Southend U3A

March 2023

The Stranger - Avril McOwen

It is a sunny but chilly day in March 1931 in the seaside town of Brighton, and Mrs Alice Murphy is taking advantage of the sunshine. She owns and runs a bed and breakfast hotel and is outside in her small back garden containing a small lawn and flowers, cleaning her hall carpet. She has placed the carpet over the washing line and is relentlessly beating it to remove the ingrained dirt accumulated over many months. Satisfied it cannot stand any more of her brutality she removes it from the washing line, goes indoors and replaces it back onto the hall floor. She stands back looking at it, admires her handiwork and decides she deserves a cup of tea and one of her home-made currant buns, from the batch she had baked that morning, covered with a very thick layer of butter and her homemade strawberry jam. Just as she goes into the kitchen her doorbell rings and she goes to see who it is who has made her change her plans.

On the doorstep is a tall well-dressed man who respectfully raises his hat to her and enquires if she has any vacancies. She thought it best not to point out to her visitor the sign in the front room window that said VACANCIES. He was softly spoken with a slight accent that was unfamiliar to her. She asked him how long he wants a room for and he replies ‘Perhaps, one, two or three weeks as I am undecided at the moment.’ As it was not yet the busy season she says there are vacancies and invites him into the house. The 3-storey blue and grey Victorian terrace house is situated on the seafront facing the sea. It has a small neat colourful front and back garden looked after by her gardener and neighbour Albert, who was born with green fingers. The beautifully decorated hall smells of the Lavender beeswax furniture polish she uses regularly and it was very quiet except for the sound of the ticking of the hall clock. Everything was very neat and tidy and that's how Alice likes things to be, neat and tidy.

Many of her guests regularly return each season with their families, or by themselves, and she treats them as friends rather than guests. She has become a very good judge of people over the years and she instantly likes this new visitor, even though they have never met before. She settles him into the first-floor room overlooking the sea and returns to the kitchen to enjoy her interrupted treat of a current bun, layers of butter topped off with a thick layer of strawberry jam.

The only meal she cooks for her guests is breakfast but if they make a special request, and there is a good reason for it, she will provide a plain evening meal of liver and bacon or chicken and chips with vegetables followed by spotted dick or bread and butter pudding as a dessert. During the first few days her only guest went to visit all the many local attractions, Brighton Pier, The Royal Pavilion and The Lanes and then hired a car to travel to places further afield. Alice cooked him an evening meal sometimes and afterwards she invited him into her private parlour where they would talk about the places he had travelled to, the sights he had seen and the people he had met. One night he asked her if she would accompany him the following day for a walk along the promenade. Alice was delighted by the invitation during which they chatted about many topics and found they had a lot in common. Since her husband died in the Great War of 1914, she has no living family so now she regarded her guests as her family. Robert was from America and told her about his wife, Nancy, 2-year-old son Andrew and 4-year-old daughter Celia. He spoke about his parents and about his own work running a travel agency which was the reason for his visit to Brighton. Many people had emigrated to America for a better life during the 19th century and now the families of those emigrants wanted to visit the old country, as the Americans referred to England, to visit where their ancestors had lived. Robert stayed for 3 weeks and then had to leave as he had received a telegram from his company to return home. Robert told her that his family and his business was in San Francisco in the state of California where the sun shone continuously. To Alice it sounded wonderful and thought it must be wonderful to wake up every morning knowing the weather was going to be warm and sunny. She was very sad to see him leave and waved him off at the front door and hoped all his plans would succeed, then closed the door and made her way to the kitchen, where she would enjoy herself eating 2 currant buns with thick layers of butter and jam. She succeeded in having one bun and was about to start on the second bun when the doorbell rang.

When she opens the door there are two men standing there, one was Robert but the stranger standing next to him who was a well-dressed shorter older man she had never seen before. ‘Hello Alice,’ said the elderly man. She stared at the face of the elderly man and suddenly her heart began to beat very fast. She had not heard that distinctive voice for a very long time, but it could not be her brother Edward as her father had told her that he had died. She stood rooted to the floor and continued to stare at him. In a quiet, shaky voice she said, ‘Edward, is it really you?’ as her voice faded away.

‘Yes, Alice, my darling sister, it is really me’. She felt numb with shock and began to shake as she stretched out her hands to grip his outstretched hands which she has not been able to do for over 30 years and led Edward followed by Robert into the house. Robert closed the front door and she led them into the front room overlooking the sea. She is still shaking from disbelief and happiness. They still held hands and just stared at each other and then they were hugging and kissing and talking to each other all at the same time. Robert just stood there and watched with delight and happiness at his father and his sister's reunion after being apart for so long. Edward had been too nervous to come on his own in case Alice would not welcome him into her home so he had sent Robert to find out if he could find out the lay of the land. They all sat down laughing and crying and talking non-stop, brother and sister just kept staring at each other, each not believing that the other was there, both still holding each other's hands. During the afternoon and evening all of Alice's questions were answered. She told Edward that one day she had arrived home with her mother to be told by her father that Edward had left home and he must not be spoken of ever again. It was that sudden. Neither of her parents had explained Edward's disappearance again. Their father was a stern man, the stereotypical Victorian father whose word was law in the family home.

Their mother was a quiet, gentle lady but submissive to her husband. Edward explained that their father, who owned and ran the family's successful grocery business in Brighton High Street, had insisted that his son work in the family shop and when his father retired would be expected to take it over. Edward had told his father he wanted to travel and have his own life, not become a shopkeeper, which incensed his father so much that he told Edward to pack his bags and leave the family home immediately. So, he did. He packed his suitcase; took the money he had been saving from the small wages his father paid him working in the family shop and left. As his mother was saying a tearful goodbye to her son, she quietly slipped an envelope into his jacket pocket and waved him off crying nonstop. In it he found money and a letter telling him to send his letters to her so she would always know where he was. Alice had been to a friend's house that day so when she returned home it was to find her mother crying non-stop and her father alone in his study with the door locked. She asked her parents over the course of the next few days where Edward was and was continually told as the child of the family, she must just accept the new situation and not to ask again. So, she did, knowing full well that no answer would be given. That was over 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, one of Edwards's letters arrived when only his father was at home and he opened it, read it and destroyed it. His father destroyed all future letters and eventually they stopped arriving. Over their evening meal that Alice had cooked for them Edward went on to say that on arriving in America he needed a job and tried his hand at being a cowboy on a ranch, prospecting for gold and working behind a bar but he was not very happy doing any of these jobs. The only job he was good at was buying and selling groceries. He opened a little shop in San Francisco and found that not only did he enjoy doing it but he was very successful at it, so much so that within 10 years he had opened 8 further shops. Then he began buying property and eventually opened his own travel agency of which Robert is the managing director. She told him that she had inherited their family home which is where she lived with her late husband Thomas, but after he died in the Great War, she turned it into a bed and breakfast hotel which she enjoys running. They spoke late into the night then Edward and Robert returned to their hotel. It was arranged that they would return the next day to stay in the family hotel to make their future plans.

After they had gone Alice chuckled to herself at how strange and wonderful life was. She had accepted that she had no living family and now found that there was a large family waiting to meet and greet her in America. Edward had run away from the unpleasant prospect of working in his father's grocery shop only to end up owning a chain of grocery shops. The irony was not lost on Alice as she turned off the bedroom light and went to sleep with a big smile on her face for tomorrow would be the beginning of a completely new life for her and she could not wait for it to begin.