Joy and Josephine by Monica Dickens Page A

with such rubbish? You see, Ellie, what you bring about with your grand ideas. Nothing would satisfy you but that she go to that footling dame school, and look what comes of it. She wouldn’t have picked up this superstitious nonsense at the Council. Come here, Jo, I’ll tell you where you came from if you want to know – ’
    ‘George, please.’ Mrs Abinger put her substantial body between them. He had agreed years ago to treat Josephine like his own, and never tell her that she was adopted. He had promised, but he still wielded the unspoken threat of breaking his promise.
    ‘Run along, Jo,’ she said, ‘and if you undress quickly, Mum will bring you a slice of cake to eat in bed.’
    ‘She’ll have to get out and brush her teeth afterwards,’ said George, who was faddy about things like that, and monopolizedthe sink night and morning with his gargles and his health salts and his nasal douches.
    Mrs Abinger, the healthy daughter of healthy country people, had not been brought up to unnecessary hygiene. She and the child looked at each other, sharing the secret of sweets under the pillow and buttered crusts smuggled in late at night if Josephine could not sleep.
    ‘And pick your feet up,’ added Mr Abinger, as Jo dawdled to the door, bored with the idea of bed, suddenly remembering Arthur and Norman and the fun they were having digging a sewer to get their father out of prison.
    ‘Don’t shout at her, dear,’ said Mrs Abinger. ‘She was a bit upset just now by Mrs Loscoe. We’ve got to go to tea there Sunday.’
    ‘Sooner you than me,’ he said. ‘The daughter’s enough to give anyone the Willies, watching the scales like a lynx, let alone the old girl.’
    Josephine was listening from the doorway. ‘Well, she’s got to go,’ her mother said. ‘I’m not letting her off after being disobedient to-day.’
    ‘Where was she, by the way?’ he asked, without interest.
    ‘In that dreadful little alley down by the railway. Can you credit it? I was quite surprised at her – ’
    ‘I wouldn’t be.’ He folded the paper back at the sports page. ‘It’s what I’m always telling you. Water will find its own level.’
    ‘There ain’t no water down there,’ said Josephine. ‘I wasn’t by the canal. And I
ain’t
going to tea with Mrs Loscoe, so there.’
    ‘Isn’t any water,’ said her mother patiently. ‘Am not. But you are going. Mum’s said so.’
    ‘Certainly she’s going,’ said George, helping himself to the piece of cake his wife had cut for Jo. ‘And so are you. I shall be wanting this room for a committee meeting Sunday afternoon, so the Loscoes are welcome to the pair of you.’
    But Josephine did not have to go to Mrs Loscoe’s birthday party after all. She was in the shop on Saturday when Mrs Moore came drifting in among the crowd of week-end customers.
    The Moores had been away for five years. After the war, they had let the Chepstow Villas house and gone to live in the Meon valley near Portsmouth, where Commander Moore had a shore appointment.
    This had been a great blow to Mrs Abinger. She had foreseen Josephine going up often to play with the Moores, making friends with the children, copying their accent, learning to feel as much at home in a big house like that as in the cramped flat over the shop, whose four rooms together were not much larger than Mrs Moore’s drawing-room.
    For five years she had been looking forward to impressing Mrs Moore with Josephine. Now the moment was here and merciful Providence had caused the child to be wearing her tussore dress with the smocking. Jo was whispering with Sidney in a corner where they were supposed to be making up pound bags of bread-crumbs. She answered her mother’s call at once and pranced up to Mrs Moore, smirking a little as she sensed that she was being shown off. Sidney took advantage of the diversion to slink into the back store, where he kept his comics in a drawer of the spice cabinet marked ‘nutmeg’ which was