Free London Belles by Annie Groves

strong tea and hot toast. The counter had a glass display case in which there were some scones and sausage rolls and sandwiches. Opposite the counter was a window with a sign in it saying ‘Café’. A row of wooden tables and chairs ran the length of the wall from the doorway, past the window and into the corner of the room. There were red and white checked cloths on the table and the same fabric had been used to make curtains for the window. Brown linoleum covered the floor, and the two women behind the counter serving the customers were large and jolly-looking.
    ‘You don’t want to take too much notice of old Smithy,’ Ted advised Agnes once they were settled at a table, their mugs of tea and toasted teacakes in front of them. ‘His bark is worse than his bite.’
    ‘But I got everything so wrong.’
    ‘That’s only natural on your first day.’
    ‘I couldn’t remember which line was which, or any of the stations,’ Agnes admitted in a low voice. ‘I’ll be sacked, I know I will, and then Matron will be cross with me as well, especially when she finds out that I didn’t go to Article Row like she told me.’
    ‘Article Row? What were you going there for?’
    ‘To get myself a room. The vicar’s wife had told Matron that there was a room there for me and I was supposed to go round yesterday to see it but I didn’t . . . I couldn’t.’ Her eyes filled with fresh tears. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay at the orphanage.’
    ‘What, and end up stuck in the country? That’s daft. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go round to this Article Row after you and me have finished our tea? You can tell the landlady that you made a mistake and that you thought it was tonight you were supposed to go. That way you won’t get into trouble with your matron and you’ll have somewhere to live.’
    Ted made it all seem so simple and so sensible. He made her feel better, somehow.
    ‘I’ll still lose my job. Mr Smith told me that I’d got to learn the stations on every single line, or else.’
    ‘Well, that’s easy enough to do,’ Ted told her.
    Agnes’s eyes widened with hope and then darkened with doubt.
    ‘I mean it,’ Ted assured her, adding, ‘I could teach them to you if you wanted. See, my dad worked on the underground as a driver all his life, and now I’m doing the same. Grown up with knowing what the lines and the stations are, I suppose. Dad used to sing the names to me when I was a kid and lying in bed.’
    ‘Sing them to you? You mean like . . . like hymns?’ Agnes asked in amazement.
    ‘Well, not hymns, perhaps, but like what you might hear down at the Odeon, you know . . .’ He cleared his throat and began to sing in a pleasant baritone, as though to a marching tune that he had made up.
    ‘Here’s to the Piccadilly –
    Cockfosters, Oakwood and Southgate,
    Arnos Grove, Bounds Green and Wood Green,
    Turnpike Lane, Manor House and Finsbury
    Park,
    Ar – sen – al
    Holloway Road, Caledonian Road
    King’s Cross and Russell Square,
    Holborn, Covent Garden and Leicester Square.’
     
    Agnes was entranced. Ted made learning the names of the lines and their stations seem such fun.
    Her obvious awe and delight had Ted’s chest swelling with pride. He was an ordinary-looking lad, of only middling height and a bit on the thin side, with mouse-brown hair and vividly blue eyes. His smile was his best feature in his opinion, and his ears his worse because they stuck out so much. He had long ago accustomed himself to the fact that his looks weren’t the sort that girls made a beeline for, so he’d learned to compensate for that with his friendliness – not that he was the kind to go chasing after girls. He’d got his mum to help out after all. But something about Agnes’s plight, coupled with her awed delight, touched his heart. Ted reckoned that the poor little thing needed someone to look out for her and give her a hand, and he’d as soon do it himself as see her taken in