Women and Children First Read Online Free Page B

about her huge, chaotic family with umpteen siblings and cousins, and about all the staff politics at the stately home where she worked, then she asked a few questions about him. When Reg told her his dad had left home when he was eight, she squeezed his arm in sympathy, and he thought that was nice. Not too much of a reaction and not too little; just right.
    Before she stepped onto the tram that evening, Reg took her hand and raised it to his lips, and she giggled, obviously pleased. She kept waving at him for as long as the tram was still in sight.
    ‘So you’ve been stepping out for more than a year now?’ Mrs Grayling asked. ‘Isn’t it difficult to see each other with you being away at sea so much?’
    ‘My trips are about two or three weeks each, then I’ve got at least a week off in between, sometimes more, and we’ll meet up on her days off. It works out all right.’
    If she could get the afternoon off, Florence would be waiting at the quayside when his ship docked. It made him feel all warm inside when he saw her tiny figure standing there waving up at him. No one had ever cared about him like that before: not his dad, not his mum, and his brothers were all young and self-obsessed. Florence was smart and insightful and he liked talking to her, liked walking arm in arm with her, liked giving her a cuddle. He’d had dinner with her family, she’d met his mum, and now a year on there was a sense that everyone was just waiting for an announcement. Wedding bells, a baby within a year, a little terraced house near the docks and her bringing up the kids while he was away at sea earning the cash.
    ‘Do you love her? My goodness, listen to me,’ Mrs Grayling laughed. ‘I’m being so nosy. Please tell me to mind my own business if you don’t want to answer.’
    ‘No, it’s fine.’ For some reason, Reg didn’t mind the directness of her questioning, although he never talked to anyone else in this way. ‘I do love her, but I just don’t know if I’m ready for marriage and I think that’s what she wants. Her friend Lizzie got engaged recently and I could tell by the way Florence looked at me when she told me about it that she would like me to propose. Other people keep dropping hints or asking outright when I’m going to make an honest woman of her. It’s what you do round our way.’
    ‘Why don’t you feel ready?’
    Reg considered. ‘I suppose I worry about the money. I want to have enough put aside to get us a decent place to live, and before I have kids I want to be confident that I’ll be able to put food on the table for them. Working on ships, you only get a contract for each voyage and you can never be sure you’ll ever be hired again. That worries me.’
    There was more. Reg dreamed of bettering himself and being able to afford some of the luxuries his wealthy passengers enjoyed. Just one or two, nothing excessive.
    ‘I want to get my own car one day,’ he’d told Florence. ‘Have you ever seen a picture of a Lozier? They’re pure elegance on wheels. A bargain at only seven and a half thousand pounds!’
    ‘You admire the rich more than I do,’ Florence mused. ‘You’re more impressed by them.’
    He suspected it was true. Not the ones who’d simply inherited their wealth but he admired the self-made millionaires from America, the ones who had started their own car dealerships and hotels and property empires. He wished he could make enough money to have a better life, but there was nothing he could do besides wait on table. And so they carried on as they were.
    ‘Marriage is a tricky thing,’ Mrs Grayling told him. ‘It’s hard work and sometimes it feels as though you are the only one trying.’ Suddenly she looked very downcast. Her grey-blue eyes had depths of sadness in them. ‘But it sounds as though you had better be careful not to let that girl slip away. Aren’t you worried she’ll meet someone else while you’re at sea?’
    Reg thought about it for a moment then