘You can start on Monday,’ said Miss Gardner without giving her the option of whether she could make it or not. The workroom, explained Miss Gardner, was run on disciplined lines similar to that of the wards. A ward sister was in charge in the hospital. Miss Gardner ruled the sewing rooms, alternating her supervision with a Miss Pope. Miss Gardner explained what wage Marcie could expect, when time and a half was paid and when double time, plus piecework rates.
    Marcie was walking on air when she left. She gladly ran for the bus home, needing to spend her energy before getting on and sitting down because she just wouldn’t have been able to keep still.
    ‘You look happy,’ said the middle-aged woman sitting next to her on the