Time Goes By Read Free

ago. Grandma and Grandad Leigh – Alice and William – who were now well into their seventies, had retired a few years ago, at the end of the war in 1945, and now lived in a little bungalow in Bispham. That was when Albert and Winifred had taken over the responsibility of the boarding house and had given it a name.
    Kathy knew that her father was a very good cook – he called himself a chef – and he did most of the cooking when there were visitors staying there. Aunty Win looked after everything else: all the office work and bookkeeping and the organisation of the domestic help. They employed waitresses and chambermaids when it was their busiest time, usually from the middle of May to the end of the ‘Illuminations’ season – commonly known as the ‘Lights’ – at the end of October. For the rest of the year they took occasional visitors, usually to oblige their ‘regulars’, and during the slack period they took the opportunity to catch up with any decorating or odd jobs that needed to be done.
    When Kathy arrived home on that Friday afternoon in mid March her father was up a ladder papering the walls of one of the guest bedrooms, whilst her aunt was busy at a trestle table in the centre of the room putting paste onto the next length of paper.
    ‘Hello, dear,’ said her aunt when the little girl’s head appeared round the door. ‘Have you had a nice day at school?’ That was what she always asked, and as usual Kathy replied that yes, she had. She had never minded going to school, but it had been especially nice since she had been in Miss Roberts’ class.
    ‘Goodness, is it that time already?’ said her father. ‘I think it’s time for a cup of tea, Winnie. You go and put the kettle on, eh? Hello, Kathy love. Go and help your Aunty Win, there’s a good girl.’
    Her dad was always saying that, and Kathy actually quite enjoyed helping out in the boarding house. When she was a tiny girl, before she started school, she had loved going round with her Aunty Nellie – not a real aunt, just a friend of Aunty Win – who came in once a week to ‘do’ the bedrooms. There were fifteen bedrooms on three floors, including two attic bedrooms. Kathy used to accompany her aunt with her own little dustpan and brush, and a duster, to help with the dusting and polishing. Aunty Nellie sometimes let her put a tiny amount of polish onto the surface of a dressing table, and then rub hard to make it all shiny and gleaming.
    She helped Aunty Win, too, in the kitchen when she was making pies or fruit tarts. She had her own pastry cutters and rolling pin and could already make jam tarts that they were able to eat. She did not help very much, though, when herfather was in charge of the kitchen; he was not quite as patient as her aunt. She realised, though, that at the moment she was only playing at helping. But Kathy also understood, with all the wisdom of her six – nearly seven – years, that this would eventually be her job of work. When the time came for her to leave school – a long time in the future – she knew that she would be expected to work in the family boarding house, or whatever they wanted to call it, just as Aunty Win and her father had taken over from her grandparents.
    ‘I’m coming, Aunty Win,’ she called. ‘I’m just taking my coat off, and I’ve got something to put away in my drawer. It’s a secret, you see.’
    On the way home from school she had called in at the local newsagent’s shop and bought a small box of Milk Tray for Aunty Win for Mother’s Day. She had been saving up from her spending money each week until she had enough. She put the purple box and the card in her drawer underneath her knickers, vests and socks, then went down to the kitchen to join her aunt.
    ‘So what have you been doing at school this afternoon?’ Winifred asked her niece. ‘You don’t do much work on Friday afternoon, do you?’
    In Winifred’s opinion they didn’t do much work at all in the infant