Remember Me by Margaret Thornton Read Free Book Online

guessed that she would, in fact, be a good fifteen or twenty minutes, having a strip-wash in the small bathroom at the end of the corridor. Guests were not permitted to take baths in the morning or, indeed, at whatever time they wished. Hot water was in short supply and so each guest was allowed one bath per week, or per stay.
    Maddy, along with the other members of the troupe, was learning to accept the rules and regulations of the various lodging houses in which they stayed. She knew that they were quite fortunate to have a bathroom at all, and an indoor toilet. At some of their digs there was a bowl and a large jug on a washstand in the corner of the bedroom, which the landlady would fill with hot water twice a day, if they were lucky. In those households they had to resort to a chamber pot beneath the bed, or the whitewashed lav at the end of the backyard.
    Sleeping arrangements varied as well. Sometimes the married couples managed to get rooms on their own, and Maddy knew that sometimes Susannahand Frank shared a room as though they, too, were a couple. At other times the men shared one or two rooms and the ladies another, as they were doing this week. On the whole, their digs at Mrs Howard’s establishment in Leeds were more than adequate. She provided a cooked breakfast and would rustle up a snack for them at other times if they required one. She even accommodated Nancy’s two West Highland terriers in comfortable baskets in the kitchen. Daisy and Dolly were a very popular turn on the programme, wherever they were playing. Because they were performing dogs they were well-trained and obedient, though not meek or subservient. Nancy loved them as though they were her children, which, indeed, they were as she and Pete had no sons or daughters. Sometimes the dogs had to make do with a makeshift kennel or a garden shed in which to sleep, if the landlady was not fond of animals. It was not often that they were allowed in the bedroom, which was what Nancy would have liked.
    Maddy tidied up her clothes, hanging her suit in the wardrobe, then she made her bed. She was feeling a little calmer now and she tried to push to the back of her mind the thoughts of what a silly fool she had made of herself last night. Well, at least she knew where she stood now with regard to Samuel. She would just have to put it behind her and get on with her life. Like a true ‘pro’, she thought wryly. She had heard many stories of howdedicated artistes carried on despite their heartbreak and misery. What was it they said? The show must go on…
    She guessed that Susannah might well have suffered her share of heartache along the way. Maddy knew that she had had a succession of gentlemen friends and admirers, but had never been married. She had attracted a fair number of what she called ‘stage door Johnnies’ in the past, but since Maddy had joined the troupe Susannah seemed to have settled into a stable relationship with Frank Morrison. Audiences, seeing her up on the stage, singing and dancing and flirting with the menfolk in her own inimitable style, might take her to be nineteen or twenty years of age, but when you observed her more closely you realised she was older than that. Maddy was not sure how old, and no one else seemed to be sure either, but the consensus of opinion was that she was well past thirty.
    Maddy admired her very much, and in spite of her being considerably – well, quite a few years – her senior, Susannah was still the nearest female to her in age, and the one who had treated her more as a friend than as a child who needed taking care of. She sat on the bed now, thinking about Susannah, who was, as usual, taking a good deal of time over her morning ablutions; and about the other members of the troupe. They had hardly changed at all since she had watched them on the sands with Jessie, when she was a little girl…
    Frank Morrison, Susannah’s friend, was still something of an enigma to Maddy. She liked him well enough,