Primrose Square Read Online Free Page B

door to the flat, gladly taking off her hat and looking for her mother.
    â€˜Ma, it’s me!’ she called. ‘I’m back.’
    â€˜Ah, there you are!’ cried Hessie Rae, turning a flushed face from the kitchen range. ‘So grand to see you, pet. Sit down now, and rest your feet. It’s like an oven outside, eh?’
    With her light brown hair and large blue eyes, Hessie, at thirty-nine, still showed something of the pretty girl she had been in her youth, but the brown hair was greying, the blue eyes were shadowed, and only the artificial colour from the heat of the range made her look well.
    She and Walter would have made a handsome couple when they wed, though, Elinor sometimes thought, her dad’s dark good looks contrasting with the delicate prettiness of his bride, and wished she could have seen a photograph. Probably, at that time, wedding photos were too expensive for most folk and so there was no record of the happy day. And her parents would have been happy then. Of course they would.
    â€˜Tea ready?’ Walter asked now, washing his hands under the kitchen tap.
    â€˜All ready,’ Hessie answered quickly. ‘I got a nice piece of shin at the butcher’s, half price, a bargain, left it simmering all day, and it’s that tender, you’d never believe!’
    â€˜Onions with it?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, plenty. And carrots. So I’ve just the tatties to mash  . . .’
    â€˜I’ll do that,’ Elinor said quickly. ‘But where’s Corrie?’
    â€˜Aye, where is the lad?’ Walter asked, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. ‘No’ reading again?’
    â€˜Studying,’ Hessie answered, beginning to look flustered. ‘He‘s been in our room since he got back from work.’
    â€˜Studying  . . . what a piece of nonsense. He’s got a damn good job at the tyre factory, what more does he want?’
    â€˜He wants to be a draughtsman, you know that – he told us, eh?’
    â€˜Well, I think he’s wasting his time, let him stick to what he’s got.’ Walter stood up and gave one of his famous roars. ‘Corrie, come on now! We’re all waiting for you, what the hell are you playing at?’
    â€˜Playing?’ asked Corrie, appearing from the back room where his parents slept. ‘I’ve been studying.’
    â€˜Now don’t you be sharp with me,’ his father told him, his eyes flashing. ‘You know what I think of you studying. Now sit down and let your mother dish up. We’re ready for our tea, if you’re not!’
    Taking his seat at the table, Corrie said no more. As tall as his father, he had his mother’s looks – the wide blue eyes, the light brown hair, and for his height was slender. As he looked across at Elinor passing a filled plate to her father, their eyes met, exchanging messages which required no words, a skill they’d acquired early in childhood, and which had stood them in good stead.
    No one spoke as the meal was finished, the dishes cleared and the tea brewed. Then Walter lit a Woodbine and passed one to Corrie, while Hessie, relaxing a little, stirred sugar into her tea and asked Elinor about the Primrose.
    â€˜What’s been happening this week, then? I always like to hear what you’ve been up to. Makes a change.’
    â€˜Nothing much.’ Elinor sipped her tea. ‘Except Miss Ainslie called us all together to talk about votes for women.’
    A hush fell over the table as Walter took his cigarette from his mouth and leaned forward to stare at his daughter.
    â€˜What did you say?’
    She looked at him, her heart plummeting.
    Oh, Lord, she’d done it now, eh? Why hadn’t she remembered what she’d told Mattie, when Mattie had talked of her dad’s views on suffragettes? ‘Bet mine thinks the same,’ she’d said, and sure enough, he was shaping up to sound off about them