A Brighter Tomorrow by Maggie Ford (read with me .txt) 📕

Crowds had swamped the City of London. Ellie had begged Doctor Lowe to take her to see them returning, but he’d had his surgery to run. Nor would he let her go among the crowds unchaperoned, even with Dora as company. Unable to bear her disappointment, he’d suggested to Michael Deel that he might care to take charge of the two girls. But, with Dora there as well, she hadn’t had the joy of having him all to herself. Now he was actually asking her if he could take her out – just her.

Although excitement gripped her, she had begun lately to feel more and more tied down. As Doctor Lowe grew closer to her, so he had begun to guard her as if she were his property. It seemed she could hardly go out unless it was with him, and if she did venture out alone, there were always questions as to where she had been and what she had done.

‘What can you be doing all on your own?’ he’d queried before now. ‘I can take you to so many marvellous places.’ Sometime she felt almost a prisoner. It was true that, no longer employed by him, she was in theory a free agent, but there was this sense that if she were to try and kick over the traces, her future might become somewhat shaky, especially with his wife living back here and at his elbow, starting to nag about her all over again. If the woman did manage to get rid of her, it would be the end of it just when what she had so far saved was beginning to mount quite substantially. Another year over and she could sling her hook with a tidy sum to see her on her way. Until then she must be patient and not rock the boat.

It hadn’t surprised her that he’d let Michael take her to watch the Boer War heroes return, a demonstration of an Empire’s pride in its fighting men. But would he frown on Michael taking her out merely for pleasure?

‘Where would we go?’ she asked lamely.

Michael gave her a wily grin. ‘Have you ever seen moving pictures?’

‘Moving pictures?’ she repeated – the second time she had echoed his words; she was in danger of looking like an idiot. She quickly gathered herself together. ‘No, never,’ she said as unhurriedly as she could.

‘There’s a little place that’s been set up in Oxford Street where they are showing moving pictures, though they’re put on at the end of music-hall performances. You’ve never seen one?’

‘I don’t go to music halls,’ she admitted. ‘I asked Doctor Lowe to take me but he considers them common. He’d prefer to take me to see plays.’

‘What about before you worked for him. You must have gone then?’

‘We didn’t have money enough for music halls.’ She felt instantly angry at herself for bursting out with that, but he didn’t blink an eye.

‘Then let’s go to see the moving-picture show on Saturday. I hear it doesn’t take long to show it. But it’ll be an experience. Then we can have dinner somewhere afterwards. I’ll bring you back here in good time.’

‘You’ll have to ask Doctor Lowe. I only usually go out with him. He might not like me being out with you.’

‘I don’t see why,’ he said, puzzled. ‘He did ask me to accompany you in watching the soldiers’ homecoming parade, so why should he object?’

‘That was Dora and me. This time it would be just you and me.’

Michael was frowning. ‘He’s not your father, Ellie.’

Nothing like my father, came the malevolent thought. Bertram Lowe was a good man, gentle and kind, if a little possessive of late.

‘But he tends to see himself as my unofficial guardian,’ she said. ‘He’s been good to me. He took us in – me and my sister – when we had nowhere else to go, and gave us work without any references.’ Oddly, she no longer minded him knowing of her impoverished home life, so long as she didn’t let it sound too squalid, which it had come near to being in spite of her mother’s hard efforts to keep her family as respectable as possible.

‘The doctor’s protected my sister and me ever since,’ she went on. ‘And I think he’s become very fond of me, so he’s bound to be worried about me.’

She guessed he knew of the death of the daughter, Doctor Lowe being an acquaintance of Michael’s father; but he could have no idea she’d become something of a substitute for the dead girl. Doctor Lowe would obviously want that part to remain secret. Poor man, she felt pity for him in a way.

Whatever Michael said to him, to her amazement he gave him his permission for her to be taken to the moving-picture exhibition. The only thing she could think of that might have persuaded him was Michael’s intimating the benefit she might derive from it as part of her artistic tutorage.

Sitting in the dark of what was hardly more than a large room while others queued outside to fill up the chairs of those who left, it was a novel experience to see actual objects and people moving across a white screen as they were projected on to it.

Almost like magic – and indeed it was magic: a train that came at speed towards the audience, making everyone start back with a cry of fear, only to disappear before it came right out at them; a haystack that suddenly turned into a horse and cart, making people laugh but leaving them wondering how such magic could have been done. And when it suddenly became a troupe of female dancers kicking up their legs, everyone clapped appreciatively. And so it went on.

It was over all too soon, though the constant, jerky movements of the various images made her feel a little dizzy, and although it was something of a wonderful novelty, she was relieved to emerge